Drifting Through the Southwest

By Rich Grady

I was on my way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, leaving Colorado in my rearview mirror. I kept the mountains to my east as I drove south through the San Luis Valley, and crossed the Rio Grande River, which starts in Colorado before flowing through New Mexico and on to Texas to become the border with Mexico. Lauren and I had intended to take this trip together, and we are, but not in the way we had planned before cancer killed her in April 2022. When our childhood friend Matt and his wife Lori moved to Santa Fe, we decided that we would visit them, and now I was on my way.

Matt and Lori welcomed me warmly to their home in Santa Fe and showed me some of their favorite places. They took me up into the nearby Sangre de Cristo Mountains – the same mountain range that I followed down from Colorado. “Sangre de Cristo” is Spanish for “Blood of Christ,” reminding me of when I was an altar boy in junior high, and the Catholic Mass was still recited in Latin, and my most important job was to know when to ring the bells during the consecration of the bread and wine.

Norman Petty Studio, Clovis NM

When I left Santa Fe heading south, I decided to go through Clovis, NM, before crossing the border into Texas. In Clovis, I stopped at the old Norman Petty Studio where Buddy Holly and other nascent luminaries of rock’n roll first recorded in the late 1950s. The studio was closed, and the bushes out front were overgrown, and it felt as if I was about to enter The Twilight Zone. If a tumbleweed rolled down the street and then a UFO landed, I wouldn’t have been surprised – Clovis is a short hop from Roswell, the mecca of UFO pilgrims.

Lighthouse Rock, Palo Duro Canyon, TX

In Canyon, TX, I booked into a hotel not far from the entrance to the Palo Duro Canyon. It was late afternoon when I took the short drive to the park to see the canyon. The views were stunning, and I stopped and got out to look several times on the drive down to the canyon floor, and saw a beautiful sunset as I drove back out to the rim. The next morning, I took a hike on the floor of the canyon to see Lighthouse Rock, which overlooks remote gullies and good hideouts. This was the last stronghold and hideaway of the Comanche people during their final years of free-ranging before confinement on a reservation in Oklahoma. I felt an ethereal connection between the physical and the spiritual in this place.

Caddilac Ranch, Amarillo TX

I left Canyon and went slightly north to Amarillo to see the Cadillac Ranch. It’s a public art installation on a flat expanse of privately owned farmland that abuts the path of the old Route 66, “The Mother Road” of early roadtrippers to the West. The abutting road now is a straightened-out multi-lane fly-by Interstate Highway. Ten Cadillacs, dating from 1949 to 1963, are partially buried nose first into the ground, sticking out at an angle that corresponds to the slope of the sides of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. They are all lined-up in a row, and covered in graffiti. There were a few cans of spray paint on the ground, so I picked up a can of yellow and painted a solid yellow heart on one of the cars – the same color as Lauren’s favorite rose. I stood alone on the windswept plain thinking of her.

Yellow heart spray painted by Rick at Caddilac Ranch

I then went south to Abilene, across the rolling plains of west Texas, singing “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” Put my ashes next to Lauren’s in the Old South Cemetery back home. After a night in Abilene, it was on to Texas hill country.

I rolled into Fredericksburg in the afternoon. I walked up and down the main street and remembered when Lauren and I visited this place. She had some German ancestry – mixed in with mostly Irish and a wee bit of Scottish – and Fredericksburg is full of Americans of German ancestry. The German influence on the place is apparent in some of the restaurants and bars – there was even going to be a German beer and sausage festival there the next day, complete with oompah bands. I returned to a German restaurant where Lauren and I had eaten. The hostess sat me near an open window where I could watch people going by on the sidewalk, which Lauren would have enjoyed – she was a people person.

The Stage, Luckenbach TX

The next day, I went to Luckenbach – it’s another place that Lauren and I once visited. It’s a tiny town devoted to country music and rural events. Willie Nelson has played there, and even hosted 4th of July picnics on-site for several years. For my return visit, there was an antique auto show on the grounds and a western swing band providing the live soundtrack. There’s a big oak tree in the picnic area that Lauren and I once sat under, and I got myself a beer and wandered over to it and sat in our spot, listening to the band and remembering her next to me under the tree, leaning into each other. The band reminded me of Asleep at the Wheel, a Texas-based swing band that we once went to see at the Bull Run in Shirley, Massachusetts.

Lauren loved to dance to their music – I miss swirling around our kitchen floor together, with swing music playing on the stereo, and laughing while we did it. I think I miss her laughing the most – and her smile. She could light up my day, and still makes me smile to think about it.

The Oak Tree, Luckenbach TX

From Fredericksburg, I went east along the south bank of the Pedernales River, passed the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Ranch, and went over to Johnson City where LBJ was born. He accomplished a lot as President in the 1960s, but it took a toll on his health. After he left office, he let his hair grow long and took walks with Lady Bird and their beagle dog along the Pedernales, enjoying the wildflowers. He died when he was only 64, in 1973, four years after retiring. I took a walk at the National Park in Johnson City to retrace the steps that Lauren and I had taken on a tree-lined path across a creek and around the old Johnson family farmhouse and outbuildings. It was as if she was still holding my hand, and I felt a warm breeze on my face. From there, I angled northeast before crossing the Brazos River south of Waco to head east toward Crockett on my way to Nacogdoches.

LBJ with post presidency long hair

The land cover began to change in this part of Texas, from open plains and rolling terrain to dense pine woods. In Nacogdoches, I took a walk around the botanical gardens at Stephen F. Austin University, named for the man sometimes referred to as the “Father of Texas.” After my walk, I contemplated my route to Little Rock. I could stick with the state and county highways and go into Arkansas directly from Texas, or swing over through Shreveport, Louisiana on the Interstate. I decided to stay off the Interstate, and made my way north to Little Rock on the roads less traveled, singing at the top of my lungs, “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!”