We first stopped for kolaches for Sis and grabbed ourselves lunch from the BBQ place. While eating, I spotted the owner, whose bayhouse is next to ours. And so I went to say hi, having not seen him for several years, since we were visiting from Chicago. He later said that he thought Mama and I looked familiar (we get that a lot--how many bi-racial lesbian couples, with twins, do you know? People seem to remember), but he wasn't sure why. He sat and talked with us for awhile about the expansion, business, family, and then offered us a behind-the-scenes tour, through the offices, new conference rooms, storage, part of the kitchen prep area. It was fascinating. And generous of him to give us a tour.
Then we took a side tour through Gommie's hometown. I hadn't been in town, only passed it on the highway, in years. And while it has grown and changed, it has remained familiar enough that I wandered through memories as we rambled around town. There was the original barbecue place, a meatmarket whose glass cases I remembered perusing, the road to my aunt's old house that went past the building where my Bammie had a doctor so long ago, my Bammie's house with the brick planter I used to walk on and the big trees in back and her neighbor who would entertain me sometimes and the alley behind--in my mind's eye, I could walk through every room in that house (except perhaps her own) and see the Coca-Cola sign, bathroom heater, twin beds, terrarium with the bench around it, the countertops in the kitchen, the fireflies in a jar on a nightstand that Gommie and I had caught one evening--and, more than anything else, the family hardware store in its three-story white building looming above that older part of town, which is the only way I found it without asking for directions. I don't know how much time we spent in this town when I was a child; I wouldn't have said it was a lot, even though I lived there as a baby, but my memories of it are from a point in childhood, I guess, where everything I saw was imprinted. The hardware store smells the same, is arranged even the same way with the housewares over on the right to be purchased for the wedding registries that are taped to cardboard with the wedding announcements and kept next to those huge rolls of wrapping paper--I can see the sweet little lady who would always be at the counter and remember Gommie buying things from her there. In the back were the endless boxes of screws and nuts and nails and such. And the scary elevator with no walls that I swear I've ridden. We didn't go up to the second or third floors, but young staff members told me that the stuffed critters are still in the office next to my cousin's, what used to be my uncle's before he (sorta) retired, and that apparently the train track is rumored to be somewhere in storage with its tracks and figures and houses and little trees on a huge table made of plywood. I saw it work at least once, with my other uncle. Out front, next to lampposts in the sidewalk, were plaques honoring my grandmother and her husband (funny, I don't think of him as a grandfather--he died when my mom was but 17), my grandmother's brother and sister-in-law, and then their parents. And it was funny to stand there and feel so rooted to a place, to feel so comfortable and familiar, to almost feel as if I belonged, even though I think of myself as more of a big city or even suburban girl not of a small town, even though it's not my home or even my childhood home. I guess that's what roots are. And they grow in the strangest places, keeping you tied somewhere even if you are much further afield.
Coming to the end of memory lane, we headed over to the George Ranch, a sprawling living history museum intent on recreating 19th-century cattle culture. None of my family were cattle people, that I know of, tending more towards farming ("Oh, the cowman and the farmer can be friends"), but the Wild West and cowboys and cattle drives is what everyone outside of the state associates with it and I wanted to learn something about the life and times. Why is it we always end up at that place when it's more than 100F outside? But today there were no kids in tow and so we could handle the heat and the walk. Heat, humidity, bugs, storm clouds in the distance, warnings about rattlers and alligators. Some things don't change. But we could ride on a tractor around the site and then duck into air-conditioned and restored houses, actually doing the family's history backwards by visiting the elaborate 1890s mansion, then the stately 1860s house, and finally the extremely modest 1830s cabin with dog trot. We also wandered the family cemetery, complete with footstones. And so many dead children. It was a harsh life, something you could feel viscerally as you walked in the heat over dried grass and gazed out into the flat landscape with sharecropper's cabins, cattle cars, chuck wagons. Heading out, I bought a cookbook from the gift shop, it being my favorite way to connect to and learn about a culture. Beans, biscuits, cornbread, brisket, all the traditional Texas recipes, with some great photos of the ranch. Later, back in town, I would pick up Lonesome Dove, hoping it would provide a narrative to the place, characters to walk those dirt paths, even though the book is more about a cattle drive than a ranch--the people, the times, the motivations, are still very similar. And even though my ancestors weren't cattle people, they were there with them, living, I'm sure, a similarly harsh life trying to eke a living out of that hot dirt.
Traffic on the way home brought us abruptly back into the 21st-century and city living. And when I'm reluctant to be here, I just open my book . . . .
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