Okay, last time, I had us on the road to San Marcos. It was a pretty uneventful trip, really. Oh, there was a little drama. We were a little more than three quarters of the way down when we realized that there was some sort of fire going on along the grassy sides of the freeway. Emergency vehicles were there, and firemen were doing their best to put it out.(1)
I will say this for Texas. They take prairie fires very seriously. They should. Grasslands burn furiously when they get ignited, and they can be very dangerous. I know this because I’m a New Mexican. I grew up with the concept of Fire as an Entity, almost an organic thing. It was always a natural part of the world I lived in, sometimes as a positive force (grasslands, like forests, are recharged when they’re burned), though always a dangerous one, and to be both accepted and feared. (2)
About the photos: Three today. First, Martha with the statue of the mermaid and friend. We would learn that the pig in question was Ralph. Second, the title of the piece, “Ode To Ralph,” by Cheryl Latimer. There will be more on Ralph coming up. And, finally, a cartoon of a mermaid and a guy in a cafe. You’ll recall I couldn’t get Adobe’s AI to produce a picture of a mermaid. (Why?) So I went back to one of my other AI platforms and got this one instead.
Note to Adobe: ease up on the censors, dudes. It’s a mermaid, not the apocalypse.
Anyway, shortly after that, we arrived at San Marcos. After driving around a bit, we headed into downtown for lunch and a look around. San Marcos does have a downtown, by the way. That is, there is an area where shops and stores and civic buildings can be found. That makes it somewhat unusual in Texas. Many towns and cities here don’t have a downtown.
It’s like this. A few of the older communities do have downtowns -- Georgetown, where we live, does. In fact, it trades off its downtown. Tourists come from all over to see what the chamber of commerce proudly calls “the most beautiful Town Square in Texas.”(3)
But a lot of other towns around us don’t have what human geographers call “a central business district.” They’re new, you see. Until recently, they were just ranches or, at most, just a crossroads with a gas station. Then the economy changed. They became suburbs and boomed. But they never had, and may never have, an area to which everyone went for shopping or go to court or whatever.
For us...and particularly for Martha, who grew up in the cities of New England...that was a shock. In fact, we have a on-going game, half-serious, in which we visit these new communities and look desperately for a Downtown. “There’s got to be one,” Martha says, “doesn’t there?”
Except, very often there isn’t. One town not far from us has its city hall and court building in a strip mall between a Thai restaurant and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school. In another town, where we bought furniture when we moved to the area, Martha somewhat desperately asked the gentleman who sold it to us where the downtown might be found. He thought for a long moment, then said, “Well, there’s a corner down by the Walmart where they put up the Christmas Tree.”
But, San Marcos has a real downtown, and we explored it eagerly. It was interesting, because it was sort of three-way cross between the University student ghetto (I should have mentioned before that San Marcos is home to a very impressive school, Texas State University. It will play a big role in my story in future), an old-fashioned area for shopping by the locals, and a tourist area. Makes for a nice combination of old and new, traditional and otherwise...
We picked a restaurant that was also clearly a bit of a dating bar for the students, the Root Cellar Cafe. The food wasn’t bad. But...the cafe wasn’t perhaps the best choice for us. The service was, for us, that day, very slow. As in Very Slow. As in VERY. The restaurant itself had a vaguely subterranean feel to it--they didn’t call it a “cellar” for nothing.
And...the restrooms. Oy! the restrooms! To get into and out of the restrooms, you had to navigate a couple of rather steep and dangerous steps...in very dim light. Martha almost fell on her way in and out of the ladies’. Not good.
Ah well...if we’d met the place a few decades back, when our bodies were a bit more limber and our eyes more sharp...maybe we would have loved it.
Anyway, after that, we walked around a bit downtown and got the general layout of things. But, then the heat began to get to us, so we decided to get back into our (charmingly air conditioned) car and drive to the Tourist information center, where we could find out more about the town and its upcoming festival.
A short drive later, we were in the Center’s parking lot. And...and!....there...near the door...was a large concrete statue...of a mermaid...
And in her arms...cradled tenderly...like a pet...was
...a pig.
With a fish tail...and a bright smile.
More to come.
Footnotes:
1. I’m not sure, but this may have been the fire in question: “Crews extinguish small grass fire along SH 130,” by, Tara BrolleyFri, CBS News Austin, August 25th 2023 at 2:51 PM. https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/crews-extinguish-small-grass-fire-along-sh-130-wildfire-danger-heat-high-temperatures-drought-threat-firefighters
2. If you’re interested, check out the works of the scholar Stephen J. Pyne. Among other things, he explains that fire is actually a natural part of most ecologies, not the freakish disaster we were long taught to believe. He also explores the role of fire in early agriculture. Many cultures, for example, Aboriginal Australians, are almost literally shepherds of fire, using flame to clear and fertilize the soil. See his webpage here: https://www.stephenpyne.com/ and his Amazon author’s page here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001ITXQHG/about
now
3. No. Really. It is actually quite attractive. See: https://visit.georgetown.org/ and https://visit.georgetown.org/most-beautiful-town-square/
Copyright©2024 Michael Jay Tucker
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