The road out of Monahans is Euclidian in its simplicity – a straight line going due west. The surveying could have been accomplished with nothing more than a compass and a long rope. The only breaks in the plain are the grasshopper-like oil pumpers.

The road finally turns when it approaches the first of the western mountains, and it is at that point that I begin to feel at home. Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at nine thousand feet, is eighty miles away but clearly visible, its massive vertical wall next to a smaller peak that seems to be kneeling before it, hence the name Guadalupe.

We finally get within radio range of El Paso and discover that eight of the eleven FM stations that the seek button on the radio finds are in Spanish. We listen as two cheery voices tell us about the weather, the traffic (there’s an accident being cleared on Zaragosa Road), and the news. Their Spanish – more Spanglish, actually – is fun to hear.

Our home town is the largest bi-lingual border town in the world, three million people in what was once a single city called El Paso del Norte because it was the northernmost snow-free pass through the Rockies. After Texas became an independent country in 1836, the Rio Grande became the border. Mexico eventually renamed their side of the city in honor of their revolutionary hero, Benito Juarez, but the two cities remained essentially one. People freely passed back and forth daily to shop, work, and visit family and friends.

Then the drug wars began. Juarez now has more killings than Bagdad. News reports of this tragedy usually put the blame on a weak and corrupt Mexican Government, but I can’t escape the feeling that the United States is ultimately to blame. If we had not allowed drug used to become so common in our self-indulgent society, there would be no demand. That doesn’t excuse the brutal Mexican cartels, but before we started taking drugs, they didn’t exist.

I clear my mind of this thought, and aim the car through the pass. The city limits of El Paso and the Welcome to New Mexico signs are at the same point as we clear the pass.

Pot Thief Tour 2010 - Day 2

Today we tried to drive the length of Texas. I was not up to the task. We made it as far as Monahans, a dreary remnant of the West Texas Oil Boom, now home to rusted derricks and storage tanks, boarded up storefronts, and a few motels, gasoline stations, and fast food joints which accommodate weary travelers like ourselves who haven’t the stamina to push on to El Paso.
Monahans is our second dying town of the day. The first was Baird, hometown of a college roommate I lost touch with after graduation. I needed to mail some books to a bookstore that ordered signed copies, so I decided to use the Baird Post Office and check if Don lived there. I learned from the lady in the post office that his parents died long ago (as I would have guessed), their ranch was sold, and Don never returned to Baird. From the looks of things, neither did anyone else. It wasn’t technically a ghost town, but there was enough ectoplasm to populate a Hollywood horror film.
I didn’t leave the Interstate to see the other small towns we used to pass through when traveling from Dallas to El Paso back when it was a two-lane highway, but I know what they look like now. Empty buildings, no one under the age of sixty, a town waiting for the last residents to die so the wind and sand can bury it. Limited access freeways make car travel faster and safer. But those multi-lane roads are like serpents devouring every town small enough to swallow. Only the cities remain, encircled by huge apartment complexes housing the refugees from the towns. In this way America is urbanized.
Tomorrow, we will reach Silver City, New Mexico. As its name indicates, it was born in one of the numerous silver-rushes of the 19th Century. Southeastern New Mexico if dotted with silver mining towns that lasted only until the ore was mined out. But copper followed silver in Silver City, then a cavalry base, and later a veterans hospital and a teacher preparation school that ultimately became Western New Mexico University. The University has had to fend off several attempts by the State to close it, but today it is a stable but small institution. Mining has essentially ceased, but the town had achieved a critical mass of population before that happened, and tourists add to the economy, attracted by the Gila Wilderness and the Gila Cliff Dwellings Archaeological site.
Residents of Silver City were disappointed back in the fifties when the route for Interstate 10 turned out to be far to their south, but it turned out to be a blessing. Deming and Lordsburg were killed by that road. But Silver City hangs on, fifteen thousand rather eccentric artists, recovering hippies, and people who just want to avoid the fast lane. Let’s hope some of them are readers. I do a signing there on Friday.

Pot Thief Tour 2010 - Day 1

Driving west is liberating. The vistas grow larger, the skies higher, the air drier. Claustrophobic greenery gives way to open plains, to stark plateaus, then finally to towering mountains. We left Georgia where bugs and snakes hide beneath vines and last year’s fallen leaves and entered a starker land where nothing is hidden, where the earth is fresh and clean, its mineral self laid bare.

We are tonight in Texas, the transition state, its eastern half part of the old south, its western half the entrance to the new west. Top soil a mile deep and rivers red with clay give way to bare rock and dry arroyos. I’m going home. I begin to breathe again. I feel lighter, unencumbered by the fecundity of fertile fields.

Tomorrow we will reach West Texas, a longer trek than the one today that took us through four states. I will stand in the parched parking lot of a cheap motel in Fort Stockton or Van Horn and stare at mountains a hundred miles away. My soul will be restored.

The first event is Thursday, a talk to the students at Ysleta High School, my alma mater in El Paso. The next day I sign books at the Palace Hotel in Silver City, New Mexico. In my mind, I am already there.

Another Great Contest from Aggie Villanueva

Writers, check this out. Go to the site, look at the image, write a short piece based on it, and enter. You get recognition on other sites and something to add to your writing resume. Plus, a look at Aggies' art is worth the trip all by itself. http://www.visualartsjunction.com/?p=5863

New Genre for Pot Thief?

The Albuquerque Journal ran an article on December 18th about books published in 2009 related to New Mexico that they recommend. One sentence said, "The best-selling adult book in this little shop is the paperback The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras (Oak Tree Press, $15) by J. Michael Orenduff. It's a lowkey mystery set in Albuquerque's Old Town." Maybe having it described as an "adult book" will help me raech a new audience? The explanation is that the previous paragraph was talking about books for children. The article was picked up by the website AllBusiness, which generated a googlr alert for me, so that's how I found about the the newspaper piece.

Congratulations to the two winners (a tie) of the First Visual Arts Junction Writing Contest. They are Ed Leonard & Jacki Donnelly. And thanks to Aggie Villanueva for creating this contest. If Ed and Jackie will contact me, I'll send them a signed copy of a Pot Thief book.

Pot Thief Email

I apologize for using the OTP Blog in this fashion, but Mediacom has evidently had their entire email operation hi-jacked, so I no longer receive email at my usual address. Worse, I have no access to my contacts file and, silly me, never made a copy nor committed them all to memory. Like I could do that. Please email me at thepotthief@gmail.com.

Thanks

Mike