Denton

The E Train went by underground, shaking the floor, the glasses on the bar. The kid standing next to me looked startled.

“When I was a kid the Santa Fe freights used to wake me up,” the kid said. He seemed lost and kind of lowdown when he said it.

We were strangers, standing at the rail of an uptown joint in the snow bound northern city where I grew up. I had come home to visit my father. He was in the stroke ward at the nearby hospital. It wasn’t going well between us, Dad and me. It never did.

“I can still hear them ol’ freights, like rolling thunder,” he said.

After awhile he said he used to wait for the circus to come to town. “Yeah I get that.” I said. “We would go to the Garden, just down the street, and watch the clowns”. I told him how the clowns scared the hell out me, how I thought that my dad thought it was funny that clowns scared me. Later, much later, it turned out it wasn’t true he thought that.

The kid looked at me like I was a crazy old man or maybe just drunk. “I used to hear the circus coming from miles away” he said, “I could hear the calliope from way far off. Folks in town would stop what they were doing and listen.Get ready to party.” Then he stopped, as if caught up in a dust devil memory he shook his head and said very quietly, “they would get a funny look in their eyes, maybe thinkin’ it was something more than the end of summer, more than another year gone to harvest.” He was quiet after that.

Before I left I asked him where he was from. He told me he was from a little town just outside of Denton, Texas. I told him I knew where it was, that I had heard the Santa Fe freights rolling by, that I had stayed awhile and moved on. I wished him well and went out the door. I walked down the once familiar streets to the uncertainty that was waiting at the hospital.

I didn’t tell him that I had been in Denton because I was running for cover, drying out, getting clean. That the trains in the night sounded like all things lost, that lonesome was a way station on the road back from where I had been.

high school scoreboard and flag

Met M and R at coffee shop. The rain was light but steady, as much mist as rain, gentle, warmer than expected. Walk to the track. Straights and curves today. For me my fourth day with steady output. Came back later to take a picture of the flag on election day. Did not bring a tripod which limited my range of choice. Got what there was. Will likely go back another morning. On the way back to the car I remembered coming home to the US nearly ten years ago. I went to get my license renewed at Motor Vehicle Branch in Denton Texas. A big haired, bored, Texas gal took me through the paper work. Finally she looked up, said we were done but for one question. What party affiliation did I want to list on my voter registration card. I told her Democrat. After another minute or two she handed me my license and my voter registration card. I could drive legally in the US, approved by the State of Texas my license said and I could vote legally in the 26th congressional district in the Great Lonestar State. It was just another Texas-hot day in June, but there in front of me was a battered, slightly crumpled guy, standing in front of the MVB window staring at two slips of paper with an amazed look on his face. I saw him looking back at me and it was only then that I noticed the tears rolling slowly down his cheeks,. The gal who had driven me over from the rehab joint I was in at the time came up to me and asked if everything was all right. :”Yeah,” I said, “I guess.” and I handed her the papers. She looked at them for what seemed a long time. “Welcome home Michael, glad you made it. ” she said and then turned away and headed back to the car. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t referring to Texas exactly, more like home from 30 plus years living abroad and more than that locked into drugs and alcohol. Yeah I said to myself, long time comin’ and wiped the tears away. Funny thing how the biggest moments, the end of the longest journey, can be marked by a little scrap of bureaucratic nonsense. Already voted by mail as we do here in Oregon, but before I did I took my now out of date Texas voter’s card out of its resting place in my desk drawer and renewed acquaintances with it; I remembered a big haired ol’ gal in a Texas motor vehicle bureau and said thanks y’all, my time to go and be counted.

Santa Fe Dreams

Tarmac Meditations-Track Work on Election Day