The Time of My Life (11 page)

Our conversation at first was the thrust-and-parry humor of our youth. It had always hidden as much as it expressed. But there were none of the old hostilities or feuds or in-law conflicts that mar so many families. We ate, drank beer, made peach ice cream, ate that, too, and told conflicting versions of our foibles and adventures of long ago. We compared children, debating which resembled which parent in appearance and personality, fretting that they were repeating too many of our own mistakes. We enjoyed it, but it was obvious that we really had little in common.

Then, in the last hours of our meeting, my brothers and I took a ride in a car and began talking of the sacrifices our mother and grandmother made in our youth and the pride we felt in them and in each other for managing, in wildly various ways, to make a good life.

“Those women sure raised a bunch of individuals, didn't they?” one brother said. “It's amazing that the three of us, so different from each other, are sitting here talking like this.”

The other brother replied, “It's the differences that make it good.”

And I realized it had always been that way. Love was all we ever had in common.

But it was always enough, and still is.

July, 1979

The First Lady Writes a Letter

T
HE RECIPIENT WAS FLATTERED
. Living out in the sticks as she does, she doesn't get many letters from the First Lady of Texas. She was surprised that the First Lady even knew about her and her town, so remote is it from the centers of Lone Star power. The First Lady's husband, the governor, apparently didn't know about her and the town when he was running for office, for he never went there, which isn't surprising, because most governors and gubernatorial candidates don't go there. It's so far away, and there are so few votes there.

So the recipient was curious and, of course, excited when she opened the envelope and began reading. The First Lady saluted her as “Ms.,” which the recipient thought was a typographical error. It's spelled “Miz” out there. But she was pleased with the folksy tone of the letter: “When Bill and I first talked about his running for Governor, very few people thought he could win,” the First Lady wrote. “But I knew he would be elected Governor because of the kind of man he is. He sets a goal and then works to achieve it and does. Of course, he couldn't have won without the help and support of many, many Texans who share his principles.”

The recipient was surprised that the First Lady was telling her these things. The recipient had been elected to public office for more than thirty years on the Democratic ticket and had been a staunch supporter of John Hill for the office that the First Lady's husband now held. The recipient had had a lot of fun lately, reminding the Republicans of her town that
they
were the ones who had put the governor in office. She had enjoyed the blushes of embarrassment and agonized mumblings that constituted their response. They had seemed peeved that the First Lady hadn't written
them
a letter.

“And Bill can't be successful as Governor without more of that help from Texans concerned about our state's future,” the First Lady continued. “He must be able to show that Texans support his programs to reduce taxes, control spending and produce more energy. That's why Bill's advisers asked me if I could write and ask you to do two things.”

The first thing the First Lady asked the recipient to do was fill out a questionnaire. But it wasn't an ordinary questionnaire: “This poll was prepared exclusively for your use. Your copy is registered as poll No. 104496KG. Only your survey has this special identification number.”

It was sent to the recipient because she was a “key opinion leader” in her town, the First Lady said, and when the polls of all the “key opinion leaders” were tabulated, they would be released to the press and sent to members of the Texas Legislature, the U.S. representatives and senators from Texas, and even President Carter.

The recipient was getting light-headed. Imagine. Not only had the First Lady and the governor's advisers recognized her as a “key opinion leader” in an area where opinions had never been solicited by anyone, but even President Carter was hanging around the mailbox, waiting to see what she thought.

Fanning herself with a copy of the
Baptist Standard
, the recipient scanned the First Lady's observations about taxes, energy, the right to tap wires, etc. Yes, yes, the recipient would fill out the questionnaire! But what was the second thing the First Lady and the governor's advisers wanted her to do? Near the bottom of the second page, she found it: “Bill needs you to become a Sustaining Member of the Governor Clements Committee. Bill needs to be able to…— tell you of his plans and ask you to contact your legislators if you agree with him; and—count on you to encourage your friends and associates to support proposals of his with which you agree.”

Imagine! Not only did the governor want to know what she thought about things, but he was going to confer with her and other “key opinion leaders” in the sticks before he did anything else stupid, like cutting the state road funds in the county the recipient was helping administer or slashing the raise that the recipient's mother thought she was going to get in her teacher retirement pension. Could it be? Was Texas government
really
going to consult the people?

The recipient envisioned the looks of amazement and envy on her friends' faces when she would flash the “handsome, personalized membership card with your name and Sustaining Member number” that the First Lady was going to send her. Hell, she was ready to ask, “John Hill Who?” She read on. It was a long letter.

“Please, right now, will you make a Membership donation of $500, $250, $100, $50, $25 or whatever you can give to the Governor Clements Fund?”

Was this really the wife of the president of the world's biggest oil drilling contractor asking her for money? The wife of the guy who spent all those millions to become governor?

The recipient sighed. They were nice, those dreams of President Carter waiting by the mailbox, of the governor and his lackeys calling to ask what they ought to do next. She especially regretted the handsome, personalized membership card with her name and Sustaining Member number on it. But being a “key opinion leader” just couldn't be worked into her budget.

Maybe she would accept the offer the First Lady made in her charming P.S., though: “The engraving on this stationery is the oldest known picture of the Mansion, made shortly after the Mansion's completion in 1856. I hope you'll come by for a tour when we finish restoring it!”

Maybe the recipient would do that. It would be nice to see where her mother's pension went.

August, 1979

Speaking of Dallas

S
OMEWHERE IN DALLAS
tonight people will be standing or sitting around, sipping cocktails, eating bean dip and potato chips, and talking about books or music or a play or movie they've seen or the prospects of the Cowboys or the fate of the Rangers or their bowling or golf scores or their problems with Internal Revenue or whether they've ridden the Shock Wave at Six Flags yet or the prices they paid for their last lawnmower or the headaches of swimming pool upkeep or Jimmy Carter or Ted Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or crime in the streets or the best soil for azaleas or the right way to cook spaghetti or an amusing little wine they've found or whether the city can stand one more shopping mall or the weather or the latest adventures of Billie Sol Estes or the courtroom style of Racehorse Haynes or whatever happened to Candy Barr.

I pray that is so, but maybe it isn't so. If it is so, I would like to find that place. I would like to go there and discuss any or all of those things or any other topic the other chip-eaters have in mind except one.

I don't want to know how they like Dallas. I already know how everyone who lives in Dallas likes it, and how quite a number of visitors like it, and I've already told everyone how I like it. Since 1976, when I moved here, I haven't swallowed a bite of bean dip without the word “Dallas” in my ears. And I can report without the slightest fear of contradiction—for I know this more surely than my own name—that three kinds of people live in Dallas: those who like it, those who don't like it, and those who like it a little but not as well as they liked the places they moved here from.

In the beginning, those who asked me how I liked Dallas were people who liked it themselves. A lot of them had lived here a long time and took a certain pride in the place, and some had just moved here from someplace else and liked what they had seen so far. Some, however, said they didn't like it. They were usually people who were moving out of it to some other city that they said they already liked a lot better than Dallas, even though they hadn't lived there yet.

Lately, though—well, for almost two years—every party I've attended has turned into a sort of geography lesson. I've learned, for instance, that Dallas is built on a flat place, that it has no hills like North Carolina or Kentucky, and certainly no mountains like Colorado, or as many old buildings as Philadelphia. I've learned it isn't on an ocean, neither Atlantic nor Pacific nor even the Gulf of Mexico. I've learned that the surfing is much better in California and the sailboating is much better in New England. I've learned that a larger supply of nice high-rise apartments is available in New York City and that Reunion Tower isn't the Statue of Liberty, a fact that had escaped my notice. I've learned that the trees are taller in Louisville; that both the Ohio and the Mississippi are longer, wider rivers than the Trinity; that city politics is more entertaining in Chicago; and that the labor unions are more fascinating in Detroit. Someone even told me that Dallas isn't even a real city like London or Paris or—for crying out loud—Miami. I've even heard Big Poor Old D criticized because the streets downtown are too clean and there are too few filthy words spray-painted on the buildings.

I shan't reveal my own opinion of Dallas here, because it doesn't matter. I've lived in a number of cities scattered, roughly, from El Paso to Boston, and all had things I liked and things I didn't like, and I didn't feel that my life would be ruined if I moved out of any of them. I'm proud to say that I didn't
have
to leave any of them, that I was free to stay if I liked, that all my decisions to move elsewhere were of my own volition, usually motivated by what I perceived as a chance to Get Ahead in the World. With varying degrees of difficulty I achieved some kind of harmony with all my various environments, never grieving for the place I had left and never believing I had forsaken heaven to live in hell. Had I held such a belief, I would have done my damnedest to regain heaven. My opinions of all those places are boring, and I'm glad no one has asked me to deliver them. My opinion of Dallas is hideously uninteresting, too, and I apologize to all those people who have had to listen to it.

But it's their fault. They asked me. It was either exchange opinions of Dallas or sulk in the corner.

Well, I discovered the other night that sulking is a lot more fun than talking about Dallas or listening to others talk about Dallas and/or grieve for the glorious places they left. The only thing I've learned from three years of party-going is that other people's opinions of Dallas are just as boring as mine, and their opinions of other cities are just as boring as my opinions of other cities, which, thank God, nobody has asked me.

I realize that now I'll never be invited to another party in Dallas, but that's okay. Home is a better place to sulk in, anyway.

August, 1979

Camp Meeting Time

I
F LISTENING TO SERMONS
sanctified people, the Davis Mountains would be inhabited by saints in the summertime. Including regular Sunday church service, more sermons may be preached there during July and August than on any piece of real estate of comparable size in the country.

Yet no one would classify the area as a hotbed of religious fanaticism, feverish sectarianism, or even evangelistic zeal. In fact, the devout of the area— most of them, anyway—are emphatically in favor of the idea that a creature's relationship with his Maker is pretty much his own business, and there aren't many arguments about who's going to heaven and who's not. Piety there is rather low-key, and such sects as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Pentecostals, who devote a lot of energy to trying to change the minds of people who already consider themselves Christians, haven't made much of a dent in the religious statistics of the place.

But during “camp meeting time”—one week in July and another in August—thousands of mainline Protestant faithful cross the deserts of West Texas and New Mexico to live in rustic cabins built of clapboard and sheet metal, eat under sheds, and spend their days and evenings praying, studying the Bible, listening to preaching two or three times daily, and hobnobbing with friends they haven't seen since last “camp meeting time.”

The first half of this divine doubleheader is the Paisano Baptist General Encampment, where two thousand worshipers come together on its grounds between Marfa and Alpine. The second half is the Bloys Camp Meeting, where additional thousands meet in a grove of oaks between Fort Davis and Valentine.

Both sites are, during those brief times, teeming mountain villages of primitive dwellings, cook sheds, tabernacles, and Christians. Although both are deserted fifty-one weeks a year, they're as sacred to many Southwestern Protestants as Rome is to Catholics. Many have measured their lifetimes by the number of consecutive years they've attended one or the other—or both—of the camp meetings.

How many people have been made better by that experience, I wouldn't presume to say, even if I knew. But there's no denying the importance of the camp meetings in the social life of the people who go to them. Courtships and friendships are begun there, babies are conceived, deals are made, and news and gossip are exchanged, in addition to whatever spiritual transformations might take place.