No Country for Old Neckties: A Spring Wedding in the Chihuahuan Desert

Earlier this month, my wife and I drove to Terlingua, Texas—a ghost town in the Chihuahuan Desert—to attend our niece's wedding. Terlingua is a two-day drive from our home in Mississippi—about 1,000 miles.

We spent the first night on our journey in San Antonio, where we ate dinner at Mi Tierra, my favorite Mexican restaurant. Beloved by tourists and locals alike, Mi Tierra features roving mariachi bands, a Mexican pastries counter, sturdy margaritas, and old-fashioned Tex-Mex food.

The next morning, we traveled west on Interstate 10 into the northern stretches of the Chihuahuan Desert. When we crossed over the Pecos River, we officially entered the Trans Pecos--the most stark and desolate region of Texas.

We arrived in Fort Stockton in the early afternoon, one of the few substantial towns in West Texas. Founded as an Army post before the Civil War, Fort Stockton owes its existence to Comanche Springs, an aquifer of artesian springs that once produced 60 million gallons of water a day — a desert miracle. The fort's soldiers protected Overland stage coaches from marauding Comanche and Apache Indians.

We turned south at Fort Stockton and ended the day in Alpine, Texas, where we spent the night in the historic Holland Hotel.  Had we reached the end of our journey? No, on our third travel day, we drove another 80 miles to the tiny hamlet of Terlingua, the wedding destination.

Our niece was married in Terlingua's St. Joseph's Church, attended by four bridesmaids and groomsmen. No male in attendance wore a traditional necktie, but all were appropriately attired. Some wore open-collared shirts, and some wore bolo ties. A few men wore cowboy hats, and many wore their best western boots. 

After the wedding, the guests retired to a sumptuous reception to eat barbecue brisket and drink 'horny toad' margaritas and ice-cold Mexican beer. I couldn't find a shady spot to sit, so I watched the young folks dancing the Texas Two-Step in the late-afternoon sun, amply shaded by my Stetson hat.

Terlingua is just a few miles from the Mexican border, and one can see the mountains of Mexico shimmering in the distance.  This region is Cormac McCarthy country, the setting for several of McCarthy's novels, including No Country for Old Men.

For the coastal elites traveling by jet from the West Coast to the East Coast, Far West Texas is Flyover Country--boring to look at from 30,000 feet. For me, however, this region has a mystical quality. Its harsh immensity is achingly beautiful.

Life in the Chihuahuan Desert of the Trans Pecos is stripped to the essentials. Air-conditioning and four-wheel drive vehicles don't change the fact that water is the most basic necessity of life and is always in short supply.

I like and admire the people of West Texas. There is a directness about them and an easy hospitality that is missing in urban America, perhaps most especially in the Blue State cities. Fortunately for West Texans, it's damned hard to get there and mostly unappealing for people who own private jets.  

Two-stepping in the Chihuahuan Desert

Summer Reading Suggestions: Dip Into Apocalyptic Literature

 Summer is here, and everyone is looking for an enticing novel to read while on vacation. Most of us want a page-turner--something vacuous but exciting, a book we can read on the beach while sipping a tropical cocktail.

The summer of 2022 is different from the summers of the recent past. Inflation is rising, and most of us feel that we are only beginning to see substantial price increases in food and staples. Gas prices are at historic highs. It seems like everyone is unhappy, anxious, and fretful. What lies ahead?

So--why not read some apocalyptic literature to help us focus on what may well be America's future? Here are my suggestions:

First, I urge everyone to read James Howard Kunstler's World Made By Hand novels. Kunstler's books are set in upstate New York during the post-petroleum age. He describes a nation that has dropped back into the nineteenth century with people riding horses instead of driving cars and lighting their homes with candles rather than lightbulbs.

Before diving into Kunstler's novels, I suggest you read The Long Emergency, his best-known nonfiction work. In this book, Kunstler argues that the petroleum-based economy is ending and that so-called renewable energy (wind turbines, solar panels, and such) will not allow us to maintain our lavishly materialistic lifestyle.

The Long Emergency is very persuasive. Kunstler convinced me that our gasoline-driven world is not sustainable. I fear our future will be bleaker than progressive voices predict. We are more likely to be raising chickens than driving electric cars.

I also recommend reading some of John Wesley Rawls' apocalyptic novels.  Rawls' books imagine life in a world after the global economy collapses. Violence breaks out all across the United States, and an international, fascist military force stamps out democracy and individual freedoms.

What I like best about Rawls' books are the technical details. For example, he provides a recipe for making napalm out of styrofoam and describes how to harden a suburban home against a terrorist attack. His books even have glossaries.

Rawls is a prolific writer, and I recommend you begin by reading these four novels: Patriots,  Survivors, Expatriots, and Liberators. If you read all four of these books, I predict you will buy 2,000 rounds of .22 ammunition and a 10/22 Ruger rifle with a camouflage finish.

William Forstchen is another master of the apocalyptic genre. One Second After describes life in Black Mountain, North Carolina, after one of America's enemies set off nuclear bombs in the earth's upper atmosphere. These explosions trigger an electromagnetic pulse that shuts down all electronic devices--including vehicles and electrically powered machinery.

As food runs short, Forstchen's town officials begin rationing, and looters and arsonists are summarily shot. Large terroristic gangs sustain themselves by cannibalism, and the town organizes a militia made up primarily of college students that fights the terrorists in a bitter battle to the death.  

Finally, I recommend people to read Cormac McCarthy's dark and harrowing book, The Road.  McCarthy's apocalyptic environment is not drawn as sharply as those sketched out by Kunstler, Rawls, and Forstchen. Still, he describes a grey, ashen world in which the sun no longer shines and crops cannot grow--a perpetual nuclear winter. It is a harrowing book that ends with a bare flicker of hope.

Americans should read all four of these authors because they sketch out for us--to one degree or another--America's future. We should pay heed and prepare for it.

I, for one, went to the grocery store and bought four cans of Spam.