A story.
You're going the wrong way! I heard a young girl's high voice shout.
Startled, with a faint memory of reading about the one way streets here, I did the perfectly sensible thing and immediately yanked the steering wheel hard to pull into a nearby gas station, where the car bounced through a pothole before landing safely. I took a breath, turned around and nosed the car back to thank my rescuers, who gathered, giggling, around it. It was the second most exciting thing to happen to them that evening; their previous warning to another driver executing the same stunt went unheeded, "and he just went all the way down the street!"
There were five or so young girls, brimming with the joy and high spirits that came from being let loose on a hot summer night to roam the neighborhoods and shuttered streets of downtown McLean, Texas. The oldest was around thirteen; they all had the same sunkissed skin that comes from swimming and bike riding, two of the essential summer food groups. Dusk was rapidly smothering the last of the sunlight here, and in the west, thunder awoke and lightning threw spasms of light toward the ground.
I chatted with my guardians, asking about several Route attractions. I was earnestly schooled about avoiding the attentions of the police by going the right way on streets, and hotel and eating recommendations for Shamrock were ruthlessly deliberated and debated. It had been a day of rough weather on the Route, and, photographing in Conway, I had been caught off guard by the sudden rise of a furious wind and dust storm that sent me scrambling for the shelter of my car. A monsoon followed, and delays from the resulting smoldering wreck and pileup on I-40 meant I had to decide if I could make Shamrock. After dinner, the answer became no.
So here I was.
Some towns and encounters draw out the best of your sleeping memories and touch off a flood of color and light, like trailing your hand through bioluminescent waters and watching the sea flare in response. Here, the past and present merged seamlessly into living snapshots of cool summer nights where crickets and cicadas never stopped gossiping, stars were thrown glitter overhead, and you and the rest of the neighborhood prowled the streets in a pack playing ghost in the graveyard, hanging out in the school parking lot and throwing furtive Little Kings parties and stealing the occasional cigarette. Days brought hours of baking under each individual ray of the sun, or wading in the creek behind the neighbor's house catching sunfish and crawdads; waiting your turn in line for a charred hot dog or burger at the neighborhood block party, and wincing at the bite of chlorine in your nose after hours in liquid turquoise. Summer was a forever thing, and the days were luminous and filled with gold and wonder.
So that night I dreamed, and the dreams were of all those things, of questing, yearning, feeling that things would never change, that these moments and this time would always remain hungry and open, and impatiently waiting to discover everything that was just around the next corner.
Over the years, Time has sometimes given a severe beating to the fearlessness and voracious thirst for exploration I like to think I possess. It's certain that storms will come, and sometimes they stay a long time. But in that brief encounter on a twilight street in a forgotten town, I came face-to-face with the best part of me, the part that roams the streets, exploring the world with the nights telling me their secrets, and I remember that I am always, until the very last moment, still there at the next corner, waiting to discover the surprise.
May 28, 2015