Sonic Burger and Family Dollar. KFC and Wal-Mart. Big Box Chain this and über-strip-mall that… Businesses that don’t care about the unique histories of the communities they profit from are swallowing up cheap land just off the interstate and establishing a flavorless beach-head of mindless consumerism. As far as I’m concerned this is a cultural hate-crime in which the victims exchange their silence for a shot at the guaranteed lowest price on a tub of margarine.  Here’s where some people stop reading and turn into armchair economists and citizens for The Availability of Less Expensive Baby Formula.

“People have the right to shop wherever they want, Mussolini!”
“Hey T-Shirt Man, these chains provide jobs and inexpensive goods to people trying to save money!”

True. The following is also true: Pakistani Madrases provide free meals and education to children in need, and it would be cheaper to manufacture most US goods in China.  Yes, I just invoked terrorism and communism to make the following point: the quality of our future experience is sewn in our near term choices and deserves more consideration than a knee-jerk reaction to economy and convenience. Our dollars are leaving our communities as profits and the jobs these big boxes create are usually at the expense of better paying jobs that were cannibalized in the process.

And as far as the frugality of the average American is concerned, penny pinching predates the shopping mall by more than a few millennia. The caveman managed his pebbles and Marian Cunningham clipped her coupons. Indeed the human compulsion to bargain and economize is nothing new. What is new, however, is the apathy the American populous displays in the face of driving an extra mile to patronize a local book seller or in thinking twice about giving money to businesses that, in the great corporate roll-up, view our small towns as just another column on an endless spreadsheet.

I’ve seen it for a thousand miles: small towns suffering blight because a mere ten miles away, right next to I-Whatever, squats a mega-sprawl of towering plastic signage and black asphalt, funneling local dollars into bottomless beige boxes in exchange for an average thing of average quality. When our local landmarks fall down, when these businesses die, so does a large part of our individual histories and the experience of our unique geography. Towns start to take on the same proportions, dimensions, color and purpose. Small Town America is fast becoming Same Town America and that sad, broken place you have to drive through on the way to somewhere else.

Despite this tide, I have to think that a higher understanding of our unique experiences will prevail in the end. That people will choose Hodad’s over McDonalds, Lou’s Records over Walmart and Pappy & Harriet’s over Applebee’s. Not because they saved a dollar and the parking was ample, but because they’ve found a higher value in the sharing of something unique. Because in the end when all is tolled, it will be our experiences that will matter most, not how much we saved in the process.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe

No one is exactly sure when this bad idea officially began, but fools have been gladly plunging head-first into its unique form of madness since the 13th or 14th century. I, for one, find comfort in knowing that, despite all we have learned as a species in the last 600 years, the primal need to prove our stupidity to our fellow man can still trump our better judgment.

Indications: Marinate a few thousand people in alcohol. Let simmer in the Spanish sun. When sufficiently pickled, pour mixture into a narrow and sangria stained, cobble-stoned street prior to sunrise. Add two parts fear, one part confusion, thirteen parts horned beast, a pinch of adrenaline and serve without warning. Consume with chaos at a dead sprint.

One can learn a tremendous amount about one’s self in 20 Spanish seconds. And while some of this self knowledge will not be flattering, its truth grants the holder a certain degree of forgiveness and clarity. Knowledge. Truth. Forgiveness. Clarity. This is the stuff of of the first confession—absolution coming on the heels of a stampede.

A brave man died this week on a Spanish street slick with the spoils of celebration. To those watching from the safety of the barricades and flowered balconies, he was just another fool who got what he asked for. I even get the feeling that some here welcomed his fate as it provided the missing justification for a morning spent as a spectator praying for a blood letting, instead of a participant desperately trying to avoid one. I don’t know what it is in man that drives him to choose between these two stations. Risk and venture seems to be our evolutionary mandate. We left the cave, took to the seas and even lassoed the moon. Each of these steps gravid with peril. Maybe it’s the lure of comfort and the false hopes of security that have bent us to the point where we’re more comfortable watching the trials of the world from our couches and behind barricades than from the cobblestones where we expose ourselves to uncertainty and the all-fateful mistake.

The only thing I am certain of is that as humans we will always crave the experience; whether it be our own or the vicarious residue of another’s. The pursuit of love unrequited. The thrill of a death cheated. The unknown turns of an open road. I guess that is why I traveled half way around the world to run scared and why I choose as my profession to wander America. Viewed in their pieces it may appear to some that I am lost, but from a fair distance and with the right kind of eyes one can hopefully see the deliberate design of a life and its purpose: to one day die an interesting man.

From somewhere under the Spanish sun,
Gabe

Their number was five. A father, two sons, a cousin and an old friend. There was even a woman among their ranks, which speaks to the sublime nature of their order. The problem with men’s clubs has always been the presence of too many men.

While in their company I learned of a bait shop at Lake Decker and the antiquated ways of the automobile in these modern times. We discussed the taming of the Colorado and how a good lawyer can get you four grand if you ever get your teeth knocked out by a bouncer. A man was drumming wildly to the Moody Blues at his table when the bartender declared happy hour at 7pm.  A 7pm happy hour? Was I still on west coast time? No, I was just Deep in The Eddy where things are done for the most righteous of reasons.

When this happiest of hour ended at 8pm, the members of the Deep Eddy Men’s Club walked the short distance down Deep Eddy Drive, to a lazy dock and the creeping water of the Colorado, to take in the best part of summer in Texas—twilight. It’s only at night, when the sun goes down, that the heat in Texas starts to make sense. The skin shines deeply as it breathes itself cool, and the eyes can finally open wide without the aid of shade. A summer night in The Lone Star State can be a religious experience when the indications are aligned:  Listen to the the hymns of insects unseen. Watch the colors change in the slow moving water. Enjoy the company of Austin’s finest.

I feel lucky to have made the turns I did that day, to have found my way to The Eddy and made some new friends. I even got a great t-shirt for the shelves of Destee-Nation. But this trip has never been just about finding a t-shirt, it’s about the turns one makes when walking this life and what happens to the soul along the way.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe

Deep Eddy Men’s Club - member since 2009

The concept is simple. Drop a numbered, plywood grid on the pool table. Seed the playing field and cover with a chicken coup. Strike up the band, get yourself a free chili dog and a few $2 Lone Stars, buy a ticket and pray that Sissy takes one on your number. Few things are stranger than rubbing humid, boozy elbows with German tourists who are madly ranting at a constipated chicken. “Acht, Huhn! ACHT!!!” But games of chance are universal and so is beer and chicken shit on a Summer Sunday in the Lone Star State. This must be why God blesses Texas.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe

Before you go to bed in your closet, turn the heat up to 110 and ask the cast of Rosanne to stand outside and yell obscenities at an imaginary dog every hour on the hour until dawn. After no sleep, get up at 5am and open your front door. Stick a hairdryer in your face, and engage the trigger. Wave at your neighbors who’ve been smoking on your porch since 4:30am, and then drink yourself a nice tall glass of warm hose water. Put a pair of shorts and a t-shirt in the dryer for a good hour, and then set the oven to broil. Don’t bother getting in the shower—that’s just a small box where the humidity feels like being literal. Go back inside your closet and brush your teeth with some more hose water. When your clothes are done, quickly put them on, slam two beers, stick your head in the oven, and try and get the casserole dish to sign a contract on the spot because you’re leaving town soon.

And the best response to a pitch made by a sweating salesman: “Is this your idea?”

Now accepting applications for T-Shirt Scout: Louisiana Bureau.

Sweltering somewhere out there,
Gabe

Lone Star Observation 1a:
I met a man named Jake near Odessa, TX who explained to me that just like the oceans have their own laws of salvage, so do the forbidden zones of West Texas. If someone finds an object abandoned on the road, it becomes the finder’s property. When I asked him if that included people, he replied with a question of his own: “How tall are you?”

Lone Star Observation 1b:
Six years after WWII officially ended, there were reports of Japanese soldiers still fighting for the empire on remote islands in the South Pacific. They either weren’t informed that the war had ended or they were in complete denial. So it is with the Presidency of George W. Bush and the inhabitants of West Texas.

A warm wind is blowing me towards the Austin city limits and my new home The Lone Star RV Estates. It’s been a long haul but something in the humidity tells me the t-shirts here will be worth the miles.

God Bless Texas,
Gabe

It’s not far back to sanity
at least it’s not for me

Once in Taos I sailed on into the Adobe Room at the infamous Taos Inn and took a few tacks with a top shelf margarita before mooring for the night at the Taos Valley RV Park. The next morning I headed south on a tip about some wicked neon outside a liquor store in a town called Española. This tip did not disappoint. Saints and Sinners along with the Taos Inn will soon have t-shirts on the Destee-Nation tables.

After a brief pit stop at the Dragon Room of The Pink Adobe in Sante Fe to talk t-shirts, I embarked on the long run to the Texas state line. A run that was interrupted by an unannounced stop at the New Mexico Girls Ranch. Texas would have to wait another day.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe

The next day it was north through the valley to the towering red rocks of Sedona, where crystal merchants and ancient vortexes scheme against the non-believers. I wasn’t in town five minutes before that mystic wagon welcomed me.

His name was Peter, and Peter was an old soul who traveled a circular path from South Carolina to Pennsylvania to Arizona painting light for a living. We talked about trailers, t-shirts and how like souls always seemed to pool together like beads of mercury in the palm of a hand. He told me when we parted that there was a woman in a furniture store on the edge of town that I needed to meet before moving on, and that I would understand once I met her.

In a thundering Arizona rain, I arrived at a nondescript furniture store, which was just a front for sages providing guidance to the souls that pooled and passed among the red rocks. She told me about her Fortune 500 executive job and how she left it all mid-stride for the quiet of Sedona. Then she told me things about myself that I already knew. Things about my path and the collective need for all of us to listen intently to our own voice and to give in to the momentum that this ancient wisdom affords. She saw much in someone she barely knew but somehow failed to tip me off to the the Mag-Lite wielding, Sedona beat cop who would doggedly pursued me and The Rig throughout the night, ultimately chasing me out of town amid the flashes of lightning and the applause of thunder.I guess clear and present danger wasn’t her gig.

I’m thinking that it’s good to know ones’ self, but maybe we’re better off not knowing the detailed lesson plan. Like the unit I covered the next day when I stopped into Boler’s Bar in Fort Verde, AZ for a beer… The one where five lug nuts threatened to remove my teeth for me because, much to their displeasure, their roomy and boozy girlfriend boisterously declared her undying love for my boots. It would have been nice to see that one coming so I could have spared myself the embarrassment of a cold beer left in fear. Then again maybe I learned something in Fort Verde that will serve me somewhere down the figurative road. That sure sounds nice when the teacher says it, but on the playground where the real lessons are learned, I sure would have felt better about myself if I could have finished that damn beer.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe

But something happened when Sinatra left town. The impeccable stylings of the original sins have have been replaced by the boorish celebration of all that is painfully obvious in America. This town may be a good place to spend 36 hours trying to erase a painful memory, but it’s no longer a place to shoot the cuffs and hang regal. I think The Rig and I are twenty years too late.

The isn’t my father’s Vegas. Five thousand roomed theme hotels and four story Applebee’s. Endless strip malls and video poker banks in the 7-Elevens. Twenty foot plasma screens provide most of today’s entertainment, and the weathered skeletons of past glory have been put to pasture in the neon museums of Old Town. But thank Lady Luck for Old Town. Here you can still find the occasional dealer named Lucky and the cocktail waitress who served Kennedy at The Sands and knows how Sammy Davis liked his Rob Roy.

In pursuit of the last great Vegas t-shirts, I spent a good afternoon at The Downtown Lounge with a man named Shady Earl. For the price of a Bourbon he told me pretty much anything I needed to know about any topic, as long as it had to do with human weakness. He’d been in Vegas 47 years after leaving a man bleeding on the floor in a roadhouse in Houston. He pointed me to a place called The Bunkhouse, which I promptly brought into the Destee-Nation family. Vegas will always have it’s use in this America, but as far as I’m concerned, Sin City has become a three t-shirt town. I’ll be coming back another time for the other two.

From somewhere out there,
Viva Las Gabas

It’s too hot to drive with the windows up, but if I roll them down I’m a sweaty tangle under God’s mighty Conair-5000. It’s even too hot to listen to music so all I have is the mocking squeak from an ill-placed Styrofoam cooler. Better men than I have gone mad under lesser conditions. Luckily for me I found a shirt to make all these desert miles worth it.

Introducing Pappy & Harriet’s Palace of Pioneeertown, CA. Pioneertown is a fictitious western town built back in 1946 in the desert outside of Joshua tree as a movie set for Westerns. Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry, if he slung a gun in a Hollywood picture back in the 40s and 50s, he stayed here during the filming.

From somewhere under the sun,
Gabe