Chapter 11

Driving back to the dorm room I rolled over and over in my head the inherit darkness within the Western myth. It was more then just missing yesterday there were other stronger elements within it. The open frontier symbolized freedom, and almost limitless possibilities. America was still going through convulsions from the closing of the Frontier. As Augustus McCrae mentioned in Lonesome Dove the myth in the end killed itself. The first really large cities were in the West. Gang problems really started in the West and moved Eastward. California was still the leading edge of the nation. Even the dreaded suburbs are an at-tempt to get a piece of the frontier. I than realized as I started putting a couple of the pieces together that the myth need not end darkly. Along the backroads there was a strong unsaid rule: someone coming up on you pull to the shoulder let them pass. Common courtesy was common in Kerrville and a rare quantity in the DFW area. Leading the odd thing of civility being a hallmark of rural Texas. I realized if that civility could make its way to the DFW area Dallas itself would be a much more pleasant place to be without reminiscing. As a Christian I had no choice but to push frontiers especially as society decayed a greater emphasis on truth raw truth was leading to effect churches being almost in a state of constant flux to react to the decay within society. We had all our raw data in the bible the chore was applying it and in its application tradition was to be challenged and when valuable accepted and cherished and where worthless discarded like yesterday's newspaper. Individualism verses the collective good though is always a struggle within the big city and that battle would forever be unresolved. I came to the conclusion that the western tale need not be all dark.

Thursday once again came and I had the chore of getting my guitar restrung. I brought into the Melody Corner and as Stan re-strung it I got into a really neat conversation with him. He told me about how heard his first Hendrix song as he was driving down some California road listening to FM radio when FM was still new. He had to pull over. That part made sense Hendrix invented more than half the rock and roll cliches still used today. For that period of time the music must have been utterly mind blowing. Along with the story I got a bit of history of rock and roll guitar usage. As he told me before Hendrix hit it big the Stratocaster was stuck with the image of a preppy guitar and was not highly thought of within the San Francisco music scene. The Stratocaster had been used extensively in surf music and was not considered a series artful guitar. He also told about when he saw Steve Miller for the first time playing a San Francisco club in 67. I listened intrigued. After the course in music history and the perfect restringing I left with more money in the wallet than I had anticipated leaving with. I than realized why this guy had a huge fan club all his own. He was a lovable old hippie who treated local musicians well.

I had grown accustomed again to a schedule that was cramped by the standards of my first semester and still full of free time in comparison to High School.

It was on a run that I had an interesting discussion with myself. I was comparing two different biblical concepts in my head. There was once scene where Christ wept over Jerusalem balanced by the notion of God being in charge. Where did compassion give way to reason? When did one stop caring about people self-destructing and walk away? How did one decide which wrecked lives to help and which to ignore? As I swung instinctively through a series of turns I blundered onto the answer. The heart and mind had to be on the same page. They had to be focused on the same page.

I was walking to class early one morning heading east out of Delaney. The sun was beginning its march across the sky. A few clouds hung just above the hills looking northeast from school and the sun shone through them. I looked I saw I felt and I responded. I was reminded to keep my eyes open at all times for the greatness of my father and to appreciate the statements of his might and love. I should not quench the moments of spontaneous praise erupting out of awe I should ride them. In Dallas they would be harder to notice but none the less there I had to see the big obvious ones here to capture the small elegant ones. I knew I was grad school bound at that point. I had three lovely years left in the hill country.

It started out as another Saturday at the cafe. A high school student pulled in from Super Saturday and she was told to check the place out. Donna and I talked with her for awhile as she drank coffee. She was obviously a believer As she related some of her speech and debate experiences and I found out she was a Kay Bailey Hutchinson supporter I could not resist. I wanted to see how good she really was. I brought Baileys variation.

The first year at the cafe faded on down to the third. I stopped complaining about the increase in yuppie traffic as word about 83 and Leakey got out. Heck the place even got mentioned in Texas Monthly. Yet the distance was still far enough out to keep the place from being overrun by Yuppies and the pilots, cops, truckers and hippies always made the place something I loved.

For three years the cafe developed on just another drive from their back to my dorm room I was handed another set of orders. Twenty-seven had always been a scene of change in my life. I had driven it on Program Workcrew dealing with the fact I was now an adult. Now I was facing another change on the same two lanes of black top. For many years there had been an itch within my soul that could not be scratched. I was half-Latvian and the fact I had a whole host of family now reachable was daunting for me. My grandpa who I had discovered dead was buried there. I was told simply that my time in the Hills was fading and the ping-pong across Texas had been for a purpose. On that road I had left my youth behind driving from being a program workcrew member to home. Now I was facing another big change in my life and I was reminded that I only have one home. I ain't been there yet. That last year I drank up the hill country life style into every fiber of my being it was simply put my last opportunity to do so. Singing "Redneck Mother" along with Ray Wylie Hubbard head against an amp on the Schreiner laying on the grass of the quad while halfway paying attention to a sunset was a prime occasion of drinking it all up.

The day I graduated Schreiner College I gave Donna the cafe she still runs it today. She herself is getting her degree. No we never became anything other than friends Leija and Luke were kin. As I go through seminary I smile as I am reminded of the cafe. When I play Deep Ellum after I blast the place with Military Brat Blues: I sing "Rambling Man" by Bob Seeger and as I recall the cafe the line flows out of me "Sometimes at night I see their faces I feel the traces they've left on my soul these are the memories that make me a wealthy man." Plano still disgusts me but I can tolerate it. I have been known to give heart attacks to Dallas drivers with my polite style. So it goes.