Seeing Things

The High bridge over the Pecos River on Highway 90.

I took the road less traveled yesterday. On my way to Marathon, we drove down highway 90 from Del Rio. I should have some ancestral memory of this road. My father’s travels as a member of the US Navy took us back and forth between California and Virginia at least four times. I have one hazy memory of stopping in Langtry to visit Judge Roy Bean’s offices, but that’s it.

I suppose sitting in the back seat of Kaiser Frazer with your brothers limits your look around abilities. And I suspect at a young age, scenery is just scenery and carries no special impact. But it’s possible we went over at least one of the low water bridges crossing the Pecos, before they got washed away and replaced by the newer big bridge that currently crosses the river. I’m sorry I missed them. Maybe one of my brother’s was in the front seat, or I was asleep.

I’m much better at looking around these days. In fact, it’s one of the joys of travel, and I hope it was the same for my parents. My mother, in particular being a girl from industrial Cleveland, OH, must have thought the west was magic, or at least I like to think so. And maybe that’s why I take such pleasure in seeing the previously unseen because somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind there’s an untouched memory of my parents saying, “Would you look at that,” and that’s how I came to see the world as a place of wonder.