Day 49 – Amarillo, TX

August 3, 2021

I was thinking about that term, People of Color this morning. There is really no way to talk about race without it offending someone. In this case, myself. People of Color is fun. What is the opposite?People of no-color? White and black are useful terms in language I suppose. They are short cuts. I always make a point of telling my students that I’m called white, but I’m not really white. I then hold up a sheet of copy paper next to my skin to prove it. 

Also, People of Color sets up this all-encompassing dichotomy. You have People of Color and then you have white people. It will be a good day when we live in a world where we understand that we are all blended cups of coffee, some with extra cream and some with spices of cardamon or cayenne. 

Coffee. I’m in McDonald’s trying to get a post off before I hit the road. (I just figured out the other day that I can get a senior cup of coffee at McDonald’s!). I’m shooting for Flagstaff tonight. Jillian has a friend seven minutes off of Interstate 40 who is going to let me park on his land. It will be nice to meet him and his family. This is an old boyfriend she hasn’t seen in over 20 years. I get to see him for her. 

It’s a lot of miles. I can’t futz around too much with this posting like I tend to do noticing imperfections for hours like the it’s/its thing that is the bane of my existence. Okay that’s extreme. Water incursions are that. I had a few drips the other night. Saw a new leak when it rained in Little Rock as I was going to bed. 

BTW, Cracker Barrel is being good to me. Another one with free overnight parking here in Amarillo. Oh, and it wasn’t the sewer after all that smelled! I gave my feet a good washing last night. I likely built up a host of smelly bacteria wearing the tick-repellant rubber boots I borrowed from Stewart for tromping on the family land in Blaine. 

I’m going to post a few more pictures from there and hit the road. I camped only one night on the old Halcyon Hills land but it was sublime. According to the Fitbit my Uncle John got me for my birthday, I got 7 hours and 7 minutes of sleep in the tent. That’s the most I’ve gotten since I’ve been recording it for over a week now. 

This morning deep, fun dreams with a host of family and odd ball characters from my past—case in point, Jerry, a guy I worked with at the People’s Library in SF Tenderloin. He may have been telling me about one of his movie script ideas in that excited, jacked-up-on-coffee way he had. 

One day I came to the library and someone had written some graffiti on a brick at the entrance of the building. “Jerry, take a chill pill it said.” But I loved that guy. Hope he is still around. He was living with HIV and camping under bridges—often with a transvestite girlfriend who’s voice was a deep, slow Texas twang. 

Okay, pictures:

Some of the shed contents on a trash run in Stewart’s pickup—local plates.

This lady just didn’t want to leave her mattress home. This is a week after I saw her the first time still carrying those eggs.
I found this almost full bottle of whiskey stashed with another bottle and two beers. I washed off the bottle and tasted it. Seemed fine but I didn’t want to take my chances.
Those Shlitz can tops have no tab. A church key was needed. It dates these to pre-1962 at least. Likely the 50s. One of the cans of beer was 3/4 full. I didn’t try that.
I found the alcohol stashed in one of these boxes. Any idea what they are? I was thinking bat boxes. Those wood dowels are finished with notches at the end. Hanging perches to be set in drilled holes in the boxes? The rectangles kind of fit in those square slots at the top of the boxes.
Kind of a gruesome find in the shed. Top pic shows the opossum in the shed and bottom is outside against leaf and pine litter. This carapace was like a flat piece of cardboard. I found the top section of the skull about four feet from this possum leather in the shed.

I had to look on the internet to figure out that the top piece—center cranium—and the bottom—right top jaw went together with the left top jaw to form the top of the skull. I was inaccurately trying to put the pieces together like in the middle picture.
A visitor outside the shed. It took a while for her to come out of her shell once she knew I was looking.
Daddy longlegs
Wood skis in need of a polish. The wood crates used in the shed were stamped U.T. Department of Chemistry.
More family pictures found. The guy on right was my grandmother Robbie’s dad. He had a successful mortuary in Bristol, TN. I don’t know the cute baby or lady top right, but I recorded the names written on back with my phone. Handy to have a computer in your pocket.
This is the first tree I ever chopped down. It fell the opposite way I thought it would. My Youtube self-teaching obviously didn’t work too well. Hint—the angle of the chop is important. Actually, I got the saw stuck in the tree. After trying to loosen it I gave up and went back through the woods to try and find a  neighbor with an axe. I was almost to the road when I heard that splintering wood sound. I walked back and it was down. These woods are very rough with many fallen trees and many standing dead. This one was dead and near where I was putting up my tent. It was 40 years old according to its rings. I was surprised it was that old because it was so skinny, but it was about 40 feet tall.
Love this tent lent to me by cousins Tommy and Kim. Very spacious. I could have lived the whole summer in it.
(This series of sky pictures was taken inside the tent-10 minutes apart at sunset.)
The crown prince were a little small—too many to the can but not tough like those I had in Denton which were tiny and too chewy. The Sunny Seas looked premasticated. I ate them anyway; it’s just their condition took away a little of the pleasure and I wondered what had happened to get them in that state. BTW, I was calling these clams at the beginning of my travel journal. They have always been smoked oysters. I haven’t even seen smoked clams.
Sunset in the Texas panhandle.
Need a job?