Michael A. Shelley’s

Ratte on a Sticke

September-October, 2000

“My brain hurts!”

A remote installment of the Ratte, of sorts. I’m writing this in Borger, TX which might as well change its name back to ‘Booger Town’ for all I care. That name was used by non-residents back in the 1930s or so, according to a book I found in the Hutchinson County Museum called Black Gold and Red Lights, which isn’t as interesting as it sounds.

I don’t really have anything good to say about Borger, so I won’t, other than some bare facts. It’s got about 16,000 people, is 45 miles or so northeast of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle, has very few trees and fewer places to eat, even less to do, and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I’ve been here since the end of May as a result of work which no one can seem to get under control. I’m extremely frustrated with it, and have become burned-out. It isn’t pretty. As a result, this will probably not be one of my better submissions. But enough about that.

I did take a trip down to Palo Duro Canyon one day, which is the second largest canyon in the US. Hiked about five miles, in the hot sun with no had. I don’t recommend doing that. Very nice scenery, though, and I rescued a fish that had gotten stranded on a low spot on the road. (The river flows over the road in several locations.)

Mostly Dogs

Every couple of weeks I actually get to come home for a weekend and see Amanda and the dogs. It’s two dogs now, as we adopted Happy, an eight-year-old mix of Lhasa Apso and Cocker Spaniel, probably with some other breeds tossed in. We didn’t pick the name. I would never, ever name any animal Happy. It’s a name for a clown. Besides, there is already a grossly overweight miniature dachshund around the corner from us with that name. I wasn’t too keen on her at first, but she’s turned out to be a very well-behaved dog who follows us around everywhere. The original intent was to get a second dog to keep Beasley company, but they don’t really get along too well.

The people behind us have a little dog named Bella that digs under the fence and comes with us on walks, and if we’re home, we let her in the house so she and Beasley can wrestle. (Happy doesn’t really get along with Bella, either.) Her owners are in the process of repairing their fence, and when they finish, I suspect Amanda will start campaigning for a third dog.

Mostly Inane

Usually when I come home, I spend the weekend doing nothing worth mentioning. Maybe go see a movie, go for a bike ride, buy new unerwear, and the like. Over the Labor Day weekend, however, we went to see X-Men with Catie & Kelson Kerruish, followed by dinner and some card playing. Any chance to be around people that I don’t have to work with is a welcome event, and while we were there, our esteemed CM telephoned. I only mention this because if it hadn’t happened, I might not even be writing this.

X-Men was okay. It was definitely better than the horrid TV miniseries that was made a few years ago. Since I never really kept up with the comic book, I can’t say whether it’s a reasonable adaptation or not.

I’ve seen some other movies, but the only one that comes to mind right now is Space Cowboys, which also gets an ‘okay’ rating from me. Oh, and we saw Art of War with some friends. Less than okay, with choppy editing and a fairly stupid plot. We were asked to fill out a survey afterward, which I suspect was about an upcoming movie that had a trailer attached to Art of War. I can’t remember the name of it.

A Vacation

In late August we took a trip to Virginia. No, we don’t have relatives there; we just wanted to go someplace and I’d liked the Richmond area when I was there for a week several years ago. So we flew into Richmond, drove up to Monticello, down to Williamsburg, then flew back home. We were gone about a week, and then spent a few days at home doing stuff around the house and hanging out with the dogs.

Richmond isn’t a bad place, by my standards. Plenty of stuff to do, places to eat, things to see. (We’d considered going up to Washington D.C. on this trip as well, but decided we had enough to do in Virginia.) Be advised that there isn’t much parking space down in the Shockhoe Slip area. This used to be tobacco warehouses, but is now filled with trendy restaurants and clubs.

I got to see the Edgar Allen Poe museum, which I’d missed on my previous trip. Poe didn’t actually live in the house where the museum is, but he might have visited it. I expected it to be a Mecca for teenage Goths, all dressed in black with pasty faces, but we didn’t see any. Of course, it was daylight outside. Fairly interesting, but I was sort of fuzzy-headed due to antihistamines. The museum isn’t worth a trip in itself, but if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, it’s something to do. An alternate set (not by Goya, someone else’s) of engravings for “The Raven” are on display, as are several articles putting forth various causes for Poe’s death.

We also visited Agecroft Hall, which is the sort of thing only rich Americans would do – buy an old English manor house, disassemble it, and rebuild it across the Atlantic. (I can think of several other structures that have been moved this way, including the building next door to Agecroft, and London Bridge.) At any rate, it’s a lot more convenient for me than traveling to England. The overall impression that we got was that it was dark inside, and covered with hand-carved wood everywhere. Paneling, beds, chests, floor – well, okay, the floor wasn’t carved. The grounds had some very nice gardens as well, in a 1920’s style for those of you who keep up with such things. (A sunken rectangular area with a pond in the center was particularly nice.)

While still in Richmond we also visited the site of the Tredegar Iron Works, which is now run by the National Parks Service as a Civil War museum. Several battles were fought around Richmond, but as neither of us are Civil War buffs, we were only mildly interested. There was a display of regimental flagstaffs (flagstaves?) from various units, and one from South Carolina, I believe, caught my eye. Most of the staves (staffs?) were straight, polished wood with some kind of emblem or carving (what are those things called that go on top of flagpoles called, anyway?) This one was the exception – it looked as if someone had just picked up a stick from the side of the road.

The James River runs right past the iron works, and rafters and kayakers run the rapids if the weather is nice. (I think it’s the only whitewater in an urban setting in the US.) We watched one raft get stuck on the rocks.

We drove up to Charlottesville, about an hour west of Richmond, to see Monticello. (In case you don’t know, it’s Thomas Jefferson’s home.) The famous view of the west entrance, as seen on the back of a 5-cent coin, is actually the back of the house. Not all of Monticello is open to visitors due to the narrowness of the stairway to the upper floor, including the famous dome. I would have liked to hear a bit more on our tour about the various gadgets and 18th-century geek features of the house, but our guide was more interested in talking to two little kids from New Jersey. It’s a pretty neat place, much more open and light than Agecroft (or typical homes of the period.) For all his innovations in farming and plantation management, Jefferson was unable to turn a profit on the place. Perhaps he should have stuck with growing tobacco like everyone else, instead of switching to wheat. The weather while we were there was a bit cloudy, so we couldn’t get a good view of the nearby mountains.

After a couple of days in Richmond, we drove down to Williamsburg, where the old center of town has been restored and is operated as a sort of open-air education theme park. Our hotel was within walking distance, which was extremely convenient, but our legs were about to give out by the time we left. Pretty neat, really – each day of the week is a particular date in history, ranging from about 1750 to 1780. Events taking place on that day are re-enacted, and the “costumed interpreters” were almost without exception very good. If you’ve bought a ticket, you are allowed into buildings for tours and demonstrations of 18th-century life and crafts. (Amanda spent half an hour talking to people in the persona Mr. & Mrs. Wyth, who was a prominent lawyer at the time.)

Very educational, but not in the way you might expect. We learned a lot of little details of everyday life, like what floor mats were made of (painted or varnished canvas) and what those bags on the end of men’s wigs are for (to catch molten pomade.) Really neat, if you can ignore the occasional tourist asking out-of-context questions of the performers. (“What if Napoleon had a B-52 bomber at Waterloo?”)

One thing that was interesting was the fact that Williamsburg was not a typical town. As the capital of Virginia, all the rich and powerful lived there, and the lower middle class was practically prohibited from living there due to what we would call zoning restrictions. We did see what was closer to a typical house, and it reminded me more of a stable than anything else. Dirt floor, no windows, two rooms. Bleak.

I even managed to get to an evening music concert, although it was a little disappointing. I expected some people playing music that would be heard in colonial America, and what I got was two guys giving a pretty mainstream early music/celtic concert. Still, better than nothing. We also went to a re-enactment of a witchcraft trial from 1702 (I think.) The audience voted on the verdict (guilty), and Amanda played the part of Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, asking questions of the witnesses and bringing to light information that made the whole accusation look like a setup. The result of the actual trial was lost, but the accused lived another forty years.

In summary, a definitely worthwhile trip if you have any interest in that period of time.

We didn’t make it to Jamestown (the first permanent English settlement in North America) or Yorktown (site of the final battle of the American Revolution), although we’d intended to do both. Spent too much time at Williamsburg.

Books and TV

There isn’t much to do here other than watch TV and read. And get fat – I’ve gained ten pounds since May, in spite of playing as much golf as I can handle. (Borger has two golf courses, and while neither has much in the way of hazards, the ground is extremely hard and dry, which makes it difficult to play.)

I’ve gotten through the first three Harry Potter books, and we’ve bought the fourth, but Amanda carries it around with her. By the time I get it, I’ll have forgotten what happened previously. Light but entertaining reading. I’ll have to get to it quick, as the religious right seems to want them banned.

In a slightly (but not much) more literary vein, I’ve read Steven Brust’s To Reign in Hell, which is a sort of retelling of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Or so I’m told, having never read Milton beyon the few stanzas required in high school. I enjoyed it, but then I have a soft spot for religious topics told from a secular perspective. (Parke Godwin comes to mind here.)

I also read Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog, which I thought pretty excellent. It’s your everyday time-travel novel crossed with Victorian social comedy. Not as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse, but definitely funnier than, say, Edgar Allen Poe. I also tried her Bellwether, but found it slightly less entertaining. Maybe I didn’t like the academic setting; I don’t know.

Also in the Worth Reading category is Iain M. Banks’ Excession, about which I don’t remember a whole lot other than it being set in his “Culture” milieu. And since I hadn’t read a lot of his work, I don’t have much with which to compare it. Higher quality writing than most, I’d say.

Music, or the lack thereof

As far as I can tell, the only place in Borger that has live music is the high school, and it’s usually gospel groups or something similarly dreadful. I’ve had to bring a recorder along on a few trips to try to keep in practice before this fall’s Texas Toot.

No help from the radio, either. Mostly the expected country & western, with several Spanish stations tossed in. There is one almost-tolerable dinosaur rock station, but it’s unlistenable in the mornings (when they pollute the airwaves with “The Johnboy and Billy Show”) or if there is a NASCAR race on. Listening to auto racing on the radio is not my idea of a good time.

The only bright spot on the dial is the local (well, Amarillo) college radio station. Lots of angst-ridden teenage garage band music, but interspersed with enough Ramones to make it the most tolerable thing around. Plus they play the Doctor Demento show on Saturdays, which I haven’t heard in years.

In October, Amanda flew up from Houston to attend the Hutchinson Oil Patch Extravaganza, which is an American Cancer Society benefit, and to see Weird Al Yankovic in Lubbock (about a three-hour drive away.) I don’t recall anything too exciting about the benefit, which included pig races, auctions, speeches, food, and country music (which I don’t much care for.)

Weird Al was much more memorable, although my current mental-emotional state is making it dificult for me to remember just what happened. Not because of drugs, either – it was a very clean show, as you’d expect, with a bunch of kids and their parents there. Costume changes between almost every song, with a video screen showing short films and video clips to keep people from wandering off. A highly choreographed and enjoyable show, even though he didn’t play Albuquerque. Dare to be Stupid (complete with yellow Devo-esque radiation suits) almost made up for it, though, and Amanda got an autograph before the show.