Marfa Double Boo

Welcome to downtown Marfa, Texas

For our first wedding anniversary(!!!), her birthday, and my student-teaching’s successful conclusion, Wifely Kate and I have taken a road trip to Marfa, Texas. It’s an incongruously posh West Texas town of about 2000 people, each better dressed and better groomed than you. Cross Stuff White People Like with Fort Worth’s aggressively vegan Spiral Diner, write it up in the New York Times, and you’d wind up with something like this town. More laid-back than Austin, and on average, more expensive, too. No Shiner on tap at a hotel courtyard, but there’s Brooklyn Lager!

We’re having a wonderful time, enough for me to let loose with this good-intentioned mockery.

Close to the nearby megalopolis of Ruidosa, Texas

The drive down took us eight, maybe nine hours, including two or three stops. To ease the journey, we created an iPod playlist to randomize 1) her songs that I can withstand (“Firework” by Katy Perry) and 2) my songs that she can withstand (“Got a Match?” by the Chick Corea Elektric Band). I named the playlist “Marfa Double Boo.” You see, I call her Boo, she calls me same; hence: Marfa Double Boo.

Dust Devil Approacheth

Dust Devil is Furious!

One thing about Marfa this summer — it’s HOT. Dust devils such as the one pictured above often arise, according to meteorologist Jeff Jamison, in “extreme temps >100 degrees,” where “the air is rising quickly [and] there’s enough shear above.” It’s a “tube of wind.” He goes on to say “Usually doesn’t do much damage and they do scoot along quickly.”

Ruidosa, Texas, nearby; 2000 population: 43 people

When we returned to Marfa from driving around Presidio (a town along the US-Mexico border), we had to pass through a US Border Patrol checkpoint. I expected some sort of drama, but really, when I rolled down the window, the authority figure just said: “Citizenship?” The responses which leapt to mind included:

• Yes, please.
• I’ll take three.
• What about it?

The correct answer was “American.”

Marfa Farmers Market

The food here is fantastic, nobody locks up their doors or bikes, the stars overhead are plentiful . . . and the famed Marfa lights, allegedly paranormal lights that do float in the sky strangely, are, well, a little lame. Possibly they’re just ordinary lights reflected by atmospheric conditions that are abnormal due to sharp differences in temperatures and elevation. On our anniversary night, at the official Marfa lights viewing station — where we drank champagne saved from our wedding — true believers insisted to one another that the lights are indeed a paranormal phenomenon. Frankly I think the city of Marfa pays some guy to stand out there with a flashlight, but make up your own mind via the great 80′s competitor to 60 Minutes, Unsolved Mysteries:

There’s a really cool bookstore here called Marfa Book Company (yelp). They had a great selection (including both their fiction & nonfiction), they were friendly to Gibson the Dog, and when I told them I was impressed they had Ted Chiang‘s short story collection, they asked if I’d recommend something similar they could add. (I suggested Chiang’s book The Lifecycle of Software Objects).

One drive we took brought us close to Big Bend National Park — that’s Mexico, right across the Rio Grande:

Near Big Bend National Park

TxDOT Teepees?!

Tomorrow we head to Roswell, New Mexico, where we’ll spend a night, hopefully not abducted by aliens or Stalin-Mengele, before we then head home.

Mrs Boo Ready to Go

Marfa Double Boo by Douglas Lucas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.douglaslucas.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.douglaslucas.com.

Welcome to downtown Marfa, Texas For our first wedding anniversary(!!!), her birthday, and my student-teaching’s successful conclusion, Wifely Kate and I have taken a road trip to Marfa, Texas. It’s...