Terlingua

 

Terlingua

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

The graveyard.  Crude crosses lie on the graves, often not even erected above the grave.  Many graves look like stone piles, barely dug into the ground.  Graves are randomly crowded together, in no order or pattern.  There is not a hint of green or anything living.  Most of the rough crosses are falling apart.  There are few names or dates on graves.  Several graves are covered in beer bottles.  Fences around a few graves are falling down.  There is no pretense of life here.  There is nothing pretty and no attempt at pretty.  It is the most reasonable and realistic cemetery ever.  

Terlingua town:  A post apocalypse scene of houses built in the midst of crumbling rock wall ruins that could be Puebloan.  In the center an amazing store with candy suckers with a real scorpion at the center (how long dare you keep it in your mouth), display cases with dusty fossils, including a mosasaur skull, and 1960’s and 70’s Austin music posters for sale for $900.  

Decorative tiles grace the old theatre cum bar entrance.  Shafts of cinnabar mercury mines grace the barren ground.

The little rustic Roman Catholic church brings a critical touch of grace to this place of undisguised harshness of life.  

Terlingua can’t afford the luxury of pretense.  Dig deep for the mercury for use in explosives detonators, but don’t bother digging too deep a grave.  Scorpions in candy is about as eloquent a summary of life as you’ll find, rivalling the Day of the Dead postcard with the innocently hot corpse-chick pulling the strings on marionette romantic partners.  

This place has to work on the mind of anyone living here, but more honestly if less gently than modern digital city life.  

Terlingua is absurd because it is an honest statement of life.  Drive through, browse a moment, then uncomfortably climb back in your RV and pretend your modern life makes more sense than unlabeled graves, scattered pieces of crosses, and the scorpion patiently waiting at the center of your candy.  

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.