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I had nearly forgotten until I was looking for the Gal Costa album that has “Estrada do sol” that I own a pair of cowboy boots. They almost went into the past when I moved a couple of years ago, gone to Goodwill along with oh so many memories, but I had apparently stashed them in the attic instead.

These boots may not be the type you have in your mind; they are ladies’ boots, short, lace-up, black with intricate stitching on the side in red, off-white and pale blue, sort of fancy in a western sort of way, and definitely not the type of thing I had worn before or have worn since. But I wore them then.

Hondo Boots are still being made in El Paso, Texas, as they have been since 1965, according to the company website. In 1992, the salesman at the Wrangler Corral West Ranchwear Store in downtown Cheyenne told me that they were well-made boots, specimens of fine craftsmanship and close attention to detail. He demonstrated this all quite convincingly, so of course I bought them.

The collection from my life in the west sometimes surprises me: the Pendleton bucking horse blanket that I got at Lou Taubert’s nine-floor emporium in Casper, western blouses with overlaid yokes of various designs, horses, stars, enhanced by fringe and sequins, the Black Hills silver (one pair of earrings, anyway), the red cowboy hat, various shirts from Wahmaker. I had nearly forgotten so much of this, even the trailer I lived in with the pink flamingos out front and the wood paneled living room decorated with mirrors and shag carpeting and a faux leather sofa and rocker with the western motif… and that Barracuda in the garage.

One thing I always knew about my dad: he had always wanted to live out west. That call to follow the sun’s path seemed to go back to the time that he was a kid growing up in central Missouri, listening to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, and trying to get off the farm. He did leave, drafted, stationed at Fort Carson. Pikes Peak. Garden of the Gods. We traveled that direction, the four of us, heading out in our 1969 Mercury Cougar to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in April, 1970. I remember my aunt and uncle’s front yard: no grass. I remember being afraid to climb a ladder in the Taos Pueblo, where my mom bought some beautiful pottery that I still have, along with the roadrunner pin my dad used to pin on his jacket.

We went to Yellowstone the next year, in our new baby blue International Travelall with the woodlike panels. I remember the ever widening sky until we approached the mountains, and then, the mountains themselves, snow, my ears popping, the elk antler arch in Jackson, Mommy and Daddy eating trout, us waiting forever for the geyser to go off while I froze in the poncho I had gotten the year before in New Mexico. The motel in Kansas on the way home was supposed to have a swimming pool—because what is a vacation anyway without a swimming pool?—but it was empty… victim of a broken pump or something like that, I think. My brother and I cried about it after a whole day in the car. My dad said he was going to kick the desk clerk’s ass, which for some reason made us feel vindicated, and maybe even happy. For years after that trip, we subscribed to the Jackson Hole News, and there was a lot of talk about moving to Wyoming. We started wearing ski jackets for winter coats, although we never learned to ski or ever went back. My dad wore a sheepskin jacket that my mom ordered for him from the Shepler’s catalog, along with the cowboy hat; boots came from Gravois Bootery, which must have been the only store in the St. Louis area that carried Tony Lamas. And finally, one day, I noticed we never talked about moving anymore.

My dad still set the radio on his basement workbench to WIL, and we kept hearing plenty of Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings and Conway Twitty, and of course the older stuff on the record player. We still watched Hee Haw, and Porter Wagoner, and then started going every Saturday, it seemed, to the country, and chased the chickens and shot beer cans off the fence posts with my dad’s 22, and sat around in the evenings listening to the grown-ups discuss what J.R. had done the night before, or the various family ailments or mini-scandals, or what my aunt might have heard on the party line, all while they drank gin and Squirt, and I wondered, as the timed air freshener spritzed hollyberry scent above the cigarette smoke, why we couldn’t just go home, or go somewhere, anywhere. So, years later—now—I do by golly know all the words to most Hank Williams songs. Only, now, I like them.

Colorado, Wyoming, the Wild West always seemed to be my dad’s territory. I was led there by coincidence, but never really stopped imagining him there—following his path, maybe I was, on the back of the Virago in the wind and the sun and the driving rain, chugging through Chugwater, holding on for my life flying by Hell’s Half Acre. It seemed so unlike me, but almost necessary, chasing some dream that was inside of him, some dream I never got to see him live or even really hear him talk about.

I do not recommend trying to live out another person’s dream, even if that other person happens to be your father, and even if he happens to have died too soon and too sorry. Searching for someone that way just makes you realize how little you really can know beyond yourself. Searching for my dad’s way made me feel that his spirit was even farther away.

But maybe we are guided to these paths for reasons within ourselves. Maybe those unmarked trails, those wrong-way turns, those errant paths that we find ourselves straying onto without understanding are set in front of us to challenge us, to teach us how to find our own way. We may not know another’s path, but we can know our own. Maybe when we wander, when we yearn, these paths are the ones that lead us back to ourselves.
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Now playing: Southern Culture On the Skids - Liquored Up and Lacquered Down
via FoxyTunes

“I’d jump the Mississippi deep and wide…
If you was a waitin’ on the other side…”

I had the George Jones and Melba Montgomery CD playing in the car stereo today as I contemplated the nature of online dating.

First off, I don’t know if the melodrama of country music is the best thing to listen to in moments of loneliness and despair. Second, I was not actually in a moment of loneliness or despair before I pulled out the George Jones. There are real tragedies in the world that beat out momentary melancholy and self-indulgent pity.

I really have nothing to say right now, which for me is itself a statement. I saw a couple of friends, thought, spread out some artwork I am doing on the dining room table, went to a teaching workshop… The weekend was in all ways ordinary, and that in itself was enough to make me a little regretful this weekend. What more could I have done? Was there not one thing I did to make someone else’s life a little lighter? It really bothers me when there is not.

Maybe it was the cool nights and the long shadows that made me feel that way.

Of course, my fleeting sadness could have been much worse. I could have continued on to Hank Williams, maybe a little Leonard Cohen, and the keys to a new John Deere.

Then again, no. My yard hardly needs a weed eater, much less a riding mower. And I have better means of transportation. It’s got to be pretty hard to get a six-pack home on a bicycle, and after the endorphins of a hard ride kick in, there is really no use for it anyway.