Wesley and others asked why I hadn't posted any pictures of our house. I guess I should have done this on the first blog post, but here it is anyhow. I'd like to post more of the interior, but the place is vacant of furniture or any other normal household belongings that usually make a house a home. Besides, the house is nothing to show off. The floors are all linoleum (yes, even in the bedrooms) and the walls are even more gross, lined with fake wooded horrific wall paneling. To make matters worse, the woman who lived here before us painted the kitchen cabinets (which you can see part of in the photograph) a disgusting turquoise. To accent these ugly clearance painted cabinets, she painted the kitchen wall an even more vomit-like turquoise. I wake up every morning to get my coffee and am blinded by a sea of blue and green puke. Even Wesley, a guy who will sleep in a rat infest $15 dollar a night motel, thinks that the inside of this house is an abomination. Nevertheless, we have plans in the works to give it a "whole lotta love."
Today, we went to McCoys, like your local Home Depot but not as cool, and checked out potential paint colors that may rectify the horridness that makes up the inside of our little place. Our next door neighbor, Susan, also works at McCoys as the Assistant Manager and will probably hook us up with a deal on the paint. She even told us she had a gallon of cream colored paint at her house that we could have if need be. Everyone is so willing to help us everywhere we go. Even the floor girl, Jessica, told Wesley he was welcome to borrow her power washer if he needed it for the outside of the house. I'm really liking the perks of a small town atmosphere.
After McCoys we headed over to Mitchell's, a small shop that sells mostly new furniture and carpet. We had heard from a couple of people at McCoys that Mitchell's sold used carpet. We desperately need carpet for the floors at the house. The owner, Mitchell himself, told us that years back they sold used carpet but no longer do so anymore. We inquired about the pieces of left over carpet we saw on the shelves but I could tell that both Wes and I weren't excited to shell out money for this kind of stuff. Mitchell then told us about the old carpet that is put up out by the dumpster that was up for grabs. We took a look at what kind of carpet was out by the side of the building waiting to be picked by anyone, if not taken by the garbage man. I wasn't optimistic, but the carpet turned out to be just the correct size for the living room, and a mix of neutral colors with no stains! We packed the rolled up carpet in Wes's truck and headed home. We rolled it out onto the living room, it was almost the exact size, a little more than we needed, but more is better than less...in this case anyhow. Wesley trimmed the edges with a box cutter. Next thing on the list will be to vacuum it, or even better, steam clean it.
Your Moment of Zen:
This is what Wes and I do every evening. We read the Wall Street Journal, together in the kitchen, just like this.
Marfa Texas is located 26 miles away from Alpine. Wesley and I took a drive out there our third day. It's about one-half the size of Alpine and you can just about see the entire city on foot in under 15 minutes. Yes, it's tiny. However, it's also expensive if you want to live there. It's as though all of the retried rich white artsy Austinits decided to pick up and move to the middle of nowhere. And while they were at it they kicked out the Hispanics (pop. of 8% compared to Alpine's 50%), built new houses, and made themselves all new art galleries. You get a feel for this as every house here looks as though the paint is still wet, and all the shops consists of either hanging paintings or fancy coffee table books. Plus, all of this arty type stuff is conducive to Marfa's two huge yearly events: The Film Festival and the Art Festival. I hope you're getting at the fact that this is one "Artsy Fartsy" town, as Wesley put it. I happened to like the small area a lot, Wesley was often rolling his eyes.
We approached an art gallery, of course, with the name "Andy Warhol's Last Supper." Wesley was definitely not into the whole "art thing," but we did end up learning a lot about how the painting were created and a lot about Warhol himself, who supposedly spent a lot of time devoted to the Catholic church, although very secretively. I doubt myself that he was very religious, though, because he vowed to make a promise to God to spend more time at church if he were to survive a gunshot wound. He did survive and he did keep his promise, but most of his time at church was spent in the soup kitchen or in the back row pew. Three of his paintings of the Last Supper were depicted in this particular art gallery. He is famous for bringing two seemingly opposite material together to make a new material. For instance, he used a photograph of the famous Lenoardo Da Vinci's Last Supper and, via a silk screen, layered it with camouflage. Here are the pieces of these art work:
Next on our list of things to do in Marfa was to check out the Paisano Hotel. (http://www.hotelpaisano.com/) This hotel is absolutely gorgeous and is famous for James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson's stay there during their filming of the epic movie "Giant" in 1955. Wes and I figured it would be the perfect place for our mother and their sisters (our aunts) to stay during their visit to West Texas, so we sent my Mom the hotel's official post card. We figured she would be the most excited about it, seeing she's an artist and all. Here is a picture of Paisano Hotel:
Last on our list was Marfa's Mystery Lights. We actually didn't stick around to see them, but supposedly strange lights, just about 9 miles away from Marfa, appear close to the ground every clear night. There is a observatory to view these lights and the local electrician of Alpine, if you recall Moon Dog, told us that "it takes about an 18 pack to see them." No one knows what the lights are and no body has been able to figure out what causes them. According to two ladies at Marfa's Chamber of Commerce, a team of Japanese scientists set up camp a few weeks ago to try to figure out what the lights were but went home empty handed. You can read more about these mystery lights here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marfa_lights
Oh, and of course, Your Moment of Zen:
Whilst on the drive to Marfa:
Wesley: "You see Sheila, Alpine is a place where everyone knows each other, Marfa is a place where everyone has slept with each other."
I'm starting this blog to keep our friends and family in the loop while we live in Alpine, Texas. Hopefully Wes will contribute, but as he told me, he's trying to hang on to what's left of his solitude, which according to him was stripped away when I moved into town. Thus, for some reason this means he is going to keep everything a secret, or something of that bizarre nature. But for those of you who know him, I don't think this comes as shocking news. In the mean time, I'll try to give you an objective view on Wes and on our life here in West Texas. And for those of you who are not family I realize the above might be a little more confusing, but I shall explain: I (Sheila Molina) moved with my cousin, Wesley McCann, to Alpine, Texas in the spur of the moment and decided to enroll in the MBA program here at Sul Ross State University. Wesley moved here because he wanted to live in the middle of nowhere in the hopes to build an adobe house someday. This little town of Alpine is located just over 400 miles west of Austin and has a population of just over 6,000 people. You can find more on this little town here at wiki: Alpine stats etc.
Monday, December 8, 2008
The drive to West Texas from Austin is a long one. The speed limit is 80mph and the trip should take about 7 hours in any "normal" vehicle, but Wesley drives just under 70 because his truck "is too old and can't handle it, so just shut it!" And although his Toyota runs well (if you're not including the fact that it burns a quart of oil every 1000 miles), I believe him, quite frankly, that he shouldn't speed along I-10 because his pick-up feels too fragile. After about three hours into the trip, we reached the desert. Passing us going the other direction were enormous strange alien objects on massive truck beds. They appeared to be monster antennas, fat on the bottom and very skinny at the top, I'd say about 10 stories tall, but we still had no idea what these foreign objects were. I took a gander and pointed out that they were shaped just like antennas and must be for the tops of buildings, Wesley believed they were headed to NASA. Reaching 4 hours down the road we were wide eyed at the giant wind turbines lined across the hilly horizon. We weren't close to them, but even from far away we could feel their massive statures as though they were bigger than city skyscrapers. We concluded that the previous "alien antennas" we had seen earlier must be fins to the wind turbines.
For those of you who don't know what west Texas looks like, well...er, there isn't much to see but sand, cactus, tumbleweeds, and a shack every once in a while. However, the views are beautiful, especially if you enjoy a long view with a few small mountain-like hills, and the above description of course. We laughed our way through the first four hours and enjoyed the landscape, but little did we know what desert weather would bring us. Rainclouds looked as though they were forming ahead of us, with gray clouds gathering low to the road in front of us. I pointed out that it looked as though it was going to rain, or that perhaps it was already pouring in front of us. As we grew nearer, the clouds appeared more "sand-like" in nature. I asked Wesley, "What in the heck is that? Is that rain!?" Wesley was a little confused because it didn't look like rain, but then again we both knew that is didn't look like sunshine either. Wesley being a little more familiar with the climate quickly realized what we were approaching and gasped, "Oh my gosh...it's a sand storm!" Yes, we went through a sand storm. We were also right about the rain, however, we didn't get torrential downpours like the desert usually sees. I've never felt stronger cross winds and Wesley didn't attempt to drive the truck over 45mph. It pushed us all over the road and looking back on it I think to myself now, "Why didn't we just stop the car?" But we had to keep going, and besides, it's much more exciting to live on the dangerous side of life, right?
We arrived in Alpine just at 7pm. I could see the university as we approached the city, the academic building roofs are outlined in white twinkling lights. Wes drove slowly through the two main streets of the town so I could get a feel for the place. We drove up to the house, dropped off our bags and took back down into town, expect for this time we were on foot. (I should point out that everything in Alpine is not but a 5-10 minute walk.) We grabbed a pint of beer at the local pub, owned by a German man, named Harry's Tinaja. There we met the local electrician, "Moon Dog," who was also enjoying himself a cold one on this Monday night. And no, I am not joking about his name, it really is...Moon Dog.
So enough said, we made it through, and now we are here in Alpine. More pictures to come. I'll blog more later on our first week and I'll also put up some of Wesley's quotes that I'd think you'd enjoy. Here's one in the meantime, or as I'd like to call it, "Your Moment of Zen."
Wesley: "I like to dig and shovel dirt, it's male therapy."
