June 24, 1991 - El Paso Herald-Post

Nostalgic thoughts of a departing Tejano

Ours is truly a lovely land, its mountains loom with a mythic and almost magical majesty.

I recently drove to Pullman, Wash., with my compadre Andrew "El Chino" Goldsmith. He flew to E.P. from Big D, and we rented a car and took off to seek housing for me and mine.

New Mexico was a rugged drive in its Northern enchantedness and Utah's mountains had much snow on their peaks, as did the mountains in Idaho. It was a grand journey, and Chino proved again to be great company as we serpentinely wended our way through canyons, slithering roads and stretches of greenery.

While in Washington, we visited many a small hamlet, searching for furniture and places to eat. Chino's wife, Adela, is a terrific cook - her mole is just about the best I've ever tasted, and Chino was scouting around for a likely place to help his better half set up a Tex-Mex Cafe.

Adela is a South Tejas Chicana whose flair in the culinary arts is much respected in Dallas where she caters meals for organizations and business groups.

We were also seriously looking for good Mexican grub in our journey, something beyond the usual and found a neat restaurant which has a delightful decor and a good menu - El Azteca Mexican Restaurant in Spokane. The walls and decorations appear to have been taken from a temple at times, and some spaces in the place have a colonial motif. Its different aspects of Mexican culture - from Aztec to Spanish and Mestizo - do not clash, and the food rests well on the palate.

The staff is courteous, quick to establish a rapport with customers, thus we enjoyed a few hours there.

There is a loveliness to people who extend a friendly warmth, as if they were like the land when it's hospitable. It felt good to enter places where people reach out without a big city hustle pouncing on one's nerves.

Driving around my future job site and home, I wondered about what is in store for us. The rolling hillocks of Pullman and the forests of the Palouse, the towering mountains just a few hours away and the coming biting cold of snow in winter - these and many other unknowables await...

A bit of nostalgia began nipping at as I realized that I will miss the music of this frontera, of Tejas, for it will be almost two thousand miles from here that we shall live.

"Do you really want to move this far?" Chino asked as we drove from Pullman to Moscow, Idaho, one morning for breakfast.

I recall thinking of the images which now landmark my life, and I felt ahuite and alegria countering each other. The bluesy sadness that nostalgically pierces one as one recalls home, while the happiness of an excellent new job sings of possibilities.

Tonight, as I write hurriedly, I think of flying to San Antonio in the morning for a farewell from Tejas party being hosted by bards and artists for me. It moves me much to celebrate, yet I muse as I wait for late July to arrive that Tere, Jacinto and I might take a U-Haul truck up those Rocky Mountain roads to create a new homesite.

Anxious to explore a new world and create a new sensibility through poetry and teaching, I feel granules of gritty Mt. Franklin granite coursing through my veins, and a part of me wants to plant itself even deeper into this soil while another aspect of my humanity yearns to venture forth and discover other ways of being.

I feel poetry brimming, some of it sentimental and other verses exploratory, and a song begins to form, El Paso, querido pueblo de nuestro nacimiento, it is a canto that...