Free food and more

We’re back on New Mexican soil on a day with cool temperatures and light rain that has just turned to bright sun. We were so beat after the flight from Hell that started in Barcelona, on to Madrid and then to Albuquerque via DFW that we drug our sorry selves to baggage claim where we declared ourselves unfit to drive and spent the night near the airport. The toughest thing about being in the rural Southwest is the epic effort it takes to go back and forth to Europe.  It is, in a word, a bitch.

Today’s little effort is supposed to be a short look back at beautiful España from the perspective of the remarkable hospitality we received there. But, alas, I’m dealing with a pesky PC to hard drive problem wherein my computer reads my 2TB portable only sporadically.  My biggest worry, of course, is that I’ll lose several thousand images taken over the course of a month in a place that's 5,000 miles away.  I pray, in the figurative sense, that it’s only a faulty cable for which Western Digital is famous.

And so, there may be a paucity of pics to support this treatise. Right now the hard drive does not read so it doesn’t look promising in the short term.  So you’ll get no pics at all or ones that have the barest relevance to the story at hand, Spanish hospitality.

The lasting memory I will have of Spain will be its welcoming people. The joyous way they live life is both instructive and inspirational.  Nowhere in the world have I felt as befriended as I did in Spain. The heartwarming trend began at Xampu, the little tapas bar in Barcelona that we visited on nights one and two and where we were welcomed back as old friends Thursday night.  Because we wanted a more upscale dinner on our last night we chose a two week old seafood restaurant called HaHa!Mariscos. No entiendo el nombre.  I had seen some glowing reviews of the place on the net and quite by chance we had noticed its beautiful seafood display when we were walking home from the beach in the afternoon.  At the unseemly hour of 9PM we were greeted by the proud owner Kai Finkener, an expat German who had been in Barcelona 35 years.  As he told us, “I’m more Spanish than German at this point.” The engaging service would support his belief.

We shared tuna carpaccio, each had whole seabass that Kai carefully deboned, a lovely Sauvignon Blanc from Rioja and finished with the eggiest flan ever.  Our tab was 46 Euros or about $65.  Double that back home.  More importantly we left with a new friend who asked us to consider his establishment our home and meant it.

 

First View of Gaucin

In our pueblo blanco, Gaucin, Lola Colon welcomed us to the wonderful La Lateral.  And on our second visit Lola called her partner Carlos Patilla out from the kitchen to meet us.  I was a rare kind of hospitality that exemplified the ‘Mi casa. Su casa’ attitude we experienced throughout Spain. At the spanking new La Granada Divina also in Gaucin and where we dined three times owner Neal Brown and I exchanged restaurant war stories and parted with big hugs and the shared disappointment that we wouldn’t see other again.

San Jose Waterfront

Free Food

 

In tiny San Jose on the arid Cabo de Gata we chanced upon a little bar near the yacht harbor.  It was filled with thirsty regulars at least one of whom was a certified barfly. We sat down for a simple vino blanco and a beer and as if by magic a tapa of sautéed prawns appeared, just a hint of curry in its buttery sauce.  It was just like the Anthony Bourdain segment in Granada.  You really do get free food. With the second round came Patates Bravas, kind of like spicy home fries. The third round came with some fried chicken wings, the universal bar food.  There was no fourth round nor was there dinner.  Dinner, shmimmer.  We don’t need no stinking dinner.

More to the point, proprietor Claudio late of Milan made us feel like long lost friends. That place could have become my new favorite bar in world if I could just remember its name.

First Night

No trip with the Immels would be complete without a little food commentary.  So here’s a taste.  Get it?

 

First tapas happened the fashionable hour of 10pm on a day that wound up being a 48 hour stint with a total of four hours of sleep.  You’ve heard my whining already.  We had enjoyed a hearty menu del dia at a restaurant with the ignominious name El Glop.  Glop is was not but was three enjoyable courses of appetizer, entrée and desert and which included a glass of wine, beer or sangria.  The price was something like 11 euros which is typical, economical and filling.  It is absolutely the way to stretch your dining dollars in Spain.

 

In the evening we walked around L’Eixample looking for the perfect tapas venue.  Most were commercial and unprepossessing but after two passes we entered Xampu on the lovely Gran Via.  We had good luck over the years picking places on gut instinct.  The puns just keep coming don’t they?

 

Our repast was entirely basic on the night, thin slices of Jamon Iberico, queso in olive oil, good crusty bread and copious quantities of Rioja. We liked it so much we had a second round of little plates and returned the next night.  I had worried about ten o’clock meals and if old people could do that and here we were accomplishing the impossible of nights one and two.

Fair warning

Monday’s post was uninspired methinks.  I suffered mind numbing computer gremlins and so many images that I clicked Publish out of pure desperation. Lo siento.

Today’s photographs, too many you may think, come from a street photography perspective and from my more or less 5’11” person's eye level.  These capture the shear vitality of Barcelona more personally than Monday’s postcards. At least I hope they do.

For what it’s worth we’ll be back in Barca for the last four days of our grand tour of España.  Steel yourself for even more from my new favorite city in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step by Step

Never have I been in such a quandary about what to post.  Not only am I dealing with the array of locales to share but I can’t even get out of Barcelona.  Two days in that place and I’ve got a brain cramp not to mention my mouse hand. I guess that’s the bad with the good.

As suggested last time, Barcelona is a city that is richly enjoyed and one best seen on two feet.  Here is the barest glimpse of the Catalan capital from a stroll from our L’Eixample hotel to the bustling waterfront by way of the city’s Arc de Triomf and adjoining park and back through the canyons of the old town. Blessed little copy this time, sports fans.

 

 

No Doze

As reported, our first day in Barcelona was a sleep walking blur. Yet, despite a combined four hours of shut eye in the previous 48, I pronounced Barcelona to be my new favorite city in the world. Not that I’ve seen them all by any stretch so perhaps I should amend the accolade to “my new favorite city in the world so far.”

The crux of the claim lies in the robust and natural way folks use the place.  The city absolutely vibrated with youthful energy, accent on youth.

I was so whipped that body and soul demanded a nap when we were granted a glorious early check-in at the Ayre Hotel Caspe in Barca’s tony L’Eixample neighborhood.  Pronounce it Luh Shahm Pluh in Catalan. But Frau Gerta my German sleep therapist insisted that “Der vill be no shleepink!” and that I had to remain upright till at least 6pm or, failing that, my zees must be had in the bright light of day.  And so, we walked the eight blocks to the chock a block Placa Catalunya where I crashed on a soft pallet of cement for a sweet hour of sleep.  Vantage point as shown below.

Spain Shpain

I have been trashed, wasted and put up wet. There are no Sketches of Spain to be had just yet. So here's Rose.

Los Extranjeros

This candid portrait, street photography really, has stuck with me since the moment this lovely woman of a certain age walked out of her hostel in Antigua, Guatemala. The fortuitous background shadow sets up her sunlit visage perfectly.

Below are our subject and her angular mate engaged in conversation during a pit stop on our way to Lago Atitlan.  The couple, like so many others that I encountered in Guatemala, were on their way to work among the poor of the country, in this case the Mayas.  It seemed that every adult extranjero (foreigner) in Guatemala was providing aid of some kind. One nurse, a part time resident with another home in Alaska, had just assisted in more than a hundred eye surgeries.  Another was building schools for Mayan girls who traditionally are not allowed an education. Only the first born males go to school. And yet another was installing water treatment systems. Potable water is in short supply. The needs are acute despite Guatemala being the richest country in Central America in terms of natural resources.

 

 

Don't forget to click on the link to the actual blog page rather than rely on the email presentation. Then, when on the real blog, click on the first image so that you can see it and all that follow full size.

 

 

Legends, myths and echos of the past

Legendary RCA Victor Studio B was run by the equally legendary Chet Atkins who built the facility in 1957.  Until the studio was completed musicians recorded in the stair well of a nearby office building to get the echo Atkins wanted and which became part of “the Nashville Sound.”  Back in the day my singing partner and I recorded in the bathroom where the tiles worked similar magic and later in 1960 when we cut our single Once Upon A Time the echo was provided by an empty 2000 gallon water tank on the roof of Audio Recorders in Phoenix. It was the same studio where Duane Eddy had unleashed his “twangy guitar” three years before. 

 

Our record, alas, was on the old Oblivion label.  You may not have heard of it.

Studio B is the studio Elvis Presley built.  More than 200 of his songs were made in the unprepossessing cinder block building at 222 Fifth Street on Nashville’s Music Row.  Reputedly Elvis could enter the studio through the back door while everybody else including some of the biggest names in country and pop history had to get by a gate keeper at the front door.  Such were the perks of being the biggest star on the planet.

I'm told that Elvis had to be in the mood to record so appropriate lighting was supplied for the King. Sometimes the colored lights were the only lights. The plaintive Are You Lonesome Tonight?, a noted blue light ballad, was recorded with so little light that the pianist could barely see the keys. And, who knew?, the piano man on that midnight session was Elvis himself.

 

Legend has it that Elvis was on piano with only a double bass and the Tennessee Three singing back-up. Except I’ve just listened to the recording and I’m pretty sure I hear the soft strumming of an acoustical guitar and can't identify a piano at all.

Because the studio was so dimly lit I couldn’t hand hold a long shot of Elvis’s piano (that’s how it’s known) but I could brace myself against it for relatively sharp shots of its innards and of my cousin Kristin’s skilled fingers caressing the keys.

 

Dry America

US 84, Sudan, Texas

The very dry Sudan, Texas

Prohibition is a blight. There’s a thread of consequences that accompanies it.  There are no good restaurants and that’s a nonstarter for me. There’s a dearth of style, vitality and worldview in these loathsome places that are stuck in the 1920s.  And in absence of any forward energy is an aging populous that sees the New York Times as elitist left wing propaganda and thinks Fox News actually produces news.  What’s more these desiccated burgs inbreed like West Virginia cousins and can’t attract educated, well travelled newcomers that would infuse new blood into the community.  It’s a double whammy of reduction and repulsion.

As of November 2013 there were eleven entirely dry counties in Texas, 194 were “moist” or mixed and 49 wet.  As you’d expect the wet counties include all the major metropolitan areas and most southern counties.  The sticks of east and west Texas contain most of the dry counties to the surprise of absolutely nobody. How they vote is a given. They’re as red as Jim Bob’s nose.

84 year old Marian Steich helped make Winona, Texas the first “wet” town in Smith County. The tea totaling, church going great grandmother decided that folks should be able to decide what to drink and where to buy it.  Steich says, “I’ve never understood why you have to leave the county to buy beer to enjoy in your own home.” And she adds,“I watched this town die, she says, “Now I’d like to see it grow.” She made an alcohol to growth connection even I wouldn't have attempted.

 

In tiny Winona, population 600 and nestled in the buckle of the East Texas Bible Belt, residents finally voted by the slim margin of 18 to repeal prohibition and town tax revenues quintupled with the addition of four package stores. That's nobody's idea of ideal growth but none of the drys’ warnings about crime and littering have come true.

Winona mayor Rusty Smith who cops to the occasional beer reports, “We’ve seen a reduction in speeding on the highway. Cars are stopping in Winona now.” That's opposed to getting out of Winona as fast as possible.

Not to mention drunk driving. Alcohol related deaths are nearly four times higher in dry counties, 6.8 deaths per 10,000 people to 1.8%.  The logic being that people are going to drink and they’ll drive as far as it takes sober or otherwise to get demon rum.

One in nine counties is still dry, but Tennessee communities allowing alcohol sales have grown 55% since 2003. In the same period, 22 more of Texas’s 254 counties and 235 of its municipalities have turned wet or at least moist. In Texas the “wets” have won 80% of alcohol elections in the last eight years. Even in Kansas, where Prohibition lasted from 1881 to 1948, fifteen counties have seen the light since 2002. What's the matter with Kansas? you ask.

Put a cork in it. Prohibition is a lame duck candidate with no war chest, a platform that doesn’t hold wine and whose prospects are evaporating fast. The trajectory toward universal lubrication is immutable but there are still die hards.  So in the public interest, here are the Texas counties not to visit.

Bailey, Borden, Collingsworth, Delta, Hemphill, Kent, Martin, Palmer, Roberts, Sterling and Throckmorton.

Vantage Points

While the big river is the namesake of the newly minted Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and certainly its crown jewel, it’s the Taos Plateau that beckons me.  The plateau, a swatch of arid scrub that stretches west 25 miles to San Antonio Mountain, is a flat desert punctuated by the occasional hillock and the faintest remnants of human occupation.  Two picturesque corrals and a couple of homesteads adorn TP 71 between the Rio Grande and Highway 285 and more are bound to be discovered as I return to those dry environs.

There’s nothing like the flats to showcase the snow capped Sangre de Cristos looming to the east and to accent the epic sky that I love so. Prompted by that sky I entered the Taos Plateau from the south on Gravel Pit Road and followed high lines to a batch of hippy built residences where a taut and sinewy cyclist was popping a wheelie.

Later above the John Dunn Bridge I followed a rutted path almost to the rim of the gorge to behold the epic show.

Prime Desert Property

Area code 775 encompasses most of Nevada and has a population of exactly 12.  Pretty much everything but Las Vegas and Reno is in the big, empty 775 which is traversed by US 50, itself nicknamed America's Loneliest Highway. There’s prime land to be had in the verdant reaches of the Silver State and the price is so so right. Or, instead, you can choose a slice of paradise in the netherworld of the Mojave Desert.  Why you would do either is a question best left to psychiatric professionals.

Property number one lies just outside Death Valley, a moniker based on the likely result of being left beside the road in mid-summer.  And you’d face a similar fate were you to be stranded ten miles west of Edwards Air Force Base on plot number two.  If the temperature didn’t get you the winds would.  Last January those winds nearly tore the door off my poor Pilot.

I get a kick out of For Sale signs on worthless patches of nothing.  It goes to show that hope springs eternal or that there’s hope that one is born every minute. Unless coastal California falls into the blue Pacific, a not entirely remote possibility, these may not be your best real estate plays.

Peace on earth

When a friend told me that painter Louisa McElwain had died at her own hand at her home in Santa Cruz, New Mexico I absorbed the news in the abstract but not as a flesh and blood occurrence.  That was a year ago.  And it’s not as if I knew the backstory, the lead up to such a tragedy.  We were on a painting and photography trip into Canyon de Chelly back in 2004 and traded stories around the campfire.  And I’d spoken with her at a couple of her openings.  That’s about it.  It just didn't seem plausible for someone at the peak of her talent and success to take her own life. She was just 59.

Recently as I was sorting through some portfolios I chanced upon photographs I’d taken of Louisa in Canyon de Chelly and those images prompted this post.  She was in love with painting en plein air and her excitement to make art in the warm canyon sunshine was palpable.  Her students watched her intently, happy to be in her circle of influence.  They were acolytes.  They wanted to paint like the Louisa McElwain. 

Louisa painted big, bold and prolifically.  Two or three 3’x4’ pieces a day, paintings selling for $10,000 or more even then.  And she sold plenty.  Not that she got all the money.  She talked about one gallery absconding with $300,000. For most artists that would be a career.  For Louisa it was a nuisance. 

She was also newly in love with Joe Emerson, her neighbor in Santa Cruz.  He catered to her every need in the canyon and did so with great joy.  He was as en rapt as she.  They married.  But he died after a brief illness in January 2013.   I remember that Joe, a retired Army Major, was politically to the right of Attila the Hun and had utter disdain for all things foreign especially the French.   Xenophobic is too mild a description. Joe was a tough guy to like.

The nature of their recent relationship is unknown to me but it’s reasonable, given events, to think that Joe’s passing had affected her greatly.  Nearly as conservative politically as Joe, Louisa had recently become deeply Christian, a combination that isn't rare.  One wishes that her faith had comforted her more.  We wish that she had found peace in life. 

High Plains Drifter

There’s a stretch of NM Highway 104 that runs east of Las Vegas for about thirty miles of undulating pastureland on its serpentine way to Tucumcari.  It’s a piece of road that has captured my fancy for twenty years or so. I do love my prairie and plains.

As we headed back to Taos after a two day jaunt to the metropolis of Canyon, Texas we found ourselves on 104. Props, by the way, to the wonderful Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon where we were attending an invitational painting exhibition and which was the reason for our trip. Not so much for the dry little burg itself. That’s dry as in no libations to be had in the entire county, one of eleven Texas counties with that dubious distinction.  The folly that is prohibition will be studied in detail at a later time. Damn near happened today.

On the Saturday of the show it was a balmy 72 and on Sunday it fell to high of 23 in Canyon. Not only that, the forecast for the whole of the South Plains was for freezing rain and snow squalls. Heading back on I-40 just before Tucumcari we were turtling through blowing snow at 40 miles per hour.  Never the souls of patience we gambled on going overland on the aforementioned 104 as had been our plan.  At the height of land half an hour shy of Las Vega we were buffeted by cross winds and surviving slick roads but when we dipped down to the high plains the skies parted and the grasslands glowed with the saturated colors that follow a deluge.  Behind us was a crystal forest and beyond the beckoning plains after the rain.

This little spread has all the icons of prairie life that a guy could want, an abode, a windmill, a stock tank and a corral.

Full Metal Jackets

There are lots of ways to look at something, up close to wide and long and everything in between. The range of possibilities with a subject are darn near unlimited and so it was with the Campbell Memorial bus that sits in the nether reaches of the former Frontier Drive-In in Center, Colorado .  The defunct theatre is the more obvious subject but the bus has its advocates, as well.

Outback is a graveyard of decommissioned travel trailers, church busses and long haulers. It’s as good a place as any for a covey of bent metal relics. See a sliver of snowcapped Sangre de Cristos middle left just above the red container. Yes, that is the right turn signal of the Campbell Memorial church bus in pic one.