Gallery-Hopping in Fredericksburg, TX; Pulled Over in New Mexico

I had been planning to head straight across Texas to El Paso with a detour south to Big Bend National Park, which sits on the north bank of the Rio Grande?also passing through Marfa, which used to, maybe still does, feature Rock Hudson's house in Giant, then coming north again to the Balmorhea springs, with beautiful stone work done by the CCC in the 1930s. I was there years ago, in 1988, while driving a 1960 Plymouth Valiant cross-country. But this July it was ferociously hot, and though the '62 Plymouth station wagon was running extremely well, its venerable air conditioning more than satisfactory, I didn't fancy the thought of being in the middle of the Cuesta del Burro mountains.

So, prior to the visit to Midland described last week, I headed northwest for the Texas hill country, the region of the Pedernales often associated with the memory of LBJ, and an hour later found myself in Fredericksburg, which offers the curious traveler not only the National Museum of the Pacific War, including the Admiral Nimitz Museum and the George Bush Gallery, but also a profusion of German restaurants. Consulting a copy of Roemer's Texas I'd discovered in the public library in Midland, I found out why. This same Ferdinand von Roemer is noted as the father of Texan geology, hence grandfather of the delighted cries of Texan oilmen whenever the geology of Texas yielded its proper bounty. In 1845 Roemer visited Texas and published an excellent account of his explorations four years later, correctly deprecating most previous writings on the state as "crude untruths and fabulous exaggerations."

I was glad to see that Roemer reserved particular venom for Capt. Marryat, author of such 19th-century works of boys' fiction as the loathsome Masterman Ready and The Children of the New Forest. In 1839 Marryat published A Diary in America, derided by Roemer as either the author's exaggerations or, in the case of the few facts, plagiarized without acknowledgment from others. "The reader," Roemer sniffed, "can look for everything else in the book except the true state of affairs as to the natural conditions of Texas."

The big German drive to colonize Texas came in the 1840s, with a company, or "Verein," set up for this purpose in Mainz. A hundred and fifty families were each guaranteed 320 acres and set sail. Disaster followed. The Verein had been sold 450 square miles of Texas real estate by a Frenchman called Bourgeois d'Orvanne, but the German settlers found to their mortification that the Frenchman was a con man and owned not a single acre. This crisis was only solved when the Verein's man on the spot, Prince Carl zu Solms-Braunfels, bought several thousand acres on the road from San Antonio to Austin, establishing the city of New Braunfels.

Captivated by the Verein's pledges of land, a fresh wave of immigrants, several thousand in number, arrived in Galveston in the spring of 1846, only to find that the Verein had no money to transport them to the site of the future city of Fredericksburg. Alternately broiled by the savage sun and drenched by the unusual rains of that year, the wretched Germans lay on the sandy coast in sod houses or tents. Malaria began to decimate them and war with Mexico broke out. With nothing better to do, the settlers formed a volunteer corps to fight for Texas. At last they began the trek to New Braunfels. "The course along the Guadalupe," Roemer wrote mournfully three years later, "was marked by countless German graves. All moral ties were dissolved and the prairie was witness to deeds of violence, from which the natural feelings revolt and which sullied the German name." More than 1000 died, and with them the German drive for colonization.

The Fredericksburg inspected by Roemer still had tree stumps in its streets, and one of the settlers chopping down oak trees was no doubt the forebear of Chester Nimitz, admiral in overall charge of the war in the Pacific, in whose honor a fine museum now offers Fredericksburg's prime historical amenity. Actually, the George Bush Gallery is a very fine addition to Texas' excellent museums, with huge dioramas of carrier flight decks, Japanese mini-subs and a faithful recreation of Tojo's study.

In the South, church signs are more urgent than those farther west. On a chapel in Abbeville, LA, I see "Each time Satan knocks, let Jesus answer the door." In the Southwest things seem more relaxed. On the way out of Texas into New Mexico I pass a sign for Central Baptist Church with the legend, "Relax, I'm in control, God, Philippians 4:6." Later I looked in the King James translation of the Bible to see what was offered as biblical authority for this soothing admonition. Verse 6 says, "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God." This is the slightly older meaning of "careful," in the sense of anxiety, as opposed to the more modern intimation of the word, of caution.

Across the Guadalupe mountain range and down into Alamogordo, 60 miles south of the Trinity site, point zero for explosion of America's first nuclear device. It's hard to drive far across the American West without passing a military base or a prison. I drove into White Sands National Monument, which is surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range, some 4000 square miles of desert that hosted America's first efforts to adapt German rockets, with Nazi scientists toiling happily in their new homes, spirited westward by the same U.S. intelligence services that extricated Klaus Barbie and sent him to Bolivia.

One such scientist was Georg Richkey, who was the supervisor at the Mittelwerk missile complex that used slave labor from the Dora concentration camp. In retaliation against sabotage in the plant (prisoners would piss on electrical equipment, causing spectacular malfunctions) Richkey would hang them 12 at a time from factory cranes, with wooden sticks shoved into their mouths to muffle their cries. Later, U.S. intelligence officers obstructed efforts by the allies and the U.S. State Dept. to try Richkey as a war criminal, and brought him to the U.S., where he resumed his missile work at Wright AFB.

I drove for a while through the white gypsum dunes that constitute the prime allurement of the Monument, whose best feature is actually the adobe reception and office buildings designed by a Park Service architect and put up by Hispanic laborers under the supervision of Tom Charles, a Kansan journalist who had successfully campaigned for the Monument in the 1930s. The buildings are now deservedly on the register of historic structures.

That evening I drive along the main street of Truth or Consequences. I notice that the South West Pharmacy has a sign below it, "Ask Us About Free Prozac." Below that is another sign for the Wellness Store, "A Neural Pharmacy." Across the street I see the Hot Springs Health Center. I pick the Trail Motel ($24, good wide front court, nice sign, Christians, no phone in the room).

As for the town's name, I'd always imagined it came from some cowboy bet in the 1880s. Not a bit of it. In 1950, so the Chaparral Guide in my motel told me, NBC tv and radio producer Ralph Edwards took the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his program Truth or Consequences to put out the word that he wished "some town in the U.S. liked and respected our show so much that it would like to change its name to Truth or Consequences." The New Mexico State Bureau of Tourism promptly relayed his hope to the manager of the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce. At long last an opportunity to shake off the town's second-best status to Hot Springs, AR, playpen of Boy Clinton. In a special election, 1294 of the citizenry voted for the change, with 295 opposed. Amid cries from the vanquished traditionalists there was soon a second poll, with the same result. The people were asked to vote again on the matter in 1964 and yet again in 1967, which suggests the diehards were still fighting.

I have another disgusting meal in La Coquina, probably the worst effort at "Mexican" chow I've ever encountered, which is saying a lot, starting with ketchup pretending to be salsa.

The next day, deliberating on a back road whether to make a detour and visit the Gila Cliff Dwellings, I finally decide it's too late and swing back onto a larger road. Red lights promptly go on and I see a state patrol car with two cops in it. After a long interval during which they check me out, a young cop comes over and leans through the passenger window. He alleges I rolled past a stop sign and then asks me what I'm doing in this part of New Mexico. His ferrety little eyes swivel around the back of the station wagon, linger on some cactuses I've picked up in a nursery in Truth or Consequences, linger further on my Coleman ice chest and then come back to my car papers. Either this a training session for Ferret Eyes or a pretext stop to see if I'm carrying drugs. Armed with my license and car papers the two spend another 20 minutes on their radio. Finally Ferret Eyes comes back and lays a $49 citation on me, inquiring as to whether I plead guilty as charged or want to fight it out in the courts. This all seems hurried and devoid of due process, but I tell him I won't fight it. I roll on my way, soured on New Mexico.

In contrast to the carefree posture of the Baptists, leaving God to sort it all out, the signs outside high schools mostly flaunt the worry-ridden "Have a safe summer" until I get to Globe, NM, a mining town on state Hwy. 70, whose high school sign dares to say, "Have a happy summer." Fear is everywhere. Various newspapers in the Southwest were carrying a news story alerting us to the perils of charred steak or chicken, now listed along with mothballs and shampoos as among the 218 substances suspected by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of causing cancer. As the health group's director of environmental toxicology, Christopher Portier, concedes, "Anything that's fun tends to be hazardous to your health." So we're enjoined not to cook steak or chicken over heat in excess of 400 degrees. Trouble is, the USDA simultaneously implores us to turn up the broiler to full power to avoid the supposed perils of underdone meat, possible sanctuary of lethal bacteria. Barbecue is probably the only way for carnivores to go.