658 Miles and a Red Meat Burrito, Part 2

In 1940, Thomas Wolfe, best known for Look Homeward, Angel,  wrote that "you can never go home again. "  This sentiment is easy to find on any website devoted to American cliches. How must an author feel when his book title and theme are so characterized......Is it a disappointment to be regarded as a cliche, or the ultimate thrill for a writer to have one of their ideas become so entwined in our language and culture?

Those words of Wolfe's ring true, however, cliche or not.  I have that feeling of longing unfulfilled whenever I visit the area I called home when I was growing up.  I find it very stifling and unappealing.  So at the end of a 300-plus mile drive across New Mexico to Las Cruces, I was appalled at the sense of unfamiliarity engendered by the growth of the city over the past ten years.

This was a scouting trip for retirement.  We've been looking at houses online, shopping for potential retirement sites.  Thanksgiving's trip to Northern CA was part of the plan.  Las Cruces and the high desert spoke to my soul when we were there ten years ago.  So as we descended from the 5700-foot St. Augustin Pass and saw the developments spreading into the foothill of the beautiful Organ Mountains, all I felt was a sense of longing for the jeep roads where I used to mountain bike and hike with St. Hannah, the tan dog.  Were they gone, swallowed up by the bulldozers of the developers?

We had found a house online in a new area and decided to trek across the state to scout the area.  Plans were to drive to Las Cruces, gorge ourselves on green-chile cheeseburgers at Guacomole's, tour the historic district, and check out the real estate market.  For a city recently rated one of the top places to retire, prices still seemed fairly reasonable.

Turning off the Bataan Memorial Highway, we entered the subdivision that looked so good on the Web.  We found the house we had devoured online.  It faced the mountains alright. Unfortunately, that view would have to be eliminated if we wanted any privacy in the living area.  Shoehorned onto small lots with minimal height masonry walls, the adobe style houses provided little privacy or feeling of "neighborhood."  We drove around a bit and decided to go have lunch.

The road to the restaurant went right by our old neighborhood so we succumbed to the temptation and drove by our old home.  Nothing had changed, except for an attractive repainting of the house on the corner and the addition of a small satellite dish to the roof of our old place. 

We proceeded to the restaurant only to find it "Temporarily Closed.  Sorry for any Inconvenience."  Well it was damn inconvenient, having traveled over 300 miles to eat there!! But then we remembered Nellie's, the finest Mexican food in the area.  Of course, Nellie's has grown with the city and the line was long just to get into the establishment.  Plan B--Roberto's--famous for its drive thru.  The food was great but dining inside is much less pleasurable an experience than getting the wonderful burritos, pinto beans, rice, and sopas "to go" so as to enjoy them while picnicking by the Rio  Grande with los perros. 

After lunch we proceeded to tour the city.  Auntie Bucksnort insisted it was like CA, even denigrating it by comparing it to the developments of Daly City, with its sloping lots and phalanxes of houses that seem to march up and down the pathetic asphalt covered hills seemingly out to eternity.  Our car conveyed us down the boulevard and turned left at the end, east toward Tortugas Mountain.  The developments faded and soon we were standing on the high desert.  The dogs were relaxed and enjoying their release from the crate and the myriad new odors.  The bustle of the commercial district was just a memory, rapidly retreating into the past and out of our consciousness.  The feeling was akin to rebirth.

We had braved snow in the Sacramento Mountains in the morning.  We had been disappointed by the newer developments.  We hadn't had the time to explore a couple of other areas we knew.  The journey back to the plains was uneventful, other than a stop at the pistachio farm and vineyard for some wine-tasting (we purchased an excellent Cabernet Sauvignon and a chocolate wine).  But while we acknowledge that the Las Cruces we knew has changed, there was a comfortable and restful feeling in the soul that spoke to us and said that maybe, Thomas Wolfe notwithstanding, we can go home again.