A Taste of Texas

Way out west.....

I always wanted to be a cowboy - at least I thought I did....  Watching The Lone Ranger or The Cisco Kid, then Bronco, Rawhide and Bonanza on TV, and then films from directors such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Delmer Davies, before the late flowering with Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, I yearned for a horse and saddle, and a bed roll and a hickory fire, a bottle of bourbon and a can of beans....

Many happy afternoons were spent playing Cowboys and Indians, practising drawing my Colt Apache, and pretending to rob banks or kill savages.  Innocent days?

But I never made it to the Wild West, despite reading great novels such as The Searchers, Lonesome Dove and The Way West, as well as biographies of the likes of John Wesley Hardin, Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok, life on the prairie passed me by, and the legends faded into the past.

Until the opportunity arose recently to visit Dallas, and the dream was revived.

Except that, with a nod to Kirk Douglas on Whiskey trying to cross Route 66 in the 1962 film Lonely are the Brave, the motor vehicle has changed the face of Texas.  Although it has been around for 100 years or more, the oil and motor car industries have all but killed the cowboy, except on the big spreads where horses, and mules, are still the King.

Even the recent past (before the tech boom) focussed on the motorcade:

Which drove through Dealey Plaza (though the shining towers weren't there then):

This is the view from the window of the book store on the right of the sixth floor:

But we all know how that ended.....  (Or do we?)

Yes, guns are a part of the culture, whether they're for shooting Kennedys, or Oswalds, or hunting, or robbing banks.....

Though Bonnie and Clyde did not rob the bank in Waxahachie, as they considered the city too big and the police department too sophisticated.  Indeed it has that air about it, having two courthouses and a mighty jail right bang in the middle.....

As well as a fine Meat Church, right next to the Theatre (which has a free show every Tuesday):

And a picturesque grain store just across the railroad tracks:

We stopped in the bank (now a restaurant) for a beer in Waxahachie after following one of the Ennis bluebonnet trails, a flowering delight amongst ranches on rolling hills.

These bluebonnets (a kind of lupin and the state flower of Texas) bloom every year in the first weeks of April. (The town of Ennis is the Official Bluebonnet City of Texas and it showcases over 40 miles of mapped driving Bluebonnet Trails sponsored by the Ennis Garden Club.)

Fields of them make quite a sight, perhaps especially when mixed with the Indian Paintbrushes (or Prairie Fire) and are enormously popular with visitors from all over:

However, pretty flowers are not cowboy stuff (they are in fact poisonous to livestock), and so we head to Fort Worth, where I get a real taste of Texas. The Stockyards Hotel has been the place to stay in Fort Worth since 1907, and it is home to Booger Red's historic saloon (named in honour of the legendary Texas bronc-busting champion Samuel Thomas Privett (1858-1926)).

It is here we have 'Anita Rita' Margaritas (concocted with premium tequilas, lime juice and secret ingredients including extract from selected Sarrano peppers) served on the rocks in a frosted 18oz schooner (with a salted rim). and guacamole (in preference to a 12oz Buffalo Butt beer)....

Then, to get properly kitted out, we cross the street to M L Leddy's: (a visit to M.L. Leddy’s is like a trip back in time, where old-fashioned values are refreshingly new again. In the historic Fort Worth Stockyards location, hand-laid brick streets welcome customers into a rough-hewn world of knotted pine, pressed tin ceilings and the unmistakable smell of leather).  

I quite fancy a pair of Vaqueros, but at $1395, style #O2818 (Full Quill Ostrich), it seems a little too much for my life in Snettisham. Likewise, I kinda feel the jackets and hats would be a touch out of place in my Norfolk village..... and I really don't need a hand-tooled saddle.

But we have a great time in Fort Worth. Rabbit and rattlesnake sausage with wild boar ribs and Blood and Honey Ale at Lonesome Dove, and then, brisket, pulled pork, grilled corn and Shiner Bock at Cooper's BBQ, before moving on to Billy Bob’s Texas (built in 1910 as a cattle barn, but opened in 1981 featuring a 100,000 square feet entertainment centre with more than 30 bar stations, real Pro Bull Riding, and a Texas size dance floor.)

So this is where I get to live the dream (or dream the life....)  Bull riding - here I come: (That's me on the right, y'all):

And off we go.... (Off being the word:)

Yeeee Haawww!

Well....  It was fun while it lasted, and pretty soon I regain consciousness, and then we are back in Dallas, where at the (Simply Tex Mex) Taco Joint I have a Spicy Grilled Shrimp Taco chilled by a large glass of Pacifico, 

Then I lubricate my aching bones in the Lakewood Growler (a Texas Craft beer Growler Fill Station) with a flight.....

Which really doesn't last long when you are a thirsty cowpoke:

Back in the real world of Dallas I experience modern America. Empty sidewalks, wide streets, six lane freeways, high rise blocks.   

But it has an elegance, looking across White Rock Lake at the CBD from the Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, it has something of Singapore about it.

And the mansions in the leafy streets in the University quarter are breathtaking by night, their etched windows and lit porches inviting all to gasp at their wealth.

In the centre there are vast art galleries such as the Dallas Museum of Art (currently highlighting a special exhibition entitled The Impressionist Revolution), the Crow Museum of Asian Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Centre (which has works by Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Joan Miró, Jean Arp and Anthony Gormley amongst many others.) And there are smart restaurants (such as Mi Cocina) by the tree-lined Klyde Warren park.

Back home with my hosts it is time to rest under the trees by Briar Creek.  It is cool, and calm, and as I reflect upon this new world and my adventures in it, a white heron dreamily glides across my vision, quietly bringing me down to earth.....

With very many thanks to Emily and Richard for their kindness and hospitality in making all this possible

Out of Bruges

Sacrifice.....

I am not a big fan of war.  I have not taken part in one, and I don't think I would be very good at it..... And now I have reached an age when should there be one in the vicinity I am more likely to be a civilian casualty than an active participant.

However, the history of mankind is written in blood, and it seems as though there has been more war than peace since homo 'sapiens' first hit his neanderthal cousin on the head.  

I grew up in the shadow of war.  Both my grandfathers were soldiers in the First World War.  I knew men who had been gassed in the trenches. Both my parents were in the RAF/WAAF in the Second World War.  I played in air raid shelters and on bomb sites.  I read story books and comics and watched films about war actions and heroes.  My school room had bound copies of magazines full of photographs of bombing raids and battles....  And later the whole school was marched to the Rex Cinema to watch Lawrence of Arabia when it came out (for more on this, please see https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/12/colonel-t-e-lawrence.html)

I have visited many scenes of battle and War Grave Commission cemeteries, but I had never seen the Menin Gate  and so, when I came across the possibility of visiting Ieper (Ypres) and Passchendaele and Tyne Cot with Riviera Travel, as an option on their Bruges for Solo Travellers trip, I thought I would go for it.....

But not (partly because of the timing) before I had made a quick sortie to Ghent, where I wanted to see the complete and recently restored van Eyck altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral.  

As Daniel Boffey explained in The Guardian in 2021, the Ghent Altarpiece (also known as the Polyptych of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb) has, during its near 600-year history, been nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, stolen by Napoleon for the Louvre in Paris, cut in half after falling into the hands of the King of Prussia, coveted by Hermann Göring and taken by Adolf Hitler before being rescued by a team of commando double-agents from an Austrian salt mine where it was destined to be blown apart with dynamite.

This work, completed in 1432 and one of the first ever oil paintings, is one of the great masterpieces of European art.  The central panel is dominated by the Lamb which represents Christ, and he is surrounded by angels and the faithful.

Blood flows from the Lamb into a chalice as a reference to the foundation of the Christian faith - the Messiah gives his life to save humankind.

But then, continuing my trip, to Passchendaele, where, from July to November 1917, almost 600,000 men shed their blood for the world to live in peace.....

The trouble is, at least this is what I felt, nothing can really convey the appalling discomfort of the trenches, let alone the noise, the filth, the agony of wounds or the pain of death. In the Passchendaele Museum, in a dark but completely dry and odourless reconstruction of a dugout, a man, who could have been my grandfather, sits on a toilet seat above a bucket. I am sorry, but this just doesn't begin to show the sacrifice each soldier made - even the ones who survived.

In a room upstairs in the chateau, students are told about the weapons used in the war to end all wars. These young people, even the teacher, are too young now to have known relations who took part in this slaughter. There is now a whole industry, an educational industry yes, but one that now profits from the exploitation of a ghastly memory. Are we better for it? Has the memory of the war to end all wars done anything to stop further wars?

New in 2024 is an Immersive Experience, where visitors are supposed to find themselves, according to the brochure, 'right in the middle of the landscape of 1917.'  To be honest, I think the final five minutes of Blackadder goes forth is more effective.....

Don't misunderstand me. Please. I don't think it wrong to remember the dead. I don't think it wrong to have museums that collect memorabilia of bygone times. But I find myself strangely unemotional as I pass through these chambers.

 

It is fittingly grey and wet in Ieper (Ypres).  The Menin Gate is under wraps, itself the victim of time and the weather.  The glorious Cloth Hall and Belfry have been miraculously reconstructed after the almost total destruction of this town in the war (to end all wars).  Inside the 'In Flanders Fields Museum' (Now more than ever, the brochure tells us) 'you can explore the Great War through authentic artefacts, videos,, projections, and personal stories.  You'll journey into the memories of the First World War.  The past has never been so close.....'

I wonder. It is a more effective museum (in my opinion) than that at Passchendaele, and some of the technology (for example videos of actors dressed as soldiers explaining such things as the use of gas, with subtitles in four languages) is impressive. 

But in nearby St Martin's Cathedral (also a complete reconstruction) I find this picture which tells an earlier story of death and destruction, and which also brings the past nearer:

The Siege of Ypres in 1383. Joris Liebaert, 1657. 

Poor old Ypres. Attacked by the Bishop of Norwich and his men in 1383, it managed to resist the siege, but, according to Wikipedia, Ypres never really recovered. The entire hinterland of the city had been destroyed and trade with England was seriously compromised.  Over the centuries the place was conquered by the French and later given to the Hapsburgs.  Then, in 1914, it stood in the way of the Germans and the Schlieffen Plan, so it got razed to the ground.

As I said, the history of man is written in blood, and perhaps the worst thing is that it is usually the blood of the poor that is sacrificed so that the rich get richer.... Think Alfred Nobel. Think Lord Armstrong (of Cragside). Think British Aerospace (the largest defence contractor in Europe).

Tyne Cot Cemetery
(the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials)

Please don't misunderstand me. I mean no disrespect. The commemoration of war and its dead probably is a good thing, even though the human race still seems intent on destroying itself. Perhaps Putin and Trump et al should spend some time at Tyne Cot and Ypres (though I suspect they would shrug and dismiss the experience on some pretext or other)?

However desensitised we have become it is still inevitably moving to stand amongst the graves, and to hear the recital of names and ages in the visitor centre. 

I think of my grandfathers, and think of their suffering, their sacrifice. My father's father was about thirty when he, a schoolmaster, joined up. My mother's father would have been about the same age but had previously served in the Boer War. The Great War (to end all wars) didn't kill either of them, but it marked them, and they sacrificed a part of their lives, their peace, for all of us.

And there is no escape. On our return to Brugge I pass a plaque on the wall near our hotel

Here in this crypt

rest the ashes of

political prisoners

from the Dachau concentration camp

When will we ever learn?

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

*   *    *    *    *

This piece is dedicated to all those everywhere who were sacrificed in war for others.

If you found this at all interesting, the following link will take you to a memoir I wrote in remembrance of my paternal grandfather who was wounded in the First World War but who died at the age of 86 with a piece of shrapnel still embedded in his arm:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/11/remembrance.html

I also recommend the following:

Edmund Blunden: Undertones of War

Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That

Siegfried Sassoon: Selected Poems 

R C Sherriff: Journey's End

And 

King and Country, a film directed by Joseph Losey, with Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay 

Back in Bruges

How time passes!

In May 2017 I briefly visited Brugge (Bruges) and subsequently posted this piece: https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2017/05/flanders-2.html, so, if you like you can read that one and save yourself the effort of looking at this one.....

It is alarming how quickly time passes (perhaps especially as you get older?)  It doesn't seem that long ago..... 

But perhaps what is even more astonishing is that Martin McDonagh's film In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, was made in 2008..... Look! There's trigger-happy Harry running by the fish market:

It's still a great film, if you like dark humour and a fair amount of violence, though the locals apparently didn't appreciate it, possibly because the last lines go like this:

Poor Ray.  Not so sensitive as his fellow killer Ken.

But I like Brugge, and wouldn't be averse to spending more time there.....

On this occasion I had booked myself on a short 'Bruges for solo travellers' trip with Riviera Travel.  I booked it some months ago as I anticipated I might need a few days respite from caring for Amanda.  However, time passes, as do we, and now she has gone, I just need a break.

But it didn't start well....  Thanks to an inconvenient incident on a bridge somewhere between Baldock and Letchworth my train to London decided to dump us all in Welwyn Garden City, so I missed my Eurostar to Lille and the convenience of a coach from there to the hotel in Brugge.  I nearly gave up then, but with a little luck and a following wind I finally caught up with my group, ably managed by Rosey, in a restaurant near the Minnewater.  A little frazzled, but hungry, and thirsty, and glad of the company.

Not surprisingly, the town hasn't changed much since my last visit.  The old centre is almost too perfect (which is why Ray didn't like it) - a kind of Medieval Disney World which attracts hordes of tourists..... like me.  

The canals meander past antique buildings and grand palaces, all of which are clean and free of graffiti.  The only bit of litter I saw was a plastic bag floating on a chill wind, almost certainly aiming to deposit itself in a bin somewhere out of a sense of civic duty.....

It is spring, and the Begijnhof is carpeted with daffodils:

But the weather is changeable, and though sharp streams of sunshine light the Kruispoort:

Dark clouds loom above a rainbow beyond the windmills:

And the reflections of Jan van Eyck's statue shimmer on the cobbles:

But if you allow for the inundation of visitors, it is still a tranquil place and the mellow brickwork and casual chintz curtains make for a restful effect:

While the views from the Belfort (something Ken got too close to) give you a sense of the lay-out of the closely worked streets and rising spires of the old town:

And in the shelter of the Sint-Janshospitaal there is still an unrivalled collection of works by Hans Memling, which delighted me on my earlier visit.  The St Ursula Shrine (1489) is exquisite:

As is the St John Altarpiece (1479) with St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist standing behind the Virgin and child and Saints Catherine and Barbara seated aside. Despite the scenes of torture and execution all around the central picture is one of supreme tranquility:

While in contrast the pale horse of death emerges from the mouth of hell on the right hand panel:

It all happens in Bruges!  In the Markt young sibyls possibly foretell the second coming (or something worse?)

While in the garden of Cafe Vlissinghe the elders hone their skills at Krulbollen (or Curve Ball - sometimes called Rolle Bolle):

The inside of this bar, barely changed since 1515, is warm and relaxed, and an eponymous beer goes down exceedingly well, carefully served by Grietje while Bruno cooks up Vissoep (fish soup) in the kitchen:

It is getting dark when I leave:

By now the day trippers have gone back to their cruise ships, while those who remain are crowding the bars and restaurants around the centre.  The sky fades from deep blue:

To inky black:

Rain begins to fall again and I lose myself in the dark lanes of the city:

Walking by the canals and basins:

Over bridges from which the town gets its name:

Until I regain the open space of the Markt and the great Belfry that rises above the Cloth Hall.  It is stunning and despite Ray (Colin Farrell)'s dying words at the end of In Bruges, if this is Hell, then give me eternity any day......

Ay Marieke, Marieke

Le soir souvent

Entre les tours

De Bruges et Gand

Ay Marieke, Marieke

Tous les étangs

M'ouvrent leurs bras

De Bruges à Gand

Jacques Brel

[For Marieke please substitute Amanda.....]