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August 03, 2009
Hey Buddy
Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock, TX, originally uploaded by quarkyman.
Today I'm in Lubbock, Texas. Its most famous resident has to be Buddy Holly, who grew up in Lubbock but found fame as one of the first rock-n-rollers.
Anyway, Lubbock pretty much fits exactly what I thought West Texas to be. A lonely, vast place. Lubbock supposedly has 200,000 people in it, but I don't know where they were - certainly not downtown. I drove around town, and in the countryside for a bit, and it certainly fit that Texas stereotype of wide open spaces, dotted with oil derricks and horses. I spent a few minutes behind a farm implement on the road, driven by an old man in full cowboy regalia. It was interesting.
Do I want to come back to this particular slice of Texas? Not especially, but I can think of worse places.
As is my habit, I picked up the local newspaper, the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. I'm not sure how it got that name, as I don't know if it ever snows here. I do know that the people I met were flabberghasted that we had the coolest July on record in Chicago, with temperatures barely making 80 degrees. Today, here, it was 98, and tomorrow it will be 101.
But there was a most interesting article in the newspaper today, and it is well worth reading. One person in particular did find the high plains of Texas (elevation 3512 feet) enchanting - enchanting enough to move here from Germany. It's funny that I spent 5 hours in Lubbock, and know all these locations. Read on:
When German immigrants Fritz and Margie Jakobsmeier reached New York Harbor with their two small daughters on New Year's Eve 1952, they already knew they were headed to the Llano Estacado.
"The western stories about the Llano Estacado ... every kid in Germany grew up with those stories," Fritz said of their plan to settle in this area of Texas.
Margie remembers when she was growing up in Germany in the years just prior to World War II, all her friends were enthralled by everything American, even the English language. They kept that attraction after Adolph Hitler seized dictatorial powers over Germany.
"When I was a very young girl - all of us - we were crazy about American movies and jazz music. I had lots of records - Louis Armstrong and other records - which were not allowed under Hitler. So, finally I rented a box in the bank and put my records in there so they wouldn't be destroyed," she said.
If they needed one more reason to move to this area, it was because of the promising landscape that Fritz had seen in a school atlas. There were two little black lines converging at Lubbock, and he surmised they were rivers.
entry no. 1403
Posted at August 3, 2009 05:16 PM