Winter Road Trips # 2 Clifton

Old Lutheran Church in Bosque County

Movie theater in Clifton, Texas

Those who live in more northern climes may not truly appreciate the winter road trip. Sure, in Texas we have periodic "northers" - storms with sleet, ice and miserable weather, (rarely snow)but in between those storms we have long periods of warm, mild, sunny weather. Daytime temps are often in the 60's or 70's, and lately (due to global warming ?) even in the 80's. I have always said that winter in Texas is like summer in Vermont, and so this is a particularly great time to take a little road trip. (In fact, I tend to avoid summer road trips all together - too many tourists, too hot, too miserable.)

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One of the places I find myself driving to repeatedly is Clifton, Tx. (My father-long story-ended up in a nursing home there. I visit him several times a year. It is a clean cheerful nurturing place, and they take good care of him. He is lucky to have stumbled across it.) Clifton is pretty much in the middle of no where, or as the highway sign euphemistically says, "At the northern tip of the Texas Hill Country". From the Dallas Ft Worth area, this means you head south on I-35, through Ft Worth, and turn right (west) at Hillsboro on HW22. You keep heading west, past the Lake Whitney Dam, (an area with some of the loveliest bluebonnet patches this side of Austin come springtime), and turn south just before Meridien. The whole trip takes me about 2 and 1/2 hours, each way - but I have a tendency to drive pretty fast.

Rolling Texas countryside on road to Clifton

The drive to Clifton is full of what we in Texas refer to as full of rolling hills - "hill" being a relative concept, if you are from Colorado or Switzerland. There are some actual smallish cliffs that the town is named after, just outside of town. The area was settled by German farmers, and is dotted with quaint little churches with old world style steeples. In the spring time, these roads are full of folks searching for bluebonnets, and the side of the road is often lined with parked cars as people feel free to just pull over anywhere, and get out and tromp through folks' private property, snapping photos of their kids and pets sitting in the bright blue flowers. Summer time brings with it people pulling boats to and from Lake Whitney on the weekends. Which is why I enjoy making this trip in winter: it is quiet, calm, pleasant. Far from any radio station, I tune into Sirius radio or load up the CD player ( my sons, trapped into joining me for this familial duty) of course are "plugged into the matrix" of their I-PODS.

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There isn't a whole lot to see or do en route to Clifton- there is an outlet mall in Hillsboro, as well as a junior college which is locally famous for hosting a Civil War historical conference each spring. (Not reinactors, like that famous scene in "Sweet Home Alabama" - just professors and authors presenting papers or discussing their books . My mom, whose hobby is genealogy and the history of her family, often attends.) Neither of these activities tempts me to stay longer. Road trips like this give me plenty of time to get caught up on all my thinking. My mom, when I drag her around with me, is ever on the lookout for places that sell ice cream, be it the local Dairy Queen, or some mom and pop type independant place. Nothing really exciting awaits us on this journey; I do it for familial reasons, and enjoying the scenery is enough for me. My children have learned to imitate grammy's speech patterns perfectly, as every day around 3 pm she will say, (thick Texas accent), "Isn't it about time for some ice cream ?" They have learned to parrot this, too, and that's usually what it takes to bribe them into joining me on this journey.

Lake Whitney

The trip this year was made more pleasant by the fact that son # 1 is now old enough to drive, and still in that excitable phase where he actually wants to drive as much as possible. So I let him drive all the way there - major highway, country roads and all. He did a pretty good job. I enjoyed being able to relax - a little. I drove us all home ; it was getting dark, after all. Didn't want any unfortunate altercations with a deer on the road that might involve swerving suddenly. As a reward for good behavior, hubster met us all at our fave Tex-Mex restaurant in downtown Dallas for dinner, when we were almost back home. That's what spells "holidays" for me in so many ways : Tex-Mex and road trips.

Guilty Pleasures

Ah, the holidays.....Time for travel? Check. Time for shopping, errands, holiday preparations and celebrations? Check. Extra time to read books, visit with family and friends, catch up on dr appointments - check. Time to watch tv ......what ? One of the great pleasures of having extended time off from work for the holiday break is a little extra time to catch up on some of my tv viewing. Normal workweeks are often just too hectic , and I frequently get to spend my evenings grading papers and writing tests. So it is with great enjoyment and no guilt whatsoever that the hubster and I have been deeply ensconced in "Psych", "Monk, and "Burn Notice " marathons . In addition to catching up on all our favorite tv series, we have watched some golden oldies as well. We both stayed up one night till 4 am, singing along with Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins as we watched "My Fair Lady". I really counted my blessings that hubster and I both grew up watching great American musicals, and this activity was carried out with no ridicule or embarrassment on either of our parts. Christmas Eve we took a break from kid mania to catch "Casablanca" for the 1000th time. "Here's looking at you, kid." Last night it was "The Sound of Music" which kept us going, and I started thinking about a trip I took once , to the beautiful city of Salzburg, Austria.

Guilty pleasures - I pose in front of the estate where the Von Trapps lived. Salzburg, Aus, 1985

Back in my college days, I spent a summer bumming around Bavaria and Austria, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and charming locales greatly. One of the hi-lights of this trip was touring Salzburg and taking "The Sound of Music" tour. This was nothing "official", mind you - just some entrepreneur with a bus and a sign, parked out in front of the Mozart museum. Pay yer fee and off ya go! I boarded a bus full of Americans tourists just like me, and the bus drove us around to all the exterior shots used in the movie, in and around the town of Salzburg. While we rode around, the bus driver put a little tape of "The Sound of Music" into the audio system, and all of us on the bus sang along. It was kinda fun - but also about as embarrassing as you can get. I hid under a large floppy hat - from what, I don't know. Why is this movie so beloved by folk ? Is it the good vs evil theme ? Years later, when reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (winner of the Man Booker Prize for literature), one of the characters says - keep in mind this novel is set in India -that the Sound of Music is her favorite movie of all time. Interesting trivia fact here : this film is immensely popular in India, as well as America. Why is that, I wonder ?

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/archive/30

The Reader, Valkyrie, and other films

The long holiday break means I have a little extra time on my hands, and so I have been catching up on my movie watching, book reading, blogging, and other hobbies (also sorting and folding laundry, cleaning out closets, etc - I just spare you reports on those fascinating activities.) I've seen a raft of movies lately , and here I share some thoughts on some of them.
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The Reader is a film based on a novel my book club read a few years back; the author is Bernhard Schlink. It is a beautiful book, well written even in translation, and I have heard that it is widely read not only in America, but in its native Germany, as well. The Reader is the story of a young boy in post WWII Germany who befriends an older woman and has an affair with her . Through the course of this relationship the boy not only has wild passionate sex with the woman, played in the film version by Kate Winslet (is there anything she can't do well?) but as their relationship evolves, she eventually asks him to read to her, each time he visits her for a tryst. The list of books they read together runs the gamut from the classic to the mundane. Cut to years later. The boy is now older, in law school, and his law school class attends and observes some of the trials of war criminals currently taking place in Germany. Much to his surprise, the woman that the boy had been having the affair with, years before, is now on trial for her role as a guard at one of the concentration camps during the Third Reich. During the course of the trial, it becomes obvious to the boy (but not others) that the woman is illiterate, perhaps a bit low-functioning as well, and too proud to let anyone know about it. She eventually becomes a scapegoat for several of the other camp guards (it is clear she is guilty, but perhaps not as guilty as others, of heinous acts committed by them all). Eventually the woman goes to prison. The boy - now a man, re-friends her while she is there, and at this point the entire novel becomes an allegory for the relationship between the young post WWII generation and that of the older generation which was responsible for what happened in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's. Clearly the author is stating that everything the post-war generation achieved was in some part influenced, or as a result of, its relationship with the older pre-war generation. Subtle and nuanced, both the novel and film explore many shades of gray in this important historical equation. The story manages to make the reader feel empathy for all characters involved, without pandering to questions of exculpation or blame.
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I saw this movie with several members of my neighborhood book club. We agreed that the film, while slightly different from the novel, did a pretty good job of adapting this complex story from book to movie. The steamy sex scenes between the two leads make you quite forget that this is a story with a moral purpose. The young actor who played the central male character from ages 15 - 25 did an outstanding job -David Kross. I'll be looking for him in future cinematic roles with heft - he carried his part well in this one. Ralph Fiennes also had a nice star turn as the older version of the boy.
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I couldn't help but notice that, even as I am closing in on the mid-century mark in age, my companions (gen x-ers both of them, but still not spring chicks) and I were the youngest folk in the movie theater by a factor of about 20. Afterwards, I started thinking,"Why so many old folk there ? Why no one of the younger generations ?" More on those thoughts, below.......


Valkyrie - I confess to having mixed feelings on films about Nazi's. On the one hand, my first ex-husband had a lurid and unyielding fascination with them; he wrote his senior thesis in college on the economics of the Third Reich, and I once spent a summer with my ex , somewhat reluctantly, touring every single place of any import in the life of Adolph Hitler. (East Germany, West Germany, Bavaria, Austria- I've been there.) On the other hand, WWII was the last war that I can think of where "good" vs "evil" ( at least from our Allied point of view ) was clearly delineated. And let's face it, Nazi's just make great bad guys - think of Indiana Jones, The Odessa File, Marathon Man, Boys From Brazil, or The Sound of Music. I've been watching movies abut daring exploits from WWII ever since my parent took me to see Where Eagles Dare when I was around 6 years old. What a great film that is ! One of the best ever ! Richard Burton was such a hottie. I even went , voluntarily, to see WWII movies such as A Bridge Too Far as a teenager, b/c the topic was interesting to me.
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And yet.....I could convince no one to go see the movie Valkyrie with me. The topic -members of the German high command who try to overthrow Hitler - is different, mildly interesting, and one I have a little familiarity with - wrote a research paper on this subject at some point in h.s., probably for an A.P. history class. In the end, I had to bribe the hubster to go with me. In spite of the fact that Valkyrie garnered fairly decent reviews, I think most folks are simply tired of Tom Cruise at this point. I, too am tired of his personal life antics, but no matter how bizarre the man is in his private life, most of his movies are ok. Not brilliant, but not hideous either. An Officer and Gentleman isn't the great thrill for me that it is for some women, but I've always enjoyed Risky Business, Rain Man, and the Mission Impossible franchise. I confess I prefer his earlier stuff, but as far as Tom Cruise movies go, Valkyrie was ok. Suspenseful, interesting. T.C. didn't annoy me in his role here as Colonel Stauffenberg, a member of the German armed forces who tried to overthrow Hitler. His portrayal of the guy who wants to kill Hitler was not particularly revealing, or thoughtful, but what Tom Cruise film ever is ? All personal idiosyncrasies aside, T.C. does manage to look good in an eye patch - lord knows not everyone can pull that off. Hubster enjoyed the nice cinematography of various locales in Germany. Some nice supporting roles by various actors here, including one of my faves, Bill Nighy. Kenneth Branaugh also had a small role in this film which was largely forgettable.
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Once again, however, I enjoyed "people watching" the audience for Valkyrie almost as much as the film itself. I noticed hubby and I were among the younger ones in the theater. I have a theory about this, as with the audience for The Reader. I am not sure if I am correct in this, and welcome discussion on this topic: Is it that the older audiences are interested in WWII movies b/c they lived through it, or had parents who did ? (My former f-i-l was 17 years old right after Pearl Harbor, large for his age, ran off and lied when he enlisted; served several years in the South Pacific. ) Or is it that the younger folk are all home playing with their Wii Fit or Worlds of Warcraft on PlayStation, instead of watching movies about it ? I wonder what will happen when the generation that had some personal connection to WWII ( lived through it, had parent who did ) die out. Are there any other wars to take its place in our collective unconsciousness ?
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I also saw Four Christmases with Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn. If you go to this movie expecting it to be funny - skip it. All the jokes are in the commercials/trailers. It is actually a deeply sad, serious movie about relationships which reminded me waaaaay too much of my marriage to husband No. #1. I almost couldn't sit there and watch it, the scenarios were so familiar to me. Except that my relationship had no happy ending.

My Family Is Just Like Yours.....Well, Maybe Not

Many folk who are meeting GFT for the first time ask me questions designed to illicit info about my family, hobbies, activities, daily lifestyle patterns. Rest assured, I am boringly middle class in most respects : I live in a "Leave It to Beaver" style suburban, two story home, on a quiet shady suburban street . I have one husband ( and one ex) , plus two sons, who are more than a little similar to Wally and the Beav. Numerous dogs, cats, and other critters. Most of my days are filled with a routine similar to your own : rouse the kids, nag them till they get dressed and off to school, work all day, come home, drive them around to their various lessons, return home, cook dinner, watch tv, go to bed, get up and do it all over again. My hobbies are of the mom sort and include friends, book clubs, reading, visiting family. Nothing really exciting , no deep dark secrets : not running a meth lab, not secretly a hooker, not running a ponzi scheme, not a member of a swinging couples swap club. I drink very little, and my wild and crazy days happened decades ago. Just like that family in the holiday movie "A Christmas Story", my husband does swear like a sailor, occasionally brings home some ugly object he thinks will complement our home decor, and we do have random domestic disasters - such as a pack of wandering dogs eating the holiday turkey - unfortunately for us, they belong to us, not any hillbilly neighbors.

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There is one aspect in which my family is probably different from yours, however. Because the hubster is a scientist, a professor at a local university, he can't help but talk about work at home. Not only that, but due to his ever-inquiring mind, he finds strange and wonderful topics of conversation in nearly everything he encounters . What causes the mold in cheese to make it so tasty ? Who invented the periodic table, and why ? What is a buckeyball ? How is a football play like a physics problem ? What is the atomic number for Darmstadium ? What causes the tides at the beach ? How does electric current make the light bulbs work ? Why does the full moon seem large some times, and smaller, at other times ? You see what I mean - the discussion never ends. As a result of all this, like the preacher's son, both our children are so blase about science, neither plans at this moment to make a career in it. Yet both of them can tell you all about nanotechnology - probably more than you want to know. We discuss all these topics and more, every night at the dinner table. Bon appetit !

Ethnic Grocery Stores in Dallas

In Texas, everything at first glance seems sort of blandly uniform and WASP-y, especially in the complex and exciting world of grocery stores. (Remember, GFT is a grocery store aficionado since her P & G days .....often it's the first and last place she hits on an international trip. ) Sure, we have a lot of great Mexican grocery stores, and even in the past 20 years, Asian grocery stores of one kind or another. There are neighborhoods in Houston, for ex, that cater exclusively to Japanese or Vietnamese clientele, and near where my mom lives in Plano there is a new pan-Asian grocery store as big as a walmart with live fish swimming in wall-sized tanks like an aquarium. I imagine the little kids with their families shopping there : "Oh, mom, look at the pretty fish !" " Beautiful- that's what's for dinner ! " But in Texas we don't have many of the same ethnic neighborhoods that are found back east, and I miss that. I know there are Greek and Jewish neighborhoods in my childhood stomping grounds of far north Dallas, but I have yet to find the secret jewel of an ethnic grocery store that I just know is tucked away somewhere in a bland anonymous strip mall nearby. Only recently overheard some Cajun folk at work talking about buying their Turduckins for the upcoming holidays, asked them where they would go to do this, and discovered a great little outpost of Louisiana only a few min from my home, in Lewisville on the way to the airport.
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So it is with great joy that I swing by Jimmy's Italian Food Store in old east Dallas whenever I am in town, and stock up on anything I just might want/need : vast complex wine selection, terrific deli with "to go" sandwiches, fresh specialty produce, that one-of-a-kind item I can't find anywhere else. My cooking often skews towards Mediterranean , it is the "go to" arsenal of recipes in my head and skills that were learned when I spent a summer as crew cook for an archaeological dig in southern Italy, way back in college. Jimmy's, much like it's German equivalent in town, Kuby's, overpowers all 5 senses the minute one steps in to the store. It is full of wonderful smells, sights, sounds, tastes, and textures that allure one down the aisles further and further into the forest till you are overcome. Half the fun is going there, the other half is planning what you will cook tonight !