El Paso holiday break and American Skull

January 01, 2023

El Paso holiday break and American Skull

El Paso, TX

December 27-30, 2022 John and I drove to El Paso. Neither one of us had been there before and we are enchanted by its stories and will be back. The four-hour drive from Placitas, NM was enough to clear my head and get me out of my pandemic funk.

We stayed at The Plaza, an art deco hotel in the heart of downtown El Paso. Conrad Hilton, a New Mexican, started the hotel chain in Texas. We were within walking distance to the excellent El Paso Museum of Art and Museum of History (both free admission), and the neighboring Hotel Paseo del Norte, built in 1912.

The Hotel Paseo del Norte has a magnificent Tiffany dome at the Dome Bar, and after the long drive, I promptly persuaded John to join me for a drink in this beautiful spot to review the turbulent history of El Paso del Norte (the Pass of the North), and Ciudad Juárez, bordering the Rio Grande.

The park by our hotel was lit up for Winterfest, a charming array of vintage-like lights with families and food trucks. We enjoyed the warmer weather and escaped into the lure of dining and holiday spirits. The fountain had an alligator statue and we discovered some of the lore of previous live alligators.

The next morning, we met our Poetry Playhouse Publications author Lawrence Welsh at the independent bookstore, Literary Books. I'm happy that my two books, Atomic Paradise, and Homesick,then, have found new homes on the shelf for locals to discover. Lawrence showed us around his adopted city.

American Skull - Lawrence Welsh - Poetry Playhouse Publications

We parked on a side street and hiked by the Rio Grande near the border. We saw the border wall, and the cross on the top of the mountain that marks the borders of U.S., Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas. Unlike the news reports, we didn't see any surge of migrants crossing the border, however there were extra cops on the streets (mostly met them at Starbucks). We did not see any homeless people on the streets, unlike Albuquerque.

The wall....

The cross at the top of the mountain marking the international borders of two countries and two states.

I felt the vortex, where everything is on the line at the border. On the line and interconnected. History is here of the smelter plant reflected in paintings from oil magnates collections in the art museum (now cleaned up from the lead poisoning), or the cement plant by our border hike.

White letters on the mountain in Ciudad Juárez (across from the El Paso freeway) say read something like read the Bible or, the Bible is truth, in Spanish. Football fans were pouring in for the Sun Bowl at University of West Texas.

LaMisión de San Antonio de Ysleta del Sur, established in 1680, El Paso.

We drove through the lower valley to experience Socorro, San Elizario, and Clint.

Billy the Kid country by the jail. John and Lawrence.

El Paso area has farm country with cotton fields and pecan tree orchards. San Elizario has a mission and an old jail where Billy the Kid had a jailbreak. We had a lovely dinner with Lawrence and his wife Lisa, and savored our first date with El Paso. I am percolating poems. We will be back!