Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Survived by 10 Cadillacs
Stanley Marsh 3, the West Texas eccentric who commission the Ant Farm to create the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, died yesterday. An heir to an oil and gas fortune, he was a man of many antics (and apparently a few crimes, too).
The first time I saw the Cadillac Ranch, I just happened to be driving that way. It caught the corner of my eye and I realized what it was. Like a lot of things in West Texas, it was as much as anything a frame for the sky. There is nothing like a West Texas sky.
Not so long ago, IPLawGuy and I made a trip out to West Texas-- El Paso, Alpine, and Marfa. We saw many odd things (though not the Cadillac Ranch; we didn't go that far North). IPLG had purchased "The Greatest Hits of Norman Greenbaum," and we listened to that and drove in the high desert, watching the sky as it trailed off to forever.
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Funny you should mention the landscape in Texas as a fame for the sky. I always saw it the other way around. Anything set against the Texas sky is uplifted by its glorious frame. Even questionable creations magically turn into inspired works of art when framed by that sky. In fact what I find most impressive is the art of trying to capture just a little piece of Texas sky and frame it.
Speaking of Alpine, I think you'd love Elizabeth Crook's "Monday, Monday." The climax of the story takes place there. Starts with the UT Tower shooting, moves on to Beeville, San Marcos, Austin. Really, really great read!
From the hill country, with its ashe junipers (cedar trees to most) sucking the life out of everything around it, to the yuccas and mesas of the chihuahuan desert, I'm drawn to the desolate, Texas landscape for some reason. Maybe because there's no better view of the sky — that I know of — than there.
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