Reflections

Visitors

Posted on by tumbleweedmotel

Today was pretty uneventful. I did a couple of loads of laundry (for the record, Miss Shirley’s old Speed Queen gets clothes cleaner than any modern machine I’ve ever used) and gave the walls in Unit Four a coat of paint.

We had visitors yesterday: A young couple in a U-Haul truck stopped here on their way to Joplin, Mo. They said they used to live in Picher, Oklahoma, which may be the most snakebitten town in the United States. If I understood them correctly, it began as a lead-mining community, turned into a Superfund site, started falling into a sinkhole, got hit by a tornado, and finally ceased to exist when the last few residents moved out last summer.

My guests had been working in California the past couple of years but decided to move back to Joplin, which is about 25 miles from Picher, to be closer to relatives. They said the cost of living in California was ridiculous, and they’re expecting their first child, so they’re going home.

They came in late last night, while I was sitting out front, listening to the coyotes and finishing my usual cappuccino. They were pretty exhausted from driving all day and pretty happy to find the Tumbleweed open. I fixed them breakfast this morning before they headed east.

I hope they find what they’re looking for in Joplin. My hometown still exists, but it’s changed so much since I was a kid, and so many of the people in my life have vanished so rapidly, I think I understand that rootless, what-do-I-do-now feeling that must have ambushed them when Picher disappeared.

One of my goals for the Tumbleweed is for it to serve as a comfortable, familiar touchstone for the people whose lives send them traveling up and down this old highway. This motel has been in constant operation for more than 60 years, and I want it to stay open and alive to provide at least some modicum of continuity for those customers whose travels bring them through Coldwater year after year. Even if they’ve never slept here, I want them to be able to look out the window and say, “Oh, look — there’s that old motel we always pass when we come through here.”

Change is inevitable, but we need some kind of constant to ground us. I know all too well how disorienting the world can be without it.

— Sierra

Ahhhh.

Posted on by tumbleweedmotel

I forgot to mention it amid all the excitement of buying a truck and shopping for a puppy, but my espresso machine came in yesterday.

Tonight, I am drinking one memory out of another.

In high school, I used to cut class and spend the afternoon hanging out at a gritty little coffeehouse with cobwebs on the ceiling, stains on the tablecloths, and a dusty, faded lava lamp sitting in a ring of dusty, faded plastic flowers on one of the tables near the counter.

The coffeehouse itself was pretty standard-issue, but the barista — a gray-haired man in his late 40s, with Parrish blue eyes and a gentle smile that reminded me vaguely of Mandy Patinkin — was anything but ordinary.

At a time when most adults just smiled indulgently and nodded at the right times, without really listening to what I was saying, Richard drew me into very grown-up political conversations and asked me very grown-up questions about what I believed and why. He made me think, and he made me feel as if my thoughts mattered. I will forever cherish those conversations with him.

Richard also taught me to use the espresso machine my father bought me for my birthday that year. I am forever indebted to him for troubleshooting my first few failed attempts at cappuccino and for showing me how to move the pitcher under the steam jet to make a nice, dense froth. I think of him and smile every time I taste that first sip of espresso filtered through foam.

The cappuccino you see in the picture is a double memory, because the mug is a souvenir from the Austin Motel, where my father and I stayed when he played SXSW to promote an acoustic album he’d just released on a little indie label in 1991. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in concert, and as I listened to his voice traverse the familiar notes of a song I’d heard on the radio a thousand times, I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, for reasons I cannot begin to explain.

Maybe I should design some souvenirs for the Tumbleweed. It’s nice to think that Coldwater might be a cherished part of someone else’s history.

— Sierra

Counting a blessing

Posted on by tumbleweedmotel

I don’t pray enough. I’m not sure why; maybe it’s because living out here in the high desert, with the sky so vast and the stars so clear, feels sacred enough without the lip service.

A friend once told me that just being quiet and listening is a kind of prayer. She backed up her assertion by quoting that verse from Psalms that says: “Be still and know that I am God.”

I like that. I really like the idea that when I’m just sitting outside, listening to the wind or the coyotes or the distant sound of the semis pulling in and out of the truck stop and thinking how good my coffee tastes or how clean the night air smells, I’m really praying.

Still, if I’m going to hang out with God, I probably ought to hold up my end of the conversation. I don’t want to treat God like some big sugar daddy in the sky who’ll spoil me rotten if I just pester him enough, but I feel as if I ought to say something once in a while, so I’m going to start finding just one small thing to be thankful for every night.

I know I’ve got big reasons for gratitude — I mean, millions of people go to bed hungry, and hundreds of people would love to live on Route 66 — but I think it means more if you take the time to think about the less obvious stuff.

Tonight, I am thankful for instant grits.

That might seem like a stupid thing to sit around praying about, but you have to understand how important instant grits are at the Tumbleweed.

You see, Joey’s favorite food in the whole world is orange sherbet, but his second-favorite food in the whole world is cheese grits. He eats them every morning for breakfast. Every. Single. Morning.

If I had to cook grits from scratch, I’d be in the kitchen half the morning. There’s no way I could pull that off. But I can nuke a bowl of grits and stir in a pat of butter and a handful of cheese in less than five minutes. It makes Joey happy, and it requires almost no effort on my part.

Anything that allows me to bring joy to that gentle soul on a daily basis has got to be a gift from God.

What are you thankful for today?

— Sierra

Openers

Posted on by tumbleweedmotel

My butt is cold.

That’s probably not the classiest way to start a blog, but it’s what I’m thinking as I sit on this ancient metal lawn chair in front of a motel I probably shouldn’t have bought, watching the tumbleweeds struggle to free themselves from the barbed-wire fence across the highway and waiting in the brittle night air to see whether the coyotes will serenade me again like they did last night.

I’m told that tumbleweeds are not native to New Mexico, but you’d never know it to look at them all bunched up against the fence by the hundreds, shivering in the cold breeze, which for God alone knows what reason has decided to buck tradition and blow in from the east tonight.

The tumbleweeds are as much a part of the scenery as their namesake motel, which is also a latecomer to this ancient land.

It occurs to me that I am a tumbleweed, blown in from the east, caught on the fence of a life that doesn’t yet feel like my own.

I don’t think I would have had the nerve to buy this place if the road hadn’t been here, holding the promise of an escape route to other lives should this one prove unsuitable. I’m still not sure why I thought this was a good idea — one too many cups of Miss Shirley’s Irish coffee, perhaps, or one too many fiery sunsets over Sangre Mesa? Maybe I was just bored, though I can’t imagine anyone in her right mind looking at Coldwater, N.M. — population 258 and falling — and thinking, “Eureka! I’ve just found the perfect cure for ennui!”

Whatever the reason, as of 11:38 this morning, I am the proud owner of the historic Tumbleweed Motel, which currently consists of five rooms (three of which are more or less fit for human habitation), an office, a functional wringer washer, a pair of rusty clothesline poles, and a developmentally disabled handyman who calls me “Sissy” and walks two miles to the truck stop next to the interstate off-ramp every morning to buy canned tuna for the feral cats that skulk around the edges of the property.

Yes: I am a tumbleweed caught in a fence. But it’s a fence that feels oddly right, and as I sit here on my own property next to Route 66, with my freezing butt and my freezing fingers and my slow dialup connection, waiting for a visit from unseen coyotes, I think maybe it won’t be long before I set down roots and become chaparral.

— Sierra