Just As It Once Was

Earlier this month, I drove out to a town just west of Dallas-Fort Worth called Mineral Wells. It’s a good hour from Fort Worth, which is already a good hour from my house in East Dallas. It was one of my final assignments at my day job, and I was glad to do it. Part of my fellowship was to deliver legal services to folks in rural areas, and this particular person was unable to leave their home for health reasons. I’m going to be vague about their identity because, in a town of just 15,000 people, the list of folks who could fit a certain description is short.

For various reasons, I never got to meet the person I drove out there to see. I didn’t count the day as a total loss, though. First, I had a friend with me: Victoria, a law student who worked as an intern in our office. She and I had a good time on the drive out there, content that day to roll with the punches.

When we first coasted into Mineral Wells, we were surprised by the high quality of the houses we passed, imagining, I suppose, that everyone lived in covered wagons and log cabins. One particularly well-masoned home sported a shiny gold star on its exterior.

“That’s the mayor’s house,” I said.

“Really?”

“No,” I said. “But it could be.”

We turned a corner. In the distance, we saw a high hill with giant, aged white letters reading “WELCOME” in the style of the Hollywood sign. After our fruitless trip to the client’s house, we headed straight for the only thing that could soften the blow of our unfinished journey: The Baker Hotel.

Christie and I covered The Baker on episode 92 of Sinisterhood, so I was familiar with the building and the city’s history. Still, even with all the research, it was different driving up to it. The fourteen-story beast with the Spanish Renaissance façade looks somehow worse than it did both in old photos and on the 2012 episode of Ghost Adventures. The latter showed the inside, crumbling and destroyed from years of neglect, while Zak Bagans shouted through the respirator on his face about the freaky occurrences within its walls.

Blocked from entering the hotel by towering fences on all sides, along with “SMILE – YOU’RE ON CAMERA!” signs, Victoria and I could only take photos of its exterior through the chain link.

“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “I’m getting bad vibes from this place.”

“Probably all the people who died there,” I said. “Also, the ghosts.”

After sweating our asses completely off in the sweltering Texas sun, we decided to step indoors to a storefront across the street. A neon sign in the window of the corner shop read You Maka Me Hot Coffee. Nothing gets me into a building faster than a horny pun name. I was even more enticed by the sandwich board on the sidewalk reading “Frozen Lemonade.”

The interior seemed to encompass three places in one. Just behind the glass doors, several sofas and chairs faced a boxy television, forming a coffee shop lounge area. The furniture was surrounded by shelved walls covered with bags of coffee for sale. Further inside, there was a small counter in front of an espresso machine.

Around a corner, there was a full glass-enclosed candy bar that extended the length of the shop. Case after case was full of taffy, chocolate covered peanuts, and toffee.

Behind that, there were dozens of shelves of DVDs and VHS tapes, echoing Blockbuster video stores of my youth. Somewhere in the middle sat an exercise bike. For use? For sale? I will never know.

An enthusiastic woman in a red American flag t-shirt greeted us, her a platinum blonde hair drawn up into a high ponytail. We ordered two frozen lemonades. She asked whether we may like some taffy to go with the frozen lemonade. I am no candy sommelier, but this pairing did not sound appetizing. We declined and waited while her companion, a mustachioed man in a vest, headed through swinging saloon doors to fetch our drinks.

“Where are y’all from?” she asked. In a town that size, I guess it’s easy to spot outsiders. I felt her look at my taupe t-strap high heels and survey Victoria’s neatly pressed slacks.

“Dallas,” we said. She nodded.

We stood without speaking, and I looked from the espresso machine to the cases of candy to the wall of DVDs, trying to reconcile it all. The woman shifted from foot to foot behind the register. I noticed the shelf behind her, stacked with navy ballcaps embroidered with the logo from the 2003 film Finding Nemo. A sign above them read, “Movie Merchandise Still Available.”

“You excited about the hotel opening up?” I asked, filling the silence. I gestured through the floor-to-ceiling glass at the front of the store. Her front row seat to the hotel’s revival.

“Yes,” she answered quickly. “You know, it’ll be a four-star resort hotel.” She added, “Just like it once was.”

“Did COVID stop the construction?” I asked.

“No, no. Actually they just replaced all those windows and doors, by hand,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”

I squinted across the street. The doors and windows looked like doors and windows. I could see the glass was intact, but I could not tell their age with my naked eye. I wondered. Is there some other way to put a door or window in without using your hands?

“Oh yes,” I lied. “They look wonderful.”

“It’ll be a four-star resort hotel,” she said again. “Just like it once was.”

Victoria and I made eye contact, each wondering, How long does a frozen lemonade take?

“We have plans if you want to see them,” she said. “Plans to the hotel.”

She pointed at large, poster-size construction plans on display, just behind another rack of DVDs. Victoria and I walked toward them.

“It’ll be a four-star resort hotel,” she said again. “Just like it once was.”

“Looks like a real destination,” I said. “Conferences, weddings.” I trailed off.

“It’ll be beautiful for weddings,” she said.

“Victoria just got engaged,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “Maybe she can get married here.” Victoria and I shared a laugh, but the woman didn’t take it as a joke.

“Oh definitely. Doors will open in 2024, but it’s booking up fast. Call Jeff, he’ll get you booked. It’ll be a four-star resort hotel, just like it once was.” Victoria and I exchanged looks.

Her companion came around with two tall cups full of what resembled vanilla milkshake. We thanked them both and headed out.

“Just like it once was?” I said once the doors were closed behind us, and we were back under the unrelenting sun. We joked about her refrain.

“Just like it once was, back when I lived there.”

“When I died there.”

We walked to a marketplace about a block away, The Baker ever looming behind us. Inside the marketplace, I lingered a bit too long at a sample station for the town’s chief export - Crazy Water - while browsing for a trinket to bring back to the Sinisterhood studio.

An enthusiastic woman with a silver bouffant and an embroidered apron approached me.

“Would you like to know the history of our town?” she asked.

I had a choice to make – I could say, “No thank you. I already did research on your town for the podcast I co-host” and simultaneously sound like a douche while also breaking this nice lady’s heart. Or, instead, I could play like I coasted into town with no agenda and let her lay it on me. I chose the second.

“Absolutely, I would love to hear your town’s history.”

She smiled wide a took a deep breath. As she recounted the mineral water’s discovery in the late 1870s, another woman wandered up.

“I’d like to hear, too,” she said. The tour guide stood a little taller and continued her speech.

She repeated the same story we had told on the air, adapted from the Crazy Water website: Once the water’s healing properties were discovered, one well was dug, then another and another and so on. The high mineral count in the water included a significant amount of lithium, which had a calming effect on the residents. Other minerals included calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc.

According to legend, the minerals cured anything from arthritis to sore eyes and paralysis to insomnia. After its positive impact on an older woman suffering from dementia (who they called the “Crazy Lady”), they took to calling it Crazy Water, a name it uses to this day.

“The Number 4 water has the most minerals in it,” the tour guide told us. “I’ll tell you, though, be careful.” She looked from side to side. “For some folks, myself included, the high mineral count in the Number 4 water has a laxative effect. Very powerful. Very powerful.”

The other spectator and I both nodded. I imagined this tour guide, slugging down the town water, running scared to a bathroom while her bowels rocketed themselves empty.

“Anyway, did you all want to give it a try?” She offered us empty Dixie cups. I was hesitant to slurp down a very powerful laxative water before a two-hour drive home.

I headed to the front register and stacked up my goods: a four-pack of various grades of Crazy Water, candy bars, a candle made from an old Crazy Water bottle, some honey roasted almonds. The cashier began ringing me up and told me the almonds I chose were good.

“Crazy good?” I asked. She hesitated then cracked a smile. “I am so sorry,” I said. “I am leaving town right now, I promise.”

“You know, we’re all a little crazy around here,” she said. “That’s what we say. We’re Crazy people who drink Crazy Water. It’s on the sign.”

After paying, Victoria and I headed outside and took a quick selfie with the sign the cashier told us about. It read: “Welcome to Mineral Wells: Home of CRAZY.” We walked back toward the Baker and climbed into my hot car, headed back to Fort Worth.

On the highway out of town, we passed a brick company and a military installation. Farmlands and factories. We had joked about it, but there was something in that coffee shop/video rental/candy store owner’s refrain:

“A four-star resort and hotel, just as it once was.”

Until the 1970s, The Baker was a draw. Towering, beautiful, elegant, luxurious, it hosted conventions and conferences. The decades since the doors shut have ravaged it. In the Ghost Adventures episode, Zak Bagans stood in courtyard that was overgrown and broken down. Inside, he was forced to don a respirator mask, standing before crumbling walls, tagged with spray paint. Even the “hand-installed” doors and windows haven’t brought it back to life, though it is a step in the process.

Just as it once was.

I thought of the cashier at the marketplace. The proprietor of the coffee shop/video store. The tour guide offering samples of the liquid laxative. I cringed, pitying them. They’re trapped, I thought, in a town that died a long time ago. Living on the hope that whatever that building once was, it could be that again.

Then I thought of that cashier ringing me up, charging me $20 for candle made out of a used glass water bottle. I thought of the $15 sack of almonds I bought. I thought of the hundreds of thousands of ounces of ground water they bottled and sold to suckers like me - the promise of a miracle in a bottle.

Maybe they aren’t the crazy ones, even though they call themselves that. Or, at least, if they are “crazy” as they insist, they’re the good kind of crazy. The kind who stuck around. The kind who look up at a crumbling building and see it not for what it is, but for what it could be. Just as it once was.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.