That's Fair

The third Saturday in October, I woke up to a text from my sister, Shannon. She let me know that she and her husband, Aaron, were headed to the State Fair of Texas with my four-and-a-half-year-old niece. I screamed to Paris, who was in the shower, that as soon as he was out, we were headed to the Fair. It was closing weekend, and the weather was perfect – a cool 75 degrees, no clouds in the sky. It’s what we called “Fair weather” growing up. Not meaning “fair” as in temperate; we meant capital-F “Fair” as in, the type of weather perfect for going to the Fair.

We went to the Fair every single year when I was a kid. We had a route we’d always walk, always parking in the same lot, exchanging our coupons for foods at the same stands. It marked the beginning of the fall season for us, and for me, meant that my birthday was around the corner.

It also meant we got two days off school and a free ticket to the fair. Every year I’ve been in town, I’ve gone back to the Fair. In 2019, the first year Paris and I were dating, I went with my family but not with him. As a non-native Texan, Paris doesn’t quite have the same attachment to the Fair as me. It makes sense, really. When you try to explain the Fair to someone not from here, you sound absurd.

“There is a giant cowboy named Big Tex who used to be a Santa, then he burned down, but now he’s back. He wears jeans with a twenty-foot inseam. There are buildings filled with cars, and you can just, like, sit in them. Then in another building, people will try to holler at you until you buy stuff. Like live action infomercials. Also, there’s a place with glass cases full of people’s art projects. Yeah, like homemade quilts and dolls and puppets. The rides are great. The best part? They’re the exact same ride machines that were there when I went as a child. I am 35 years old, why do you ask?”

In 2020, the Fair offered a COVID-safe drive-through experience, but I had no interest. I didn’t want to see the shuttered buildings and closed food tents. So, earlier this year, when a Facebook targeted ad offered me seasons passes, I snatched them up. I went on opening day with my cousin, Ami, a Fair aficionado.

With the gates reopened, I decided to shake up my usual McKinney Family Fair To Do List. Instead, I let Ami lead the way and let myself spend coupons on things I never had before. I tried a caramel apple covered in nuts. I had to keep my tradition of Texas-shaped nachos from the Hass family booth. To change it up, instead of a small boat of chips and plain cheese, I went with Nachos Grande, an order that came on a plate and was covered in salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and finished with a little Texas flag set onto a toothpick.

On my second visit this year, I went with my dear friends Gypsy and James. Gypsy was born and raised in Mesquite like me, so she also has a deep love for all things Big Tex.  We happened to go the weekend before I had a combination colonoscopy/endoscopy. On the hunt for whether celiac disease was causing my severe stomach illness that had only gotten worse since July, my doctor told me to have some gluten on Sunday.

“Just don’t go crazy,” he said.

Sorry, doc. I had Deep Fried Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, which tasted exactly as it was described.  A ball of fettuccine noodles and chicken, slathered with Alfredo sauce and fried into a ball. It was disgusting and amazing all at the same time. I also followed Gypsy and James to their favorite funnel cake stand where I ordered a red velvet funnel cake.

This was my idea of “not going overboard.” The gluten worked. I got my diagnoses (non-celiac gluten intolerance and some other stuff). I was only sick for about 48 hours since the pre-treatment for the colonoscopy flushed out everything I’ve ever eaten. The funnel cake was worth it, even though I got covered in so much powdered sugar I looked I sneezed while doing cocaine.

(Honestly, I’ve never done cocaine. I don’t know if it’s the same consistency as powdered sugar. I’m basing this totally on what I’ve seen in movies.)

Another day, I went with my high school pals. Sean was in town from Austin, and we met Jeff, Emily, and their baby, Canyon, for a day of fair fun. We ventured toward the beer garden area where I sampled the Fair’s version of frozen daiquiri for the first time. Not bad. Just as you would expect, like a Slurpee with some wine in it.

We also headed down the Midway where they took Canyon on the carousel. He squealed and cried, and honestly, I’m not sure what else he did. That thing spun so fast, it seemed like it could whiff off its axis at any moment. I didn’t see the ride operator’s panel, but I am sure the speed was cranked up to eleven. Just watching it was enough to make me dizzy.

The Fair only runs from the end of August through mid-October. When Shannon texted me that weekend, I was eager to go one last time before it shut down for the year. Paris and I met her, Aaron, and Sydney at around 11am on a bright and sunny Saturday morning. There were folks milling about the main area around Big Tex, and Paris and I navigated the crowds to find my family.

People watching at the Fair is one of the best parts. Walking through the hoards, we passed a man in a black t-shirt, printed with neon green letters asking the age-old question: “Do I Look like I give a fuck?” Paris and I read the shirt at the same time.

“We can’t know from the back of his head,” Paris said. We walked faster to pass him and saw the shirt was printed with the same question on the breast pocket.

“He does not look like he does,” I said.

We found them though the mess of folks, and started off for some food and rides. After getting her face painted, Sydney was most excited about the funhouses. At the State Fair, the funhouses are portable metal structures, between one and two stories tall, with various lights, mirrors, obstacles, and optical illusions throughout. They’re also machines of death and destruction.

When I was about ten years old, my dad and I went through one of these funhouses. The entrance contained a set of mechanical stairs that slid back and forth. Walking up these steps, my left foot was swallowed whole. The cerulean canvas shoe I had been wearing was torn to pieces, leaving my foot bare and smashed between unceasing pieces of moving wood.

I screamed to the point that Fair medics showed up and carted me off to the first aid tent in a golf cart. They ended up duct taping my shoe back on my foot, and my family continued our Fair visit. We couldn’t waste a good Fair day just because a foot was crushed, could we?

The first one she chose was not my nemesis funhouse. It was a whimsical structure and cost seven coupons to enter. That should have tipped us off as to its complexity and intensity. Though she passed the height requirement to get in, she was the littlest person in there by several feet. No matter, she walked the same steps as the teenage boys in front of us without hesitation.

We slid down the final slide together, and she marched in a straight line to her parents, asking to go through another one right away. The next two we tried only cost five coupons, followed shortly by one that only cost four. It seemed we had leapt off the seven-coupon cliff and would be chasing that high until the Fair next year.

As we rounded a corner that final day of the Fair this year, I came upon it. The funhouse that ate my foot. Shannon and I exchanged glances and told the story to Aaron and Paris. I looked at the admission: five coupons. I felt ashamed that I had been bested by a five-coupon funhouse all those years ago. Sydney was determined to conquer them all, so we turned our coupons over to the grizzled man at the entrance and headed toward the stairs. I silently swore an oath to shove my foot back into the stairs if I needed to in order to protect her.

My dramatic plans were unnecessary. She hopped up and over them with no issue. Same with the spinning barrel. She just ran right through. We made it across a bridge and over some unstable platforms that spun beneath us. Halfway through the very funhouse that had chewed on my limb all those years ago, she looked up at me and said, “They’ve got to make these harder for me.”

Sure, kid. Great idea. The last time I set foot in here, I was actually devoured by the machinery, but yes, let’s crank up the thrills, limbs be damned. I’m proud of her every single day, but I was overwhelmed in that moment. So little and already so brave. Turns out the best way to beat something like that is just not to flinch.

We ventured back through the Midway where Aaron and I decided to ride The Magnum. Listen, I know out of context saying I decided to “ride The Magnum” with my brother-in-law sounds very backwoods, but let me tell you – it is very backwoods. It’s just not sexual

The Magnum is a long-time State Fair staple. In operation for at least 30 years, this metal machine whips riders around in small circles, strapped into carts that extend from a four-armed piece that itself also whips around in circles. Then the carts aren’t even secured in place. They rock back and forth on a center axis.

It’s hard to explain, but I imagine it’s like a homemade version of what they used to prepare astronauts for G-force in space.

We both walked onto the ride with full knowledge of what could happen to us. We weren’t fraudulently induced. Not only is the ride operating in the open in broad daylight, we’ve both seen it there for decades. It’s the same hunk of metal that has occupied space on the Midway since the Reagan administration, beckoning riders to hop on board with the enticing imagine of an airbrushed Tom Selleck.

We handed over our fourteen coupons each – if you’re playing at home, 1 coupon = $1 – and walked onto the metal platform toward our waiting coffin. We took our seats and clicked the shoulder bars into place.

“You know you don’t realize how rusted everything is until you’re strapped down,” I said.

We both noted the bolts, the very ones that kept our cart attached to the rest of the ride, and how rusted and crumbling they were.

“Nice knowing you,” I said.

“Why did we do this?” Aaron asked. We both looked at my sister, ever the good decision maker, staring back at us from solid ground. She waved.

The machine revved up. They played some song like “Highway to Hell” as we began to spin. Then we spun some more. Then we flipped. We would get stuck halfway through a flip, suspended in the air, parallel with the ground, before we whipped back the other way.

I think I handled it pretty well, screaming, “This is how we die” multiple times in a row.

For the record, we didn’t die. It was only about a 2-minute ride. Not even a full song, but it felt like plenty. We got our fourteen-coupons’ worth. And we both managed to walk away without losing consciousness or the food we had just ingested.

“Did y’all have fun?” Shannon asked.

“Too much,” I said.

It was getting late in the day, and the Fair started getting crowded. They headed for their car while I told Paris I wanted to ride one last ride.

It was a ride we would beg to go on as kids, and sometimes we did. But as we grew up, we adopted a new Fair route. See, the Fair has something like eleven different entrances. Depending on how you get there and where you park, your route through the place will change. A long time ago, we began favoring a parking lot near an eastern entrance, which meant we hit certain booths and food stands in a certain order, following a well-trodden path.

Now, with the Fair reopened, knowing how much there was I missed out on when it was closed for the pandemic, I wanted to branch out. As a creature of habit, this is hard. I can’t always bring myself to deviate from my rituals. I like what I like.

I am, on the other hand, marrying Paris Brown – the king of Let’s Just See Where This Path Takes Us and emperor of Let’s Try This New Thing. It’s both exhausting and thrilling.

So, in the spirit of going where the path leads, I asked to ride the haunted house ride, the same one that had been around since my childhood. The last time I had ridden it was probably 20 years ago. Paris, ever eager for an adventure, jumped in the fiber glass cart with me. We squeezed beside each other and filled the entire space.

“Tight fit,” he said.

“Fun fact – these are the same carts they have used for the past thirty years,” I said.

“What?”

The cart began to move.

First, we slammed through a set of swinging doors, wood dented and paint chipped from years of use. The walls at various points were covered in aluminum foil, glow-in-the-dark paint, and mirrors. We rode through artificial fog past a skeleton with its pants down. Paris asked if it had also been there when I was a kid.

“That’s a new addition,” I said. No funds for new carts, but sure, add a pervert skeleton.

After bends, curves, and a short drop that took us outside past the waiting line, we rolled out the exit doors. We disembarked and another couple scrambled on as our cart slammed into the one in front of it.

Headed back toward our car, we passed the official Midway Barker of the State Fair. He’s a talking optical illusion – human torso and head (a real guy) from the chest up suspended on a long brass pole. It gives the illusion that he’s missing everything from his ribs down, which he takes as an opportunity to gather a crowd and sing parody versions of popular songs, replacing the lyrics with references to his pole or lack of body. It

I glanced at the Barker and kept walking. Paris stopped, awestruck, and listened to a few of the jokes. He caught up to me and took me by the hand.

“How did you walk by that so nonchalantly?” he asked.

“Walk by what?” I asked. “The Barker? That’s just the Fair, babe.”

***

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

All the Things I Forgot About Traveling

We just wrapped up our seven-city, eight-show tour performing Sinisterhood live for fans and friends across five states. If you made it to a show, thank you so much! It was great to see all your lovely faces. If not, good news – we’re releasing the episodes on the feed, and we put up some behind-the-scenes video footage of Seattle/Portland, Denver/SLC, and San Antonio/Dallas (with Houston & Dallas Pt. 2 coming soon!) on our Patreon page so you can feel like you were there with us.

The Houston episode and the final Dallas episode have yet to be released on the feed, and both of those episodes have even more of my favorite moments. We laugh. We cry. We have a celebrity cameo. We (I) learn a basic tenant of science that was heretofore a mystery to me. It’s a great time.

But all that traveling meant we had to travel. Like travel-travel. Like get-back-on-airplanes-and-shuttles-and-Ubers travel.

The tour wasn’t my first foray back into traveling post-pandemic. I did a test run back in July when I flew to Philadelphia to visit my friend, Elyse. At that time, I had not been on an airplane since September 2019. Before COVID, I used to fly fairly often. I would fly back home to Dallas when I lived in Chicago. I’ve traveled for work over the years. I went on family vacations as a kid. All those times on a plane, I was never afraid of flying until it was time to get back in the saddle after quarantine.

For some reason, the prospect of flying to Philly in July made me a nervous wreck. I was having nightmares – not just about airplanes, but general stress nightmares. Like waking up screaming because I believed a spider was crawling on my face nightmares. I actually had to Google the phrase, “What does it mean to dream you were in an explosion?” With my brain in anxiety overdrive, it was hard to get to sleep the night before my first flight back in society.

Once I got into the airport, I calmed down a bit. The one constant I noticed among travelers was that we had all forgotten how to act around one another. I don’t mean it in the “People don’t know how to act” label we put on folks who are acting rude. I mean it seemed like we were just rusty at being around a lot of other humans.

The frontline folks seemed fine – the TSA agents, the airline employees. They had been out and about for the past year and a half, so they were caught up on human interaction stuff. I was privileged enough to spend a huge chunk of the pandemic holed up with just Paris and the dogs, with a side of virtual visits with friends and family. That meant I lost my once firm grasp on small talk.

I stood waiting to board my flight to Philly in one of my favorite masks designed by the internet artist Caroline Goldfarb. It’s a rainbow gradient print with a collage of Larry David heads. It never fails to bring compliments, so when a young woman in a faded t-shirt stopped me to mention it, I was ready. This was an interaction I’d practiced.

“I love your mask,” she said speaking through her own white paper mask. “I know who that artist is.”

I thanked her and told her I loved the artist, too.

“I know of that artist because I used to live in LA,” she said. “LA has its own art scene. It’s not like Texas, not like Dallas. LA – it’s just different, you know?”

I did not know but said I did anyway.

“I just really like Larry David,” I said.

“I am a comedy teacher,” she said. “Well, I was a comedy teacher. And one of my students wrote a whole essay about Larry David. He said it was very cathartic.”

I said, “I bet it was.” I don’t know what about a Larry David essay was cathartic, but the plane was about to board so I didn’t get to find out.

I had an exit row seat, which meant the gate agent asked me if I was at least 15 years old and ready and willing to assist the crew in the unlikely event of an emergency. I could have said “yes” and kept walking. Instead, because I forgot strangers could once again hear me when I talked, I said, “Absolutely, I am ready.”

This made me sound like a wannabe vigilante Batman type, ready to spring into action. Honestly, after the incidents on airplanes I had seen on the news in the days and weeks prior to my flight, I actually was feeling poised to swoop in if necessary.

Earlier in July, a woman had to be restrained on an American Airlines flight from DFW to Charlotte, North Carolina. According to reports, she attacked the flight crew and was trying to open the forward door mid-flight. As a result, flight attendants had to restrain her by taping her to her seat with duct tape. Just a week before that, a man on a Delta flight from LA to Nashville was attempting to open the cockpit door when flight attendants subdued him. He bit one of the flight attendants, so they zip tied him and drug him to the back of the plane.

If I recall correctly, one or both of these folks may have been suffering some type of mental health crisis. Nevertheless, if it’s a choice between keeping the plane full of people safely in the air or opening the door to the sky at 35,000 feet, I think I’d rather somebody get tied down rather than sucked out into space.

Settled in my seat, I hoped my flight would be nowhere near that eventful. I took my aisle seat and made brief eye contact with the woman wearing a long jean skirt and blue rubber Crocs sitting up against the window in my row. No funny business, I thought and smiled.

A man in his fifties built like a professional basketball player approached the exit row section and took the seat across the aisle from me. He wedged himself into the seat and announced to no one and everyone all at once, “I guess we got the kids’ seats today.” Nobody responded.

A woman then wandered up with an enormous suitcase, much too large to fit wheels-first into the overhead compartment. Paying no mind, she crammed it in sideways, crushing the items around it before lugging her giant canvas “personal item” to the window seat of the second exit row. There was no seat directly in front of her, just the flight attendant’s jump seat that pulled down from a wall.

“Where will this go?” she asked out loud, holding her bag out, noting the lack of under-seat storage in front of her.

“There’s nowhere for me to put this. Hmmmm.”

She got back up and stuffed the bag in front of the oxygen tank in another overhead compartment.

I hope we don’t need that.

When she returned to her seat, she set her open-lidded iced coffee on the floor, unfurled a copy of USA Today, and began leafing through sections. Oh to be that free.

The tall man tried his line again: “I guess we got the kids’ seats today.”

The woman lifted her coffee from the carpet beneath her, took a sip under her mask, and said nothing.

I silently assessed every person who walked past me down the aisle of the plane. Everyone looked unremarkable. Just folks loading onto an early morning flight. I thought back to the duct tape lady and the zip tie man. Did they look unremarkable when they got on their flights? Just your average Joe or Jane, headed to their seats, with no plans to try and escape into the clouds prior to touching down at their destinations?

After the whole plane had filled up, a slender redheaded boy, probably no more than 20 years old, slipped into the middle seat between me and Jean Skirt. His knees bounced with nervous energy, and he rubbed his hands on his masked face, pulling out then returning his bag to the seat underneath him over and over.

A wide man in a navy-blue American Airlines polo shirt came down the aisle, holding a silver piece of metal in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other. He kneeled before Jean Skirt, pointing to the open hole on her armrest where a piece was missing.

“We’re going to put this baby on like this,” the maintenance man said as he lined up the silver piece in his hand with her armrest. “Then we’re going to give it a little of this.” He duct-taped the piece into place. “There. Let them worry about that in Philly,” he said and left.

The redheaded boy watched his every move, repeatedly wiping his palms down the thighs of his jeans.

I wondered what else had been duct taped into place, what else had been left for the folks in Philly to handle, what else would be hanging on as we hurtled through the sky.

Once we started to taxi and take off, I was overwhelmed with a sense of dread I’ve never had before when flying. Before all this, I had a couple of reasonable fears – terrorism, freak accidents, getting sucked into the airplane toilet, dropping my cell phone before landing and having it rocket to the other end of the plane.

Now, I added in hastily fixed plane problems and passengers in crisis who may or may not freak out and start chewing on the crew members. It was a lot to take.

Luckily for me, I faced no issues. I worked. I texted. I read. I stood up right when the plane got to the gate, very aware that I had morphed into that person but doing it anyway. Once you make that stand, you really can’t back down. You’re up. That’s just how it’s going to be.

After smooth sailing to Philly this summer, I was optimistic about traveling for the tour. The longer flights to Seattle and back home from Portland went well, as did the flights between Denver and Salt Lake City. So, boarding a plane at Dallas Love Field bound for Houston on my 35th birthday, I thought it would be just another go-round. Your usual cattle call of a Southwest flight, where passengers line up by number and scoot themselves on-board into whatever seats are available.

Christie and her husband, Tommy, sat in an aisle and middle seat on one row, while I took an aisle seat beside LeeAnn (my wiiiiife) on a row adjacent to them. We didn’t know it when we booked our tickets, but we were on a very special flight. This flight was transporting the Birthday Bitch Crew.

Though it was my actual birthday, I was sadly not part of the crew. You could tell the crew members by their custom t-shirts, each in a different bright neon color - blue, purple, orange, pink. The words across their chests were printed in white in a decorative font. First, you had THE BIRTHDAY BITCH. She was surrounded by The Lit Friend, The Thick Friend, The Snarky Friend, The Petty Friend, and The Petty Cousin. I immediately loved them all.

The Birthday Bitch herself chose the open seat in our row. She stretched above my head and popped her bright pink bag in the overhead compartment before wedging herself beside the window. The Petty Friend was seated in front of the Birthday Bitch, beside a couple that looked plucked from the shopping aisles of JC Penney.

The Petty Friend conducted a phone conversation on speaker phone at full volume in which she complained to the listener on the other end that an unnamed person was giving her a lot of headaches on Facebook.

“Listen, I am not here to get ratchet on Facebook because I’ve got a business to run,” she said. Then added, “A real business. Unlike the stuff she’s trying to do.”

Damn. Truly petty.

The Petty Friend wrapped up her conversation as one final couple boarded, the last two passengers on the plane. Possibly unfamiliar with the Southwest open seat policy and appearing generally irritated at the whole lot of us, the pair looked row by row in an effort to find two seats together. It wasn’t going to happen. Before I could tell them to sit the hell down so we could take off already, a flight attendant did it for me in a much nicer tone.

“But where will our bags go?” the woman asked, repeatedly pushing her chin-length salt and pepper hair behind her ear, moving her eyes one by one to each of the completely full overhead compartments.

Her husband’s blue Van Heusen button down stretched across his torso. In short order, he pressed himself up against my face and into my ear to reach into the compartment above me.

“Up here,” he said, shoving his body into me as he wrestled with the bags.

“Just move that pink one,” his wife said. “Stick it back there somewhere.” The Birthday Bitch looked at the pair, concerned, but said nothing.

“Um, actually,” LeeAnn said. “That pink one is our bag, and we’d like it to stay right where it is.”

The couple looked at one another a moment.

“She’s right,” the flight attendant said, approaching the pair with a 7-Up in hand. “You’ll have to gate check your bag.” Their faces fell. He moved his body off my head. I was able to smile.

The Birthday Bitch thanked LeeAnn. We all shared a laugh when I said I hoped we landed in time for the lady to make her Ann Taylor catalog shoot.

Silently hating people then mocking them out loud to make a stranger laugh? I’m back, baby, I thought. This is going to be a good flight.

The flight attendant handed the 7-Up and some antacid to the man behind Christie and Tommy. He was hunkered over, moaning, saying he was so nauseated he may throw up. He shuffled his feet underneath his seat, his black socks rubbing up and down the length of his Birkenstocks, and fanned himself with the safety card.

The winds outside were sustained at 35 miles per hour and gusting up to 60. They rocked the enormous aircraft like a rowboat before anyone had even shut the forward door.

“Folks, if the winds can rock a hundred-and-thirty-thousand-pound plane while we’re on the ground, you can bet this trip is going to be a bit bumpy,” the pilot warned. They slammed the forward door shut.

My mind raced back to Aviation Law class where we learned about that Delta flight that crashed at DFW back in the 80s. A microburst came along and caused the pilots to lose control. Over a hundred people died. A few survived. Those that did were in the back of the plane. I counted up to see what row we were on – six rows from the back.

“You know,” I said to LeeAnn, then paused, thinking better of it. “Nevermind.”

She shrugged.

Things were fine for a few minutes after takeoff, then, as we reached cruising altitude, we heard it. The dreaded ding. The fasten seatbelt sign illuminated, and the pilot made good on his earlier promise.

The bumps were small at first. I was able to continue my work, listening to some audio for the show. LeeAnn’s head was tilted back as she listened to music on her headphones. I looked across the aisle and saw Christie reading a book for the show. I looked back at our row. The Birthday Bitch was leaned up against the window, eyes closed, hugging her sweatshirt like a teddy bear.

Then, a big dip. And another one. The plane began to shudder in great heaves as it navigated the wind.

The Birthday Bitch woke up. The nauseated man in the Birkenstocks put his head between his knees and continued to moan. The shaking became so intense, I had to put my notebook away. I reached over and grabbed LeeAnn’s hand. She squeezed mine back. I saw Christie put the book away and lean over onto Tommy. The Birthday Bitch cradled her face in her hands. I thought she may be crying.

In a panic, I leaned down and grabbed the small diary I keep in my purse. I wrote:

This is how I die. On my birthday. Like the lyrics to some Alanis Morrisette song.

I started thinking about what my obituary would say. I hoped that if the plane did crash, we would live and that the Birthday Crew would survive, too. I thought, At the very least, surely God would spare the Birthday Bitch?

With what seemed like hours (but was really only about 40 minutes) trapped inside a metal tube being shaken like a maraca, we finally crashed to the ground and taxied to the gate.

“Sorry about that, folks. Welcome to Houston,” the pilot said on the intercom.

Welcome to Houston, indeed.

None of us could speak after the ordeal we underwent. When our nerves finally settled, Christie said, “I know it’s not his fault. Logically, I know that. But I just kept thinking, For God’s sake, DO SOMETHING!”

As is often the case, she perfectly articulated exactly what we had all been thinking.

We walked on wobbly legs up the ramp and into our waiting car. We made it to the show that night, and I won’t apologize for the amount of time we spent on the air recounting our near-death experience. You can hear it in Wednesday’s episode.

The next morning, we opted to cancel our flights and drive back home. We figured things would be a lot more stable if we had four wheels on the ground. Plus, we had the opportunity to stop at Buc-ee’s, the enormous Texas-based truck stop that defies all explanation.

We filled up the tank and used their sparklingly clean restrooms. Christie bought Christmas pajamas. I loaded up on Beaver Nuggets. Feet on the ground, we navigated a swarm of humans ravaging shelves of beaver-printed merchandise. We were safe. We were home.

***

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

Showing Up

It’s after midnight, eastern time. I am sitting in a hotel room in Philadelphia, listening to Bo Burnham’s INSIDE. Kolchak: The Night Stalker is muted on the TV. I am going to send this out to you all in the morning.

I usually like to draft this newsletter during the week. At the very worst, I write it early on Saturday then spend the day editing. Still, it gets done on time. I like sending something out every week because it feels like a nice way to connect with you.

Some pieces I write turn out better than others. Some turn out worse That’s the nature of anything we create – half of the product will be below average. That’s just a fact. I’ve come to terms with that. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

There are times the words flow like water. I have to turn on the faucet and get some rust out, but still they come.

Other times, I feel like a character in that movie/TV trope where the person types something on the typewriter, pulls the page out, crumples it up then throws it in the trash. The problem with laptops and traveling is I don’t have the dramatic gesture of crumpling up a sheet of paper and tossing it out. Instead, I can only highlight and press the delete key – a much less impactful action. I guess I could drag the file to the little virtual trashcan. Just doesn’t feel the same, though.

Today is one of those paper-crumpling days.

So, here we are. I am writing to you with nothing to say. That’s pretty scary. You may think, Why are you sending anything then?  Because I said I would. I gave this little thing a name that had a due date in it so I would have a date to shoot for each week.

It seems like a dying concept to do something just because you say you would. This can be good. You say you’ll do a thing, then you do it. It’s called Sunday Morning Hot Tea, so that’s when you’ll get it.

I also like to believe we as a society are becoming more understanding. We’re all trying to be kinder to each other and to ourselves. If someone cannot physically do something that they said they would, I hope we give them a little space and a little grace. For instance, sometimes I send y’all a note saying there will be no newsletter because I got engaged or because I baked myself in the sun on July 4th weekend.

This week, there was no reason for me not to do this. Sure, I’m on a short vacation to Philadelphia, but that’s not the problem. There have been a hundred and sixty-some-odd hours between last Sunday and right now. I spent a lot of those hours working on the show. I went to Pure Barre. I did some fun stuff, like having lunch with my mom, going on a dinner date with Paris, and getting my nails done with LeeAnn. I also watched Loki and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season one (have y’all seen “The Dinner Party From Hell” episode? Unreal!)

What I didn’t do? Work on this. At least not directly. I did my morning pages some days, but not every day. Then I flew to Philadelphia to see my friend, Elyse. I tried working on this a little during the trip, but things got in the way – like visiting with her, meeting her family and friends, enjoying a classic Philadelphia sandwich called the Schmitter, and taking a satisfying hotel nap.

That left me with a choice – should I tap out, send you all a message saying, “Sorry, y’all! I’m on vacation!” and go to bed? A part of me wanted to. The other part – that driven part of me that keeps the train moving forward at all costs – said no. It told me to grab a La Colombe draft latte and crank out a meaningful and thoughtful piece for you.

Well, that didn’t happen. I had a few ideas, but I crumpled up everything I started and threw it into the virtual trash can. Still, I decided to send this because of that driven part inside me that won’t let me not.

Here’s the question I keep coming back to: is that driven part a good part of me? Is that what we want – to do what we said we would do no matter what? On the one hand, it makes us reliable. People know we’ll be there for them when we say we will. On the other hand, is it ok to tap out if we just want to? Where is the line between obligation and selfishness?

I don’t have an answer yet, but I’ll keep thinking. Maybe I’ll figure it out somewhere over the next hundred and sixty eight hours. If it comes to me by then, I’ll send you a note and let you know.

***

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

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.