The Story of My Life :P

A Trip to Texas

A memorable event in my life was my trip to Texas.

Yes, I saw the Alamo. Yes, I was hot. Yes, I had a good time.

There. Boring part's done.

Still, I have to explain the beginning.

I was on a trip with my mom, dad, and brother to Texas. We were going to meet my long-lost grandfather, Papi. That in itself was exciting, but the excitement kept getting bigger and bigger when we actually hit the road.

First we stopped at this amazing food joint in New Mexico. It had all of these fake cacti and sombreros and bright colors. The place smelled amazing, like all of the best cooking smells you could think of, like cilantro and churros and carne asada, turned into an aroma and concentrated. I know that might not sound very amazing, but to my eight-year-old brain, it was.

After we had eaten, we jumped back on the 10 freeway and floored it. The drive was boring, I just waited and waited, letting my mind drift into some daydream or other. A train started coming up behind us on the track next to the freeway.

One thing you must understand (if you do not live in the city) is that a natural rule of thumb is to go the speed of the driver in front of you. However, if you take away those cars in front of you and add an endless stretch of road, it becomes easy for a city driver to reach ninety miles an hour and not realize it. This is precisely what had happened to my mother, and the train was moving at the exact same speed as my our car. My mother noticed this, and, instead of slowing down, she attempted to outrun the train. She succeeded. In a few minutes she had left the train in the dust. Once she realized that she had accomplished her goal, she decreased her speed and allowed the train to pass.

The week went by with my long-lost grandfather, who I learned was a Vietnam war veteran and mentally unstable. He attempted to gift my ten-year-old brother with a machete and began to elaborate on how he had decapitated people with it. My parents, however, heartily objected to this and Papi was obliged to give him a blanket he had used during the war instead.

After all the excitement with my crazy grandfather was over, my family hit the road again. We outran another train and a storm, and I'm fairly certain we saw a rainbow as well. Those events, however, are not important to this story.

What IS important is the reason that this became a significant event in my life.

On our way back, my mother got a strange craving for pecans. There was a small town up ahead, and it was approaching us fast, because we were going eighty miles-per-hour. My mother wanted to stop there to see if she could purchase some. We rapidly decreased our speed and, after a screeching halt, got out of the car. There was a small shop that specifically sold nuts: Walnuts, peanuts, cashews, chestnuts, pecans, etc. etc. 

We pulled in to the parking lot of the store. I didn't go into the actual store because my parents were suspicious about something, so I lingered out by the car with my brother; we were anxious for a chance to stretch our legs and calm ourselves after the unnervingly fast ride. The store looked decent; well-kept, as did the rest of the town. My parents came over to my brother and I and told us to get into the car. I noticed that my parents hadn't bought anything, which I found strange.

"Was it open?"

"It said it was open." My mother replied.

"Was anyone there?"

"No."

I peered in through the glass windows of the store from my seat in the car. The lights were on, the sign said open, so why was no one there?

We drove around the town for a while, there were mostly office buildings, some residential. The thing it seemed to lack was people. Not a soul was in sight, the entire city seemed deserted. The place wasn't dilapidated. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. It was as though everybody simply got up and left. There were no cars driving, and no people walking around. It was a beautiful day, too! Bright Saturday morning, and the entire city was gone. 

We had stumbled across an honest to goodness West Texas ghost-town.

At the time I didn't hear it, but my father told me later, he had turned to my mother while we were driving around the place and told her:

"Honey, I've seen too many horror movies start this way. We'll buy you some pecans from the Vons back home. Let's get out of here!"

And so we left. Whether or not that town still remains there, I don't know. Maybe the citizens came back, took up their normal lives again and the owner of the pecan store is happily doing business with travelers and locals. Maybe they're still gone, and a modern-day Roanoke exists, waiting to be stumbled upon. Who knows? The only absolute in the whole situation is that it stands out as one of the most memorable events of my life.