Yesterday I had just finished my lunch at the Grub Shack when the place got slammed with the arrival of several carloads of people, most of them children, who were on their way to a Smith family reunion. I decided to stick around, order a dish of chocolate ice cream, and vicariously enjoy the holiday mood of this attractive and happy family.
I sat across the table from the paterfamilias, a very pleasant guy who was glowing with silent pride at his brood of ten grandchildren. “We do this reunion every other year,” he explained to me. He and his wife are presently living in the mountains of northern Georgia, but periodically move from place to place. “No place is really home anymore,” he said. Yet I could tell that his is a strong family for which geography doesn’t matter. They know how to be a family.
He said that choosing Big Bend as the site of this year’s reunion was the decision of other family members who were in charge of organizing this year’s reunion.
I think it’s significant (and fortunate) that this family chose to meet at Terlingua Ranch, and not some other venue down in the town. Terlingua is no place for young kids. The town of Terlingua has a reputation among some visitors as a place where you can visit, behave badly, and get away with it—a hardscrabble Vegas where “what happens in Terlingua stays in Terlingua.”
The Terlingua Ghost Town is a particularly alcoholic scene largely populated by a group of young adults who call themselves Zombies. Their immediate main goal in life seems to be partying and remaining high on whatever they can score doing the least amount of work.
In a way you can’t really blame these kids for lacking higher ambitions. Many raised themselves elsewhere in homes with absent parents, and were schooled in institutions which taught them to be passive, uncreative consumers. And now that the employment situation for young people in the outer world is so dismal, these kids are ill-suited to make their ways on their own without ready-made job slots.
The Zombies have at least discovered a place outside the basements of their parents’ homes where they are riding out the recession. I just wish there were something more for them here, something uplifting, inspiring, and transformative, as an alternative to the ennui they experience.
A lot of the Zombies subsist on allowances from their folks and supplement this with what little work is to be found here, with barter, and (for the most derelict, charming and/or persuasive among them) by mooching.
If I were in a position to do so, I would put some of these young people to work building at Estrella Vista. We are far enough removed from the bars of the town that a healthy youth culture could be established here around rigorous principles of self-discipline, creativity, and morality. Wonders could probably be achieved within a year with a seed fund of as little as $50,000.
One day, possibly as soon as next year, we will be building at Estrella Vista. Not all kids are as fortunate as the Smith children and grandchildren to have been raised in healthy families, so we will create one here. Maybe we will even be able to bring a few local Zombies back to a life of freedom and self-responsibility.
۞
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