The Streets of Where I’m From

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

-Ansel Adams

It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I was in my mother’s garage murdering a hibiscus, when I heard a train whistle.  We had heard it before, close in proximity and distinctly trainish.  The problem is, there are no train tracks near the house.  There do exist tracks in Commerce Texas, but not as close as that whistle.

Commerce is an outlier, a small east Texas town that’s sorta typical and sorta not.  In general, little cities in this part of the country are bound by their similarities and subsequently mutual distrust/keeping up with the Joneses regarding the others, but they are often separated by long stretches of country roads and farmlands and don’t actually have much to do with one another.  The nearest big city is Dallas and it’s about an 1.5 hrs away….a distance any Texan will tell you is nothing.   Commerce is fortunate to host a small branch of the Texas A&M system, so that brings in people and resources and opportunities that a lot of the other surrounding towns don’t have, but that has its drawbacks.  Growing up, the population sat around the 7,000 mark.  But after I left for college, I came back each time to increasing renovation, construction, and growth for about 8 years as the university and local economy thrived, population peaking around 2006 with just over 9,000.  However since the economic downturn in 2009, Commerce is back to around 8,000 people- there is less construction, more empty apartment buildings hopeful for new occupants, and more vacated shops once occupied by small business as the Super WalMart continues to assert its crushing dominance everywhere all the time all over the goddamn world.

Aside from the draw of the university, people also come for the booze.  Commerce is a “wet” city surrounded by “dry” ones, and people drive far out of their way to purchase alcohol there. (for an interesting map of how different parts of the US uphold one of the tenents of Islam which forbids or limits alcohol sales, check this out).  Otherwise…not much doin.  For me, having a childhood in Commerce meant a good deal of time exploring the surrounding woods (pre-drivers license) and a good deal of time exploring various construction projects (post-drivers license).  Any way you slice it, the explorer tendency, although nursed in the smallest of environs, is strong with this one.

So when I heard that train whistle, I really really needed to know where it was coming from.  Very few perplexing things remain of your hometown when it is so small, and this mystery would not get the best of me.  I got in the car to drive towards where I thought the sound came from.

Driving around the dirt roads outside of and in between these small towns is a favorite pastime and de-stressor for many who live there.  It’s hard to explain, but there’s something so liberating and empoweringly lonely about it.  And it’s fascinating- these county roads within arms reach of a place you know so well- they present constant turns of uncertainty.  They can’t be called “uncharted” exactly because there are roads after all, but it’s new to you the driver, labyrinthine and unfolding into endless stretches of fields, tucked away houses, livestock, and every so often, a mystery.

I happened to be driving along such dirt roads that seemed familiar until I passed a formidable wrought iron gate emblazoned with a monogramed “M”.  True, sometimes wealthier residents chose to build houses out of the city for a little quiet or privacy or whatever, but this scene was distinctly different.  For one, it was a really nice gate, and the area between road and gate (the beginning of the driveway) was paved.  However, the gate was just a gate, not attached to a nice wrought iron fence as one might suspect, but rather on either side was a dilapidated barbed wire fence, rusted, sagging and of no practical use to man or cow.  Furthermore, the driveway beyond the fence was unpaved.  Un-anything in fact, just some semi-worn tire tracks through a pasture until they reached…a fountain.  Grandiose, multi-tiered and and flanked by two large stone lions.  Middle of a field.

The tire tracks continued out past the fountain to a…house?  Upon first inspection, that’s what it seemed, minus one important detail, a roof.  I would have used the term ‘mid-construction’ except the front entryway seemed not only completed, but decked out.  Large, stained class tiled lanterns hung in front of ornate and richly colored heavy double doors, wooden.  There was outdoor furniture- round stone carved tables and benches.  It did not make a lot of sense.  Who would move their nice patio setting into an unfinished house?  Of course, I pulled the car over and went in for a full investigation.

Things only got weirder from there.  The stone furniture?  Plaster.  The benches teetered when I stood on them (don’t ask).  But the lanterns were legit, and the doors were legit.  And unlocked.  Passing through them, I met with an expansive but roofless main room, walls composed of cinder blocks.  But perhaps “main room’ is a misnomer as there only appeared to be one other room-type enclosure next to it, and the large space I was standing in did not appear to be laid out to accommodate walls, bathrooms, closets,anything, except a round foundation of something else in the middle of the space, possibly another fountain.  There were large windows evenly spaced around the the outside walls, but none had glass installed.  And here’s the kicker:  although it was obviously an unfinished project, there were zero signs of ongoing construction.  No caulking tubes, cement bags, tools of any sort or other building materials aside from the odd cinderblock laying around.  It was completely deserted, clean even.  There was only one “room” attached and it was the only portion of the entire structure with a roof, a window with glass installed, and a locked door to prevent entry.  There was a precariously rickety wooden tree-house type ladder leaning against this room, and I climbed up to get a better overview of the project.  Ultimately though, I learned nothing there.

I pushed my nose to the glass of the one complete room, the one that was locked.  Inside it, stacked floor to ceiling, was really nice furniture.  A number of oversized, carved wooden chairs, an imposing armoire, chandeliers, dining room table, and more hidden behind that I couldn’t see.  Quite the collection to be sitting in a half built, partially decorated house in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.

Surrounding the house was pasture, far as the eye could see.  There was a tree in the front yard with a discarded child’s bench and a couple of trash bags, but no real clues except that someone had perhaps recently held a small bbq there. Duhn duhn DUHN!  The final oddity to complete the scene was a single mobile home, parked inside the barbed wire fence, but still some distance away.  I got the impression that the people living there had nothing to do with the house.  The home looked old and tired, a dirty mattress leaned against the side and a clothesline hung between trailer and a nearby tree, linens hastily thrown over and falling off.  Childrens toys were strewn around the yard.

I never did find the source of the train whistle.  This was enough exploration for that day.  I’m hoping someone from the area will read this post and have some information for me as to what this place is?  Things in the realm of plausibility to me are:  movie set or event venue?  But neither of these makes complete sense.  It’s probably something very mundane and explicable, but for now at least, it is cloaked in mystery!  Suspense!  And in the information age that is quite an endangered sense of things.  Welcome it where it may be found.