Uvalde / Trinity / Reed

 

By Andrew W. Griffin

At the moment, I am listening to Uvalde, the excellent 2003 album from Texas Country singer-songwriter Luke Olson.

Ever since I bought it, now almost 20 years ago, it is in regular rotation, especially when I am traveling in Texas. I recall reviewing Uvalde back then, noting Olson’s appealing, plaintive vocals and Lloyd Maines’ clear, crisp production – each instrument front and center on songs like Rich Brotherton’s mandolin on Olson’s cover of J.J. Cale’s “If You’re Ever in Oklahoma.”

I often wondered why Luke Olson was never a more high-profile star in Texas and beyond. A San Antonio native who helps run a family real estate firm, he was regularly winning awards in his hometown and up in Lubbock where he attended Texas Tech University. I can see why. He is very talented and very genuine. He is relatable. And his love of the Lone Star State is very strong, as evidenced in his music.

His other albums are great, like Panhandle Sunset, but it is Uvalde that keeps getting played – over and over – each year.

And Luke Olson has been on my mind lately. In fact, I emailed him a couple of times, inquiring if he was working on any new music. No reply. Last week I got a LinkedIn message reminding me that Luke was celebrating a birthday. I messaged him. No reply.

In a recent issue of the Port Aransas South Jetty newspaper, there was an article about the popular Port A watering hole, Shorty’s, was moving to new location. I kept the article, planning on mailing it to Luke Olson, since it is noted in his humorous Uvalde track “Gulf Coast Romance,” which also features Ray Wylie Hubbard and Pat Green.

Olson’s songs are really beautiful on Uvalde. Songs like the dreamy “Old Mines Road” talking about the rugged area near the Mexican border with “big deer” and DEA planes flying overhead and recalling “the Indians ruled this land” – an area that is still truly wild.

 “1985” is about being a kid in that remarkable year – one I recall with great fondness. For Olson, recalling fishing and spending time in the country with family – can “ease a troubled mind,” as he sings.

And then there is “Old Mines Road,” a song that mentions the “Wild Horse Desert” a truly wild and rugged parcel of land between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River. This is where wild mustangs were in the thousands in the 19^th century, before being nearly brought to extinction.

UVALDE

The final track on Uvalde is “Uvalde.” A song about the city 80 miles west of San Antonio which was the sight of a horrific and sickening school shooting, which led to many children being slaughtered by a deranged youth named Salvador Ramos. It took place at Robb Elementary in Uvalde and has really bothered me.  

A few weeks back I was thinking about Uvalde, Texas and even looked at it on Google Maps. It is a town in Texas I had not visited before, but it interested me, brought on by Luke Olson’s story-song about a young man who sees a beautiful senorita on a Uvalde street, in front of a local feed store.

“Just another day in this South Texas town,” sings Olson. “Sometimes it seems like nothing here is going down.” Nothing going down, except the sun at sunset.

And that’s when he sees her. But she is distant and unattainable. Asking her name, she walks right past him without acknowledging his presence. The young man shrugs his shoulders and thinks, “Well, at least I tried.”

“Where does she go, when the sun goes down?” Olson sings.

The waltz-like tempo, with flourishes of Mexican-styled accordion playing and a tasteful acoustic guitar solo, places you in Uvalde, in either present day or 100 years ago.

There is a timeless quality to this album closer, a song that hits all the right notes and evokes twilight in a dusty, South Texas town where a man expresses his longing for a woman who is out of reach.

Uvalde remains a favorite of mine years after its initial release. I can listen to it over and over. And even if I have never been to Uvalde, Texas, I feel like I have been there, listening to Olson’s record.

ODDITIES

But back to present day and this gut-wrenching shooting in Uvalde on May 24^th.

While reading the San Antonio Express-News coverage of the shooting, it noted that in late April 2018, two teens attending Morales Junior High School in Uvalde had plotted to engage in a massacre at the school, not far from Robb Elementary.

On May 2, 2018, the Express-News reported: “According to the (Uvalde) Leader-News, the teens had originally planned to carry out the shooting on April 20, 2022, which would coincide with the Columbine shooting anniversary during their senior year of high school, but one of the suspects persuaded the other to commit the shooting this year at Morales Junior High, where the 14-year-old was a student.”

The two teens, according to the article, had referred to each other as “Dylan” and “Eric” after the Columbine shooters in Colorado from 1999 – Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. The teens were arrested back then and placed in a juvenile detention facility in Del Rio, Texas.

I distinctly recall being in my car in Waxahachie, Texas, on April 20, 1999, where I was a newspaper reporter, when I heard Rush Limbaugh talk about the Columbine massacre. It was shocking, just as the San Ysidro, California McDonald’s shooting in the summer of 1984 has haunted me ever since.

So, four years and one month after the intended date of the Morales JH shooters-to-be massacre at their Uvalde school, a “lone gunman” in the same town commits an atrocity at an elementary school he had once attended. It is important that these two young men, wherever they are now, are interviewed by police and investigators.

Did Salvador Ramos know these teens? Ramos – shot dead by police – was 18. He would have been the same age as these two back in 2018. What triggered the bloody rampage which began with Ramos shooting his own grandmother before heading to Robb Elementary? Last reports say the grandmother was not killed, but is in bad shape.

Regarding that date – April 20, 2022, just a little over a month ago, I noticed that date pop up while researching the “Wild Horse Desert,” which Luke Olson sings about on “Old Mines Road.”

But first, I came across an historical article about it at TexasHillCountry.com from 2019 headlined “The Wild Horse Desert of Texas: What Happened to 1 Million Wild Horses?”

A book written by New York Times reporter Dave Philipps, Wild Horse Country, delves into the history of the Wild Horse Desert and why the US Government keeps wild mustangs.

“I think the mustang is the most American animal out there,” Philipps told the Texas Standard. “The mustang is an immigrant. It is noble, but not because it had any noble lineage. It is noble because it is independent, it is sort of a symbol of us as Americans.”

After scrolling down, reading the story, I noticed an eerie story just below it titled “Mysterious Shadow Figure Hidden in Old West Photo,” written by the TexasHillCountry.com staff on April 20, 2022!

Notes the article: "The photo in question was taken during negotiations between Geronimo and the U.S. cavalry for the old shaman’s surrender in 1886. Famed Tombstone, Arizona photographer C. S. Fly captured the image of the kidnapped boy Santiago “Jimmy” McKinn standing in front of a group of Apache children and warriors. The photo is one of the most striking images of the old west, but until recently the mysterious shadow figure in the background apparently went unnoticed. Then last year the photo was featured on the cover of an acclaimed historical novel."

The novel, written by Max McNabb, and titled Far Blue Mountains, is about a child kidnapped by a band of Apaches in the rural Southwest. The photo on the cover, taken in 1886, does feature a strange shadow figure in the background. The article wonders aloud what the figure is.

“Those inclined toward the supernatural have speculated that the figure might be one of the legendary Mountain Spirits of Apache mythology.”

Who knows?

TRINITY

What I do find curious is that Robb Elementary is at 715 Old Carrizo Road in Uvalde. “Carrizo” means “reed” in Spanish. Just down the road from Uvalde, down Highway 83, one comes to “Trinitys” a BBQ joint in Carrizo Springs, Texas.

I mention “Trinitys” because the town of Carrizozo, New Mexico (“Carrizozo” was downwind from the atomic bomb detonated at the Trinity Site on July 16, 1945 – 7/16/45). Online research notes that the extra “zo” in Carrizozo, was to emphasize the good reed grass in the area where cattle were raised. 716 Old Carrizo Road in Uvalde is a private residence, across the street from humble Robb Elementary. On the night of 7/15/45, the scientists and soldiers of the Manhattan Project were setting up the Trinity Site detonation platform. 

I plugged a portion of the photo in at the top of this story. It is a shadowy figure, no doubt. And it is interesting to note the connection to Geronimo. 

An actor friend of mine, Rudy Ramos, who is the character Felix Long in the series Yellowstone, performs as Geronimo in a one-man performance he gives. Ramos grew up in Lawton, Oklahoma and Geronimo's final-resting place was Fort Sill, outside Lawton. I interviewed Ramos late last year, for the Southwest Ledger.

Another friend of mine, Kyle, who ran a doughnut shop in Lawton, shared a story with me last year about when he and his brother were driving along Interstate 10 in the area southern New Mexico, near Deming, when he seemed to go into a trance and see "an Indian on a horse." 

The image, which he took to be Geronimo, caused Kyle to run off the road. Thankfully, he wasn't seriously injured. But he said the experience shook him. Kyle, who was not originally from Lawton and had not lived there long was shocked to learn of Geronimo's connection to the Lawton-Fort Sill area.

Deming, New Mexico is where young Santiago "Jimmy" McKinn was picked up by his parents and brought back into the family. He would grow up, get married and live in Phoenix, Arizona, passing away shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

It is rumored that Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, and a member of Yale University's Skull & Bones, dug up the Apache chief's skull at Fort Sill. Oddly, George W. Bush, this week, was reportedly the target of an Iraqi assassin and that the assassination was going to be done in Dallas, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The plot was uncovered and the man arrested. Dallas is on the Trinity River, of course.

And George W. Bush's nephew, George P. Bush, former Land Commissioner, lost last night, in his pursuit of being nominated as a Republican Texas attorney general candidate. The "P" in his name is for his great-grandfather, Prescott Bush.

DREAM ON

I know this blog is called Dust Devil Dreams and Visions, a successor to my old Dust Devil Dreams page at Red Dirt Report. And, in fact, a dust devil appeared in a recent dream, as did a tornado. Here are a few of the dreams I wrote down, right after waking up. They are from the past few months:

March 17, 2022: Is it all this Ukraine news getting to me? I don't know. In the dream, I am in an old building that is literally falling apart. A bookstore slash thrift store is in it.

I am with " friends" who seem older, particularly older women i don’t know. Anyway, I have a premonition about the building collapsing and people are killed. Various things signify this including a guy wearing a Detroit Tigers logo polo. The building collapses, as does a similar one in Calgary, Alberta. I am VERY emotional in this dream. It was very disturbing. I wish I had more details.

March 29, 2022: “Really bad dream. Nuclear war. Scrambling for shelter. Caught unawares. Dust devil and tornado. Intense stuff.”

March 30, 2022: Watching The Bad News Bears last night, one of the kids had a bike with the #9 on it. It stuck out to me. Like the fact that Vic Morrow and Ben Piazza were both involved in Twilight Zone projects in the 1980s and both were in the original Bad News Bears film. Morrow, and Piazza synchromystically connected via that series. Morrow dying during the making of The Twilight Zone: The Movie and Piazza succumbing to HIV-related illness in the early 1990’s.

Anyway, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were in my dream, and were the 1980 versions of themselves. I was oddly accrpted into their "group." Their Beatles song, “The Ballad of John and Yoko playing. "Last night the wife said, oh boy, when you're dead, you don't take nothin with you but your soul ... THINK!" 

May 20, 2022: Weird clouds. Unknown menace. Riding bikees through chalky, muddy streets.  Something in the skies.

I feel very unsettled right now. I know a lot of people do.