"Sheltering the Creative Spirit"
Taos, New Mexico USA
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"Sheltering the Creative Spirit"
Taos, New Mexico USA
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Frank's 1966 Ford Galaxie
On the Road with Frank Waters by Mark Rossi I first encountered the
writing of Frank Waters in 1969 with his Book of the Hopi. Glued to the accelerator
pedal of the only car that Frank purchased nearly new, my right foot has
traversed thousands of miles of southwestern desert since his eyes gave out past
the point of bluffing and Barbara needed help getting both of their cars and a
U-Haul trailer back and forth annually between Tucson and Taos.
During the year of Frank’s 90th birthday the odometer edged toward
200,000 miles. Since then, it has
passed that milestone. Frank claims
that the Galaxie is an extension of himself. His beloved car is now a
graciously oxidized, antique red with a white top mellowed to ivory.
A beaded Hopi amulet dangles from the headlamp switch.
A sticker on the chrome rear bumper asks inquisitively, “Have you had a
15-minute Vitalizer break today?” The brakes need a warm-up in
the morning, but the engine is strong and vocal.
The tranny is solid. Like a
buggy team, the car finds its own pace across the terrain.
It prefers gliding along at a mile a minute on smooth blacktop with a
gradual uphill grade. On a dirt
road, the dauntless old trooper negotiates with a satisfied smile.
At night the left headlamp jumps here and there across the textured road
to the track of Imagine the travels of all of us across a century. On the road, I think of this web of timely pathways. Frank has written about his train ride to Farmington, New Mexico, from Colorado Springs as a 10-year-old. I doubt that his unruly hair has changed much next to the open windows of a motley assortment of vehicle. Before the Galaxie it was an
aging blue Ford, which had replaced an older Chevy pickup that had hauled
materials to build new rooms onto the adobe in Arroyo Seco.
What car was around during his six months in Nogales, I wonder, and on
the long drives to and from
Tombstone while he was writing the Earp brothers book?
How about the road conditions when Frank and Barbara drove her Chevy
Impala to Guatemala and back? How many horses and mules have journeyed with Frank on the road?
He says his riding boots look lonely on the closet floor. Frank was the first of his
family to acquire a car, a 1929 Ford coupe equipped with pneumatic tires.
With this car he made his way through reservation and pueblo land in New
Mexico and Arizona and on to Los Angeles, where he gave the car as a
Christmas gift to a young married
couple. During a stay with his
sister and brother-in-law, he met an “ingenue” actress from New York with a
Hollywood studio contract. It bored
her to hang around on salary with no work to do.
Frank bought her hardtop Plymouth when she headed back home. For me, Frank Waters’
writing has sound and rhythm, like his car.
His first novel, which he titled Lizard Woman, is a little bit
rock and roll; the Colorado River is symphonic.
Frank’s description of the pyramidic geography of the river’s
drainage area resounds in my memory banks.
That account returns to me as I fly at 30,000 feet toward Albuquerque
on a different trip. Watching the
folds, rolls, and bursts of terrain as our flight descends over the Rio Grande,
I focus finally on the course of I-25 traffic. In August of 1990, I remember, my sister Valerie and I had followed slow lines advancing into nearby Santo Domingo Pueblo to watch a corn dance. This entire experience touched us deeply. It changed the meaning of pace and step, even in our shared distance running. That same summer Frank
generously had loaned me his car while I housed at an In the Galaxie, time is
boundless, meaningless. To date
there have been eight (or is it ten?) trips to and from Tucson and Arroyo Seco
without mechanical difficulty. Journeys
of thought and conversation; piloting separate cars; sharing meals together with
Barbara; Frank changing cars every so often. From the aspen out of Arroyo
Seco through Taos into the Rio Grande Gorge, West of Lordsburg, stalwart
yucca capture our attention every time. One
realizes this is the way Frank likes to travel -- close to the land.
This is his element, rather than the sky full of high flights above. I remember one drive when two F-16’s buzzed the power lines
along I-10 west of Bowie, Arizona. Rivets
on their fuselages flashed silver in the slanting sunlight.
This is not Frank Waters’ way. Now in November of 1993 we have completed yet another Galaxie odyssey, this time with the infant Frank Waters Foundation thriving beyond expectation. On the road, it too has an expansiveness stretching beyond narrow painted lines. Like its namesake, the Foundation is bound to interface with new horizons, with new generations of creative vision. Like the 1966 Ford Galaxie, it will endure.
Mark,
a sculptor, is treasurer and a mainstay of the Frank Waters Foundation.
An appropriate footnote to his perceptive essay above is the first
paragraph of Frank Waters’ unpublished essay about river travel.
Slow travel is always the best -- the slower the better.
Jet flight is not one is merely picked up somewhere and set down somewhere else without any sense of the land or sea between them. Even automobiles travel is too fast. You skim over an interstate paved highway without feeling the changing texture and
rhythm
of the land. Riding a train used to
the
long-gone narrow-gauge lines
dark
tunnels, crept over massed mountains heaving up on all sides. Travel on horseback, as I did
through
Mexico,
Frank
Waters
Sub page: "The Car Goes On" -> CLICK HERE
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