SUN BEAMS:..."Riding The Open Range"...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

FORT SUMNER, New Mexico |...There were a good 25 or 30 miles to go before we'd hit the next town of any size, one we'd not seen on the map. It was a tiny speck of a rural community, home to perhaps two dozen hardscrabble people, most of them working for the region's big rancher.

But it did have a roadside gas station and small general store, and, well, that's all we needed for the moment.

Some good hotel was much farther up the highway, and we'd stay there. Stopping by an old store had its charm, and so I spent a long hour just hanging out and talking to the couple behind the counter.

There were lonely aisles of the old kind running across the store's dusty wooden floor, with droopy shelves full of old oil cans from another era and dog food and bags of peanut brittle and sunflower seeds.

My girlfriend Clara found some once-bright, now totally faded orange plastic-framed sunglasses she wore out of the store, while I grabbed a few bags of chips and a bottle of water.

Outside, I filled the truck's gas tank and was about to get in to drive away. Something led me back inside the old store, however. And when I again stood in front of the aging counter, I mentioned to the friendly couple that it sure had to be a great thing, something special, to live with such peacefulness.

"It must be really quiet at night," I went on.

The old man nodded and said it had been just that for his last 45-50 years in town. I said that was wild and the old lady said she'd likely go crazy after one hour in the city.

I smiled and then all three of us laughed aloud...

-30-

[EDITOR'S NOTE:...There is a longer version of this short story, with imagery of rolling, miles-long conversation and rural radio playing in the background, that sort of reading stuff...]