by Michael Gos
When you are heading west on 90 out of Del Rio, the town of Comstock is where the desert begins. There is not much out here. The population of the entire area called Comstock is 375 but that covers a huge amount of territory. What you see from the highway looks more like a town with a population of 10. It has one tiny combination restaurant and bar and that’s it. There is a café building down the road a few hundred yards and what used to be a gas station, but both look like they were abandoned years ago.
I was on my way back from photographing the pictographs in Seminole Canyon and was hungry. The permanent sign said “Jim Holley’s Place.” There was also a portable sign that said “J and J Holley’s Place.” The indecision on the name seemed consistent with the building itself. From the outside, it looked like a real dive, but it was the only place in town and it was a long way to Del Rio, so I pulled in.
The toilet bowl planter outside set the stage for what lay inside. I opened the door a bit and looked in. The mismatched plastic tablecloths covered three small, different sized tables. No two chairs in the place were alike. Jam-packed, the place might seat 10. It was a dump, but I was hungry and some of the best burgers and Mexican food I’ve had have come from places like this, so I went all the way in and shut the door behind me.
All the tables were full—a good sign. As I walked up to the counter to look at the menu board, one group of diners got up to leave. I waited as the woman running the place came out, made a cursory wipe of the table and asked what I wanted to drink. It was January, but I had done a long hike down into the canyon and back in 80-degree weather. Beer was in order.
A few minutes later, she came back with my Lone Star and I ordered a cheeseburger with jalapenos and an order of fries. She disappeared into the tiny kitchen and went to work.
I sat down and took a few minutes to look around the room, and out the window onto the road and the desert beyond. The Chihuahuan Desert has a beauty you either get or you don’t. I’ve always gotten it and I love being out here. In fact, I wouldn’t mind relocating here if I could find a way to make a living. But the options are few unless you want to run a restaurant or bar—and towns like Comstock can barely support one.
By the time she brought my lunch the place had pretty well cleared out. The lunch rush was over. She had nothing else to do so she stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining area and we talked as I ate.
She told me she and her husband had come to Comstock for the weather and had bought the diner when they realized no local businesses or agencies would hire them because they didn’t speak Spanish. She said it wasn’t a requirement that you speak English to get a job in Val Verde county, but Spanish was mandatory.
We talked briefly about how that could happen in America where English is the native language. I asked her if anyone ever complained about it or tried to determine what series of events led up to that circumstance. She said it was never talked about. It was just one of those things that no one discussed in public.
I understood what she meant. I work in an environment where we have lots of restrictions on speech. People often see college as a place where ideas are discussed freely, but nothing could be further from the truth. The American college probably imposes the greatest restrictions on speech of any institution in our country. In the college environment, it is generally understood that only certain political ideas may be discussed. Students with differing values are often shocked to discover that their ideas are not only unwelcome but can, in some cases, result in punishment if verbalized. While most colleges have well-understood but unwritten policies on this, some go so far as to codify them into speech codes written in the student handbook. Others limit the expression of unpopular ideas to certain “free speech zones” on campus. Like the lady in the restaurant, we don’t discuss or debate these things; they just are. They are off-limits—sacred cows.
When we label a subject “sacred,” just what are we saying? Is it holy? Revered? Or are we really saying that it is unchallengeable? I suspect it is that last one. When we deem something to be sacred, or sacrosanct, we remove it altogether from the realm of discussable items, or at the very least, we set limits such that only certain things can be said about it. My white lab is a sacred subject with me. Don’t you dare say anything bad about my beautiful little Maggie Mae!
If you think about it, the result of elevating something to sacred status is to control the speech, and even the thinking, that takes place regarding that subject. Not seeing Maggie in the way I insist you see her is unacceptable behavior on your part. I have set up a situation where, if you say something negative about her (perhaps that she is a bit pudgy), it is you who are the problem, not her weight.
When we do attempt to discuss something deemed sacred, we feel uncomfortable trying to talk about, or even around, the topic. Bring up the subject and you immediately feel like you are walking on eggshells, stepping carefully to avoid the hidden land mines. Because we find that situation so uncomfortable, we generally opt out—choose not to discuss it at all. When that happens, the system has worked.
Don’t get me wrong—lots of things are very important and need to be treated with respect. Promises made should be kept—most of the time. But sometimes situations change and promises need to be broken or revised. They are not sacred.
Then there are matters of character. Sometimes we are forced to do things we define as wrong according to our own moral codes because things happen that force us into those decisions. I once agreed to meet with a university in Arkansas regarding a job offer. They asked for a chance to convince me why I should work for them. They offered to pay all expenses for my travel and wanted only one day of my time. I agreed to meet with them and hear them out. But as the meeting date drew closer, I realized my soul would never let me leave Texas. So I violated my own moral code and did not fulfill a commitment I had made. I canceled the meeting. Clearly, fulfilling that commitment wasn’t something I found sacred.
While the world and the people around us define countless things as sacred, many do so only to control our thinking and the subsequent discussion that might take place—to limit our options and to regulate our behavior. If we accept these limitations, we accept limits on our freedom of choice.
But then is nothing sacred? The answer to that is a resounding “no!” I passed on the Arkansas interview because it wasn’t the right place for me. I was violating one of society’s sacred cows (always fulfill your commitments) to accommodate another, truly sacred idea—Texas is the only place for me. Why is the second idea undeniably sacred while the first is merely a control device? Because the second comes from the only place that really matters—my heart.
There are lots of things that deserve our respect and people of good character honor those things whenever possible. But there are very few things that are truly sacred. What it comes down to is this: nothing is sacred but the integrity of your own heart. Be true to those things your heart tells you are right and take the rest with a grain of salt.
Of course, the lady in the restaurant could have taken a few months to learn Spanish and get a job with the county or one of the utilities. She chose instead to follow her own heart—to live by her own sense of right and wrong. As a result, that day I had one of the best cheeseburgers I’ve ever tasted.
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Galveston
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