You probably already know, but I grew up in Lubbock, flat as a pancake and surrounded by miles and miles of cotton fields. If you fly in during cotton harvest season, you would genuinely think it was a blizzard. When I think of spring in Lubbock, I think of never-ending wind and dust — nothing to stop the wind except the barbed wire fences.
We would get colossal dust storms, and the town would be filled with all that dirt from the cotton fields. If the wind was blowing in just the right direction, the entire town smelled of the feedlots south of town. It was an olfactory biohazard zone.
Lubbock’s motto was “Welcome to Lubbock … For All Reasons” (because there wasn’t any one good reason to actually be in Lubbock). This is a famous photo of one of those signs taken during one of those dust storms to prove a point. Lubbock in the springtime was no picnic. They would never close school during one of these dust storms, even though there would be 50 mph winds and zero visibility on the streets. I can remember on more than one occasion when I was a student at Texas Tech, getting out of my car during one of these storms to walk to class only to get right back in my vehicle, shuddering at the thought of having to walk across the big campus.
This sign was in plenty of local businesses, which says a lot about the character of its people: rugged and resilient. My grandfather, who was never one to be politically correct, said the wind keeps all of the Yankees away.
El Paso is a very different city than Lubbock, culturally, economically, and politically. But they have one thing in common: the West Texas wind. We get the same winds in El Paso, but the dirt is straight from the desert instead of the cotton fields. The Franklin Mountains gather the wind and rush it downward like a runaway freight train. Hold on to your cowboy hats, ladies and gentlemen. The city takes on a brown hue during the spring, which can certainly take a toll on a person’s psyche. If we share one personality trait as El Pasoans as our Plainsmen relatives in Lubbock, we are strong in the face of adversity.
Yet, out of that strength and patience, life and beauty are born in the spring. The temperature rises. Rain falls. Grass grows. Flowers bloom. Out of the abyss, the most beautiful of all days happens during the spring. On those special days, the wind stops. And the mornings are crisp but not cold. The day is the perfect ambient temperature, just right to go enjoy the outdoors. The nights are perfect for al fresco dining or lounging on the porch after a long day’s work. Easter comes, and the hope of the Resurrection triumphs over the gloom.
So, I will take the bad days this spring in stride, knowing good days will surely come.
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