The Desert was my Playground

 After reading “Dos Gringos” many have asked about growing up in El Paso and the desert outside of twon. I wrote a number of memoirs for my children and I will share some on this web. Read down for some of the thrills this boy enjoyed.

The sun rose over the Huecos to the east and set over the Franklin Mountains that spread across the desert to the west. On the other side of the Franklins, the tail end of the Rockies, was the Rio Grande River  and Mexico. Several winters it snowed on the desert and that was a momentary thrill.

Rain came sporadically, only totaling three or four inches a year. When it did rain, the mud puddles became pools of fun and overnight spawned wiggly little tadpoles that turned into peepers and quickly died in the following heat and drought. I tracked my muddy feet through the house. The soil being “caléche”, an almost impervious white calcium layer, the rain puddles could not percolate and would evaporate in a day or so. The sweetest smell of my childhood was the desert after a rain. The greasewood or creosote bush, its small green leaves washed by a rain, gave off a pungent fragrance, like a thank you to the heavens for a welcome drink.

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Coyotes, prairie dogs, tanks and B-29s

It was seven years after the Great Depression had leveled the fortunes and morale of the nation and raised the hopes of my parents for finally producing a boy after three lovely daughters. The richness of the desert was the only richness around. The Andresen’s never had much, but we never lacked. In 1939 Hitler launched his invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia. I was safe in the desert of West Texas. Before I would reach my teens, the silence of the desert would be blasted by the roar of maneuvering tanks and the shouts of sergeants; and from Biggs Force Base, five miles across the desert, the drone of B-17s leaving to their bases in England from which to bomb Germany, and B-29s to the Pacific to bomb Japan. It was a thrilling time for a young boy.

Seven identical red brick houses formed an island in the West Texas desert, holding the families operating El Paso Natural Gas Company Station #3, one of seven “booster stations” on the pipeline delivering natural gas from the fields of Texas and New Mexico to California.

The desert around us was full of mystery and beauty for me. With my dog, Jeannie, I trekked through the desert until I lost sight of home. It was always a thrill to lose sight of my house and the tall water tank emblazoned with the company emblem. Then the adventure began. The desert was full of living things: coyotes, jack rabbits, prairie dogs, hawks, tarantulas, and a myriad of small birds. But in all my life in the desert, I never saw a rattlesnake. I learned they hid during the heat of the day and would come out at dusk. My dog would come home with her long ears full of cockle-burrs. I often had a sunburn so painful my mother would put me chest down on the bed and rub me with calamine lotion. That was all we had in those days.

Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

A Desert Childhood

An ivory-white army, resplendent in the illuminating golden rays of the setting sun, marched invincibly across the black horizon of a receding storm. Sixty miles behind them, through the crystal desert air washed clean by a spring rain, was the undulating profile of the Hueco Mountains. Between them and the safety of our red-brick front porch, stretched the white army. I couldn’t tell which way they were moving, but somehow I decided they were marching north. That is the way the blooming yucca plants seemed to the imagination of a seven-year-old boy, standing with his mother behind the flower box on the front porch of a three-room brick house in the West Texas desert north of El Paso  in 1939.

 The above is the first paragraph of part of a childhood memoir I wrote for children. I recently was interviewed by an editor from the El Paso Times about my book “Dos Gringos” which he had read and enjoyed. He asked about my childhood in El Paso and I told him I had written about much of it for my children and I sent him several pages. I may revisit those memories and post some of them here.

Buy a copy of “Dos Gringos”  here.

“Grappling With Soviet Symbolism,” New York Times

In the May 15, 2010 edition of The New York Times, was an article by Andrei Zolotov, Jr. “Grappling With Soviet Symbolism. This paralleled well with the sentiments in my book  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia.” So, I wrote a letter to the New York Times and they, surprisedly, answered at once telling me it was going to be published in the International Herald Tribune. I expect to see a copy of that soon. Here is what I wrote:

 “What a welcome account of the obvious change happening in Russia today. It has been happening, but slowly and often unnoticed by the press. Lenin said Russia progressed one step forward and one step back. I say today it is three steps forward and two back, but we must acknowledge that residual step and help build on it. Zolotov covered it all well. Indeed, it is often the “blink” of events that help turn the head and then the body in a new and better direction. The Smolensk fatal crash killing the Polish leadership on the anniversary of the Katyn massacre may well have been that unexpected moment that turned the Russian heads. In my seventeen years in Russian business, it has been so obvious that the country was inching toward a reality first foreseen by Peter the Great, now led by the world-conscious young as they lead Russia out of the historic dark past into the light of the new world.”

Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Children’s Art ~ Friends across the Sea

Art knows no borders. The Los Angeles/St. Petersburg Sister City Committee is sponsoring an exchange of children’s art between LA and St. Petersburg, Russia to celebrate the committee’s 20^th anniversary. Recently I was happy to see the exhibit of that art from the schools, grades 1-12, of central LA and I was really impressed. Over 200 paintings will go to St. Petersburg and be displayed in “Master Class,” a major arts and entertainment event during the glorious “White Nights” that city celebrates every June.

The plan is for in 2011, in addition to again LA kid’s art going to the Russian city,  that art from St. Petersburg’s children will come to LA and there will be a major banquet and event in LA to celebrate that 20^th anniversary. St. Petersburg is the cultural center of Russia and a beautiful city. The amazing advance of all the arts in Los Angeles makes this exchange a mutually enjoyable celebration.

Buy the book here  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Why I like Chekhov

I have seen all of Anton Chekhov’s plays, some several times, and read many of his stories. I wondered why I was drawn to his writing and especially to his unique character development. I saw the Russian film “Ward 6” based on his story. It was the most depressing film I have seen. It’s all set in a 19^th century Russian insane asylum. How depressing can that be, right? But, the dialog was amazing.  It took me a time of quiet introspection to come to terms with all this. I came home and read Richard Pevear’s introduction to the book of Chekhov stories and that helped a lot.

 Chekhov was a doctor, but chose the human’s thought and not his body to dissect. His stories extol no cause, no political or social principle. He only demonstrates through his words, what each character thinks about all these issues, about life. Like any really great artist, he only represents his picture, and it is up to the observer, the reader, what is meant. And that may mean one thing to one and another thing to another. He was not a pessimist. He wrote about pessimistic characters.  ”Man is what he believes,” said Chekhov.

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About Genealogy and the Alligators of El Paso

I have never been big on genealogy, but of course curious about where my own ancestors came from and why. And I changed mind a bit after attending, with a friend, a meeting of the Genealogical Society of Hispanic America-Southern California.

There was a speaker who talked on the history of the area around San Bernardino and Riverside called Agua Mansa and La Placita settled in the early 19th century by Spanish colonists from New Mexico. Many of the members were descendent from those pioneers who trekked all that way along the trail lacking water and attacked by Indians. Nothing remains of Agua Mansa today, except the burial ground, on the hill above the river. Read more »