The Significance of Paris, Texas

A Little History

Back in late-1999, I moved into a room in an old house on Pleasant Street in Oberlin, Ohio. At that time in my life, I didn’t have any kind of money to buy new CDs and there were no streaming services in existence, yet, so I would listen to anything I could find. A previous tenant of the house left behind a few CDs and cassette tapes, including Jeff Buckley’s “Grace”, a recording of a live concert by Nina Simone that introduced me to her music, and the soundtrack to the Wim Wenders film “Paris, Texas.”

That soundtrack got played over and over and over. There was something about the score by Ry Cooder that just sounded like the desert and reminded me of driving through Death Valley the previous summer while visiting my aunt in Los Angeles. The album also includes a song that Harry Dean Stanton sings in Spanish on titled “Cancion Mixteca” which is one of my favorite recordings of all time. Whenever I listened to this album over the past 22 years, I’d feel an ache to be in a desert somewhere, and today I actually made it to Paris, Texas.

By the way… it’s not in a desert.

Work and an Early Hike

First thing’s first, though. My EST timer is still running strong, so it was easy to get up early and pack and bill a few hours. Not sure if I mentioned it, but this isn’t strictly a vacation. The mornings are blocked-out for work, the afternoons are for travel and the evenings are for blogging. If I get a bigger chunk of work, my plan is to stay in one place over the weekend, when the national parks are filled with people, and take care of work to free me up during the week.

There was a trailhead in the parking lot of the motel I stayed at making it convenient to get in a 3 1/2 mile hike and still have time to take a shower before checking-out. The hike wasn’t anything special, but it did have quite a bit of elevation, a good view from a point called “Goat Rock”, and I got to hide my second roaming stone in a good spot. One fun moment was walking along and looking up to see the bottom of a wickedly muscled, short, brown haired animal standing above me. All I could see was the bottom half of the animal and I nearly shit myself thinking it was a mountain lion. It was a relief to discover it was only a deer staring at me like an idiot, and maybe I mean staring at me like I was the idiot.

Touring Bath House Row and Taking Some Spring Water

Hot Springs National Park consists of a row of historical bath houses in the downtown area, along with the historical walks and trails in the area. The weather was absolutely perfect, so I decided to just walk around for a while given the fact that I got my hike out of the way before checkout, instead of after, so I was way ahead of schedule. The area around the bath houses is filled with restaurants, brew houses, boutiques and other venues, and at least one of the bath houses is still doing the spa thing.

Near where I parked, there was an active spring water dispenser that people were lined-up behind filling bottles that they brought with them. When I say filling bottles that they brought, I mean they were parking their cars in front of it and filling-up ten gallon-sized jugs of the water! Like a dope, I asked two different people if they actually drank the water, and in their wonderful Arkansas dialect they assured me they did, even to make their coffee. Back in my car, I had three empty quart-sized Nalgene bottles, so I went and got them and filled them up with hot (and it is startlingly hot) fresh spring water. None of it’s been drunk, yet… I need to do a little more research.

A Drive To (Make Me) Remember

After filling-up my water bottles, I looped around the area once more and then headed for Paris, Texas, where I’d be staying the night. Now, there’s no way I was more excited than I was when I entered the final road to Devil’s Tower three years ago. The anticipation and anxiousness of that drive was sickening, but this drive had me pretty excited as well. There was a definite picture in my mind of what Paris would look like (which turned-out to be totally wrong) and how I’d take a selfie in-front of a “Welcome to Paris, Texas” sign (I never found one).

Regardless, the 3 1/2 hour drive I took today reminded me of my favorite parts from my last trip: simply driving on beautiful, minimally trafficked roads off the beaten path. Maybe it’s because Paris isn’t a major city, but the directions I was given had me on two-lane roads that initially passed through forests and rolling hills, and then finally gave way to huge pastures full of grazing cattle. It got me super excited for what I imagine is coming after this weekend when I leave San Antonio and head for Big Bend National Park, after which I probably won’t see much civilization for a few days.

Paris, Texas

And, there I was, driving into Paris, Texas. Finally! After… wow, 22 years of listening to the soundtrack and seeing the movie, here I was, at last! You can probably tell that my imagination had built-up something that could never be satisfied by the reality of Paris, Texas, which is just a middle sized city that could be mistaken for Wooster or Mansfield, if they were a bit less humid in the summer and didn’t have a miniature Eiffel Tower topped with a red cowboy hat in them. But, hey, it’s still really amazing to get here for real and sort of check that box.

A funny little story. While I was setting-up the Bronica to take a few pictures of the Eiffel Tower, a family of three pulled-up and the woman walked right-up to me and introduced herself, telling me they’d just moved to Paris and they they felt obliged to see the tower and take a picture. After letting her know that I’d been wanting to visit for over twenty years because of the movie, she told me she that she was familiar with it, but they got it wrong because there aren’t any tumbleweeds in Paris. Apparently, I won’t be seeing any tumbleweeds until I head into west Texas. Anyway, I agreed to take a picture of the three of them in front of the tower with their camera, naturally locking it up and requiring them to unlock it for me.

So, Paris, Texas, is not in a desert, but the desire to return to one is now even greater than it was before, which didn’t seem possible. That should happen on Monday afternoon.