FIRST TRIP TO MEXICO

In 1968 I was finished with UT art school. I learned a few useful things there. I had a few good teachers, but it also made creating art almost impossible for me. Something about the teaching was uninspiring. I need to work with inspiration rather than marketing calculation. I was called “excitable, romantic.” I joke that I’m not from this planet, I don’t always understand how things work in the “real world.”

Also, a young artist shouldn’t be graded by a lot of old fogies as he’s trying to find his way, in my opinion.

Jim was courting my ex-wife on his trips north from Mexico, and he was looking for passengers to help pay gas as he got ready to return to Mexico City. Jim was a tall fellow with a long face, bandito mustache and limp hair. When we got to Mexico City he went out dressed in military looking clothes, complete with epaulets.

My friend Gary and I agreed Mexico was the right escape hatch, better than stick-in-the-mud America at the moment. We signed on. Jim knew all the ropes. He had been living in Mexico for years and spoke Spanish. I heard a vague story of an ex-wife and a gaggle of children that he had somehow left back east somewhere, but I didn’t know if it was true.

His Plymouth station wagon had seen better days but he knew how to coax the best out of it across the deserts and into the mountains. We set off, arriving at Piedras…