Down that dusty road again (Rancid bloodclot remix)
by Matt Worley

I've been down this road a million times. Albuquerque to Santa Rosa to Fort Sumner to Clovis. And vice versa. The road itself never changes. Sometimes there are less holes, sometimes there are road blocks, but the road itself is the same. The same scenery, the same road side stores and landmarks. Santa Fe trains sunning themselves in the midday heat, then steaming down the tracks as the night gets cooler. Farm trucks moving at 35 down the shoulder, the rest of us pushing 75--just to get the trip over with.

"If ya listen to the record (do ya feel the same?), well it don't get any better (going backwards again!)"

I forgot that I wanted to go back to Clovis for a little "research." I wanted to see the changes. I hadn't been in that town for a few years, and something had to be different--right? I mean, I'm not the same guy I was in that town, so the town should have, well, evolved a bit. I woke up on Thursday and looked at the clock. For some reason it hit me-- "I'm supposed to go to Clovis today."

I hadn't told anyone this, or even thought about it since Sunday morning when the need for photographs of my teenage hangout clouded my mind for a few minutes. But there the thought was again, except this time it was now or never. If I didn't go to Clovis then, as soon as possible, it would be weeks or months before I even thought about it again. And maybe a dream I'd had Wednesday afternoon--the one starring my oldest friend--stirred up some of the old feelings. Where was my past? Had I piled so much dirt on the old graves I couldn't dig them out anymore?

Well, the thought process wasn't actually as metaphorical as it may seem. But the thought was there nonetheless, and I had to get my ass out of bed and into driving mode before I thought of a hundred excuses why I didn't need to drive the 200 plus miles to Clovis and then back again.

So I got back on the trail. The miles passed like forgotten thoughts of a good drunk--quick, slightly amusing and gone. In moments I was already back in eastern New Mexico. The flat high plains--dusty (although somewhat green from summer rains), windy and desolate. The familiar smell of cow shit was not in the air. It was so windy, as if someone wanted to blow the whole damn place down, no smell was in the air at all. It was only driving past the big piles of manure when the ugly smell permeated my being. This was good. I didn't want that kind of a memory.

"Now my guns are blazing--bloodclot I can see 360. Now my guns are blazing, pick it back up and start it all over again."

I was warned (or questioned) by members of my family about this trip. "I hope it's not too depressing," my dad said. "There are so many places to go in this state and you're going there?" my younger brother asked. But over the last few years I'd forgotten about all the bad feelings. Not really forgotten, but set them aside.

See, the entire time we lived in Clovis, everyone in my family was mad about being there. We moved there because of a wretched set of family business, and we stayed because we'd grown some roots of permanence. In the summer of E.T. (1982) my family moved from the friendly confines of Kansas City, Missouri, to the alien land of Clovis, New Mexico. Clovis is ten miles from the Texas border, almost smack dab in the middle of nowhere. So it was easy to hate the place from day one.

But I found some of the best friends I'd ever had there. And I found a place to be myself, even if I didn't know who that was at the time. Maybe I was the only family member to actually like the place--because I wasn't afraid to live there for a while. And while I, like the rest of the family, thought of the time we would be leaving Clovis, I also had fun being there too. So many good times in so many different places around town, I couldn't hate the place--even though I convinced myself otherwise for many years.

This trip was quick. I drove around taking pictures of old hangouts. New buildings at the schools, new landscaping at the old house, new storefronts on Main street. It was like going to Disneyland, except there were less people, no thrill rides and all of the themes were in my head. Everyone was nice (even though I was wearing a Descendants shirt with the line "everything sucks" on the front), and everything was eerily familiar. I could have been the kids cruising the mall, peeling out at stoplights, or stopping into Taco Box for a late afternoon snack. I was all those kids, even if my time in those positions is gone.

"Well I can see 360. I can see all around me. Oh yeah."

I drove back to Albuquerque as the sun went down with rains occasionally clouding my vision. The trip back I drove just a little bit slower. It will probably be a long while before I travel that road again. And so I drove back to my real life--away from the safari hunt of old ghosts. I'd found most of them, and they left me alone. We've changed a bit in the last nine years--me and the town--and I think we're both better off enough to smile and let the past go.

Matt Worley listened to Rancid (thanks for the quotes), the Aquabats, the Rolling Stones, Luscious Jackson, Bob Marley, John Coltrane and a few others on this trip.

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