Al Dente

Al Dente


Each summer here in Texas that as the heat climbs, the rains stop and the temperature builds at a truly ferocious pace, I increasingly find myself standing trancelike on my front porch. My mind travels northwestward, through the pecan groves and the oak stands, the mesquite thickets, skimming over the Brazos, Pease, and Red rivers, further and further, leaving the cotton fields of the panhandle behind and finally soaring over the wild, high Texas plains and the deserts of New Mexico. This goes on for days, and for days I shake that vision off and I shake it off until something clicks—or snaps—and I recognize what I knew all along; there’s a long drive in front of me.

As with many of my lifelong habits, this started innocently enough. One August day a few years ago I got a phone call from my friend Evan Voyles, who is one of the strangest and most wonderfully interesting people I have ever met. We first met in Abilene, TX. I lived alone in a small stone house on College Street; Evan had a small house too, but shared his with four hundred pairs of custom made cowboy boots he'd collected from all over the Southwest. In addition to his boot collection, Evan also trade in Navajo blankets, antique firearms, knick-knacks and old neon signs, the kind you see advertising hotels, department stores, long defunct products such as Bull Durham Tobacco, Four Roses Whisky, AM radio stations, greasy spoon diners, in short any of the old, quirky stuff that that was