20 The Gateway The second village had still some life in it. The third one had five buildings of which
three were empty and decayed and two were closed. Five miles8km before Fabens Coco
surprised me with a new phenomenon she had a flat front and back tire at the same
time. When I examined both wheels, they looked like a
pincushion. More than a
dozen thorns had forced themselves into Coco’s tires and not for acupuncture. The many cactuses
beside the road prepared a trap for the already over sensitive and battered wheels
of Coco. It was an uneven
fight. I was glad I had
spare tubes, but I had to protect Coco for a next attack because that would definitely
be the end of today’s cycling and a long walk to the nearest motel. I found out
that those horrible thorns were spread like an innocent blanket next to the road.
To avoid them, I started cycling in the middle
of the road. This way I should
arrive at Fabens at 1:00am1:00 without any more flat tires. On the
rare moments that I saw a car coming I stopped and carried Coco onto the side of
the road till the car had passed us. There was no Motel in town probably because no
long-distance traveler would cross this town via highway 20. However, there
was a motel not far away near the I10, so I had to take the 793 to this interstate. After ten minutes cycling on the 793 we
arrived at the ‘The Desert Breeze Motel’
It was
a typical Texas stop along an interstate with a motel, café, gas station, prickly
pear cactuses, mountains in the background and a small town down the road. The man at the reception was in a bad mood or
maybe it was his normal unfriendliness. Without any hope I tried to get some background
information on Fabens but he did not answer and just gave me the key and told
me mainly what was not allowed. He pointed
at Coco when he said, “And it is also
strictly forbidden to take that thing in the room.” It sounded very
contemptuous when he talked about Coco and my first thought was to tell him to
treat Coco with more respect, but I needed a place to sleep so I did not say a
thing. Without saying
thanks I left the reception and went to my room. After I settled
myself in an outdated room with outdated decoration I left to visit the café next
door. The people
in Café La Estrella were very friendly. It almost
felt as if I was part of their family and while the outside of the Café did not
invite me to go-in, the inside asked me to stay a little longer. I ordered tiny tacos with marinated pieces of
beef together with sour cream, house made salsa roja
and baked potatoes. It was outstanding food. The nice thing
was that the English of the staff was even worse than mine. While I was enjoying my meal, a typical Mexican
entered the room and came to me to welcome me warmly. He introduced
himself as Juan the proud owner of this restaurant. Juan was a Mexican living and working in America
for already twenty years. He told me that the Mexican border was only 4mi6km from Fabens. I asked Juan if he could tell me something
about the name ‘Fabens’. The next
moment he was sitting at my table and we were in an engaging conversation. “Fabens is named after an attorney with the
name George Wilson Fabens who worked for the railroad.” It almost
looked like those chiefs of the railroad had only one goal in mind, to spread
their own, their families and their friend’s names all over southern part of the
US in an ultimate try to become immortal.
Probably half
of all the southern cities, towns, villages were in a sophisticated way infected
by them. The story itself
was not spectacular but the man told it with a lot of enthusiasm. With the same enthusiasm he went on telling me
how dull this town was. “When you walk
in the main street it is as if you are thrown back twenty years in time. But just
this picture makes it an attractive place for producers and scriptwriters. Like, eight years ago1972, Fabens
served as the film location of a famous scene in The Gateway. In our main
street there were some shooting scenes with explosions and car chases. Carter (Steve McQueen) and Carol (Ali
Mac Graw) were a fugitive couple. In their runaway
Carol buys a car. On
highway 20, somewhere near Fabens, Carter found out that the radio did not work.
When they crossed this town, Carter ordered
Carol to pull over at the electronics store to buy a portable radio. When inside he quickly switched off the television
near the owner’s desk because it was broadcasting the news of the robbery they were
involved in. Suddenly, all the televisions in the store
showed Carter's picture, prompting him to leave immediately. The owner got a glimpse of the picture, and called
the police. Carter quickly
entered a gun shop and stole a shotgun, followed by several gunfights and explosions.
The couple escaped
and a little outside Fabens, they switched from a car to a public autobus. The autobus
drove back, in the direction of Fabens, which brought them to the results of their
gunfights. The autobus passed the burning police car and
continued undisturbed its way to Dallas. But that is not
all!” His eyes began
to glisten “At the beginning of this year, Hollywood producers
were searching for a 1950s café along a typical Texas sites highway. They found such
a scene here at La Estrella. They had to redecorate our cafe a little, but most of it
was already as they wanted it. In our café
they filmed the complete movie ‘When Are You Coming Home, Red Rider?’ It’s a heavy
storyline. The story began
in 1968. Richard and his violinist wife Clarissa
arrived for a morning cup of coffee. Furthermore, there was Angel the waitress and Stephen
a local. Then Teddy, a disrupted Vietnam veteran and his
hippie girlfriend Chery entered the café. They got stranded with a broken van and without
money. The whole situation
made Teddy crazy resulting in harassing the others with questions before
eventually terrorizing them all and forcing them to do whatever weird, sick thing
he asked. Juan was
an engaging storyteller and he told me some nice anecdotes about the crew. He talked very
fast and had a funny Mexican-American accent, but sometimes hard to follow and
impossible to write it all down, sorry! It was my turn and again, dear note, your pages
with a summary made it possible to present a nice travel-story. He loved it and asked me if I’d already arranged
an overnight. I told Juan
I stayed at his neighbor the Desert Breeze. “Did the man tell
you they also used his motel in a movie?” I told him the
man at the motel was not very talkative, even a bit unfriendly. “You’re right
and I will tell you the story, but, if at any moment he wants to tell it himself
it's better that you act like the story is completely new for you.” He conspiringly smiled at me. “Two years ago the Desert Breeze
Motel was used in the movie ‘The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training’. It was an American
sports comedy film and a sequel to the movie The Bad News Bears. This first movie
ended with the News Bears’ scandalous second-place in the North Valley League. This rebellious
baseball team from the first movie got the opportunity to play a Junior League
game at the Houston Astrodome. One obstacle stood in their way, the team had
no adult coach. The star player of the team tried to talk his
estranged dad into coaching. On their way to Houston they had an overnight in
the Desert Breeze Motel” I had a great evening with Juan and our farewell
was warm. Back in my motel
room, I spent most of the evening repairing the tubes checking the tires for thorns.
I still found a few so we were lucky during the last part of our trip. The tubes were
a disaster; I had four inner tubes, one with ten leaks, one with five, one with
two and the last one had too many to count. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to two of the four
tubes, it was the end of their trip because they had too many leaks and I had to
be economical with the glue because there was not much glue left. I was able to repair
the other two tubes, but it meant that I did not have any spare tubes for tomorrows
cycling trip! Dear
Note We can start tomorrow, but we have to avoid the 20 and travel on the I10 again.
Let’s hope that it can protect us against the cactuses. A weird
fact is that none of the enormous Colossus of steel, called bridges were able
to stop us on our cycling trip. While, so near our goal, it’s not completely unrealistic
that those miniscule little thorns will force us to stop our journey. Pleasant dreams, dear Note, It was very late when I went to bed, and in my
dream, I lay on a spiked bed. |