A man in a bears beanie and cargo shorts and flip flops walked about a dozen paces ahead. It seemed for the life of him, he could not hold a straight line. We walked down a wide-wooded street, characteristic of the suburban neighborhoods in this part of the Texas hill country. The street was bordered by a mixed array of 80s brick style homes and big-windowed, white-shuttered “space barns” that a new wave of ex-California big-tech employees had ushered in.
The man spat with a frequency I half expected to dry his mouth out — he walked straight through the front yards of each house. He was particularly drawn by the surprising number of birdbaths that lined the streets. The man would walk up to each one and, without faltering his step, dip his pointer and middle finger in the still pools of water contained there. No sooner would his fingers enter the pool than he would whisk the water away with a quick snap of his wrist and begin his search for the next birdbath, his flip flops snapping in the dewy grass behind him.
I watched him for a ways as if a spectator to a nature documentary. Some Werner-Herzog-esque commentator echoing in my head:
“The concept of property seemed foreign to him. He was but a stranger to the concrete jungle of norms and civil society. And yet here he is, throwing cans, spitting in gutters, dirt on his hands, face and shirt, his gut bursting over his belt. Unconfined.”
He disappeared along some side trail or potentially into someone’s backyard.
Some ways down the road, I came across a house I had passed a million times — a clay sun hung over the front door. A wraparound porch framed large glass windows into an unkept living room stacked with books. The house was all wood, white — the paint was chipped — and the yard was engulfed in weeds and wildflowers. One of the times I passed by I had seen two men passing a guitar back and forth on the porch — they exchanged some Willie Nelson songs. Now one of these two men tended to the weeds, while his children wandered the yard that seemed to be as much of the Texas backcountry as you would find around here.
I’ve been wandering a while — and I don’t need much, but I do think some property would be nice. Maybe someday someone in my neighborhood might walk by my place and record the outtakes of my life like some old View-Master. That would do just fine.