How Do We Get There from Here?
By: Brian Fehler
Tags: Election 2020, Family, LGBTQ, Community, Equality

A dusty diner on a long and featureless road in west Texas may seem like a strange place to serve as a kind of crossroads of the world, but so it was — at least to my wide and impressionable ten-year-old eyes.

Though the old diner’s food was more venerable than tasty, a crowd was always gathered there. Situated in a little town of few restaurants and among cattle ranches and oil fields, the diner could always count on hungry cowboys and rig crews to fill its booths and perch on its stools.

Whenever I set foot in that diner, I realized the images of the strong, silent Western man and the stoic Western woman were pure Hollywood invention. There in the company of west Texans, you couldn’t shut people up if you tried — and nobody even tried. Stories were swapped freely and loudly and met with raucous guffaws of appreciation. If a cowboy dropped a heavy mug of coffee on the floor, the din of “visiting,” as everybody called it, would invariably muffle the shatter.

My Granddad could chin-wag with the best of them — and at any volume or decibel the venue required.

“And so he goes, the old yokel does . . .” Granddad said, sprawled in a corner booth with his back to a sun-baked window. “This yokel tells the young lost travelers, You can’t get there from here!”

Granddad slapped his knee and roared, and I, sitting in the booth across from him, craned around to see all the people nearby burst out into laughter, too. I knew they would laugh, these people, even though they’d heard the story from Granddad a thousand times before. Even I laughed, though I didn’t think the story was funny at all, not its actual words anyway, though Granddad’s joy in telling it always made me smile and giggle.

I watched as all the crowd laughed along, some shaking their heads and even wiping their eyes. All these people, some couples so old and weathered they were as wrinkly as the balled-up napkin on my table; some young vaqueros up from Mexico to work the cattle; some college guys working the oil fields on summer vacation; families and truck drivers whose vehicles out in the parking lot sported license plates from a dozen states; an oil executive or two from across the globe, ferried in on sleek private jets parked out at the old one-runway airfield.

As Granddad and I left the place and stepped out into the merciless sunshine, I had to ask him: “Why always the same stories though? Get some fresh material, old man!”

Granddad chuckled but his eyes took on the look they got when he was serious, when A Lesson was coming.

“Yeah, you’re right, Bri. Most of those people in there have heard that story before. But that’s the point. People in there don’t necessarily have a lot in common. But we know each other’s stories, and when we hear them it kind of reminds us that we all have a history, together. And for the new folks who come along? Well, those stories help introduce them into the group, to feel welcome.”

I hopped up into the huge truck, tummy full and eyes sleepy, more interested in pumping up the air conditioning to cool the cabin than in talking too long about old people’s stories.

“Okay, sure, I get it,” I said. “Just, you know, maybe work in a story that’s actually funny from time to time, for my sake!”

Granddad gave me a playful punch on the arm but didn’t agree to any such condition, knowing full well that the tide of ancient stories would roll on, binding all those people back at the diner to each other, and binding him to me, for a long, long time to come.