These previously published vignettes find former Texas Observer
contributing editor Bode (Texas Sketchbook
) watching the regulars of a downtown El Paso plaza in "their social club beneath the mulberry trees"; fondly studying skateboarders who loiter outside a 7-Eleven like "urbanized Huck Finns"; and speculating on what the future holds for a Hispanic and Anglo "Romeo and Juliet" whom he observes in a barbecue restaurant. Bode meditates appreciatively on the natural wonder of shade and on the ubiquitous hackberry tree that represents "everything that was graceless and shabby and down-at-the-heels in the hot Texas summertime." Epiphanies of his own 1940s central Texas boyhood mingle with memories of his son as a boy as he recounts, with courageous forthrightness, the painful story of his troubled son's suicide. Essays that reflect on his 48 years of teaching public high school in El Paso, including his award-winning "Requiem for a WASP School," capture the rise of Chicano counterculture and his own rebelliously liberal antiwar stance. Bode's deep feeling for unsung places will endear him to anyone familiar with the Texan townscapes and landscapes he evokes. (Nov.)
