The Old Prospector stopped by my place yesterday. I knew right away he’d been biding time in Rosa’s Cantina. Again. So I went to the shed and pulled the canvas wrap off the jug, and we had a snort or two, for New Times’ sake.
Told me he’d rode past ASARCO, the once-again wannabe smelter west of Central. Told me again that he couldn’t figger out the black soil around there, including how it runs along the embankment of the I-10 near UTEP. I told him I don’t know, but I don’t like it, even if it’s not the smelter’s fault that the city grew up around it. I guess they tried well enough back in the day to keep the stench and the birth defects away from Central. But no one expected that the Yuppie-esque West Side would spring up, and legions of thin wives would troop in leggings to 24-hour fitness centers in between bitching about EPISD and dipping tea-bags into tepid cups of upscale Target china in the middle of their xeriscaped back yards.
And then I said that black color ain’t natural to the geology around here.
O.P. said he’d heard of Summer Luciano’s recent problems at ASARCO and Rosa wasn’t too happy about it. She blamed the downfall of her Cantina on ASARCO, though we all new better, and that it was really on account of that song.
I said I don’t know anything about that, because I don’t know any people who would name their kids after a season like Summer anyway, or willingly suffer pollution from a smelter getting dragged through their evaporative coolers right into their kitchens and bedrooms and sissy-girl nostrils.
That led, curiously, not into a debate on smelters, but rather into a discussion about crazy names people give their kids, although “Summer” isn’t too extreme by California time. There’s the Urban Legend about an Alabama couple naming their kid Formica Dinette, of course. And then there are those who name their kids April, though month-naming kind of drops off after that. November Valdez, anyone? That’s uncommon. Met a gal named Maya, once. That’s easy on the ears, but made no sense because it was attached to a hippie white girl from the West Coast who looked about as Mayan as a Maori warrior looks at home in Stockholm. I asked after her sister Inca but got a blank look.
There’s a whole class of people who name their kids in unusual ways. Sam becomes Sammuell; Summer becomes Sommere; and Santa Claus is sometimes recast as a red burkha-wearing Imam off Mesa named Dagjeep, huddling under a domed roof bitching on Friday about whatever it is that Muslims in El Paso don’t like about the locals. I expect several fatwas have been put out about how to properly name that little bundle-of-joy cum future homicide bomber who those proud parents have tucked inside that Koran-brand baby stroller.
And then there’s another class of people who mix Out-of-Africa-like language memes in the most amazing ways, concocting such Africanesque naming conventions as mixing Maasai syllables with Ogu spelling. So you get easily-pronounced names like Taneeka, Daschwanda or Latoya that totally miss any cultural connection with the US or, usually, with the people who got so branded.
On the other hand, our cultural connection with the jug was rapidly established. O.P. gave that he’d named his first kid Jack Daniels, his second Bullett Prospector and his third James Turkey Beam, even though they were all girls and eventually changed their handles, respectively, to Sara Lou, Desiree Coco and Latoya Taneeka as soon as they joined the Air Force and signed a contract with Playboy. Heard that story, did you?
I could relate. Though I’ve had no rugrats or future homicide bombers, I had named one of my colts Jagdeep Monstrosity, but as soon as he joined the Koranic Konvent of Kansas he became Sam Just Sam, although he kept his blinders and tack. That religion rode him harder than I ever would have, although he was largely pollution-free, in the ASARCO way.
Eventually, the mild afternoon turned to a pleasant purple evening in the desert, and O.P., with only minor difficulty, mounted his mule for the long trip home. He said he wanted to go study the Koran. I told him good luck even as I eyed the jug bulging from under his poncho. Told him to take a wide trail around ASARCO, at least until he knew Summer Luciano was safe and that ASARCO PR flack was back at home in one of the West Side enclaves where even suicide bombers fear to tread. “Watch out for them Neighborhood Watch signs and HOA regulations, you hear!” I shouted, as he ambled away.
