Paradox Of Lubbock

Following stereotypes, Texas is supposed to be rough and tough-cowboy central. Last night my wife and I had a chance to see the flip side. Lubbock has an event called First Friday Art Trail. It’s free. It involves art. It involves trolleys. Yes trolleys. And it takes place on the first Friday of the month. It get’s even crazier than that. Let me unfold last night’s events. We showed up at the Buddy Holly Museum [one of the two main starting points] and there we had the chance to listen to some music from the emerald isle out in the open air of the veranda. Roan-inish was the name of the rag-tag band and they even had a lil lass dancing an occasional jig...like a mini River Dance.

The event uses four different trolleys. San Fran style is the only way to go! So we hopped onto a trolley and off we went to the next “display” of local talent. Of all possible places to set up an artistic display, the place we ended up was at the bottom of the list. A Subaru dealership. That’s right folks. A used car lot. Inside the store, they had some very nice pottery, some pretty oil paintings, some nice hand made wood furniture, some acrylic paintings that my five year old could have done [yes, I said a 5 year old... at the risk of offending readers who may view art to be anything produced by a proclaimed artist], and some handmade [possible factory made from China] jewelry. Our voyeuristic journey was over in less than five minutes. This meant that we still had some time to kill before the next trolley came to whisk us away to our next stop. So we looked at used cars. I ought to add that in addition to selling Subaru’s, they also dabbled in Cadillac, Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes...so there were some nice cars to look at and some hefty price tags to go with them.

At last came the trolley and off we went to a much larger facility and there we saw paintings, artistic quilts, photographs, sculptures, pottery and other canvassed art. I also ought to mention that each place served refreshments...and did I mention that it was all free? Our last leg of the journey, before heading back to the Buddy Holly Shrine, was at the Tornado, were we saw more paintings, sculptures, and a Spanish dancer. Upon our return we sat and listened to more of Roan-inish. They even brought out a bag pipe. By then it was time for us to retrieve our brood from the neighbors and send them off to bed.

All in all it was a smashing night. And we made a mental note to scratch off car dealerships from any future outings that involve art. So you see us Texans have a soft spot for culture, we just have to scrape the cow pies off the boots, cinch up the bolo tie, polish our belt bucket and six shooters, and dust off our Stetson and we’z ready for the opera.