Look Homeward, Angel: Yeah, We're Not Always In The RGV, But, Then, Of Course We Are...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor

AUSTIN, Texas - In New York, they would tell me that my living there meant that, try as I might, I'd never be able to leave the city behind. Gotham grabs you in a certain way, they said before noting that, yeah, I'd return sooner or later. Perhaps they referred to the city's verve, that feeling that comes over you when inspiration has found your veins and everything seems possible.

I have been back to New York several times, although much of that has to do with my daughter Gabrielle living there. The city that never sleeps is special, but there's another place that holds me just as dearly:

My hometown.

McAllen and I have had this ever-raging love/hate affair since I left the Rio Grande Valley to serve the military. I never came home. My time in the U.S. Navy was followed by my years at UT-Arlington and later my Journalism career in newspapers and magazines from Houston to Boston to New York. I love McAllen because it retains my roots and because it still affords me a few visuals of those days, when I was a teenager and when my lovely mother was alive. I hate it when I see what it's become, a hodge-podge of development that speaks to money mania and not a well-thought-out journey to something unique.

What is it about our native lands?

A drive down some old familiar byway like Houston Street in McAllen sends me back decades, like when I see a downed fence fronting property I still recall from my days at Travis Junior High. Or a view of a chain link fence separating two homes, such as the one in the photo above this story. Much of McAllen has fast-forwarded to 2011, its streets now lined by new and improved business fronts, much better residential neighborhoods, the entire however-burgeoning visual of what a city should look like in the Year 2011.

It's not like I get a knot in my throat as I drive my hometown when I'm there. Too much time has passed and too much has come to McAllen in the ensuing years. The Bulldog water tower is still there just south of McHi, my old school. The old convention center on S. 10th Street, where the prom came with the music of bands such as The Troggs and Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas (school officials we were told prohibited the playing of music by the Rolling Stones, however). Still, Prom Night back then meant you chased the comfort of air-conditioned dancing in McAllen and then sultry love across the Rio Grande in Reynosa, where the clubs never closed.

I don't know. I don't know. I worry that one of these days, I'll return to the Valley and see change of the sort that will shoot my memories down the tubes, buried like black & white photos in a dusty scrapbook. Not that I've seen much. Brownsville is still Brownsville and Harlingen is still Harlingen. With few exceptions, most valley communities look as they did in the 70s, newer cars and better roads replacing the battered Chevies and Buicks and Fords of yesteryear, modern blacktops replacing caliche streets and roads that flooded in the weakest of rains. Change is good. But it does mean unexpected goodbyes.

Backward glances are said to be good for the soul. Who knows? I look back and see my back pages have turned a certain yellow in color. And while it's been a good life, I wonder how many of us wouldn't trade one year of whatever time we have left for one long weekend from back then?

I remember.

And, well, I'm grateful for that. And I appreciate being able to move down New York's crowded sidewalks and believe I belong, as I also appreciate cruising 17th Street in McAllen while knowing that I came from a few blocks over...

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