On Calvert

According to that Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, he was introduced to speed courtesy of Elvis Presley in none other than Calvert, Texas.

 

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Now, I don’t know whether that’s based on accurate information or whether the filmmakers just picked that place at random. But I find it pretty amusing.

 

I spent a fair amount of time there as a child. Our grandmother, aka Babbi, lived there. It’s a very old, sort of forgotten place. It had seen substantial railroad activity at some point in the distant past, but the place just never took off, never had a boom or a growth spurt that changed the town much.

 

I always liked it there though. Quiet, and with some great cemeteries. Downtown had those old buildings. I remember the bank building on the corner where we turned to go to Babbi’s house. And I remember the mortuary where my sister and I were taken to see the corpse of Mr. Mojo.

 

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There’s a patch of woods behind Calvert High School (“Home of the Fighting Trojans”) where I’d explore sometimes. A forgotten cemetery is back there in the overgrowth. It’s small, but the headstones are legible, with old dates.

 

Once while in those woods I experienced the panic of getting lost. Every direction I went seemed to lead me into denser, less-maneuverable places. I finally saw a clearing, stumbled into it and found I was on the highway about 50 yards from where I’d started.

 

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A tornado ripped through town in the late 70s, causing great destruction. It ripped the big tree out of Babbi’s front yard and dropped it in her back yard, leaving her house untouched.

 

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I was there about a decade later, and there were still piles of rubble where some buildings had been.

 

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I collected beer cans for a stretch as a kid. Tiny Texas towns sometimes had the most offbeat, obscure beers. At some point I’d usually convince each of my grandmothers to buy a six-pack of, say, Pearl in a can I’d never seen before, or something with a weird Czech name maybe.

 

I can still see Babbi mid-morning once, doing me the favor of emptying some beer cans for me. That is, she polished off the six-pack before noon, woozily telling me she didn’t usually drink so much so early. I didn’t understand why she did that since I only needed the one can and I, but who was I to say anything?

 

I still chuckle thinking about it.

 

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Babbi’s not doing so well right now. Won’t go into all that, but you know, she’s on my mind a lot at the moment.

 

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The times I’m talking about, the times I was in Calvert, were in the 70s. Seems long ago to me, but to the generations ahead of me it must seem like only yesterday. I guess that’s how it works. The days when we make day-trips to Corsicana or the weekends we go to Brazoria County will be the source of nostalgia for my own kids I suppose.

 

And before I burst into “The Circle of Life” on ya’ll, I’ll sign off.