LOBO - The sun was setting, the clouds were cotton candy, the pecan trees across the way rattled
their leaves prettily and the Germans seemed really tired. Nice, but tired.
"We filled the pool but then a sand storm came," Alexander said as he gestured at the
pool's tea-colored water. The Van Horn kids shrieking in the murk cared not a whit. passed
back the back of his hand across his forehead. A weather lined local man in a cowboy hat came up,
shook the German's hand and thumped him on the shoulder. "The name's Blankenburg and you all are
welcome at our house anytime," he told his host. "I mean it, anytime," and then he wandered off
to his drippy kids standing in towels. blinked hard.
is one of the three Germns who bought the old town site of Lobo and started fixing it up
about a year ago. This is a big project. Lobo is situated on that particulary long stretch of
roadway between Valentine and Van Horn, the part of the highway that unfurls in such a way that
it does funny things to your sense of distance, rather like being at the beach. Once comprised
of a gas station, a little motel and a scattering of other smallish buildings, Lobo has been
inhabited solely by dust devils, Mojave rattlers and ghosts for the past couple of decades.
Until, that is, the Germans came and threw a party. Last Saturday's event at Lobo - the Germans
called it Lobo Motion - was intended to be a home-spun, my-dad's-got-a-barn, let's-put-on-show
sort of art and music fest.
Only, the musicians didn't really show up, something about a lack of funds. No matter. About 25
Germans did come, most of them from Frankfurt and most of them good friends of the three
owners. And a whole bunch of new friends showed up, people from Van Horn and Marfa that had
met one or two of the Germans at the bar or the market or the Laundromat, or had simply heard
of the weekend-long party and decided to go. At sunset Saturday, there were upwards of 65
people there, all of them friendly and a little dazed from the beer and the sun.
"It's basically a town-warming party," said. "Just to show people that we're not here
to take over, we're not mean spirited and there's no commericial interest here."
The Germans have done a ton of work on the place and offered to sell a motel room or one of the
little houses as a sort of vacation home to their friends for a few hundred bucks. So far, eight
units have sold. As points out, though, nearly all the work is unseen: gas, electrical,
sewer, water, roofing. There's probably not an intact window in the town, graffiti is still
present here and there and the plumbing in the bath house can be politely described as rustic.
They're only here for a few weeks a year, though, and there's a limit to how much they can get
done. Despite the work ahead of them, Annetta , one of the three main owners, thought things
were going pretty well.
"I'm surprised so many people are here," she said. "It was the same yesterday."
Behind her, local folks were obligingly forming a semi-circle around a German performance artist
who was getting ready to stage a piece that began with the line "In the beginning, there was
dust." Someone had turned on the Christmas lights and tiki torches around the pool. Other
people were still dishing up dinner: the bratwurst had run out but there was still sauerkraut,
potato salad, pretzels and store bought oatmeal cookies.
"We know we'll never really be finished, we'll never fulfill completely all the work we have
to do," said. "We just wanted to welcome our neighbors."
Night fell and the few people who left were replaced by others who walked up out of the dark.
Convoys of trucks blew their horns as they rolled past. La Reina, the burro lady, was near
Lobo earlier in the day. Now she was camped in a borrow ditch somewhere in the big dark.
"All I see is love here," said Leonore Petit, whose son David Kane had heard about the party
in Van Horn and brought his usually housebound mom out to Lobo. The two were settled under
the food and drink tent, watching the gathering and talking to everybody for a long time.
"All races are here and there are no fights," she said. "We need to have many more parties
like this one. I love it."
"Me too," said her son. "I thought, I want to meet these people." I'm glad they're opening
Lobo up again."
Someone switched the music to reggae and there was a little dancing. Mostly, though, people
just stood around, introduced each other and talked. Axel Roessler walked up. He's a computer
graphics guy and an artist from Frankfurt. His parents think he's loopy for buying a place
and helping his friends with Lobo.
"They say 'you've just bought stones in the sand,'" he explained. "But that's okay by me. I
feel like being here in this Texas space, I did something for the future. It's a vision.
It's a dream coming true."
The moon came up, beautiful and waning. Predictably, Boyd Elder wasn't ready to go home yet
but he walked us out to where we were parked. He rode on the hood for the 300-yard drive
back to the party, hollered goodnight and loped back to the Christmas lights. As we swung
onto the roadway, the headlights swept across two people kissing rather cinematically on the
side of the road. It was quiet all the way back home.
