My dad’s list is short and simple. He loves the Marines, his grandsons, menudo on Sundays, and Clint. If pressed, he’ll own up to loving the Cowboys but admits they’ve lost much of his admiration, largely thanks to Jerry Jones. It’s best not to get him started on Jerry Jones.
Daddy is a sentimental man plagued with nostalgia for his hometown: Clint, a hamlet of about 1,000 Texans just downriver from El Paso. He reminisces about picking cotton as a boy with his siblings, baling hay with his dad, Sunday church, and cruising the back roads of the neighboring farm towns.
Eighty-seven years old now, Daddy still sees Clint as it was when he was growing up. He sees cotton fields, pecan orchards, irrigation canals (where he played and learned how to swim), Don Poli’s corner store, the San Lorenzo Church, and those dirt roads. He remembers the train blocking the main road in the heart of town during the most inconvenient times, and a tractor further slowing that same traffic when all anyone wanted was to get home.
