It's 1958 and I'm twelve years old. We're driving down a desolate desert road to my new home--destination, Jal, New Mexico. My daddy has found a new job with a company called El Paso Natural Gas. I guess Midland didn't work out...we were there for two years and still I could tell by the conversations behind closed doors that there was not enough money to live. I was glad to be leaving Midland, Texas. Maybe they wouldn't know in Jal, New Mexico that I was poor white trash. I mean, isn't that what the kids called me in Midland? I wonder if I really am...?
Our exodus from the hills of Oklahoma to Midland, Texas, when I was ten, was one much like The Grapes of Wrath. I was happy there in the woods. I didn't really know I was poor because everyone else was as poor or poorer than I. All I knew was that Oklahoma was home and I liked the feel of the wet leaves on my bare feet as I explored the creek banks and woods behind my little two-room house. I was comforted by the locusts screaming in my ears on a blistery, hot afternoon. I felt protected by the cloak of blackjack trees jutting up in every direction.
...why are there no trees in this country? Where is Jal, New Mexico? Sounds like a penitentiary. Maybe it is, Daddy never really told us about it, and Lord knows the pensive look on his face as we're whizzing past these gnarly little shrubs makes a girl wonder.

A new school, new faces, more explanations about why we moved. (Shudder!) I hate it. I just know no one will like me. How will I ever fit in with my homemade dresses and cheap plastic shoes.
It's so dusty! And what is that ghastly smell? It looks as if this place is where everything in the desert comes to die. That's probably it! Whew!

It's my first day of school here. Mama assures me, as all good mothers do, that I will make friends and be happy. (I really doubt it.) Everyone else has been going to school all year, running in packs as friends. There're just six more weeks of school this year. I'll just keep to myself and wait until summer to try to meet people. Here comes a whole group of girls. Oh, no! Are they going to call me a hillbilly? Do you think they can tell? "Hi, my name is June Newberry, what's yours? Do you wanna hang around with us?" My mind races.....
are you going to ask me where I'm from, or if I had an indoor bathroom and running water?
(Because for your information, I didn't) All my fears faded as this wonderful girl smiled sweetly and showed me the face of a genuine friend...an "I don't care what you are or where you were raised" kind of friend.

And that's the way Jal was for me most of my life. Oh, yes, there are always those who sit in judgment of others, and they live everywhere on the globe; but for me that first warm, trustworthy smile laid the foundation for the kinds of friendships I was able to develop with so many in that sleepy, dusty, desolate little town.

As the years passed, the yearning for the damp leaves, the thickets of blackjack trees, the sound of the water as it trickled over the rocks in the creek seemed to fade. I began to appreciate the flat openness and the exquisite beauty of the desert. The resplendent sunrises and sunsets would paint the skies more magnificently than any Rembrandt.
The sandhills replaced the woods as a place to run through with reckless abandon. There was a beauty there that was subtle--one that wasn't obvious to those who didn't look for it.

I no longer live there. In fact, my home is in Midland and my attitude is very different than when I was a girl--due, in part, to the confidence instilled in me by people in that little town called Jal. There will always be a connection, though my parents have passed on and most of my friends have made lives in other places. I met my husband of almost 30 years (Denny), I raised my two children, I developed a career, made lifetime friends, and left a piece of my heart in that dusty little town.