A few years ago, I opened the CNN.com homepage and the headline story was about Tulia, the little town north of Lubbock where my dad grew up and my grandparents lived at the time. In a questionable drug raid based on the evidence of one extremely sketchy undercover cop, the sheriff had arrested a significant percentage of Tulia’s black population. At the time, the town was horrified that it’s moment in the spotlight was so negative, and divided over the situation.
Nate Blakeslee was the reporter for the Texas Observer who broke the story and Tulia is a complete account of the events. It’s a situation out of To Kill a Mockingbird, except the good guys (mostly) win. More than that, it’s a stark portrayal of a dying small town. When you drive through Tulia, most of the storefronts are empty and there aren’t jobs or industry. To me (because I was always ready to leave anyway), it was never clear why people stayed. In Tulia, most of the people arrested in the sting had very few prospects in town, but couldn’t bring themselves to leave either.
I enjoyed reading this quite a bit, though, like Case Histories, it didn’t quite hang together as a mystery. The motives didn’t really seem sufficient when it all wrapped up. One Good Turn was more of a page turner, with kind of a madcap feel to it. I’m not sure if there wasn’t as much humor in Case Histories, or if I just don’t remember it, but this one was notably funny in place.
Again, Atkinson is great with characters—the whole cast of them are interesting and fleshed out. I wasn’t sure how much this one would feel like a sequel—I had hoped it would, but the reviews seemed to imply that it wouldn’t. In any case, Jackson is again the main character and the detective of the mystery, even if he only sometimes and no one else ever realizes it.
I was a bad blogger over Christmas—too lazy to write anything at all. We went to Lubbock for Christmas. Since my grandparents had just moved to Lubbock, this Christmas there was more family around than has all been together in years. Two sets of aunts and uncles were in town, as well as my little cousin, who I hadn’t seen since she was a baby, five years ago. It was fun to all be together. We went to a Texas Tech basketball game, ate tamales on Christmas Eve (a Texas tradition), and had monkey bread and stocking stuffers on Christmas morning.
E had wanted to go to the windmill museum the last time we were in Lubbock, but this time we finally made it. Then we went go cart racing at the same place we went last year. It was a blast, even though the cars were more evenly matched this year and it was harder to pass people. We went seven times in a row, and were all sore the next day from flooring the gas pedal the whole time.
When we got back to New York, we got right to work getting ready for our New Year’s Eve Eve party. It’s fun to have a party on the non-traditional night. We cleaned our whole apartment and made lots of party snacks. As usual, the most popular were the pigs in blankets. I was so busy getting ready that I forgot to take any pictures. We weren’t sure how many people were going to show up, but by when everyone was there, our apartment was pretty much filled to capacity. We had a lot of fun.
The next day, we were tired and we had a lot of cleaning to do. Our poor Christmas tree was almost bald—I think there were more needles on the ground than on the tree. By the time we finished cleaning up, we were too tired to do anything more than lay on the couch and watch movies on New Year’s Eve. It was nice to be at home that night and not go to any parties.
Since we rested New Year’s Eve, we were all ready for a big day of watching football on New Year’s Day. I made Hoppin’ John with black eyed peas for luck and collard greens. Somehow, given that all of that was cooked with plenty of pork fat, I don’t think it was the healthiest of meals. Very tasty though!
In blog-related excitement, E bought me my very own URL for Christmas, so this blog will soon have a new home!