The last philosopher in texas
Daniel Chacón I heard about a job at McDonald’s that paid 50k for forty hours a week, not as a manager, but just a worker. Managers made like 90K. All you had to do was make burgers and fries, and housing was included. You had to move to Pecos, Texas, which at the time I knew nothing about, but what else was I going to do? My degree in philosophy didn’t help me get a job, and although I was always writing, the one book that I did finish nobody wanted to publish. I ended up making it an e-book and selling it for ninety-nine cents on Amazon, but no one bought it, not even my siblings. So one Saturday I borrowed my dead mother’s car that now belonged to my sister (but should have been mine) and I drove the three and a half hours from El Paso to Pecos, for an interview. I pictured a desolate desert town, tumbleweeds flying across Main Street, school houses with windows busted out. To get there I had to pass through desert so barren the cell service kept going out. I couldn’t listen to philosophy podcasts or playlists and had to settle on AM radio, a Christian station with a preacher on fire sounding far away in space and time, like the recording was from the 1920s when revivals came into towns and put up circus tents. He kept yelling, Lord, where’s MY path?! The town turned out to be much like I had pictured. Main Street, the heart of downtown, looked like the apocalypse had come and settled. You hardly saw anyone on the street but an occasional meth head walking zombie-like between the buildings and across abandoned lots, or you would see a cluster of them