It's "Away in a Manger," Damnit, Not "Away in a Hangar."

What is wrong with my town? I mean, besides thinking the Renovated Pretend-Authentic Childhood Home of George W. Bush is going to bring in piles of money and be an on-going source of Community Pride & National Acclaim, and besides being The Most Conservative Town of Any Actual Size in the Entire Fucking Nation (a motto you're going to be seeing on billboards around our fair city, let me tell you)--besides those, what?

What = we are so backward that, tonight, The Ever-Gorgeous Earl and I went to the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale's Holiday Concert in an airplane hangar, having to walk across a parking lot lit by floodlights run off generators (since they don't have actual electricity outside of the metal building), a parking lot so pitted and dusty that the fur-clad women in high heels were picking their way gingerly as if braving a minefield, and the men in their tuxedos had a layer of dust on their cowboy boots.

I do not make this shit up.

Reportedly, Midland and/or Odessa is/are building a Performing Arts Center. It's not yet finished, so the symphony is being shuffled around, holding its large concerts in this hangar and its smaller ones elsewhere. Somewhere without big airplanes, I'm hoping. What I want to know: since Midland has alwaysalwaysalways been about Money and has, at various times, had a whole shitload of it (like now, for instance), why is it just now building a performing arts center? It's got a shitload of huge fancy buildings for other stuff: it just completed The Horseshoe, a huge multi-functional "venue" that has hosted--and these are just the things I know about, and you know that's not even a tiny fraction--rock concerts, rodeos, and the annual Celtic Fair. It's very, very big. And it cost a ton of money. Why the fuck can't IT host the symphony? We have the college coliseum, where they have concerts and basketball and graduation ceremonies for both high schools. Very big. With actual padded seats! From which you can, oh, actually See. And Hear. Wow.

Maybe we don't have a performing arts center yet because we spent all that money on the sports complex. Also big. Also very, very expensive. Because--duh: football!

But no. The symphony has its holiday concert in the Building Formerly Known as The Confederate Air Force Hangar. The CAF Hangar. Only it isn't that any more, because after a couple of years of being the CAF Hangar, someone suggested, gee, maybe "Confederate" wasn't really a word we wanted attached to this, seeing as how the Klan had just showed up to protest the changing of the Robert E. Lee High School's school flag from the Confederate flag to something, umm, maybe a little less mind-bogglingly racist, after enough people complained loudly enough, never mind that the whole school system was still under court supervision in its on-going heel-dragging in the whole silly We ♥ Separate-But-Equal saga.

ANYWAY! So they changed the name. It's no longer the Confederate Air Force Hangar, but they wanted to keep calling it the CAF, so it's Something That Also Starts with C. So those people who were mightily pissed that they had to change a perfectly good name just because of some punk-ass liberal Negro sympathizers, well: they can keep on calling it the CAF and be happyhappyhappy. And then they can go to the country club for dinner and give an extra nice tip to their favorite waiter, just to show what Good People they are.

Whoa. I digress.

I also rant.

So. In my brand-new effort to be Less Scrooge-Like, since The EGE does love Christmas and all things Christmas-y, except ham and shopping, and wrapping presents and decorating and baking. And cold. And addressing Christmas cards, and--OK, OK: he really mostly just likes the music, OK? So my brand-new effort was to have some holiday music, and so we went to the damn concert. OK? Jesus.

We drive out to the airport, halfway between Midland and Odessa. I have printed directions, but it's still tough: we never go there. It's dark. I'm not wearing my glasses. The printer was running out of ink when I printed the directions, and I'm juggling a cup of hot peppermint tea and am on the phone--which has to be plugged in, since the battery won't hold a charge--with my friend Wendy, who's telling a jaw-dropping story about her stepmother. But you know how we find it? We see the huge generator-powered floodlights and see all the dust swirling up from the parking lot. The EGE goes, "Is that it?" because we think surely this must be a rodeo or something, out in this big metal building surrounded by dirt. But no. We pick our way across the parking lot and in through a tiny door. The "box office" is a plastic folding table, and the girl with the cash box asks what kind of ticket we want. She picks up a sign and sets it upright so we can see it: it lists the tickets. There's the Conductor's Circle, which is some outrageous amount. There's reserved seating, which is $24 a ticket, and there's general admission, which is $17. I always buy general admission. In my experience in Midland, it's usually the best bet, as the higher priced seats are usually roped off from The Great Unwashed and not really much better in any appreciable way except for that dainty little barrier. She points to this sign and then turns loose of it, and it flops over on the table. She does this several times and then sighs and takes our money.

We get two general admission tickets and make our way across the stained concrete floor past the row of Symphony Belles (rich white high school girls who actually go through the whole Presentation thing--they're our version of Debutantes). They're wearing sleeveless white dresses, white gloves, and silver shoes (I checked to make sure they weren't white) and are all freezing to death. But their chattering teeth are all very, very good teeth!

I wish I had photos of this place. I did entertain myself by sketching it in my notebook, but 1) it was dark and 2) I was laughing. So the sketches wouldn't help you much, anyway.

Imagine. . . .well, imagine an airplane hangar. Big. Ugly. Metal. That's about it. About halfway into the cavernous hangar, there's a little stage set up for the orchestra, and another little one to the side for the chorale. These are dwarfed by the soaring steel beams and are surrounded by huge airplanes and racks of giant propellers. Everywhere. The walls are metal, the roof is metal, the floor is concrete.

Does the word "acoustics" mean anything to anyone?

There are tables ringing the stage, and they're covered with green cloths and decorated with fake wrapped gifts. Then there's another ring of tables, similarly done up but not quite so close. Then, along the back wall, about 5,000 yards from the stage, there are three rows of folding chairs. Not the good sturdy kind, but the ultra-cheap plastic folding chairs you get at Sam's Club. Those kind. All rickety and bent and beaten up, and not even lined up in orderly rows, but just kind of tossed back there, like "Who the fuck cares how hoi polloi sit? They don't know from music, anyway, the evil bastards."

Plus did I mention that this is a big metal building out in a field? If not, let me mention that now and suggest to you that Big Metal Building Out in a Field does not = Perfect for Central Heating. No, indeed. Picture those little gas-powered heaters mounted high, high on the very high metal walls, all around the perimeter of the building. They turned these on after the concert started and turned them off about half an hour before it ended. Saving money, you know. Because Midland is dirt poor! Obviously; I just hadn't realized it before, since we cleverly hide our poverty by pretending to be rich! I guess we also hide our freezing cold butts by pretending to be warm. Of course, if I were A Real Midlander, I would have known to wear my fur. NOW I understand.

We go in and try to get seats. Most are being saved, as is obvious because people have gone in, plunked their programs in the seats, and then headed for the "bar," another plastic folding table set up with big bottles of cheap wine and stacks of little plastic cups.

We see two seats and try to get to them but have to stand forever waiting for one old man in a cheery sweater to finish talking to his friend, another old man without anything at all cheery about him. We finally squeeze past and get to the seats, and I moan softly. The woman sitting next to us is huge and badly in need of a shampoo and, goodlordalmighty, a fucking pedicure! Her toenails (I have to look down so I won't trip over the metal chair legs, OK?) are the most disgusting things I have seen in, well, since Houston. Scabrous and dirty and chipped, like mal-formed claws. And do NOT chide me for this, suggesting she may have had some sort of Medical Condition that She Couldn't Help that makes her toenails look like that. To that I have one word: socks.

She's wearing a baby blue jacket and cropped jeans and those spongy slides that are just one step up from flipflops, and you gotta admire the democracy of it all: women in furs, men in tuxedos, ladies in cropped pants and Payless slides.

So I'm already twitching--I don't like other people's bare feet at the best of times--and then her son comes and sits in the empty seat between us. And sees The EGE and greets him--one of his former students. Ah, well. Someone he knows. Maybe it won't be so bad. I start to settle in, and I smell something. What the fuck is that? It's familiar, but in a weird way, like something I recognize but would normally avoid and not smell in my everyday life. What IS it? I'm trying to think, and I look over at this guy, and he's filthy: he's got gummy clumps on the sleeve of his jacket, and coarse hairs on the front and--omigod, I'm smelling DOG. Dirty, nasty dog. Not like the dogs I know, but like a mangy dog. Jesus Christ.

"I smell dog," I whisper to The EGE. I expect him to say, "Dog? Surely not, my beloved."

He nods and says, "Yeah. This is the guy I told you about, years ago, who smelled so bad that even after he took a shower he smelled bad."

"WHAT?"

He nods. This is an adult who, when he was a kid, smelled so horrible AFTER he took a shower that The EGE would sometimes have to let the other kids leave the room so they wouldn't get sick. This guy. Who's sitting next to me, INCHES AWAY, and reeks of Mangy Dog.

"I'm moving," I say, and I get up. Apparently my husband thinks I'm joking (as if that might possibly be the case) and doesn't follow me for about 15 minutes, by which time I've found seats far, far away and am playing in my journal, trying to get warm. Normally I might be watching the orchestra warm up, reminiscing about my days in high school band, if I could actually remember them. But I do not do this, since I stupidly forgot to bring a telescope, which is what it would take to actually see the orchestra from our seats. I can't call them seats in The Nosebleed Section, since they were flat on the concrete. Would that they had been, though, since heat does rise and those would surely have been warmer.

Early on, I get up and wind my way back among the airplanes and stacks of mops and shovels and crap to the restroom, which is small and hidden away but is at least not actually outdoors, as is the men's restroom. Yes: the men, some of whom, as I mentioned, are wearing tuxedos, must go out of doors to the port-o-potties.

No. I cannot believe it, either.

At another point, also early on, a cat wanders through the rows, tail up, seemingly at home. Shortly thereafter, the orchestra plays "The Holly and the Ivy," which, the conductor says, is "a more intimate setting." Does he mean it needs a more intimate setting? Or that it will make us feel as if we are in a more intimate setting? I'm not sure what the fuck he means, since the evening was rife with grammatical gaffes, including one point when the president, a former high school teacher, said that something was "very unique."

So: this intimate setting, whatever the fuck he meant, and the orchestra plays, and there's this faint roar. And it gets louder, and louder, and louder. And everyone looks up, and the building shakes. And the airplane passes over, drowning out a good bit of "The Holly and the Ivy" and disproving my theory that perhaps the concerts are held at the hangar because of, maybe, good acoustics. This makes me giggle happily, to the irritation of Santa Claus, who, I forgot to mention, was sitting behind us. Yes, and Mrs. Claus. And I was never so happy to see her with her husband: when I had first seen this woman walking toward us in a patchwork skirt, big black boots, a blinding holiday sweater and a little round patchwork hat, I'd elbowed The EGE and said, gee, maybe flipflops and cropped jeans weren't the worst sartorial choice of the evening.

Oh, I can't go on. We left early, to beat the crowd and to get warm, since, as I may have mentioned, they turned the heat off early. We took a wrong turn and had to drive home on the service road, rather than the Interstate, and then stopped at The Dreaded Wal-Mart, where I bought pillow stuffing and had to show the security guard my receipt, as if I'm going to shoplift two humongous 5-pound boxes of polyfil while wearing a Kevin Simon dress and a Magnolia Pearl velvet duster, on my way home from the symphony. Perhaps I smelled vaguely of dog?