History lingers. Unearthed in deserts, garages, drive-ins, restaurants, memories.
History lingers. A stain coloring everything we've done.
Can we move beyond it?
Should we?
A PTA group argues history in south Texas -- how should it be presented to their children?
Winners and losers. Majorities and minorities. Power and tradition.
It is always political even when it isn't.
Sam Deeds stumbles upon a question he didn't know he needed to answer. No one cares. He isn't sure he cares at first.
But it lingers. He must know, if only for himself.
He lives in the shadow of his father Buddy, former sheriff in the same small town. Large, looming, revered: a legend, so they say. Sam doesn't believe the hype; he lived with the man.
And Sam's mother? A saint, though no one cares to say why.
They put up a plaque for Buddy down at the courthouse. Everyone says the nicest things.
At least he was better than the guy before him.
Col. Payne has his own daddy issues. He never had one. Now the one he never had lives right down the road.
His son knows, sneaking out to solve his own personal mystery, his own skeleton in the desert.
Can anyone move beyond their own history?
What good is history unremembered, like the mayor who knows more than he'll say?
We have to know it before we forget it.
We have to read what it says before we have the freedom to throw out the book.
Political or personal, it's all the same.
Everyone believes in clean slates but no one has ever had one. Ever.
Even the illegals sneaking across the river now wade into their own conundrums and hang-ups. Even language is history.
The land remembers. Sam studies it just as carefully as the other clues.
There is always a continuing story. There always will be.
"Forget the Alamo."
film journal entry: 05.01.2013
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