Charles Igor Loving
1941-2026
It seems like the losses we are asked to endure often come in bundles. Last time it was Bill Narum and Ed Alexander. Now it is Pliny Fisk and Charlie Loving. And Charlie and Ed were famous friends for their lives. They were both cavers and they were no more afraid of a dark, unmapped cave than they were afraid of the dark futures that face our human condition. For they both carried their own light.
When Charlie and I would hike in the mountains of Mexico in the Catorce Uplift, we would always have the necessary light and tools to go in and take a look.
I first met Charlie over 5 decades ago when he walked into my advertising agency office. That company, Directions Company, was handling some great accounts, most notably, Armadillo World Headquarters. Charlie had a T shirt idea to pitch to another Ad agency that was politically connected to the Texas Drive Friendly campaign. It was the official logo with a tire skid mark over it. It didn't go over that well.
Charlie was well known to me because of the Luckenbach T Shirt and all the posters he had done for Soap Creek and his Flying Chicken contests. I also loved his Nuncio Narc cartoons in the Rag. .
But in a few years he settled down in Round Rock and I ended up in an old mansion in Taylor running Taylorvision and we both had children. Our boys were about the same age and so were the girls. In those early days we celebrated their birthdays and behaved pretty normal. Using his schooling in Meteorology, Charlie became a TV weatherman, and I had graduated up to running large car dealer campaigns in Laredo and Abilene.
But there was nothing "normal about Charlie".
In Vietnam, he survived a fall from his medi-vac helicopter and lived in that rice paddy drinking river water for 3 days until he was rescued. He and Ed crossed the Saharan desert alone. He illustrated my book called The Day of the Heart. He even helped me find land for Utility Solar plants.
In the early 70s, I published his Nuncio Narc Comic about a dunce who was always getting in jams as he tried to arrest dope smoking criminals. It was published in conjunction with the Adventures of God, a cool white bearded handsome man that smoked only the best hash as he used his powers for good. The comic called Everwuchawe is still traded.
I still have the originals in my flat files.
Many years later, after our children were grown, Charlie was living in Real de Catorce with several other Caver Texans. It was a haven of free thinking Americans, and a nice sprinkling of Italians, Swiss, and Germans. The Don of the town was also a Movie Star as well as Charlies' close amigo. I had heard about this enclave, but had never made the 600 mile trip across the border.
Then, as I faced divorce, Charlie took the bus to Austin, picked me up and took me to Catorce on that same Mexican bus line. When we got to Matehuala, we went to the open air market of this bustling Mexican truck stop city. Getting our provisions, we got in his Ford Bronco and headed up the mountain on the cobble stone road that shook the jitters right out of you. At the end was a long tunnel. On the other side was a different world. At sixty miles an hour and 600 miles for the trip, I learned to say that we erased about a decade an hour in the journey.
In Catorce, horses were clopping up the stone street, and roosters were crowing at the sun, and Huicholes with their culture of loose fitting white clothes were selling their intricate string drawings and jewelry on the streets. Telmex had only a handful of phones. The internet was just showing up in a few coffee shops.
It was time travel.
I spent the first night in Charlie and Rae's house, but couldn't get past the gato dander. By the next night I was ensconced in habitacion Once with the best restaurant in town just down the steps. Here in the Abundancia, I fell in love with Real de Catorce. Each time I would transit through the tunnel, I would cry with joy to be there. Soon, I rented the best home on the Zocolo with a view from my terrace of the 200 year old towering cathedral 2 blocks away and the town square below.
I still have that home 25 years later.
When Charlie turned 60, I threw a huge party for him at my big house in Austin.
I owed him.
Perhaps the high lite of the evening was when musician Henry Clay (of the lost planet airmen) got stuck in the upstairs bathroom for an unknown time until I freed him.
A few years later, Charlie and Rae tied their knots together in Austin with food cooked by R14 chef Francesco.
Over the last 25 years, Charlie and Raye would often stay in the Quemado room in the Big House when they came to shop or see a doctor or just visit Austin. By now they had a new house in Real County designed by one of Austin's finest architects. Catorce wasn't going to work for them any longer. He called his new home Deer Corn.
During this long piece of time, Charlie lost his son John Charles. But his daughter (Alicia) has prospered at Austin Energy and as a proficient horse jumper.
Charlie was drawing or painting practically every waking moment. His views of humankind were most often in the shadows. But going through some of his email over the last year and a half, he seemed to value our walk on this earth and how we humans should behave..
Here's a taste of what he sent me:
Entitlement is darkness, humility is light. St. Francis
And, like me, he worried about the world.
A talking head says we are in for a big crash.
And another said there will be a war.
One of my nurses is a Trumpista
She shows me all her guns.
She is I am sure not in the minority.
But I am sure that Charlie was.
He had a famous Uncle named Barbette.
Barbette was a gay cross dressing circus tight rope walker in Paris,
who worked on Hollywood movies like "Some Like it Hot "
Some say Charlie was a Spy.
He, like Barbette, was mostly an entertainer.
A cartoonist of our turbulent Time.
A man who drew what he saw.
And then showed it to us.
We will all miss his candor
and his humor.
And the Earth
will grieve his departed spirit.
Yet it remains.
Bye Charlie
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Labels: culture, earthfamily, existential philosophy, personal philosophy, political philosophy, real de catorce, the world
posted by oZ @ 5:24 PM
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