Texas is in the grip of a serious drought. Ranchers are
selling their cattle because they can’t afford to feed them, and crops are either
withering in the heat, or non-existent. Just today, the temperature at 8am was
80°F (27°C); by noon it reached 90°F (32°C); and
by 5pm it soared to a brutal 109°F (43°C). No relief is in sight as new
meteorological records are broken daily.
So it might seem
a strange time to head for normally arid West Texas, but I did it anyway. There
are only a couple of corners of Texas that I haven’t explored during my time
here – Houston is one of them, but it’s just another hot, humid and crowded
city, so it’s way off my list. I remember when I first arrived in Texas, I
asked the hotel concierge where the desert was – I had the same image of Texas
that most Brits probably have, of cowboys and huge ranches and oil in an
essentially desert environment. The concierge wasn’t sure, since he’d never
seen any. I’ve found out since then that it’s West Texas, and that a large part
of Texas is anything but desert – I mean, they grow rice here! So I wanted to
see West Texas for myself.
Odessa and Midland, two towns in the heart of West Texas,
are 21 miles apart. Midland was thus named because it’s roughly halfway between
Dallas and El Paso, and has the dubious notoriety of being George W and Laura
Bush’s hometown; Odessa was named by homesick immigrant Russian railroad
workers in the 19th century. The only reason that these towns exist
is oil. The guidebooks have nothing nice to say about either – for example: “… the area is dry, dusty and flat, with
little physical or cultural interest.” Needless to say, my expectations are
set low.
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| San Angelo mural |
Midland is due West of Dallas on I20, but I chose an
alternate route, to relieve the boredom of hours on the interstate, going via
San Angelo to the south. I had lunch at Miss Hattie’s Café and Saloon –
meatloaf and mashed potatoes, washed down with a Blue Moon beer and a tall
glass of iced water. I decided against the Brothel Burger – “just the meat between the buns” – for
which they’re well-known. The name is a tribute to the fact that the building,
in times past, was a bordello, conveniently connected via an underground tunnel
to the local bank. When the farmers and ranchers came to town with their
families, they would send the family shopping, while they tended to their
“banking business”. The restaurant brochure says that: “with deposits and withdrawals complete, they would rejoin the family
for dinner.”
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| Nodding donkey, pumpjack, horsehead pump, ... |
Driving from San Angelo to Midland, the landscape becomes
increasingly unpleasant. The creeks and draws are all bone dry, and even the
Colorado River looks brown and torpid. There are a few cattle, but not many –
the sparse vegetation would not support a large herd. The terrain is desert scrub,
and so flat that from the top of slight undulations in the road you can see for
miles – the occasional vehicle on distant unpaved roads is clearly visible by
the billowing clouds of white dust in its wake. Most of the landscape is
peppered with the nodding donkeys that perpetually pump oil to the surface from
far below; the parts that aren’t are either refineries or a graveyard for the
rusting hulks of machinery that has outlived its usefulness. There is very
little agriculture, although every now and then you pass a small oasis of crops
that thrive only because of continuous irrigation.
Midland and Odessa are not towns I would choose to live in,
but not as bad as I had expected. Odessa has a (passable) replica of
Stonehenge, a (very good) replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and an 8ft
statue of a jackrabbit. I happened to be close to the First Christian Church
when the church bells chimed the hour – on further investigation, I discovered
that the church has a carillon that not only sounds the hour, but plays what
sounded like American folk tunes for some little time afterwards – beautiful!
Midland has nothing of interest to me.
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| Stonehenge |
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| Jackrabbit |
Driving west another 100 miles brought me to Pecos. It took
some time to escape the oil-defined landscape, but once beyond it, and
certainly to the south of Pecos towards Fort Stockton, parts as yet not
despoiled by humans have a natural beauty in the same way that English moorland
does. The sheer expanse is awe inspiring. Pecos’ main claim to fame is as the
birthplace of the rodeo – obviously somewhere has to be – but is otherwise
nondescript. Fort Stockton has a long military history, and has done a good job
of preserving and exhibiting it.
Something West Texas has plenty of is dust and wind. The
latter is put to good use by some of the largest wind farms I’ve ever seen on
the drive up 385 between Fort Stockton and McCamey – hundreds of wind turbines
atop tall mesas, all elegantly rotating in time.
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I know that wind turbines are not to everyone’s taste, but
to my eyes, they are majestic. Nodding donkeys and other artifacts of oil-based
technology are ugly, and belong to a time that should by now be far behind us.
