Odessa and Midland

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 19^th 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.

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.”

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.

Stonehenge

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.

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.