November 4
One constant companion in west Texas was travel. Any sort of sporting event through school involved a lot of travel. We would often travel to other towns for meetings of the regional Southern Baptist association or state associations. One frequent stop was a visit to the Fortune’s in Sheffield, Texas, a town even more remote than Big Lake, if that was possible. Their oldest daughter, Ruthie, was close enough to my age that we spent a lot of time together when we were there. I remember playing with a tennis ball and racket, just me and a wall. I also remember one time when Ruthie and I were riding in the back of a pickup truck, standing in the truck bed, leaning up on the cab, the wind in our faces. We were singing “If I Had a Hammer” and “A Hundred Miles.” To this day those songs bring back that day, wind in our hair, sun on our faces, as we sang across the wide-open spaces of the edge of the Trans-Pecos desert where you really could hear the whistle blowing a hundred miles.
Sheffield was only about forty miles from Big Lake as the crow flies, but what roads there were had to go around mesas and through passes and so a forty mile distance could easily turn into an hour and a half drive. For the hundreds and possibly thousands of miles I spent in the back seat of a car driving all over West Texas there were three things which were always within view. One was oil wells, pumping up and down, their diesel engines chugging away. Any time there was no other noise to compete with you could hear this constant sound. Even in town when you had the windows open at night you could hear them pumping away, the sound drifting in and out with the breeze. Our high school, now partially infamous due to the movie The Rookie, really does have an oil well pumping away right across the street from the front entrance. The mineral rights and taxes on the oil have kept this entire part of the state from becoming nothing but ghost towns.
Another constant were the utility lines, the old style wooden poles with wooden cross beams topped by colored glass insulators. No matter where you were you could find a line of these stretching out of site to both horizons. And then there is the mesquite tree. It is the only tree growing on the majority of land because it doesn’t need rain with tap-roots going down as far as a hundred feet. The ranchers are always trying to clear it in a never-ending war. But for most of the traveling I did that’s all you could see, and it was just tall enough to block the view from my vantage point. Utility lines, mesquite trees and oil wells. They are the background of my west Texas memories.
We often traveled to the ranch run by the Tuckers. At least half of the trip was on dirt roads and we alleviated the boredom by looking for snakes or tarantulas crossing the roads. Several times my brother and I were allowed to get out and chase a tarantula, many times stoning it to death. Looking back, this seems a bit cruel, but then we probably weren’t wearing seat belts either. I remember one time that my dad ran over a snake in the road. I guess I thought he would swerve because it upset me. But what makes it stick in my mind is the fact that he slowed to a stop, put the car in reverse and made sure it was dead! I was so upset that I cried. In spite of his excuse of protecting innocent people I evidently had no problem allowing a snake to crawl through the brush of a ranch, eating mice and rats. It was one of the few times that my dad did something I considered improper.
West Texas was settled primarily by ranchers, then later by those involved in the oil industry. I grew up around these people, even though they were not a part of my daily life. But I have many firmly entrenched images of them in my mind. Certain faces pop up when I think of a cowboy. Leathery faces and hands, tanned below the brim of their hat, boots with sharp-pointed toes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that one of our annual summer trips was to a camp site in a remote location first frequented by cowboys on cattle drives. Paisano Encampment is near Marfa and Alpine, but that just tells you it is on the way to the Big Bend National Park, possibly one of the most remote, barren landscapes in North America. The buildings are scattered in between rock formations. Children are evidently still allowed to crawl all over the rocks, many of which come complete with fifty-foot cliffs. I’m surprised no one has ever been seriously injured out there. I remember lying on a bed in one of the cabins one summer, and I think it must have been our last summer in Big Lake, and listening to the radio. Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down” was playing:
Once upon a time I drank a little wine
Was as happy as could be, happy as could be
Now I´m just like a cat on a hot tin roof
Baby what do you think you´re doin´ to me
Told you once before
And I won´t tell you no more
So get down, get down, get down
You´re a bad dog baby
But I still want you ´round – around
I still want you around
Texas is hot enough, but the heat in this part of the state was oppressive. The main building was referred to as the ‘tabernacle’ and was some sort of strange partially geodesic dome shape. The rafters inside crisscrossed in every direction. Even as a child I was a veteran of church services, and there wasn’t much I hadn’t already heard, so I was quite skilled at occupying myself until they were over. This was made easier in Paisano because I could sit right there in the tabernacle, behaving myself, and to be entertained all I had to do was look up. There were bats! They just hung there, occasionally moving around when it was light. But at night they flew in and out. I’m sure it was quite distracting for the preacher to see so many people looking up and around every few minutes.
One final thought on Paisano. One summer I had a wallet. I think it may have been one that I had made myself as part of cub scouts. I lost it. So my dad went with me to the office to see if it had been turned in. We described it to Mr. Basham, who happened to be one of the members of our church. He was also an old ranch hand leathery-skinned cowboy. He pulled my wallet out from behind the counter and announced “Yes, we found it…” and then he looked right at me, his face flushing a bit, “…in the women’s bathroom!” With this pronouncement of judgment he slapped it onto the counter. He was obviously getting quite some righteous satisfaction out of calling me out for my obvious flagrant improper behavior. I’m sure he could picture me spying on women’s panties around their ankles and who knows what else. As we left I explained to my dad that I had indeed used the women’s restroom, I just didn’t know I was in the women’s side! No women came in while I was there. As I recall my dad believed me, but the righteous anger on that cowboy church member’s face stuck in my mind. I resented and avoided him the rest of my time in Big Lake.
One of my friends that I remember the most from Big Lake was Tommy Woods. I remember him best because every time I was around him I was either getting hurt or in trouble. I think his dad was raising him alone so he spent a lot of time by himself. One time we were playing ‘Marco Polo’ in his back yard. He didn’t have a pool, so we were just walking around. I was covering my eyes with one hand and walking down the fence line. I ran right into a yellow jacket nest and I received several stings to the right side of my head before I knew what happened. My mom, as usual, provided the first aid, after I had walked several blocks back to my house. Another incident in his back yard was when he was showing me how to golf. His dad worked at the golf course so he knew the basics. Unfortunately I did not, including where NOT to stand when someone is swinging a golf club. He raised a wood on the backswing and it whacked me, either in the head or near my mouth, I don’t recall. Once again, Tommy Wood = pain. Another back yard incident, this time in MY back yard, was when Tommy thought it would be good fun to throw darts at me. I hid behind a tree yelling at him to stop, but he just kept throwing them. I stuck my head out to yell again not knowing he had already launched one. It struck me right under my right eye, bounced off my cheek bone and just hung there, lodged in the skin. I’m not sure who was more shocked, me or him! It came out easily enough, but I was an inch away from wearing a patch the rest of my life. And yet for some reason my mom didn’t forbid me from ever hanging out with him again. It would have saved a lot of heartache…..
The piece de resistance occurred one day when I was hanging out with Tommy and some other friend. They talked me into joining them while we all played with matches. For some reason the location we picked just happened to be a small pen off of the alley behind the mayor’s house. There were, I think, a goose or perhaps a duck here, and a small area with hay in it. We had climbed up on the hay, maybe two feet tall, and were dropping lit matches down between the hay and the wooden fence, a space of only a few inches. This fence was probably six feet tall made of tall skinny poles woven together, similar to an old frontier fort look. The tops were sharpened points. Not being skilled with matches I ended up losing most of mine by opening my matchbox upside down. After all of mine had been lit, dropped and extinguished one of the other boys, probably Tommy, managed to – surprise! – start a fire. Since we were on top of the hay everyone began scrambling to climb over the fence and run for it. For some reason I couldn’t get over the fence. I think I was barefoot, and maybe not tall enough. I was trapped. The smoke rose, the fire department was called. The hay was burning pretty hot by the time the fire engine came to a stop in the alley, the siren winding down. Magically a fireman appeared through a gate right next to the hay pile. Why hadn’t WE used that? I have no idea. He popped into view with his dirty yellow flame-retardant coat, picked me up, and deposited me into the mayor’s back yard. I looked up and saw the mayor and his wife and their kids all standing in a row, staring at me. I’ve always wondered why he couldn’t have just grabbed me and taken me to the alley.
One time I was walking down the sidewalk toward the church and the mayor’s wife was out front watering her yard. She turned the stream in my direction until I walked across the street. She didn’t want me anywhere near her house, and I guess I can understand why. Evidently the preacher’s kid was getting a reputation. They probably thought Tommy Woods was a saint.
