Driving West Texas

by John Van Dyke

“I thought I knew Texas pretty well, but I had no notion of its size until I campaigned it.”

— Ann Richards, former governor of Texas

It is a long drive between most places in Texas. I had been in hill country with trees, and then in open range area with mesas, and then just plain flat with not much of anything. I was heading to a place called Ozona for the night. On the way I passed through the town of Mason. The town had an L shaped main part around a little park. I pulled into an angle parking spot in front of a raised boardwalk along a row of one and two story buildings. Buildings were occupied, with merchants, offices, rooms for rent, a physical therapist, a violin teacher. I walked up the steps to the boardwalk, and a couple of ladies walked by me, wearing red aprons, pulling a Red Flyer kids wagon, filled with cartons of Chile, crackers, and soda pop. I asked them what they were doing. They said, there was a Chile fund raiser, and they were delivering prepaid orders. Kind of like a chuck wagon. They told me to go over to the theater entrance across the park, where they had pots of it. I did, donated some money, and had a bowl of Chile. Shot some video and photos, and headed out just as it was starting to rain.

Ozona wasn’t much of a place. The highway strip, and a couple of streets. I found the Holiday Inn Express and checked in. Asked about a place to eat, and was directed to Pepes Mexican restaurant. It was on a little triangle where a road met the highway. I was glad they were open, this was lunch and dinner, and it was late afternoon. The food was good. This was a working town. Oil drilling equipment everywhere. There was a notice on the restaurant window for help wanted. Oil workers. The breakfast room the next morning was filled with workers.

I put the town of Alpine in the map program, avoiding tolls and Interstates. It showed a drive of three and a half hours on a lot of road without much of anything on it, other than a couple of small towns. About an hour out, it had been raining, I passed through a community called Sheffield and made a turn and soon came to water over the road. There was a car ahead of me, and I watched it carefully go through the water, noticing how high it came on the car. I guessed it was about ten inches, and figured I could make it, so I am staying in the center, on the crown, and slowly got to the other side. Now, I am wondering what’s ahead as I continue in a barren landscape of wide open nothing. The road did have dips, and I was seeing metal markers at intervals, kind of like the snow markers, where I am from. Soon, I figured out what these were, water height markers, measured in feet. I was on a road that was prone to flooding, probably due to rain, and it was raining. I was getting a little concerned, noticing there was no cell service, and decided to drive faster and get out of this area. Miles later on another section of road, I dropped down from what must have been a grand mesa to a valley floor and there was a dense fog on the way down. For some reason, I was not expecting this. I was happy to eventually arrive in Alpine.

I found a place to stay just outside of Alpine, with the usual breakfast included that worked for me. I was definitely in west Texas, also not far from the Mexican border. Alpine had a couple of main streets that ran parallel with cross streets. I did my usual walking tour and found the only two coffee places, a restaurant, a taco truck, and a popular bar in a Landmark Hotel.

It was a Tuesday mid-morning and I was walking down towards one end of town, with my camera and gear, to one of the coffee places, this is also where the taco truck is. They share the same outside picnic table. It was a little chilly, on a November day. I stepped inside, there were only four tables, a little counter area to order coffee, and pay. I ordered my coffee and went over to a table, that had one fellow sitting at it, and asked if I could join him. He said, sure, and I sat down and put my camera on the table. That of course was the conversation starter. His name was Todd, he was a regular, everyone seemed to know him. I gathered he was hanging around more than usual, since he told me he had broken his arm, the reason his pile jacket was cut off at the elbow. Todd was 34 when we had the conversation. He had a neatly trimmed beard, wore a bandana around his neck, and a straw cowboy hat. He had a boyish look, and a big grin when he smiled. Todd had an easy going, Texas manner about him. Kind of no nonsense, reflective, and sure of himself. I asked if I could record our conversation on camera, he agreed.

Todd was born and raised on a farm and ranch with older parents. He talked about learning to appreciate the land and what it has to offer, from his parents. “If you’re a land owner, you have a responsibility to work with it, and take care of it.” It was the farm work, that brought Todd to this part of Texas. He was driving combines, and following harvesting work. He went to college near here, and decided to stay, choosing to work with his hands, he learned custom blacksmithing and said, if it’s metal, I can make it.

I asked Todd how he felt about our divisiveness and extreme polarization, he said it shouldn’t be “us against them.” They are trying to divide us, and we are letting it happen. “it’s all 1984” referring to the dystopian fiction novel by George Orwell. Todd thinks we are losing pride in our country, and getting lazy, watching too much controlled media, and not thinking for ourselves. “We need to start paying attention.” Todd did point out that more people are turning out to vote, and that is a good thing. When I asked if he was optimistic about the future, he said he is optimistic about his own.

Todd, seemed to get it right in my mind. I appreciated his thoughtfulness about what was happening to us, or what we were becoming. I had learned something from my time spent in Mexico, it is about where you happen to be sitting, taking in events, that gives you a perspective. If you are too close, in the thick of it, you can’t really see what is going on. The farther away, you see the big picture, the details, the nuance, maybe what others miss. And, in a small place, less distractions.

I walked into the Landmark hotel, it had a big long lobby area, decorated with heavy wood furniture, almost a Mexican look with stucco walls and with a small bar off to one side. Time for a beer. There were two couples sitting at the bar, I sat down on a stool at the end where it made an L and the bar station was located. Good place to chat with the bar tender.

Joey said he was bartending there for about a year. He lived in Marfa, 30 minutes away. Joey was tall, lanky, a thick head of sandy colored hair, and deep set eyes that seemed curious. I told him what I was doing, and he was interested, and agreed to sit down and have a conversation with me, when he got off work in an hour. I had another beer.

We found a quiet place to sit, and I could get decent video of him while we were talking. I wanted to hear Joey’s story, how he got to where he was. I was in for a couple of surprises. I think that is what I like so much about what I was doing. Once we got past the idea of questions, or an interview, and forgot about the camera, things just started flowing, and many would reveal things, stuff they probably just needed to talk about. Joey was born and raised in Midland Texas. He told me Midland is conservative, and pretty much everyone follows the group thinking. It is Bush family country, and is a big oil and gas area. I think Joey came from a family with some money. We were talking about our divisiveness, the theatrics and rhetoric in today’s politics. He told me, how traveling in Europe, he was embarrassed to say he was an American. But said, most Texans say they are from Texas anyway. He is surprised at how far backwards we have gone, in such a short period of time. Like a lot of people, he thought most of our social issues were behind us. Joey went to college, became a teacher, and lived in Austin. He said it’s a liberal place, and more to his tastes and talked about the rise in liberal voters and thinking in Texas.

Teaching was changing and became less interesting to him, and the money not that good. So he started bartending on the side and made more money than teaching, and it was less stressful. About that time, he said, he had a series of medical events, each requiring pain medication. “It looked like a small pharmacy in my bathroom cabinet.” He was prescribed OxyContin.

“You will do anything to get that feeling. I became a drug addict.”

It started innocently, finally running out of prescriptions for three different and separate events. He didn’t know he was addicted until, the pills ran out. I was not expecting this conversation with Joey. He told me how he got introduced to black tar heroin, a route many addicts go. Free basing, as he said, “The punker way.” Most didn’t know, he was even still teaching for awhile. He said one day his source dried up, and it was hell, “You realize what an unreal world you have been living in, yet you crave it.” Joey is mostly clean now. He said it was hard, and ten years of his life. That is why he lives in Marfa, It is like the end of the world, quiet, and far away from the temptations of drugs. He works on his music, reads, and has wide open spaces, and his bartending job. He is smart, thoughtful, educated, and carries the scars of addiction. He also can spot bullshit, and bad actors, from his time as an addict. A good quality for a bartender.

It strikes me as odd, the people who make, transport, distribute, sell a lot of drugs, have a history of killing each other. The customers who use, and abuse themselves with drugs, have a history of destroying or killing themselves. All are eventually replaced, and the cycle repeats itself.