A-Nony-Mous, 60,000 people
Dec. 28, 2012

Just when I think I have things planned and settled and all is comfortable and known, then sometimes it isn’t.  And for us just now, it isn’t, which is okay but different.  Now I am feeling pretty anonymous, very unusual after living in the same town for 35 years and scarcely being able to go anywhere in the region without seeing multiple people I know and experience places that are familiar - kind of a warm snuggy feeling. 

I am told there approximately 60,000 additional people, transient workers (60,002 if you count Chris and me) in this area, utilizing an infrastructure developed for 60,000 fewer people.  Doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the congested conditions on roads, in stores and pretty much everywhere.  We are in the Permian Basin (I’ll let you look it up; it’s the underlying geologic structure), thus many business names incorporate “Permian”, “Basin”, “Midland”, “Odessa” or “Midessa”.

I have discovered that I am able to venture out into an unknown city in crazed traffic with unfamiliar driving situations and continue to function as a fully competent adult.  Admittedly, it is odd zooming along looking for things I need having no idea where they may be whilst dodging this way and that and keeping a close eye on who is changing lanes, pulling out in front of me and slowing down.  Today, I found a car wash (I even remember it is north of Wadley on Big Springs), a drug store, a dollar store (in a bad part of town - kinda nervous making), a water dispensary, got back to the downtown library where I obtained a library card and checked out a book) and back to the HEB, easily the most frenetic grocery I’ve ever entered.

The young men at the car wash could not remove my radio antenna nor could I so we went ahead with crossed fingers.  Expected scenario tonight: Chris comes home, says “Oh good, you washed the car” (it was the dirtiest car in town after three dust storms laid a thick layer of white caliche on it and a light sprinkle set it like cement and the birds that I was - past tense - feeding deposited their droppings all over it) and I say, “Yes, that’s the good news.”  I suspect I will not be listening to the radio in the car anytime soon.

Now the HEB: One lines up for a parking space, lines up to get inside, lines up to pay and lines up to get out the door.  It is huge and wonderful.  Stupendous garden shop, bakery, cheese shop, produce section, dairy: fresh baked bread of all kinds, tortillas being made before your very eyes, samples to make you not miss Costco and more stuff than I’ve ever seen in a grocery - very fun, just don’t try it in a hurry.

Water dispensary is to save some bucks that we’ve been spending on bottled water.  On C’s first morning here, he noticed an oil slick on his coffee and was quickly converted to bottled water.

Brrrrr . . .

Time out to whine - temp this a.m. is 28 degrees and we have not heat nor hot water because we ran out of propane last night.  Chris: “I was just so happy you were here I forgot to check it”.  Oh well, any excuse in a storm.  We do have an electric radiator for backup so there are no icicles hanging off my nose but it’s damn shivery in here as we await the office opening at 9.

Local attractions . . .

I check the Midland RV Park website and see a tab marked “local attractions”.  Anticipatorily, I click it to discover what awaits me in the discovery world: Blank.  Yes, a big white page with nothing.  I check again; perhaps the internet wasn’t loading correctly.  Yup, still blank.

Not only are there no local attractions, it’s a billion miles to anywhere. 

No matter, we figure out something and take a jaunt off to see what we can see.  Mostly what we see out of town is more oil wells and vast seas of mesquite-covered plains. 

Monahans Sand Hills State Park, private property, birds, Roy . . .

For a break, we find a mono-scenery within the larger mono-scenery: the Monohans sand hills.  We have been here only briefly previously, so determine to explore at more length.  The opportunity to walk somewhere is overwhelming for me.  I am so accustomed to turning my nose any direction at home and setting off cross-country on an explore.  That is not possible in this great state; virtually every square inch is private and posted or private and posted.  The rare exceptions are seashore (none of that anywhere around Midland, aptly named) and State parks a la Monahans.


Back to the desert within a desert: We spot quite a surprising number of birds while we’re driving in, so set off afoot with binoculars, spotting scope and bird book - freed of sitting in the trailer or sitting in the car.  The place fascinates and provides excellent exercise both: walking up and down sand dunes is quite the workout.  Who would guess there would be so much wildlife in these Sahara-like surroundings but an abundance of critter prints proves it so.




The sport of choice at the sand dunes is disking.  The day was too chilly for me to try it, but the younger set was having quite a time sliding downhill and trudging back to the top to do it again.

We manage to identify a few birds while there: Brewer’s blackbird, kestrel, northern mocking bird, western wood peewee, chipping sparrow, spotted towhee, white-crowned sparrow, raven, western scrub jay, house sparrow and a amazingly: a life bird, the sage thrasher.

An avian aside: at “home”, we had house sparrows, house finches, white-winged doves, a cardinal and a million common and great-tailed grackles.  I say had because I have removed the feeder due to the overwhelming numbers of feathered friends and their messes.

Once when Texas cousin Art was visiting in Arizona, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the grackles at my house, especially when they came to devour the hordes of cicadas, and he opined strongly the opposite.  Okay, now I get it: they are legion here and they are large, raucous, messy pests that gather by the thousands.

Venturing on, we check out various abandoned buildings (a particular fascination of mine) and old neighborhoods in Monahans, Pyote and Wink. 























I love Monahans' street signs with a metal galloping horse scene atop each one.








Chris was fascinated by the Pyote Town Hall, about the size of my bedroom and office.  I followed the signs to their museum but it was no more or at least not right now.


















Wink was interesting, to say the least.

It houses a Roy Orbison museum, it being that singer’s boyhood home, a facility open only by appointment; one surmises that may not be often. 












Also in Wink was this scene that still has us scratching our heads - bundles of some kind of paper stacked at the top of a building whence they are about to topple out onto the sidewalk because the facade is missing.  I’d give a quarter to anyone who could explain this to me.

Not to be left behind . . .
Dec. 18, 2012

“So here we are in the Tijuana jail.  Can’t find no one to go our bail.”

No, we are not really in jail - Tijuana or anywhere; I just have song titles popping up as they suit the situation, so actually, here we are in Midland, Texas.  Elvis’ “It’’s now or never” also comes to mind: start this installment of the blog or admit that it’s too late to do so.

Yes, I have joined Chris, the previous blog post being my sole attempt to journal our separation.  We had not made solid plans beyond Chris going to Texas and getting a job.  Would I remain at home?  Would he be able to travel back & forth or would I?  Would he even find suitable employment?

The answer is that he obtained a good job and as soon as he conveyed that information on Friday, I began preparations to leave on Tuesday, a wholly inadequate length of time for said preparations.

A house sitter engaged; Christmas packages prepared and shipped; fallen-leaf-strewn premises raked; pantry, refrigerator and freezers cleaned out; arrangements made for commitments to which I was uncommitting; a zillion other things attended to as stress levels rose to volcanic levels (many apologies to those who experienced the resulting Mount St. Helens-like explosions) - Tuesday morning and Rowdy and I were on our way, Ruby loaded to the gills.

Never one to appreciate cities or city traffic, we nevertheless rolled on through Phoenix and Tucson with ease, arriving in Benson just in time for a scrumptious lunch prepared by my sister-in-law, Pat, and a nice-but-too-short visit with her and my brother, Frank, at their winter RV haven.

I shot their portrait with Bubba by their Arizona Christmas tree, exchanged gifts and came away with a heart rock that Frank found on one of his forays into the southern Arizona desert so beloved by me and others of my Kelley kin.

Arizona behind us, we arrived at our night’s lodging in Deming, New Mexico, in good time, able to kick back and breathe after the intensity of the previous weeks and especially those last few days.  Rowdy took his role of guard of all things Wuehrmann very seriously.  Besides prowling the room’s circuit throughout the night, he made sure to peer out front the better to see danger as it approached.

Wind & dust . . .

Ai yi yi!  Beginning our second day of driving in strong wind but with a beauteous sunrise (one disadvantage to traveling alone is the inability to shoot photos and make notes along the way, thus blessedly shortening the resultant blog), the rosy clouded prairie viewed through the windshield reveals distant plumes of dust kicking across the landscape.

I swallow panic and assure myself I will be able to find a safe pullout if necessary.

Two cities traversed yesterday, two more coming right up: Las Cruces and El Paso, scary enough to this spoiled country girl but in gale-force (not sure what that is exactly but it felt that way to me) winds and legendary dust storms, I find my hands clenched tightly on the steering wheel as I hurtle at 75 miles per hour in rush hour city traffic allllllll the way through El Paso cheek by jowl with big rigs.

Finally free of the metropolitan area, I remain at alert as the wind whips across the highway.  Even in these conditions, I can appreciate that my fellow travelers are courteous and law-abiding.  Texas law requires travel in the right lane with the left lane only for passing and that is being obeyed to the letter, making for orderly proceedings.

The end in sight, Toyah, Rattlesnake Bomber Base . . .

Holy moley, there is not much out here in the vastness of the West Texas plains, but then we knew that - it still makes an impression, though, every time I encounter it. 

After I turn northward toward Midland, I see the sad but begging-to-be-photographed remains of the ghost town, Toyah, bringing back memories of a previous trip along this route; however, I cannot interrupt my pell-mell forward motion to wander anywhere camera in hand.

After much more featureless time seeing the pavement disappear beneath the car's hood,  I am relieved to see a roadside rest area that appears to have facilities (or faculties, as Dad W. would say).  This calls for sorely needed leg stretching, use of those “faculties” and munching on my lunch which is not nearly as nice as yesterday’s, consisting sparsely of cherry tomatoes and Clementines.

Inside the hangar-like building, I encounter a zealous Texas State employee who gives me an unsolicited personal introduction to why this rest area is constructed to resemble airport structures and what the structure within it represents plus quite a bit more of his newly acquired knowledge.

A highway sign had earlier pointed the way to something called the Rattlesnake Bomber Base Museum.  These edifices are designed to summon the ghost of that once-burgeoning United States Army Air Force base now succumbed to the Texas plains.  Interestingly, the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, was among the thousands of aircraft mothballed there after World War II.  The building’s interior contains an accurately sized superstructure replica of that infamous plane with period photographs and information.

The Rattlesnake moniker attested to the thousands of venomous reptiles disturbed from their winter hibernation dens during the training base’s construction.  Officially, it was the Pyote Air Force Base.

Destination achieved . . .

Along about the height of the wind-borne grit storm, we arrived at the Midland RV Park and our semi-safe haven from more dust-laden air than I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot for someone born and raised in the Valley of the Sun, renowned for its periodic miles-high walls of dust.

This was not as dramatic as those awesome displays, but suffice it to say that a person could open their eyes only the merest slits or suffer serious complications.  What an introduction!  I valiantly (if I do say so myself none too modestly) unpacked Ruby, managed not to let any doors crash open in the dusticane and at last was settled inside the rockin’ & rollin’ little snuggery to await the señor's arrival home from work.

In preparation for our arrival, Chris went all out with festive Christmas decorations.

Rowdy was hopeful about packing himself to head back home.

My first sunrise at my new home - and dust-free!

Texas or bust
December 4, 2012

I’ve thought for a few days that I would journal the most recent adventure, but it has been easy to defer taking action.  Reasons for that inactivity abound.  Primary among them is that it is not exactly my adventure.  Chris is the one who is away from home, so the journey is mine only in a vicarious way.

I easily discern that it will be beneficial for me in an emotional sense to spend time writing about this episode in our lives, but then I wonder if I should actually post it as a blog.  If so, it will necessarily be without photographs, at least at this juncture, because I am home, camera in hand (well, okay, more like at hand), so for those who consume my travel blogs primarily via pictures, boredom may set in.

For now, I will call this my journal, helpful for me to ease the thoughts swirling in circles, and mayhaps it will be a blog posting, too, albeit more personal than most.

Chris departed these premises last Saturday morning.  What a shocking sight - I stood in the living room watching him drive away in the Toyota Tundra Toter, as we refer to our pickup, pulling our Totee travel trailer.  We waved at each other as he passed the window and I watched until he reached the corner and I could no longer see him.

That departure was the culmination of several months of discussing, planning and researching whether we ought to pursue the possibility of his obtaining employment associated with the oil field boom towns of Midland and Odessa, Texas.

Hoping to allay financial setbacks, our scheme was for him to work there over the winter at wages more lucrative than what is available in our locality.  The alternative seemed to be a whole new full-time career here to get to the same fiscal freedom, but the long-term sense of that was not at all to our liking.  More money, shorter time period: why not give it a try.

Well, now I know why not.  After 33 years together, it is feeling decidedly awful not to be together.

Amarillo be damned - he made it to El Paso the first night and I wanted nothing in the world more at that moment than for him to turn around and come home; the feeling was fairly mutual as we talked on the phone that night.  In the light of the next morning, we agreed that after all we had done to get to that point, it would be absurd not to pursue the goal as best we could.

We knew from contacts that a 64-year-old retired college administrator/archaeologist/geologist/teacher was not going to be among the more common applicants in the oil field industry, but Chris’ physical labor pursuits convinced us he has what it takes.  Convincing someone else, however, is an entirely different matter.

All of which brings me to now - Wednesday - because of the boom town nature of Midland/Odessa,  housing is not only at a premium, there is no room in the inn, any of them, thus the advantage of the Totee.  A semi-advantage only; there is no room in the the RV parks, either.  His departure was put back and put back and put back as we waited for his place on a waiting list to advance.

In fact, I became so accustomed to his departure being deferred that it was shocking when an opening was announced.  Last-minute packing, reminders, reassurances and arrangements and he was on his way.

Once we surmounted the El Paso doubts, he rolled into his destination mid-day Sunday.  His descriptions of the changes to the city are astounding.  Miles and miles of industrial and oil-related businesses have popped up like mushrooms in the rainy season during the past two years.  Of course all that increased industry demands additional businesses to serve additional workers and workers' families.

Shades of 19th century gold rushes!  Those stories that shimmer as if they were legends are suddenly made real.  It has happened in Midland before and likely will occur again after this one busts, but for now, it has changed us as those of long ago transformed other families - to their advantage or not.