Day 39...an end-of-course correction

 

Day 39, Friday July 18th...I come to the realization that it's time to go home.  It's time to head to the Rocky Mountains...Rocky Mountain High

I left El Paso this morning with a question mark still hanging over my head.  Do I head south and complete the 'along the border' part of my ride or do I turn due east and bisect the route I followed south to the Gulf, thus completing the around the US part.  On the one hand, I DID set out to do the edges and I've done that until this morning.  However, by completing the edge trip I'll add a minimum of 4 more days to the trip, two of which will be new to me and two more just to get back north to where I'd be if I just headed east.

Heading east will have me home in two or three days.  What to do?  I needed more time to think.

I got on the bike and drove to the point on the map where I needed to make the decision.  Texas has some mountains and I got to drive past them this morning.  Rocky Mountains they are not... but they are beautifully rugged and just beg me to go climb them.  Traffic was moderate on I-10 this morning and the only traffic jam was at an immigration checkpoint about 30 miles southeast of El Paso where all the traffic got narrowed down into two lanes.  I don't know what they were doing, but some cars were subjected to rigorous screening.  When I got up to the checkpoint I was, again, waived on through.   The overwhelming memory I'll have of today's drive is the incredible number of trucks heading southeast with me.  It is not exaggeration to say there was a stream of trucks spaced out at about 1/8 to 1/4 miles apart.  Hundreds of big trucks.  Of course passing them caused me to be buffeted about in their slipstream.  Not pleasant.

 

 

you too can own a piece of Southwest Texas

 

 

I drove 100 miles.  Then 120.  Then at about 130 miles and just at the point where I have to make a decision, the answer came to me.  I was ready to go home.  I felt my task of circumnavigating the US had been reached for all practical purposes.  An urge to go home to my wife and home came over me and when the highway divided into south I-10 or east I-20 I put the bike over onto a heading of due east.  No regrets.

 

I sent my friend Perry an email asking if I could spend the night with him in San Angelo and got a quick affirmative.  Then, when I stopped for gas a little later I looked at a map and saw that by getting off the interstate in Midland, Tx, I could be back in my home town in the same amount of time that it would take me to get to San Angelo.  So I cancelled my reservation at Perry's and turned off the big road and headed north and east.

 

This was oil country.  There were oil field service vehicles everywhere!  Just about every pickup truck was logo'd and carried an auxiliary diesel fuel tank in the bed.  I'm not sure why.  I saw wells working, some with stationary pumps, and even quite a few drilling rigs working.  The sheer number of wells I saw from the road begs the question: How many wells ARE there working the Permian Basin.  It's a lot of oil.

 

As I got closer to my hometown of Tahoka I was struck by a sense of 'homecoming'.  I've heard you can take the boy out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of the boy.  I think there's a lot of truth there.  Also, like Dorothy discovered in the Land of Oz. "there's no place like home."  If I need some comfort, need to 'feel the love', or just need to get in touch with who I really am, then a trip to Lynn County, Texas does the trick.    Stopping by to pay my respects to, and talk with my parents seemed the thing to do as I stood at the cusp of completing my adventure.  I'm not sure they would understand WHY I made the trip, but I know they would have been proud of me for doing something that not many other people choose to do. 

 

Not much happens in this part of West Texas.  But if you know where to look you can find history (of a sort).  In the city of O'Donnell, TX (just 15 miles south of Tahoka pop: 800 or so) there is a bust of a 'famous' American... Dan Blocker, the actor who played Hoss Cartwright on the TV show Bonanza.   So there is someone famous other than me (snort) that comes from this area. 

 

Tahoka isn't much of a town at first glance.  Main Street is much diminished from when I was a kid growing up here.  There are much fewer open businesses.  As a matter of fact there are fewer buildings than there was in the 1960s and 70s...they just fell down or were razed for safety's sake.

 

 

 

The old bank building and the corner drug store stand abandoned.  There are only a handful of open businesses along the street now and a stranger would never know that at one time we had two movie theaters, a furniture store, a jewelry store, two barber shops, a 'variety' store, two drug stores, at least three car dealerships and two dry cleaners.  But time has not been kind to retail in Tahoka.

abandoned drug store and bank building (still have one of each though)

the old dentist's office and clinic (there is a new hospital)

the old "Rose Theater" where I saw my first movie Old Yeller

the old Piggy Wiggly building

 

there are still businesses, just not as many

 

 

What hasn't changed is the Lynn County Courthouse and the Tahoka Schools.  The courthouse stands looking exactly like it has for nearly a hundred years. 

 

The schools have changed little and what change there is seems to be mostly cosmetic.  An alumnus of our Elementary Schools would have no problem in recognizing the buildings.  And the High School is darn near historic.   A drive around the school showed there are still 3 pieces of original playground equipment upon which I played as a kid.  Metal horizontal bars, a horizontal ladder 'monkey bars', and a metal slide were all there in the 1960s when I played on them... no telling how long they were there before I got old enough to play on them.

 

One change that I didn't see coming was the decision to go 'wet' and allow the sale of alcoholic beverages in my hometown.  I suspect that the two liquor stores in town are causing a lot of grave spinning out in the cemetery.

 

Tahoka is about 30% smaller in population than it was when I left to go to college and the USAF.  A lot has changed.  But it is still HOME.