Not Every Place Is For Everyone

Bright yellow orange flames shot from a thin gas pipe against the west Texas gray foggy horizon as noon approached. On a two-lane highway with little else to see beside muddy side roads and mesquite, I passed a propane tank with a small solar system atop it. Did the propane provide energy with the solar system as a backup for some unseen appliance supported by Haliburton, the name on the tank?

Road runners dashed across the highway. In a three-house village, someone had begun to establish an outdoor museum for John Deere tractors. A dozen or so sat, rusting, in various locations throughout the field.

“I’m going to Pecos, little lady” is a line I’m sure I’ve heard a cowboy state proudly in an old black and white western film.

As I drove into Pecos, I wondered what the cowboy would have found. Perhaps he stopped at the pink Cowboy church along the way, now part of a growing denomination. Possibly he visited one of the decrepit stone houses on the old town’s northern edge. Maybe he went to Judge Roy Bean’s office, now sitting across from the All American café and rail station. The menu looked promising but the server occupied the only seat available.

This little lady passed on choosing one of the outside but comfortable overstuffed loungers and rolled her mud-covered car on down the road.