Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Goldsmith - Living in the ruins of the oilfield
March 20, 2002

In late February, I picked a blustery day for exploring some country close to home. The trip started poorly, for I drove for 10 minutes before I realized I had forgotten my camera, forcing a fussy return trip home. In several places the arabesque calligraphy of wind-thrown sand danced on the blacktop, its sinuous dance a slow counterpoint to the buffeting wind gusts of 50 mph. In other places sand-fog swept high, the picket-fence effect of the telephone poles hidden from view. The little quarter-ton truck danced and weaved drunkenly as I sped past a warehouse district.

I headed west, past the school district's bus barn, past the housing development where the wells are running dry, and on out to Gardendale. As always I gave the giant mesquites on the Fasken Railroad embankment an admiring glance. They have seen these bleak and dreary, vicious winds carrying stinging sand spray frozen by the zero wind-chill many times before. A Chihuahuan Raven swirled over one, playing with the wind, beating its wings when it shifted and stalling out when the wind gusted. It uplifted my spirits. I felt that something would happen on this drive.

Around the pecan orchards of Gardendale dozens of ravens played in the wind, taking turns as if in organized contest, perching on a rusty empty stock tank. Is there a winter roost nearby? Are they gathered to harvest the pecans? I slowed and pulled to the side, to passively observe, comfortable in the truck as it shivered and shuddered after the gusts. One left the group and angled at a 45 degree angle to the wind. It crossed the road and passed only a few feet in front of me, to land on the fence post to the north. It turned to peer over its shoulder, and the white patch on its throat winked as the wind lifted its feathers to reveal it. Out in the pasture beyond it, I saw another dozen on the ground, gathered around a large animal carcass.

Thanks to the drought, ranchers are not letting cattle wander the pastures. Any left from the sell-offs of the last few years are fed and tended carefully. Not much was left of the carcass - a piece of hide lifted and flapped like a huge folded cardboard box I had seen that was causing drivers on the loop consternation. Its color made me wonder if the animal had been a deer that had starved to death. The ravens were not pecking at it. They seemed to be merely watching the hide flap, bored, frustrated, disgusted and uncomfortable. I drove on.

I stopped in Goldsmith to chat with a lady that was born in a tent in Wickett, and raised in that tent as it traveled the Depression oil-field from oil camp to road-building camp to ranch. Her mother had written remininsces of those times, and my hostess had an album of pictures. Our conversation wandered from Signal Peak and State Line, to the Head of the River Ranch where she began drawing daywages at age 12, earning $2.50 a day. Men were getting 5 bucks a day, so she felt she was contributing mightily to her family's needs. She told of riding the range and roping critters with screwworm and digging out the maggots before slathering Smear 62 on the raw flesh.

Her house was one of the houses provided by the Goldsmith School to its teachers. She had just bought it, and was fixing it up, painting it, replacing windows, arranging her pictures and knickknacks and furniture, helped by two dogs and a cat. The bigger dog barked at me steadily, until she put it out in the cold. In a few minutes she let it in and he put his paws on my leg and rubbed his head on my belly, so she put him in the bedroom. A big cat wandered in and accepted a scritch behind the ears. She talked about her neighbors. They were elderly, one in his 80s and one in her 90s.

She pointed at their houses, more than a block away. Most of the other houses nearby were gone, but one shell of a house was up the little rise to the south. Its windows were broken out. I mentioned finding houses in rural areas, abandoned long ago. In the house would be many of the belongings of the last resident. I expressed my amazement that everything seemed untouched. No vandals or thieves had ever touched those houses. "Sometimes a family had to go, and with only one car, things had to be left behind." I wondered if her family had done so.

I left, and drifted south. A few miles out of town a coyote stood in the road. I slowed, and it held its ground.It stood over a smear of blood. When I got a hundred feet away it slowly walked into the wind, under the fence and to the first mesquite. The wind caused its fur to bristle along its spine. I pulled to a stop and it stared at me. After a minute it moved another 50 feet to a pipeline right-of-way where it seemed to be waiting, as if it wanted to return to the smear of blood on the road. It took a few tentative steps but after thinking better of it, turned and faded into the gray haze of leafless mesquite. By the time I built up to my cruising speed of 45 a quarter mile down the road, I was in a draw filled with the dry stalks of American Basketflower. Yellow shapes were draped over a fence, so again I slowed. And stopped, to see four dead coyotes slung over the fence, their bodies still with form, undecayed, eyeballs still glassy.

A big water truck honked at me, and when I looked up, the driver raised his arm and gave the thumbs up sign.