Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

The People of Midland
December 1, 2004

I am a Llanero, a citizen of the Llano Estacado. I was born and raised in Midland, on the southern end of the Llano Estacado. I love this place – I am proud of it. I love the glorious sunsets, the strings of sandhill cranes coming to a salt playa at sundown, and the glorious fields of wildflowers in wet springs. I love the pocket forests along the draws, the grasses rippling in the wind, and the night song of toads after a summer rainy spell.

I love the stories of the region, from the Blue Nun of the Concho, to the ciboleros chasing buffalo, to the stories of struggle by early settlers seeking to establish the good life on the plains. I love the stories of families living by the first cable-tool oil rigs during the opening of the oil fields of the region. I love the stories of modern-day emigrants seeking a better life in west Texas after surviving wars, droughts, or social injustice in their countries of origin.

The Llano Estacado is our home. Midland is my home. Deborah and I spent a recent rainy Sunday afternoon wandering the streets of town. “I don’t think I have ever traveled this street,” I told her several times, despite serving as a tree-pruner and landscaper during the 1980’s. We noted an exciting new trend of landscaping as we drove. Many homes now have showy border beds, filled with flowering perennials, ornamental grasses, garden benches, flagstone patios, garden art and more.

We admired the “coral” columns recently painted at the I-20 and SH349 overpass. Northeast of downtown we admired brightly painted houses. Beautiful colors were also provided by the urban forest of town, as well. The colorful fall foliage of red oaks, cedar elms, Chinese pistache, burning bush euonymous, Bradford pear, and many other species had stimulated our drive – a fall foliage tour of Midland. What fun!

The day before, I served as a Keep Midland Beautiful volunteer to recycle e-waste, old tires, old car batteries, and more. Despite a cold rain whipped by a brisk wind, hordes of Midlanders came to properly dispose of such items. “Any day that it rains in west Texas is a beautiful day,” was a sentiment I heard time after time. Keep Midland Beautiful had more than enough volunteers that day – a wonderful expression of the caring spirit of our town. On another rainy weekend two weeks before, thousands of Midlanders came to “the world’s greatest garage sale” to raise money for a good cause. Such outpourings of grace during downpours do all of us honor.

Love and pride of our home is a growing phenomenon. The love we demonstrate in the care of our town inspires others. Positive action liberates our souls and hearts. Such action is news of far more importance than news of robbery, violence, and thuggery at professional sports events. Midland is not the home of “in your face” disrespect, with chair-throwing, bad-mouthing, trash-talking bad attitudes. We are far better than that! Americans are far better than that!

People that whine with a self-realized and self-promoted victim mentality only perpetuate their own negative attitudes, and create nothing of positive value. To find fault in others is the easiest response – for it requires no effort to make things change. Change comes from each and every one of us making the commitment to do something of positive value. People help those who help themselves – it is human nature.

One of the joys of working at the Sibley Nature Center are the many calls, emails, and people dropping in to share stories of their and their ancestors history, and to share stories seeing the wonderful “going-ons” of our wildlife. Ben Strickling the III brought a tiger salamander out recently – amazed that such a critter lives in the heart of town. “I have never seen one,” he said. “What a bizarre creature!”

A half-dozen people called about the migrating Swainson’s Hawks on October 16th. Hundreds of the beautiful hawks with black and white underwings soared in swirling kettles as the morning warmed. They were headed to Argentina – part of what becomes a never-ending stream of millions of hawks in fall migration. Mark Nicholas sent a CD filled with hundreds of Queen and Monarch butterflies drinking deep from the sweet blossoms of Blue Mist Eupatorium (the botanists have changed the name eupatorium to conoclinium recently.)

Bill Hendon of Memorial Christian Church called earlier this month about bats finding their way into a building at the church. I had thought that free-tailed bat migration occurred earlier, so his information was interesting – I hope they have gone on by now! Larry Hatfield dropped by to talk about a friend of his east of Snyder that collects old historical buildings that he refurbishes on his land.

Suzanne Palmer called about a hurt box turtle she had nursed back to healing, and wanted to know if he would go ahead and hibernate if released on a warm fall day. Another dropin, a homeschooling mom and her two kids, told a story about finding a box turtle that had a nail driven clear through its body – they brought it inside and removed the nail, and then the turtle completely healed! Dana Ratke called about a box turtle with a swollen eye. This affliction might be caused by stress, and seems to be a symptom of a respiratory disease.

Unfortunately, I did not catch the name of another drop-in visitor who had a most interesting spider – its black spotted orange abdomen was edged with spikes. I had never seen such a spider – except in books! The reference library at Sibley revealed it was a “Crablike Spiny Orb Weaver,” a species that loves “woodland edges!” Channel 9 television, and several people, including Carol Overton, called on November 4th about the incredible numbers of descending baby spiders leaving strands of silk over everything in sight on that sunny afternoon.

Jackie Hammack called about my story about cotton farming, and told me of being raised on cotton farms in Crosby County and in the Littlefield area. She wished to tell me that I had cotton-picking and cotton-pulling backwards – that picking is removing the lint out of the bole in the field, and cotton pulling is taking the bole and all. We chatted for 20 minutes about life on cotton farms in the 1930s. She told of canning 600 quarts of corn and black-eyed peas for the winter dinner table. They had to water their garden at times by filling up 50 gallon barrels and hauling them to the garden, carefully giving each plant in the half-acre garden a good drink.

Harley Stimmel called about purple nightshade, wanting to know more about it. It has long been used in making asadero cheese, for the juices of the berry when properly prepared cause milk to split into curds and whey. He commented on what an aggressive “weed” it could be – which led to discussion about how many species of plants with rhizomatous root systems are important in the recovery of land that has become bare from drought, a bulldozer, or other reasons.

It is so wonderful to hear the observations and stories of people interested in their world, and actively pursue learning more about their surroundings. Thanks, Midlanders! We are Llaneros!