A Walk Across Texas

Chapter Ten

ChapterTen Sometimes we got homesick Then we’d look into the skies And, suddenly we knew We were three lucky guys. Walk across Texas With its wonderful sights. Walk across Texas With its beautiful nights. The almost instant response this country makes to a rain could be seen as we began our eighth day of walking. Where brown had been the predominant color of the countryside only yesterday, today the pastures and grain fields flashed vividly like a traffic light hung on the green cycle. The trees appeared darker and at first I attributed this to the rain but decided after walking a mile that it came because of lack of sunshine. I looked down the highway digging into the land in front of me. It stretched on and on like a dull piece of duct tape. I could not help but become a bit depressed as I looked at the length of the road over which we must walk until we reached Highway 180 and turned east. I had forgotten how many miles Eddie said we had walked as we ate breakfast that morning. But, I knew it was a long way from being halfway and certainly a long way from our final goal of 450. Officially our walk reached Donley County yesterday. But, we still had not walked to Clarendon, where we had stayed last night. We were about twenty miles from its city limits. We had considered staying at Greenbelt Lake. But, after hearing another weather forecast of rain and temperatures in the thirties and looking at the limited camping facilities at the lake, we had decided to stay in a motel. We drove back to our starting point and began walking the twenty miles to Clarendon. As I walked across the land of sandy clay and deep and sandy loam, I thought about some of the characters who had once called this country home. One of those was Asa Elmer Reid Jr., who became known as Ace Reid, a cowboy cartoonist and a delightful character. As a youngster, he had helped his father work cattle on the family ranch at Lelia Lake. He was a good cowboy, but early on he said he would rather spend his time drawing horses than riding them. In his last two years in high school, he built an art studio out of what had once been an old chicken house. He quit school in 1943 and joined the navy. He served in the Pacific and visited Nagasaki a month after the atomic bomb had been dropped there. He came back to the Panhandle after the war and eventually became a cowboy artist and cartoonist. That was after he had been diagnosed with leukemia as a result of his visit to Nagasaki. That diagnosis was made in 1961 and Reid was given only five years to live. The diagnosis didn’t slow him down. He and his wife moved to Kerrville where they bought a ranch and called it the Draggin’ S Ranch. That was about the time I met him when he visited the Star-Telegram where the late George Dolan, a longtime Star-Telegram columnist, became his friend. Reid’s storytelling made him almost as famous as his cartoons that earned him the label of being the “Texas Pen and Ink Will Rogers.” He died November 10, 1991. My thoughts were interrupted when a pick-up stopped and the driver rolled down his window. He hollered, ”Want a ride?” “Naw,” I said. “I’m on a walk.” “A walk?” asked the driver. “Yeah,” I said. “A walk across Texas.” “How far across Texas?” he asked. “Oh, about 450 miles,” I said. “Gawd, that’s a whole bunch,” he said. He smiled and shook his head. “Well, I don’t guess you need a ride. So I’ll see you on down the road.” I kept walking and passed the Jericho Cemetery that had its first documented burial in 1895. There were many tombstones of victims of smallpox and influenza epidemics. A marker said that the town of Jericho had been a station on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Gulf rail line. We reached our fifteen-mile destination about ten miles north of Clarendon. Heavy clouds made a dark gray blanket to the south of us. The wind had increased. I looked at the countryside and saw in it a beauty that one would not catch while driving down the highway. Standing there and watching the formation of the clouds...