A Walk Across Texas

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen We talked to many people Who told all kinds of tales Like the one about the Croton Breaks That looks like a page torn from hell. Walk across Texas With its wonderful sights. Walk across Texas With its beautiful nights. Everybody talked about the rain the next morning and throughout the day. Of course, this country, like much of Texas had been in a drought that had parched the countryside for months. But, anytime rain comes in this part of Texas, it generates conversation. We heard many stories as we ate our breakfast. The waitress had beautiful long black hair and wore jeans. She told about somebody getting stuck in his front yard and calling his friend Jerry for help. “And, he goes over there in that big old pickup he has and damned if he didn’t get stuck, too,” she said. She roared with laughter, as did the other customers. Shortly afterwards Jerry walked into the café. He wore shredded jeans and a thick covering of mud came up almost past the tops of his shoes. His arms were muscled and he had wrists as thick as the big part of a baseball bat. Mud had splattered over his truck. He filled his coffee cup and began talking about the incident. “Yeah, I pulled up in that front yard and hooked onto old Bobby’s truck and began pulling. Damned if my truck didn’t sink all the way down to the axles. So we had to call us a wrecker and he parked about twenty feet away from that front yard and hooked onto me and finally yanked me out,” he said. “But, I tell you, we really got a good rain.” We finished our breakfast and since the rain had stopped, we began our walk toward Spur, which lay eleven miles south. Streams of water wider than we had seen yesterday lapped in the rows of cotton. Eddie also pointed out that there were even more of the playa lakes than there were yesterday. Orange-colored water ran in the bar ditches and warning signs about possible high water had been stationed along the highway. We kept walking toward Spur. Judy Alter had emailed us that a delegation from Spur wanted to welcome us to their city so we looked forward to meeting those folks in that town of about 1,700. We walked into Spur and stopped at a café called the Dixie Dog. Norm looked at it, grinned, and said, “I’ll bet you could get a good hot dog there.” Then Joyce Howze, a strong looking friendly woman who is Spur Main Street Manager, arrived. She smiled, laughed, shook our hands, and welcomed us to her city. “I can’t believe you guys are walking across Texas,” she said. “When we read about your venture, we knew we had to show you Spur. We’ve got lots of things to see. Like we have an agricultural experiment station that was built here and they developed the syrup pan form of terracing for farming land. It provides full use of the rainfall and diverts water in such a way that it vastly improves crop yields. And, it is still being used across the country.” She said she was not a Spur native. “No sir, I am a Tennessee gal. I moved to Austin to work for Texas Parks and Wildlife in 1991. Then two years ago, we came to Spur,” she said. “This is an interesting town and you don’t know that unless you stop and smell the roses. Like, most of the homes in this town were built more than 100 years ago. And all of the buildings along Main Street were built around 1911.” I asked her if moving from Austin to Spur in this sparsely settled part of the Texas Panhandle was a cultural shock. She laughed. “Oh, no. We love it here. The peace and quiet and the people, well this is a nice place,” she said. We got a nice slice of the local people and the area’s history for the next few hours as Howze led us on a tour of the city that included a stop at the old agricultural experiment station that is now closed. We looked at vacant buildings that had once been the office and home for the station’s superintendent . The home had columns and a fence made from petrified wood. I could imagine how thrilled my friend Mary...