A Walk Across Texas

Chapter Two

ChapterTwo So they drove north To where Oklahoma begins Then they began walking Through those fierce Texas winds. Walk Across Texas With its wonderful sights. Walk Across Texas With its beautiful nights. Our departure looked like a family reunion. We met at the Lane’s house with our wives. Jane and I also took our dog, Cleo. Eddie and Jane’s dog Mattie joined the entourage outside as we laid all of our gear near the tent trailer that would be our home for the next month. Eddie was more proud of the trailer than Norm and I. He should have been. He only paid $300 for it. It looked like it. We soon named it our Highway Hilton. As we packed our gear into the trailer and car, Cleo and Mattie looked like they were about to lose their best friends. Our wives laughed and joked. “Don’t forget where you live,” said Barbara Snyder. “We won’t,” said Eddie. “And, you girls behave yourselves. We’ll see you in a month or two.” We gave last minute hugs and then we were off. Cleo looked out of our auto and barked. I knew I would miss her almost as much as Jane. Still the thought of whether this was such a great idea tugged at me. I realized it was a little too late to back out now. We decided that we would go a shorter way to reach the start of the trip so we headed north on Highway 4 to Highway 281. We reached Windthorst about eleven A.M. and stopped at the Windthorst General Store, which is always a traveler’s treat. I remembered my first stop there more than forty years ago after I had gone to work at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a ranch and farm writer. It was a delight then and time certainly has not changed it. You can buy a mean German sausage sandwich there as well as hamburgers and burritos. You can also buy things like lariat ropes from a wide selection of ranch supplies. I wandered across the creaking wooden floors looking at straw hats, walking shoes, boots and riding gear. After a half hour of looking, we continued north to Archer City, home of author Larry McMurtry who has written many best sellers including Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, from which hit movies were made. We wanted to 9 CH A P T E R TW O stop at his well-stocked bookstore but it was closed so we headed on north. We drove past pastures full of mesquite and I remembered reading in the Texas Almanac about that thriving tree. The almanac states there are more than 200 varieties of mesquite, the honey variety being the one that dominates Texas pasturelands. Ranchers spend thousands of dollars fighting mesquite. Before it became such a problem Mother Nature curtailed mesquites with pasture fires and the ubiquitous prairie dog, which loved to chew through its root system and eat the wood. Ranchers controlled the grass fires and killed the prairie dog by feeding them poisoned grain. No more grass fires and no more prairie dogs. Instead, there are millions of mesquites that require a constant battle to control. As Eddie drove a thought that had been heavy in my mind during all of our planning came back: Would the three of us be able to get along without any major conflicts during a month of what was going to be fairly intense association? I knew that Eddie and I had managed without any problem when we had done the research for the bridges book. We had camped out for a week at a time on two different occasions and had not had any major argument. I think one thing that prevented this was an agreement we had made early on that we would not discuss politics or religion at any time. When we talked to Norm about making the trip, we emphasized this point and he agreed that it was a good idea. We passed freshly plowed and planted grain fields. Tiny stems punched through the reddish colored dirt as a result of recent rains. I looked at the new growth and thought of the sad news I had gotten the day before we left about the death of Horace “Chief” Craig, a longtime and dear friend and former city editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Chief, as all of his friends called him...