....;;;;----  Permian Basin ----::::,,,,
2/26/95
320 miles

The day started out sunny, with birds singing and the ground and cars still wet after the evening rain. The passing weather front had deposited it's liquid gold for the farmers. But the nature of West Texas was that it is dry most of the time. Travel plans crackled in my head. Sun and the promise of another unusually warm day for the end of February (70 degrees) put the drive into me after a routine Saturday of housework. If last week had been amply rewarded with a trip north of my new home city, then south seemed equally enticing. With the naivete and excitement of a Bob Hope in "Call Me Bwana", I set out to explore the Permian Basin. Cowboy hat in hand (I've not been born to wear it all the time), a map, and my beat up Jeep (yes, dented and disfunctional now from being rear ended just two days ago), I head south.

Evidence of my recent transplantation to west Texas is my breakfast choice before leaving: fried matzos. However, I am confident that local delicacies will entice me for my afternoon and evening meals. Nevertheless, a bag of jelly beans goes into the Jeep to hedge my bets.

I take Texas Highway 82 south. Again visions of tumbleweed, endless farms and straight flat road meet my eyes. I come to Ropesville, population 450. A farmer coop cotton gin, sorghum bins, cotton fiber (blown by the wind) coats any stubby plant still growing, and farm equipment, dominant this little town. The origins of this town's name is not in the AAA book. In fact, the town isn't in the AAA book. But like "Muleshoe", it's a descriptive name. Further south I go through Brownfield. A teeming place of 10,000 souls, and endowed with chains like Sonics and McDonalds. Billboards on the roadway speak to farmers about fertilizers or weed retardants or chemicals to act as aprons for the cotton plant. Such descriptive town names! Are the fields really brown - in fact they are this time of year. Yet where does the next town fit in - Seagraves, TX. I doubt the locals a century ago realized that the Permian basin was in fact a sea bed. Well, it's nice to speculate.

The wind is to the plains what water is to the seas. Looking out to the horizon, patches of blue sky turn red-brown from the blowing dust. The dust crosses the road, and in so doing accumulates in the road and on the shoulders. Shoulders turn into dunes like on beaches and around the playas in this area. The car rocks from the force of the wind and the weeds tumble. So much so that my gas mileage is affected by bucking the wind. The air has substance, taste, grit. The dust, salts and minerals accumulate and cover over the cotton stubble. The farmers plow the fields but must surely see the constant and recurring signs of dust bowl. It is a fragile balance, one which some do not think man will maintain for longer than when the underground water runs dry in 30 years.

Highway 82 turns into 385, and I take that all the way to Odessa. This is the center of the Permian Basin, and rugged country indeed. Trees, always scarce in west Texas, are exotic plants in the South Plains and Permian Basin areas. They are replaced by oil rigs and pumps, power and telephone lines, windmills, and a rare microwave tower. The country is dotted with rocker arms pumping oil out of the ground. These pumps are called sucker rod pumps, as a rod is pushed down the oil shaft with the up and down motion. At the bottom of the shaft, a device with valves and plungers force the oil up the tube and into the underground pipeline. The oil pumps are like a forrest throughout the region, like a metal crop of plants on the brown plain, and like a swarm of mosquitoes taking blood from the land.

In 1881, Russian railroad laborers named Odessa after their homeland, which the wide flat prairie resembled. By Texas standards, this was a tame cowtown, primarily because local Methodists outlawed saloons until 1898. Ironically, the first bar was finally opened by the sheriff. Odessa and neighboring Midland are sister cities, but Odessa seems to be the poor step daughter. The town is not impressive although it has a population of 90,000. The Texas Tech University Health Science Center has a campus there, which was experiencing some major construction. But even here, it was disportionally smaller than that in Lubbock.

Having left Lubbock at 10:45 and traveled for over two hours, I decided lunch should be in Odessa. Sunday can be a hard day to spec out restaurants, especially in a new city. Finally, I chanced upon La Margarita near Interstate 20. Eat where the natives eat is my slogan, and I was right on here. I was a minority of one, but was welcomed. My chips and dip came right away. No wimpy salsa like at Chi-Chi's. This stuff would have been pure capsaicin had it not been for the pepper seeds in it. My flauto's, re-fried beans and rice was flavorful, and luckily, no damage was done to my innerds.

Now on to Midland. Entering Interstate 20, it was a short 25 miles east. As I crested one of the small bumps in the road, the city exploded before me with skyscrapers and highrises sparkling in the sun from their steel and glass construction. The same population size as Odessa, Midland has fared much better. Driving around their "loop" I saw very affluent neighborhoods, and their down town was dominanted by oil and bank buildings of modern and expensive architecture. Originally a farm town, and a cross roads of the cattle trails, it was named in 1880 for its location halfway between Fort Worth and El Paso. The economy change drastically in 1923 when oil was discovered and Midland became the geographic and economic center of the Permian Basin oil boom. I headed straight to the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum.

This museum is one of the few attractions in west Texas given a red star by triple A, and well deserved. It was only open 2-5 on Sundays, and I arrived at 2:15 (pretty good planning if I do say so). The nominal fee of a few dollars obviously isn't funding it. Plaques are everywhere from oil and rigging companies to signify their support for individual exhibits. This is a well laid out museum, and seems bigger on the inside than it looks outside. Multimedia is used to set a fast pace sure to keep kids interested. I learn all I wanted to about the oil industry around the Permian Basin. How to locate oil, how to dig a hole, how to pump it, how to move it, and how to protect the environment. The exhibits did not condescend: geophysics, geology and mechanics were discussed at a high school to college level. Videos, slide shows, even explosions and shock waves (scared the beans out of me it was so realistic - a plate I didn't realize I was standing on bounced me like at a Disney ride). Of course, the exhibits are of land oil wells, and only a few touched on drilling at sea.

The Permian Basin occupies 100,000 sq. miles, and half a billion years ago was a sea. An excellent exhibit used 180 deg slideshow to describe the U.S. perspective on oil. We use a third of the world's oil, but have only 4% of the world oil and gas reserves. The Persian Basin accounts for 21% of all the U.S. oil production. Oil wells actually started in the East, with Pennsylvannia, West Virginia and New York as prominent sites, and sources for expertise in the westward expansion. The United States lead the world in oil technology and was probably the first country to drill an oil well. Production in the early 20th century was sufficient to fuel the rapid expansion of the Model T car. The U.S. won World War II because we were a petroleum rich country (which meant fuel for our planes, boats and tanks), and our enemies were petroleum poor. The discovery of oil in what are now the OPEC countries turned our economy around as we remember.

As if there wasn't enough (for me at least) inside the museum, including artwork of oil related activities, replicates of oil towns, and a natural history section of the area, the outside had oil rigs, pumps, christmas trees (those are pipes for oil and gas), and production equipment. I moved along so as to finish by 4:45.

I continued east on Interstate 20 towards Big Spring. Here the geology really gets interesting, with the flat sea bed interrupted by what were old coral reefs and islands (like in the south Pacific now). The city lay at the base of these high plateaus, with some very large and pretty buildings on their slopes. But Big Spring is a poor town of 25,000 and was named for the spring that served as a watering hole for buffalos, antelopes, deer, mustang, and people. Although involved in the refining and distribution of oil in the area, I know it best for the Big Spring VA Hospital, which is one of it's biggest buildings. Annual events include the Rattlesnake Roundup in late March.

It was getting on to 6 o'clock, and Lubbock was 2 hours away. I decided I better find me some grub while it was still light. After circling through the town, I got on Hwy 87 which was the main north-south access. Slim pickins, with most things closed, and the few Mexican and one Chinese restaurant didn't appeal to me. As I was leaving town, going north on 87, I saw a McDonald's at the Interstate. Praying for forgiveness in my hour of desperation, I pulled in. A glass enclosed display case had a HUGE rattlesnake. I ordered a fried fish sandwich and got on the road quickly.

I knew I would be in for a long dark drive, and set my cruise control to 70. The scenery was familiar, but clouds had come in from the west. The sun set as a red ball behind the clouds, but since it was all the way to the horizon, it produced a beautiful half circle which touched the ground. The dust plays games with sunsets here, and for a time the horizon was violet. Then the colors returned to a deep red, fanning out in three broad rays from the event horizon (where the sun goes below the horizon). Maybe because the land is flat and the horizon so far away, the sunset colors lasted well over an hour, seeming to dissolve the clouds and lighten the sky.