Landed in the flat brown sunshine of Midland-Odessa and made my way to the compact rental car I'd reserved a few days ago. It turns out to be a Chevy Silverado Super Cab. Oil country. Not a lot of EVs or hybrids around here.
A drive to Big Spring across the dry, brown, plain listening to Pat Boone's 50's show on satellite radio. Oil derricks, refineries (I think), railroad transport operations, possible drilling stations intermingled with cotton fields and, out along the far horizons, giant wind turbines lined up for miles.
I had the lunch special at a misplaced Cajun seafood place - a pound of boiled shrimp, potato, and corn. The Mexican waitress asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked for a Lone Star.
"My favorite kind of beer", she giggled. A lovely flash of white teeth and black eyes. This is her family's place, I thought. She opened the beer for me, asked me if I wanted the cap.
Unpacked my stuff at the hotel. Let the shower run for awhile to take some of the wrinkles out of my shirts. Opened the curtain to a fourth floor view of an old water tower, a gutted building with its twisted metal roof rusting in long strips on the ground. Flat and brown all the way out to the hospital at the base of the mountain where I'll report for work in the morning.
Out on my own to the Spanish Inn for a Tex Mex dinner. Another family run place, but this one has deep roots here. A patron tells one of the older waitresses he saw her daughter the other day out at her new job. She didn't want to work at the restaurant anymore apparently. They're taking about the younger generation of females - how they do their make up. The man asks what this thing is with girls shaving off their eyebrows and replacing them with a thick black line. He says they look like they have burnt french fries across their foreheads.
Outside, a cold dusty mist has blown in from somewhere. Feels as though the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since I landed. People are complaining about it. There's something about this I am experiencing for the first time.
I have a headache so stop to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store trying to get used to the extra length of the pickup while parking.
A woman under a hood walks by me singing, jittery, sizing me up as I stand there trying to select a drink. After my transaction, I see her in the parking lot with the hood of her SUV raised. She appears to be trying to pour water into the radiator. She is rocking back and forth, putting her eye down close to the radiator's open mouth. Her car looks stuffed with a one bedroom's worth of belongings. She is spilling water, noticing me, smiling, pointing in recognition from the store just a minute ago, whipping her head around. Meth.
I'll be here for two weeks or more.
A drive to Big Spring across the dry, brown, plain listening to Pat Boone's 50's show on satellite radio. Oil derricks, refineries (I think), railroad transport operations, possible drilling stations intermingled with cotton fields and, out along the far horizons, giant wind turbines lined up for miles.
I had the lunch special at a misplaced Cajun seafood place - a pound of boiled shrimp, potato, and corn. The Mexican waitress asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked for a Lone Star.
"My favorite kind of beer", she giggled. A lovely flash of white teeth and black eyes. This is her family's place, I thought. She opened the beer for me, asked me if I wanted the cap.
Unpacked my stuff at the hotel. Let the shower run for awhile to take some of the wrinkles out of my shirts. Opened the curtain to a fourth floor view of an old water tower, a gutted building with its twisted metal roof rusting in long strips on the ground. Flat and brown all the way out to the hospital at the base of the mountain where I'll report for work in the morning.
Out on my own to the Spanish Inn for a Tex Mex dinner. Another family run place, but this one has deep roots here. A patron tells one of the older waitresses he saw her daughter the other day out at her new job. She didn't want to work at the restaurant anymore apparently. They're taking about the younger generation of females - how they do their make up. The man asks what this thing is with girls shaving off their eyebrows and replacing them with a thick black line. He says they look like they have burnt french fries across their foreheads.
Outside, a cold dusty mist has blown in from somewhere. Feels as though the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since I landed. People are complaining about it. There's something about this I am experiencing for the first time.
I have a headache so stop to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store trying to get used to the extra length of the pickup while parking.
A woman under a hood walks by me singing, jittery, sizing me up as I stand there trying to select a drink. After my transaction, I see her in the parking lot with the hood of her SUV raised. She appears to be trying to pour water into the radiator. She is rocking back and forth, putting her eye down close to the radiator's open mouth. Her car looks stuffed with a one bedroom's worth of belongings. She is spilling water, noticing me, smiling, pointing in recognition from the store just a minute ago, whipping her head around. Meth.
I'll be here for two weeks or more.
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