Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

What a long, familiar, but different kind of trip, for this time of year.

A deluge similar to the one that has had Oklahoma City soaked for the past month has lake-sized pools and puddles standing in the cotton fields of West Texas, too.

So the cotton harvest has proceeded this year with fits and starts -- mostly fits. Some of the gins had a few modules in the yards, but for the most part they, and the cotton warehouses, remained idle.

In the fields, bolls had popped open and the fiber stood exposed to the elements. Not good. But not a crisis, I don't think, if it dries off soon.

"You see farm equipment here you don't see anywhere else," Dr. ER observed, as we passed through one of the little towns. Yep: cotton trailers, module builders, sprayers, stuff you don't see in wheat or soybean country.

Lubbock really depends on the cotton crop. Retailers, experts say, literally base their inventories and sales projections on crop projections. Now THAT'S a farm town -- if a city of 200,000-some-od people can be called a "town."

It was cool to make the drive between Wichita Falls and Lubbock again, which I hadn't done since moving from Wichita Falls five years ago. The little towns are pitiful in some ways, with boarded-up downtowns and all, but they hold an important place in my heart:

Holliday (one big oilfield pipe and parts yard); Seymour (where Bird, on this trip, amazingly, sampled her first-ever Allsup's burrito: chili and beans, deep fried to a brown, scrumptious fat-laden crisp, which I prefer with mustard); Mankins (crossroads where a canival used to winter, maybe still does, but it wasn't there this trip); Dundee (where camels in a pasture on the side of the highway had cars stopping and kiddos and moms and dads with cameras pouring out for pictures, including us); Red Springs (where I wrote the town's obituary a dozen years ago when they closed the post office); Vera (where I wrote another town obit at the closure of another post office); Benjamin, where a newspaper feature story of mine on wild hog hunting hung behind the counter at the store for several years, and where, across the street, is the Knox County Courthouse, where I covered several proceedings, including a full jury trial for cattle rustling, and the odd murder); Guthrie (home of two of the biggest, most historic ranches in Texas, the 6666 Ranch -- pronounced "the Four Sixes" -- and the Pitchfork); Dickens (just north of Spur, where there is never a bathroom suitable for human beings to use); and, closer to Lubbock, towns I've only passed through, never "worked" in the same way I have the others: Lorenzo, Ralls, Crosbyton, Idalou.

At a Hastings in Lubbock, across from the football stadium at Texas Tech, I picked up a great photography book, with essays by famed Texas writer Elmer Kelton, on 13 huge, historic Texas ranches: Texas Cattle Barons: Their Families, Land and Legacy, photography by Kathleen Jo Ryan. I love it because I have either visited of know personally people involved with four of the ranches: the 6666 Ranch at Guthrie, R.A. Brown Ranch at Throckmorton, Moorhouse Ranch Co. at Benjamain, and Spade Ranches, headquartered at Lubbock. My inner child is a cowboy who would rather spend a morning breakin' ice on a tank or tossin' range cubes off the back of a pickup truck or diggin' postholes or DOING ANYTHING but ridin' a desk all day.

If it would pay. But it wouldn't. SIGH. Dr. ER could have shot the photography for this book, and I could've written the essays in it, just as well. One of these days ...

The football game was a bust. Oklahoma State's defense handled Tech's pass-happy offense, but our offense never got off the bus.

GAW* -- not nearly as historic as "GTT" (see previous post); short for "got a-- whupped," reference to the outcome of the OSU-Texas Tech game.

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