Great Plains Drama

"Drama on the Llano Estacado" 11 x 14 acrylic on canvas panel

"Paint for yourself," advised a Taos landscape artist in an art magazine I bought yesterday.

The advice came at the right time, as I had started a painting twice and stalled. Sometimes art has to brew or stew, like good coffee or chili, needing more ingredients.

On my computer screen was a photo I'd taken a couple of years before on one of my many trips into and across the Texas Panhandle, heading west. There's always something to see out there on the Great Plains, in the sky, in the wide open spaces, in the weather, in the ever-changing light..

I've tried painting it in watercolor before and been too fussy. But I wanted use it as a reference for what I love to paint, what inspires me...the skies, the open spaces, the old buildings, the stories.

I made a value sketch, still stewing. Then I began mixing paint with a palette knife, experimenting, forgetting, or ignorant of, any rules, having fun.

Today's painting is all palette knife work, except for the two grain elevators and buildings. The sky is mixed with variations of only three colors, plus white--Ultramarine and  cerulean blue, and burnt sienna. The little foreground is yellow ochre, azo yellow, and burnt sienna, plus the blues for shadows

I took the photo driving about 75 on I-40, east of Amarillo with storm clouds rolling in, and abandoned elevators capturing my attention. Obviously I used my artistic license on composition and color.

I've noticed since trying to learn acrylics that most of my work is vertical, compared to most of my horizontal watercolors. I don't know why. This was easy though, to show the immensity of the sky, the open spaces, and the smallness of humans. 

Notes: I'm having trouble with a title that fits the painting I'm happy with, that I painted for myself. The photo darkened that main cloud a little more  than it is. This is also, I just realized, essentially a study in complementary colors, adding to the interest and contrast.It will be available soon at In Your Eye Studio & Gallery in Paseo Arts District.

Solitude

"Solitude," 5 x 7 watercolor holiday greeting card

          "Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene. Breathe God's air. Work, if you can, under His sky." 

                                 --Thomas Merton on "Solitude"

I think America's Great Plains, the land of wide open spaces, far horizons, and relatively sparse populations are idea for what the great Trappist monk Merton had in mind, as he wrote about God's people combatting the illusions of America's materialistic and political chaos.  He also had advice for those having to work in cities.

But as December deepens the solitude forced on us this pandemic year, I notice that most of us are reevaluating what is really important in our lives. We miss interaction with friends and families. We can stock up on groceries, and order essentials on line, knowing how little we really need. The virus is exposing the great weakness of a capitalistic society...what happens when people quit shopping?  

You see that almost every day as societies try to put the "economy" above safety, not just for the corporations but  for the thousands out of work, facing untold financial hardship, hunger and worse.

While I need time alone, I don't like being "cooped up," even as an introvert. That's when I imagine living in a farmhouse, on some lonesome road in the Texas panhandle, enjoying the wide open spaces, the silence, the big sky where you can breathe free. But I'd also value driving into town just to see people.

Today's watercolor. 

Holiday hope

"Decoration Dawn," today's 5 x 7 watercolor holiday greeting card

 I won't gripe about people putting up holiday decorations early this year. I don't think there can be an "early."

I'm not talking about the holiday music already playing in stores, trying to sell more merchandise. "Black Friday" has already become a month-long endurance tests for unending ads, which does make sense as merchants also struggle to survive.

But I wouldn't be surprised if some people are more than ready to hang some wreaths, get out holiday lights, and more. In the biologic and political disease ridden year of 2020, we need some holiday hope.

I saw these fence posts in the Texas Panhandle a few years ago, and  thought it would be appropriate to hang some holiday hope on them. It would brighten my day to see them, no matter how early, this year.

Blue Norther on the horizon

"Blue" Norther on the horizon, 5 x 7 watercolor

"Nothing between us and the North Pole but a barb wire fence, and two strands of that are down."
So was our joke a few years ago as a "blue norther" swept through rural Oklahoma, plunging temperatures into the teens in a matter of minutes, with a biting wind chill to boot.
If you live any time on the Great Plains, you have experienced a blue norther sometime in your life.
Most memorable for me was several years ago, driving on a clear day through the Texas Panhandle toward New Mexico.
But up ahead, I could see this dark wedge against the northwest sky. Almost within sight of Amarillo, the ragged dark gray edge of clouds, ahead of dark blue gray on the horizon angled toward me.
 In a few minutes, I was pelted with sleet and freezing rain, and Interstate traffic slowed to a crawl. I saw jackknifed trucks within a mile or so. Instead of making it to Santa Fe by nightfall, I stopped, ate, watched the weather get worse outside. I managed to get to Tucumcari for the night.
Blue Norther? I looked it up. It's a  a fast-moving cold front that causes temperatures to drop dramatically and quickly. Common characteristics are a dark blue-black sky, strong winds, and temperatures than can drop 20-30 degrees Fahrenheit in a few minutes.
Ironically, they are commonly associated with the Texas Panhandle, and are sometimes called Texas Northers, though they occur elsewhere on the Great Plains.

The Texas State Historical Association reports that  the term "Blue Norther" has at least three attributions:
"The term refers, some say, to a norther that sweeps 'out of the Panhandle under a blue-black sky'—that is, to a cold front named for the appearance of its leading edge. Another account states that the term refers to the appearance of the sky after the front has blown through, as the mid-nineteenth-century variant 'blew-tailed norther' illustrates. Yet another derives the term from the fact that one supposedly turns blue from the cold brought by the front."

The National Weather Service in Amarillo notes that Blue Northers can catch people off guard. Temperatures can drop as much as 40 to 60 degrees within hours. Many times the temps will be unseasonably mild before hand, but they can happen anytime from late fall to late winter.

One of the most historic blue northers occurred Nov. 11, 1911. Some say it was among the most sudden and dangerous cold blasts in American history.

Cities in the Midwest experienced record highs in the 70's and 80's. By evening, temps in these same cities would drop into the single-digits, recording their record lowest temperatures.

In early afternoon,  the blue norther  blanketed cities like Kansas City and St. Louis will dark blue skies and low clouds.  By late afternoon, thunderstorms and hail began, and the temp began to drop. In Columbia, Mo., in one hour it fell from 82 to 38. By evening, driving rain, sleet, hail, and tornadoes gave way to snow and temps reached single digits. 
(Most of this is from an online web site.)
Speaking of blue, I use more blue colors in painting than any other. This one, is all with Ultramarine, and a little umber. It fits the subject.

Palo Duro landmark, watercolor

"The Lighthouse," Palo Duro icon, 5 by 7, greeting card watercolor, for Burrowing Owl Books

Palo Duro. Llano Estacado, Comancheria. West Texas. Panhandle.
Where the wildness of the West still pervades every day. Palo Duro Canyon, not far from where my daughter Dallas, her husband Dr. Todd, and my grandchildren Erin, Abby and Max live outside Canyon, on the rim of a canyon.
People who think Amarillo and the Panhandle is flat, haven't traveled. 
Palo Duro, where the musical "Texas" is staged, where tehre is camping, and hiking, and all kinds of critters, is just outside the county seat of Canyon, Texas, a great county seat with a university, West Texas A &M, a place with great schools, and...
Burrowing Owl Books, my daughter's new and used bookstore on the courthouse square, will feature today's watercolor, for cards soon for sale there.
Icon of Palo Duro's fantastic geologic formations, The Lighthouse. More coming.
Biggest challenge for me? Other than all the different angles and light on this icon? Painting vertical. Hey, when you grow up on the Great Plains, horizontal dominates. 

(WorldWatercolor Month, Day 14 challenge).

Palette--all kinds of earthen colors. 

 

Where fences tell stories

Morning on the Llano, 7 by 12 watercolor, 140# d'Arches

The Llano Estacado of the Texas Panhandle. Big, empty, wide open spaces where the wind never seems to cease. 
Fences are few and far between, and the old ones have the character of the land...rugged and ragged as the land and the posts. The wind rustling and grass on the fence lines and singing through the old rusting barbed wire.
This old one is long gone now, replaced by more efficient steel posts and new wire but it was just up the road from my daughter and son-in- law's house near Canyon, Texas.

Stumpy's Spur, and the worried moods of the moon

Chapter 9

The swollen moon inched above the silhouetted sandstone rim of the caprock as Greg walked out on his wooden deck with a cup of coffee and his binoculars.
     After the day of the threats and warnings, Greg wondered just how much other people knew, especially after he'd started teaching a night class at Panhandle State Junior College, one of the bright spots in Darling in his opinion.
     'The first time I remember seeing Aunt Sissie was when she showed me the moon,' Greg thought, putting his coffee down on a table, and lifting the 7 x 50 Bausch and Lomb binoculars to his eyes as he twisted the focus ring.
     He often went to the deck at the back of the house to think.  It helped him focus on what he was going through, and tonight, he needed focus. Did anybody else know? He'd covered it up well today, but Myrt's warning  stuck in his head.
     At least he thought he remembered the dark shadows of summer-thick bushes and trees rising above him on the sidewalk, the black built of nearby buildings framing a few yellow-lit apartment windows, and the huge round silver-white face in the dark Dallas sky reflecting its light off Sissie's equally round, kind face.
      'Perhaps it's just that I heard Mom tell me about it, how Sissie would take me for a night-time walk and show me the  moon.' he thought. "'How I'd reach my little hands and stubby fingers for it, and how she'd tell Mom, "Well Faye, get it for him"'
     The full moon seemed to always make him talk to himself, and think. He knew Sissie would take him out in a baby carriage, but seeing in moon seemed to make it fresher. He knew his parents may have told him about it, but they wouldn't have mentioned the details about the shadows and lights. "Can you remember anything that far back, at age three or four," he said out loud to the night as the moon kept rising.
      Aunt Sissie was his favorite aunt, and even now, years after she died of cancer, when the moon jogged his memory, his throat thickened, and his eyes would water.
      "Let him reach for it,  Miss Vera," was his mother's reply. That's what Sissie told him years later, when as a teenager, he'd visited her.
     "Seems like you've been reaching ever since," she'd said, chuckling.
     Greg didn't know if it was a blessing or a curse, or both. Maybe that was the key. Always reaching, challenged by some remote destination; yet, once attained, never satisfied.
 Easily bored when newness wore off and routine set in, a  journalist's life was at once a sop and a sentence, Greg knew. The Panhandle Index, despite his resentment was important, as was his family and reputation.
     Still, he treasured the full moon and moonlight, and the hunt for adventure. Maybe that's what had attracted him to the older student in his college class. It had been casual, at first, but then a friendship formed in the first few months in Darling.  With stress at home and at the newspaper, with boredom in the small town, it had deepened.  He should have known that nothing in a small town was ever discrete, but he'd been in the big city too long. At least Stumpy didn't seem to know anything about it, or wasn't saying, but Myrt's words had worried him all day.
      Now as he watched the moon rise, and remembered the day's warnings, he finished his coffee, the family already asleep inside. He was worried, and could talk to no one--except perhaps the moon.
     Watching the moon, shining through the edges of swiftly moving clouds, he put the binoculars down next to the coffee cup, reached up, and said, "Come on, Babe, I want you."
      It was a short night.

Stumpy's Spur--Breakfast advice at the Fat Lion--II

Chapter 8

Greg had usually been able to take the criticism  and barbs of the crowd in the Fat Lion, but that one made him pause.
The place had been sort of a safe haven, and his journalist's sense of humor gave him a reality check. Besides, he'd learned to hate the plastic food of fast food joints, and the Fat Lion was anything but fast, and definitely not plastic.
"Told you," Stumpy said, as Myrt came over to refill their coffee cups, balancing his breakfast order in one hand and the coffee pot in the other.
The Fat Lion had cheap paneling on the walls. One broken window was boarded up with construction grade  plywood. High school kids had painted graffiti on it till it was covered with a spastic motif that Beau left as a sign of his school spirit--or laziness, Greg wasn't sure.
Oscillating fans covered with West Texas dusty buzzed away even in November. Beau and Myrt had tried to remodel with rough-cut wood on the walls, decorated with lariats, old iron relics and a few dusty hanging green plants. But the siding merely serve as cracks for  cockroaches to hide in.
Greg watch one move slowing down the wall toward the next table where some biscuit crumbs waited. Jeanne wouldn't eat here, but Greg loved it.
An assortment of different-shaped formica topped tables with dingy faded red tops, and chairs with vinyl covering and torn padded add to the "decor. " A cigarette machine in the back corner sat under an air conditioner poked theory the wall.
Stumpy quietly sipped his coffee, and Greg began eating, picking up one of the yellowish grease-stained menus. While Beau wasn't much of a cook, at least he had a sense of humor, and comments on the menu were always worth reading.

"The Fat Lion--the 'mane' place to go--You'll roar about your food--a lion-sized share of good eatin'"
"Tell us how you want your steak, but we only fix it rarin' to go."
"The 'paws' that refreshes--Sink your fangs into Bad Beau's bar-b-cue. Sides of big, red sweet onions--If she'll kiss you after you eat one of these, she either loves you or her nose is stopped up."
"Chicken fried steaks, smothered in homemade gravy--If they don't fill you up, you need an operation or a cork--We'll supply the cork, just 49 cents each."
"Cold Lone Star Beer--Long neck, short neck, just don't neck in here."
"Homemade lemonade--It'll make more than your mouth pucker--for the sour dispositions in town." "Try the Palo Duro--a malt the size of Texas--so thick you need a knife, so tall, Big Tex looks up to it."
"If your food's good, tell your friends. If you've got any complaints--shut your mouth."

When Myrt came over to get his plate as he finished, she lowered her voice and bent over, while pouring another cup of coffee.
"Greg, you're a good customer and a friend. You don't ask for advice, but I'm gonna give it. We been hearing a lot of, well, shit, and it's not good. I don't understand all this prison stuff, but don't get hurt. It's not worth it. This town's not worth it."
"Myrt, "Greg said, smiling. "Thanks, but I know what I'm doing."
"Do you Greg? Be sure. You can get hurt in more than one way. " In the back, Beau yelled "Order Up!" and she turned toward the kitchen.
He watched her leave, thinking about what an unlikely couple they were. Tall skinny Myrt, and short, fat Beau. Some called them "Mutt and Jeff" behind their backs, but Greg liked them. They seemed to be some of the few people in town who didn't seem to have any pretensions of importance. 
"Unlikely couple," he said aloud, thinking of the way they just accepted people regardless of faults.
"Yep, they are," Stumpy said, "And their advice is as good as their menu comments.  You ought to listen to them."

Stumpy's Spur--Breakfast at the Fat Lion-I

Chapter 7

Greg unzipped his coat as he walked into the Fat Lion Cafe, busy even at 6 a.m. with the coffee and breakfast crowd. The downtown greasy spoon attracted high school kids and some college students on afternoons, but old-timers and early risers waited for it to open every morning.
Named by owners Myrtle  and Beau Perkins in honor of the Darling High School mascot, the Pumas, the cafe occupied a narrow brick building a block from the paper. Greg soon learned the regulars knew more about what was going on in town than anyone else.
This morning, conversation died down when Greg came in, and he suspected it was the editorial. He heard somebody mumble to Myrt about getting Caldwell some jelly to sweeten his sour disposition. Stumpy was sitting in the corner by the steamy plate glass window waiting for him.
Greg grabbed a chair, and propped his back to the wall. He could always get a quick "read" on what people were paying attention to in The Index by eavesdropping and watching out of the corner of his eye what they read. He  knew the academic content analysis researchers would be dismayed and scoff, but he suspected what he learned at the Fat Lion as just as reliable as their "scientific' research.
"Well, you do know how to open a can of worms," Stumpy said, sipping his coffee. Before he could reply, Myrt came over with a coffee pot and a mug, "Morning Greg. "Coffee?" She was pouring before he answered.
"Yep,  a coupl'a eggs, hash browns, sausage and biscuits and gravy, please."
"Sure, be a minute," and she turned back to the kitchen in the rear where Beau was cooking.
Looking Stumpy in the eye, Greg said, "Yes, I guess I did. What do you hear?"
Stumpy sipped his coffee, frowned, and paused.
"I think you're right, and maybe so do a lot of people, but most of 'em have learned to keep their mouths shut when the town's big dogs want something. They've learned, or given up. You do have guts, boy, but I think you're also still a little naive about who runs the town."
Greg started to respond, but was interrupted by a conversation at the next table.
"Whattya thinking, Henry?"
"Nothing much. I had Post Toasties for breakfast, and read the paper--now I've got nothing on my stomach and nothing on my mind."
"Anything in the Index?"
"Naw, nothing."
Greg smirked, mainly to show them he wasn't irritated, even though the comments were meant to annoy. He knew a sign of respect in a  small town was the good-natured banter and jibes between people. That's why he enjoyed coming into the cafe, for what he called "real food and real people."
But the next comment was not good-natured, and Greg's apprehension returned.
"Except for that editorial yesterday," Henry said. "I think there will be hell to pay."

Stumpy's Spur--A Prison for a Prison?

Texas highway 70 to site of Darling on Canadian River in the distance, looking north

Chapter 6

No sooner had he returned to Darling, than the chamber of commerce president and a few others had began pressuring Greg to support what they called "The Prison Project." His dad an been lukewarm about it, and they wanted the Index to support a local bond issue for it.

Looking enviously at Oklahoma, where several private prisons had been built, they thought it would  be a quick cure for the town's economic ills.

"Caldwell, it's the key to our survival. It'll bring jobs, more business and more advertising for your little paper too," said Jim Bob Brantley, an attorney with a big belt buckle and ego, who was also a deacon in the Baptist Church. Greg said he'd talk to his dad, but the longer he was there, the more people kept pestering him.

After questioning his dad about his reservations, Greg had dug deeper.  He couldn't help being skeptical of what sounded like a too-good-to-be-true private prison project.  The more he tried to get information, the harder it got, and the more something smelled.  It looked like a get-rich-quick deal for a few, at the expense of the regular people. His reporter's instinct, honed by covering the corrupt and hustling Houston politics several years ago, made him suspicious.

Stumpy added to his suspicions with a few vague remarks during their Sunday morning breakfasts, though he wouldn't be specific. Greg got the feeling he was afraid to say too much. He could also see the irony, a town he viewed as a prison wanting to build a prison.

 He had more legwork to do, more digging, but he was almost sure something that looked so good had to be crooked. The more people pushed, the more the prison began to stick in his craw, like a piece of gristle on what looked to others like a lean, juicy cut of sirloin.

Brantley cornered him after a Friday Rotary meeting where he'd railroaded a motion though for unanimous support for calling a bond issue, as Greg sat there and didn't vote,

"It's a win-win deal, Brantley said, "You need to get on board for the good of Darling, and the good of your paper, cowboy," he said."

"Anytime someone says it's a win-win deal, somebody's going to lose," Greg sarcastically shot back, and Brantley turned on his cowboy boot heels and walked off, muttering, "Be careful."

That threat did it and Greg went back to the office and knocked out an editorial for next week's paper. He stewed over the weekend, changed a few lines, and dreaded the reaction.  Jeanne urged him not to run it. His dad seemed to hesitate, but Greg reminded him of the advice of putting out the paper for the little people.

When he told Stumpy he was going to editorialize against the prison, Stumpy arched an eyebrow, almost smirked, and then grimly said, "Now the shit's gonna hit the fan."

A cold front Monday turned the skies gray, matching Greg's mood as the presses rolled the new edition of the Panhandle Index.
His stomach churning, he rehashed the harsh words he'd used in the sarcastic editorial as he delivered the paper to the newsstands.  "Instead of unlocking Darling's economic future, there's no evidence the project will do anything but imprison it, while freeing taxpayers from their money for the benefit of a few. The prison would be a crime," he'd concluded, signing the editorial formally: "Gregory L. Caldwell." 

The reaction was swift.

 

Stumpy's Spur--A Wrong Kind of Dance

Chapter 5

"Living in Darling is like living 30 years in the past. Will the 1990s ever get here?" Greg  complained  to Stumpy one Sunday morning.
"What's wrong with that?" Stumpy shot back. "You just miss all that hurry-up rat race of the big city where your blood pressure goes up? You ain' slowed down since you got here. Quit being so uptight and enjoy life."
Greg snapped back, ""I've been in a hurry all my life. And no matter what I do, it's not enough. I'm always afraid of what others will think about me."
 Always in a hurry to meet deadlines or get somewhere, he would drive out of his way to avoid stop lights, or long lines of traffic.
He knew he was obsessed about time, but blamed others. Over his computer was taped a piece of yellow legal paper with a quote from his old iron-disciplined Linotype instructor, Henry Darge: "The's the Darge way, and the wrong way." His father, also raised in the unforgiving, unbudging newspaper world of hot type, was equally as picky. His mother had believed you had to earn you way into heaven, or into anything else, with inflexible, punctual obedience to the rules.
"I should have been a Pharisee," Greg said as he ground his teeth. "All I do is hurry, hurry, hurry, trying to keep all the rules, no matter how small."
"You got too much religion, boy," Stumpy said. "You need to get out of the newspaper and out on the Spur's dance floor."
"Oh, that would do it," he said, laughing. He could imagine the reaction from Jeanne, who still hadn't gotten over his absence at church. "That would be a wrong kind of dance."

 Their move to Darling had been widely anticipated in the church where they were heavily recruited to teach Sunday school. They'd been there, every week, and Greg wasn't sure they were valued for their talent and presence, or because, as owners of the paper, their membership added prestige and perceived influence to the church. He only knew he was expected to be active, just as he was expected to run the newspaper, and to work for the town. 
He sometimes felt he had lived most of his life fulfilling other people's expectations... including Jeanne's expectations of perfect appearance at home. It was getting old. 
He had to admit this week's editorial had already jarred a lot of expectations.

'Shake a Leg at Stumpy's'--the talk of the town

Chapter 4

The  twice-a-week  newspaper had been struggling to survive the rural economic woes and the town's declining population for years. Darling, on the banks of the Canadian River  at the edge of caprock and prairie, had only about 3,000 people left. 
When he first came back, Greg wanted to cut it back to a weekly. His dad, an old-time newspaperman who was owned by the paper more than he owned it, refused to consider the idea, just as he'd refused to consider selling it to the Donrey chain.
"The Index has been in this family since 1904. It won't be Don Caldwell who sells our birthright and our town to those bottom -line boys at Donrey," he'd yelled when Greg suggested letting the paper go.
"You should retire, Dad."
"Hell, no. Shitfire, no! Son, the paper is more than in my blood. It is my blood. And yours too."
Greg was trapped. He'd quickly learned that a hurry-up lifestyle, excellent writing and idealistic journalistic standards wouldn't save the paper, at least in a small town. He'd grudgingly began to concentrate on advertising.
 That's when he had scandalized the town as he starting running ads from Stumpy's Spur, after a conversation of coffee on Sunday mornings.  His dad, a tee-totaling Methodist, wouldn't run ads having to do with liquor.
Facing declining advertising with more stores boarded up, The Darling Index needed the money. After the first half-page ad appeared featuring a local band and with a big bold headline,  "Shake a Leg at Stumpy's," right underneath the obituaries, the town started talking. The Ministerial Alliance had called to protest what they saw as a newcomer changing the paper and endangering morals. Greg ignored them, reminding them they all wanted 20 percent discounts for their small church ads, and were often late paying.
Stumpy always paid cash, pulling out a thick roll of bills and flipping out the twenties until the half-page-a-week ad was paid for. Greg wondered why Stumpy agreed to advertise in the first place, and had asked.
"Respectability," Stumpy said, winking. "And maybe just to irritate some people."
Greg had already managed to do that in the first six months with his editorials too.

Stumpy's Spur--Breakfast at the Fat Lion

Chapter 3

Reluctantly giving up a cherished academic career at an Oklahoma City college, Greg had returned to Darling a year ago to run the family newspaper after his dad had a stroke. His wife Jeanne and two children didn't want to leave city life and friends behind either.  The empty Texas Panhandle and cliquish small town made it worse.
The only social life revolved around the churches, a few social clubs and high school football.  Jeanne eventually fit in at the First Baptist Church because she could sing in the choir, but the members' holier-than-thou attitudes toward the rest of the town only irritated Greg. After a month in town, he quit attending, much to Jeanne's chagrin.
"What will people think?" Jeanne demanded when Greg first said he wasn't going back one Sunday morning.  "What am I going to tell them?"
"Tell them I'm busy, or I don't agree everybody else is going to hell. I don't care," he'd snapped back.   After another 15 minutes of arguing, Jeanne took the teenagers to  the car and drove off. 
Greg drove downtown to the Fat Lion Cafe to get breakfast. When he walked in, he saw Stumpy in the corner, motioning him over.
"How come you ain't in church, Greg? Backsliding?" He smirked." Sit down here with a sinner and have breakfast."
"I'm surprised you're up after a late night at the Spur," Greg shot back, smiling as he pulled up a chair. "Conscience keeping you up?"
An hour later, they were still talking as Greg finished his sausage and eggs, hash browns, pinto beans and biscuits and gravy.  Cafe owner Myrt Brown was giving them a good-natured hard time about emptying two coffee pots. Meeting Stumpy became a Sunday morning ritual every week that Greg joked of as "Church at the Fat Lion." 
It relieved the tension at home, and kept Greg in touch with what was really happening in town--not the chamber of commerce version—but the gossip and behind-the-scene politics of the town’s leading citizens.
“What you hear at the Spur is usually reliable—once you clean the bullshit off the boots,” Stumpy would say, tearing off a wad of Beechnut tobacco and putting it in his cheek as they left before the "church crowd" showed up.

Stumpy's Spur--'A Crutch to the Crotch'

Chapter Two

Stumpy had tried to jump a freight train in Tucumcari when he was 18, slipped and fell under the big steel wheels of a boxcar. He’d pushed himself away and that had cost him his little finger too.

“Came home to die—couldn’t rodeo anymore, play football, nothing,” he said when Greg Caldwell asked about the leg. “But my coach told me to quit feeling sorry for myself. He bought me a crutch and took up a collection for my wooden leg.”

“Worst part is when my big toe itches. I can feel it, but it ain’t there.”

Newcomers to town would be shocked when they’d see Stumpy without his wooden leg on the rare times his stump got irritated. He’d hobble down the sidewalk with a pant leg penned up, hopping along on crutches with a peculiar clop-plop sound, alternating with the one cowboy boot.

But if he was crippled, he wasn’t handicapped. Caldwell had heard his father Don, owner of the Panhandle Index, tell one story over and over.

Several years ago,  a drunk cowboy had been thrown out of a downtown bar and landed at Stumpy’s foot as he hobbled along.

The cowboy stood up, cussing loudly as a crowd gathered at the door of the bar. People from the adjacent Phillips department store watched from the window and he started threatening them.

Stumpy told the drunk to shut up and leave, that he ought to be ashamed.

The cowboy turned on Stumpy and pulled a knife.

What happened next happened so fast people weren’t sure it did, and the legend grew. Greg’s dad had been in the department store and saw it all.

Balancing on his one leg, Stumpy swung one crutch and quickly caught the cowboy in the groin. As the drunk bent over in pain, Stumpy brought the crutch around and slapped him on the side of the head with a loud pop, knocking off his dirty Stetson.

The cowboy slumped to the pavement, out cold. Stumpy hobbled over to his rusty pickup and drove off, while the bar owner called the police.

The next day the Index carried the story, with the headline: "A Crutch to the Crotch." The first two sentences still made Greg smile: “Stumpy stomped a drunk, leaving him out cold. He may be handicapped, but he’s not foot-capped.”

Stumpy was so proud of the article he had it laminated and tacked to the wall behind his cash register.

“That’s when we became friends,” Greg’s dad told him. “Only time he got his name in the paper. 'Course it embarrassed your mom to use such language in the paper, and the ministerial alliance thought I was giving him free advertising.

“They’re all for the First Amendment when they agree with it,” Greg said.

“Yeah, remember to put out the paper for the little people—the Stumpys,” his dad had said.

Vibrant Texas Panhandle

Texas Panhandle, 8 1/2 by 14 watercolor, 140 # paper

"Paint," she said, after a night of good food, wine, drinks and discussions and agguments about God, prayer, spirituality, and more, thanks to Richard Rohr, "Immortal diamond" and more, including a chiminea and pinon fire on a cold back porch.

So here it is, thanks to Susan, another version of my trip through the Texas Panhandle.

Texas Panhandle

Texas Panhandle, 8 by 10 watercolor,  140 # paper

Prairie skyscrapers

I love the Texas Panhandle. For many, it's perhaps boring and desolate, but I love the starkness, the far horizons, and the always changing weather.  My trip last weekend ran into the front that eventually brought more than an inch and a half of rain, and fall temperatures. The clouds moved in quickly the farther west I got, building constantly changing moods and infinite shapes and shadows all the way.  Beautiful country with awesome prairie skyscrapers.

Back roads journal, New Mexico--II

Abandoned store at Ocate,  NM 120, at the end of the pavement. What a roof.  It breathes "weathered."What a painting to be.

Weathered adobe, wood and geography at Ocate.

Weathered. There's got to be some personal symbolism or identification for me to so love that word, and the many times I stop to take photos of weathered buildings and fence posts and more. 
So it was this trip. Rusting tin roofs. Drooping wooden rafters. Vacant windows. Peeling adobe.  Eroding granite and limestone in the mountains. But to really discover weathered, you have to get off the main roads, take the less traveled roads, slow down and look and feel.

Abandoned dugout in a nameless Texas Panhandle canyon.

Weathered...it makes you realize how small and impermanent mankind is...our monuments return slowly to dust, while the ancient earth also erodes, on a scale of size and time that dwarfs us. Those are lessons from the back roads, where there is time and space to think.

Abandoned church at San Isidro cemetery on NM 94, tin, adobe, wood, mountains, graves, weathering away.

More than man-made posts weathers...eroding Hermit's Peak, from dead end NM 266 near San Ignacio.

The "Tooth of Time" weathered landmark on old Santa Fe Trail, on NM 26, near Cimarron.

West Texas thoughts and grandchildren

West Texas--wide open land  of the Llano Estacado in The Panhandle,
where the skies and people stretch your mind and heart.

Most people think of the Texas Panhandle as a place to drive through as quickly as possible, but I've grown to love the thinking time, the remoteness, the extreme weather. And in the past few years, there are even more important reasons.
My daughter Dallas Bell, her husband Todd and their three children Erin, Abby and Max now live outside Canyon, just south of Amarillo where Todd is a doctor. I was thinking about that today because this is my oldest granddaughter's 13th birthday...Erin Ann Bell.

Abby and Erin, right, on one of our trips to the bookstore.

I remember the night I got a phone call from Dallas, saying, "Congratulations, Granddad." I've been blessed to be around enough to really get to know her and her sister and brother.
Amarillo is a treasured destination now, even if for just a night or a day stop. We always get to do neat things, like eat ice cream, go to book stores, explore their property, go shopping.
This photo is a year and a half old, so I hope Erin will forgive me for posting it, but it captures her spirit and goodness and that of her sister Abby.

The Water "Games"?

What had been the middle of America was a desert reaching from the Texas panhandle into Saskatchewan. Once the Ogallah aquifer was pumped dry in mid-century, cities and people disappeared. The incessant winds and dust storms  and heat turned skies a dirty orange by day. No stars shown at night.

With the ice caps gone and Greenland vanished, the oceans buried every city on the coasts. Potter's hometown of Spotsylvania was under water, and the Shenandoah valley was a shallow sea because there was no drainage, with the Atlantic lapping at the eastern base of the Blue Ridge. Houston was gone, and the skyscrapers of Dallas-Fort Worth were empty shells on a lifeless beach.

Oklahoma City was a village, its "river walk" filled with sand, its rivers dry, its energy companies vanished. The last earthquake had been more than a 9 on some forgotten scale, and collapsed the city's newest building, an energy company skyscraper. Potter thought it ironic that Tulsa fared no better, its statue of a senator who once called climate change a hoax presiding over vacant, dusty streets and empty oil storage tanks.

Most of the survivors of the famine and disease were like Potter, living in mountains like the Cascades and Alaska and Rockies and Ozarks and Appalachians and Poconos where they could still get groundwater  and altitudes cut the heat. That's where what remained of governments existed, where  power was measured in the amount of water controlled.