BBE 18 - Dudes on Duty

This is a border patrol checkpoint.

You would think, as much as politicians like to spout about illegal immigration and how it has ruined America, that the border areas would be a war zone. There are troops down there, right? And they’re patrolling that border with humvees and dogs and heat-seeking missiles, right?

Well, no.

We did notice that along the fenceline (plain cow fence, no razorwire) on the Mexico side only, the shoulder had been plowed and tilled. And a Border Patrol vehicle was driving along the shoulder pulling tires behind it, making a clean slate to pick up footprints. Pretty low tech. Maybe there were BP guys monitoring the whole fenceline from atop a nearby mountain, but we didn’t see them.

The two border patrol checkpoints we went through were at least 50 miles north of the border. The impression I got was that they don’t care so much about friends and relatives who visit back and forth in border towns, the BP is set up to stop people from invading the more civilized parts of the state.

We got inspected at both checkpoints, we were driving a van, after all, and could have been hauling at least a dozen illegals. That’s probably how old ladies in that area make pocket money.

At the second checkpoint, we did a little inspecting ourselves. The young man on duty was pretty darn cute. Merlene managed to flirt a bit and find out that he’d only been in Texas for a few months, he actually came from New York, I think, and his name badge said “Chooch,” or something like that. (I'm sure I'll be corrected by the teacher if I'm wrong.)

“So,” Merlene asked the spotless dude in the perfectly-starched and ironed uniform, “you haven’t lived through a summer here yet?” Nope, he hadn’t. “Heh, heh,” she chuckled as we drove away.

BBE 17 - A Texas Funeral

We picked up a copy of the Cenizo Journal somewhere near Presidio. It’s a quarterly “neighborhood” magazine for the Big Bend country. I thought it was proof - both of the scarce population in the area and of Merlene’s ability to meet people - that she had met several of the people who were interviewed for articles in the short time she lived there.

You can go to yourself and see the magazine. I hope you’ll download the 4th Quarter 2009 issue and read “The Passing of A. Kelly Pruitt” on pages 4 and 27.

There are many fine western artists who have never really lived the cowboy life they portray. A phrase I heard recently to describe such a person is “Too much hat and no cow.” Kelly was born and raised in the Rio Grande country. The article in the Journal says he “touched people’s lives with his philosophy of living simply, his kindness and unique spirit.”

He lived in the desert in a converted school bus with two dogs, a wolf, two horses, a burro and 35 sheep. When he started having heart problems, Kelly started digging his own grave in a nearby cemetery (not the one in my picture, however). He was shoeing his horse one day soon after and evidently had a heart attack.

When a friend found him lying in his cot, unable to rise, Kelly said he would not go to a doctor, nor let one come to him. “I have not been to a doctor since 1947,” he said, “and if I go now they will want to cut me open. I do not want that.”

So his friends all came and sat with him in a vigil, and finished digging his grave. “Isn’t this wonderful?” he said. “A great funeral, and I am here for it.”

The author of the article spent time writing down what Kelly had to say just before he died. My favorite quote is...”Somehow, the Universe works. Yesterday I was involved in the business of the world. Today I am not.”

It’s really as simple as that, isn't it, when you eliminate the middle men?

BBE 16 - Presidio

Merlene taught school in Presidio for 3 years. But that’s not why we went there - to visit her old acquaintances. The true reason is that the little town has the best Mexican restaurant in West Texas. I can’t remember the name of it, M will have to fill in that blank, but it was very good.

Presidio is a little cowtown on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande river. A Mexican town, Ojinaga, is on the south side of the river.

How did I know Presidio is a cowtown? This was the greeting committee.


Once again, in Texas they have drivers who are smart enough to figure out that if there’s a cow in the road, you should slow down. This doesn’t work in California. Truly. I had a horse hit and killed on the highway in front of our house once by a driver who saw him in plenty of time to stop but said, “I thought he’d get out of the way.”

Presidio is not a fancy place, 43% of the population lives below the poverty line. But it’s a strangely comfortable place. The phrase "honorable poverty" comes to mind, and I liked it there. I like Hispanic people and they are the majority in Presidio.

Merlene said when she first came to the area she liked it, but she was struck by the sight of the ominous black mountain that overlooks it from the Mexican side of the river. The bandit Pancho Villa reportedly had a camp up there, where he could see for miles.


Located on a fertile flood plain, Presidio is the oldest continuously cultivated area in the United States. People have farmed there since 1500 B.C.

If you want to get away from it all, this is the place to be. I found some real estate for you online: Casa Piedra It shows a “stunning” house on 510 acres for only a million bucks or so. In typical real estate lingo, the description says, “The interior walls are covered with a plaster of earth and water.” (In other words, mud.) You need to know that it’s 250 miles to the nearest WalMart. There are several small airfields in the area, so if you have your own plane it’s not a problem. (Do people who own planes shop at WalMart?)

Merlene says there are some very exclusive spa-type ranches in the area where celebrities come for a retreat. In contrast, these are some of the places where real people live:

A mobile home in Presidio


An adobe and rock home in nearby Shafter



This and a couple of other stone houses reminded me of dry land "Hobbit" abodes. They look pretty cozy.

What you don’t see is 1200 acres of ticky tacky McMansions thrown up 5 feet away from each other, åla California. There’s probably not enough electricity in all of West Texas to run the air conditioners in Sacramento County’s newest development, Anatolia. (fondly called Assholia by those of us who think it’s a black hole).

I will be at home all weekend, nursing my batch of chicks to health. I'm planning to catch up on Big Bend Escape episodes, so hang on and enjoy the ride.

Interrupting for a Brief Complaint

Why can't I order chicks from Zappos? My order of chicks took 3 days to get here in PRIORITY mail with the US Post Office. Melanie ordered a pair of shoes from Zappos at 5 p.m. on the internet and they were delivered to work at noon the next day. By FedEx.

The shoes were sent postpaid, with free return postage.

Why is it more important to get shoes in a hurry than LIVE chicks?

It's not the hatchery's fault. A couple of years ago the US Post Office tried to stop shipping chicks altogether. FedEx won't take them.

They really do pretty well being shipped, but even a day sooner would sure make it easier on the little guys. I ordered 25. I was sent 27. Three have died, they were just too weak. Three are marginal, but I'm feeding them by hand and I think they'll make it. The other 21 are running around in their box and doing great.

But why, I ask, do some services improve and others deteriorate? Are there only certain activities that are acceptable? Like buying shoes? But raising your own chickens is unacceptable?

Maybe you shoe people can get the recipe the Donner Party used for boot leather soup when food gets scarce. I'll be happy to sell you some fresh eggs to go with it. $10 each. I'll mail them to you.

BBE 15 - Rock On!

Texas has a marvelous assortment of weird (to a Californian) and photogenic rocks. Here are a few in the Big Bend area.

BBE 14 - Big Bend Country

Can you handle more photos of blue sky and wide, open spaces? That’s what southwest Texas has in abundance.


At the entrance to Big Bend Park, we were told by the park rangerette that the entrance to the visitor station at Chisos Basin might be closed because it was already full of people. We did get in, though, and enjoyed the views.

This one is called The Window.


You can see for miles into Mexico through the space between the mountains. The road to Presidio is down that way, too. When you’re down there looking back up at the mountains, there’s no way you’d guess the hidden valley at the top even exists.


Merlene is looking for acorns for me. When I read that Chisos Oaks only grew in the basin, I decided I wanted to grow one at home. There are too many critters that need acorns to survive, though, there were none left.

The park follows along the Rio Grande on a highway called “The River Road.” Merlene had said she didn’t want to be on it after dark. I respected her opinion about that. She was right. There are nastier roads in the Sierras at home, but this one had lots of blind hills and sharp turns, sometimes in combination. In California it would be deadly, with a constant barrage of motor homes pulling small SUVs and dudes in huge SUVs trying to pass. In Texas it mostly doesn’t make much difference if you drift across the white line, there’s hardly ever a car coming in the opposite direction.

It was on the River Road that we saw a Desert Bighorn Sheep. I mean literally, it was right in the middle of the road when we came around a turn. Just as I got the camera aimed, it jumped over the wall.


If you look really close at the enlarged detail, you can see the animal’s head and horns. It was a treat to see one. They’re not a common sight.


Was it standing on a cliff, or falling to its death? It was probably fine, but there was no place to pull over and look. Also, neither of us is fond of looking over the edge of a cliff.

We encountered some cliffs earlier that we didn’t like. This is a bridge over the Pecos River, where it joins with the Rio Grande.


We had parked at an overlook so Merlene could give herself a pep talk about driving over the bridge. Finally, the Cap’n provided inspiration. He said, “Make It So!”


So across the bridge we went at Warp 2, straddling the white line so we didn’t have to get too close to either side. I think it was over in a few seconds. I had my eyes closed.

BBE 13 - Blooms, Birds, and Bikers

Compared to California, Texas was rather brown in March, but we did see lots of flowers along the roadways. These are Texas Bluebonnets. (Yes, they’re lupines, but do NOT call them that in Texas.)

One thing good about Lyndon Johnson is that he married a lady who had flowers planted all along the roadways in Texas. Further south were Big Bend Bluebonnets, a different strain that grows well in drier conditions.


This shrub that I’m snuffling up to (it smells grand) is a Texas Mountain Laurel.


I found a plant that still had a few seed pods hanging on it - not in the wild, it was a landscape plant in front of a motel - picked a couple, and brought them home, where I’m trying to get them to sprout.

We saw lots of birds, most of them were familiar, and a lot of them were LBB (little brown birds), the most difficult to identify. I did get to add a few new birds to my lifetime list: a Black Tufted Titmouse, a Vermilion Flycatcher, a Chihuahuan Raven. Merlene spotted a weird-looking bird sitting on a fence. I missed that one, but there was another like it a few miles away. It looked to me like an Aseel chicken, with a long neck, a white head and cape like a silver duckwing, and long yellow legs. This picture is from the internet.


It was a Crested Caracara. It’s a member of the falcon family. It has the feeding habits of a buzzard, however. This makes sense to me. How could a gaudy bird like this ever sneak up on live food?

I expected we might see a Roadrunner, and was hoping to see an Armadillo. We didn’t. We didn’t even a see a purse made out of a dead Armadillo.

In California you see dead wildlife everywhere along the roads, the traffic is relentless and habitat is being paved over injudiciously. In Texas the animals seem to have a better chance of survival, especially in West Texas where traffic is scarce.

We only saw one roadkill that looked interesting. We even turned around and went back to see what it was. It was just a jackrabbit that had been squished into a strange position.

My son tells me this blog is pretty boring, it’s just about a couple of old ladies wandering around looking at the wildlife. Well, sorta. We like to look at wildlife and rocks and things of historical interest. We were open to other things, there just wasn’t much out there..

One of my assignments was to take pictures of cowboys for Katherine. Texas is supposed to be cattle country, after all. We saw some fake cowboys at Luckenbach. How can you tell a fake? Because he just bought a brand new cowboy hat at the dude store. They even had a huge pile of hats you could paw through and use to have your picture taken.

Mostly in Texas you just don’t SEE anyone for miles and miles.


At home, when I try to leave my driveway in the morning there are 50 cars a minute ripping by. Along a ranch road in Texas we’d see maybe 8 in 30 minutes. There were ranch driveways, we could tell they were ranches because the signs said, “Stone Creek Ranch,” “Oak Valley Ranch,” etc. But we never saw a building from the road. No barns, no houses. In California “Oak Valley Ranch” would probably be 10 acres. You could see the whole outfit, with its 3 cows and 5 horses from the highway. It takes so many acres to run a cow in Texas, the ranches are huge and could be miles off the highway.

We only saw 2 certified cowboys on the whole trip. They were sitting on the ground holding their horses. It looked like they were waiting for a trailer to come pick them up after they’d been riding the range all morning. We didn’t see them far enough ahead for me to get the camera ready, though. Merlene would have turned around and gone back, but I’d have felt weird asking to take their picture. So, sorry Katherine.

We discovered some people who are really more fun than cowboys, anyway. Bikers!


These fellows were trying to take each others’ pictures in front of this sign into Big Bend park. Merlene, helpful soul that she is, jumped right out and helped them.


Then they loaned us their leather jackets and took our pictures. Those are on Merlene’s camera, though. It may be years before we see them.

I’m happy to announce that this blog has finally brought us to Big Bend.

BBE - Texas Scenery

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam
(or the longhorns, they’ll do)


Where the deer and the antelope play.
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

BBE 12 - Finding Lost Maples

I have a clear picture from an evening newscast in years past, of people in Texas being plucked from trees by a helicopter, floodwaters rushing around them. The people had been driving and were caught in the flood. I had visions of a flash flood; of someone driving along peacefully and suddenly water came from nowhere, picked up the car and floated it away, Luckily there were nearby trees with branches at a convenient height.

Well, now I know how those folks got into the trees. They made a bad decision.

On our way to Lost Maples State Natural Area, we drove along the scenic and peaceful Guadalupe River. The river winds back and forth, crossing under the highway at several points. But there are few real bridges to speak of. The river crossings are raised concrete corridors, maybe 4 or 5 feet above the river level. There are large pipes that let the river flow under the road, which is probably all but a few days a year. When there is a flood, the river goes over the top of the road. There are signs to warn drivers.


This is a raised concrete crossing. At the end of it, on the left, is a measuring gauge to show how deep the water is at the crossing.


The assumption is that given a warning and some factual information, Texans are bright enough to figure out when they shouldn’t cross the road. It’s really a great system, it cuts down the initial cost of building a road and minimizes damage from a flood.

I’m guessing those people in the trees were Californians who hadn’t been in Texas very long.

Remember the fish heads on the fence? Well, here’s a scene along the Guadalupe river. There’s quite a long stretch of fence with boots stuck on the ends of the posts. Merlene says they have been there for at least 30 years, though there are more now.


A lot of the fences in Texas are stake fences like this one. Without the boots.

Lost Maples State Natural Area is a lovely little park. It’s only about 2000 acres and was part of a working ranch until 1979, when it was purchased by the state. The park was named after the grove of Canadian bigtooth maples that inhabit the deep limestone canyons. They are leftovers from the last ice age, when Texas was cooler and moister. The canyons create a microclimate that has allowed the maples to continue growing here.

The park is especially popular in the fall, when the maple leaves are at their best. This picture is from an internet site. It shows how lovely the trees can be.


This is my picture. This is how the trees look in winter.


Another interesting thing in this area is Ball Moss (Tillandsia recurvata). We’d seen some in a tree in Johnson City. It looks like this:


At Lost Maples we got a closer look at Ball Moss.


I think they sell this stuff at Home Depot as an “Air Plant.” It’s usually attached to some kind of ceramic doodad like a small parrot, or a Bambi deer. You can supposedly hang it on the wall and it will grow there. It would be great stuff to use in Capn Picard’s landscapes, but I didn’t dare bring any home. We already have trouble with mistletoe in our trees.

Ball Moss is not a parasite like mistletoe, though. It’s an epiphyte.

There’s a small state park office at Lost Maples. I found a t-shirt there that I loved, but couldn’t find it in my size. On the way out Merlene stopped and looked again and found one! She’s such a pushy broad, I love people like that.

And I love my shirt. I wore it to work one day, though, and as I was standing at the counter holding some papers in front of it, one of my coworkers looked at the shirt and blushed. Cover half the M and the A in this picture.


She said, “Lost Nipples? What does that mean?”

BBE 11 - Luckenbach

Merlene pointed out to me last night that it's taking me longer to write about this trip than we spent on the trip itself. Yes, it is.


Luckenbach was our last destination in the Frederickburg area. It is small (population 3), even for a tiny town in Texas. We made three wrong turns before we found it, and then we asked each other, “Is THIS really the place?” It was. We were there on a quiet day, and even so there were quite a few people and some live music. Evidently the place livens up on a Saturday night, and when Willie Nelson is there it’s a real experience, with an audience that combines motorcycle helmets and cowboy hats.

In 1849, the town was started along the creek as a trading post. In 1970 it was run-down and for sale. It was purchased by Hondo Crouch, who ran it as a venue for country music. He has since died, and is memorialized in this sculpture.


Luckenbach has a dance hall, and a combination post office, souvenir store and beer joint that you see in this picture, surrounded by big oak trees.


There were two musicians playing (for free) when we were there. We listened for a while.


This guy was pretty good.


This guy not so much.


One of my favorite things about the place was the chickens running loose everywhere. They were well taken care of, and seemed to be accustomed to being chased around by kids. When they got tired of it, they perched in the trees over the picnic tables. This was an Ameraucana cross.


Hey! Is that Willie over there?


Nope, some other dude, but he has to know that pigtail will get him some attention here.



We watched people buy cowboy hats and become instant genuine pretend cowboys. My tour driver finished her genuine pretend beer and we were back On The Road Again, listening to Willie sing from the drink cup.

BBE 10 - Johnson City

I say I like to see everything there is to see, but sometimes I can be a stick in the mud. Merlene told me about Enchanted Rock, and it was something near Fredericksburg we planned see. It’s off the road aways. The first time we passed it, it was late afternoon and we were looking for our cabin. The next time there was no opportunity without backtracking. OK, so I admit I was the spoilsport. We didn’t see Enchanted Rock. Please feel free to look it up on the internet, you'll be enchanted.

One of our U.S. presidents, Lyndon Johnson, was born and raised in the Hill Country. We did go to Johnson City, where his boyhood home (one of them) has been preserved.



LBJ wasn’t one of my favorite presidents. No president from Texas seems to evoke fond memories from anyone. You have to wonder how they ever got elected. Except LBJ was NOT elected to that office, remember? He was vice president when Kennedy was assassinated and did not run for re-election on his own.

The Park Service has done its typical good job of preserving this slice of history for all of us. It pains me that the first budgets that are cut are for national or state parks. These things are such a small part of the budget, and such an asset for everyone. I mean, WHO would actually go to a place like Johnson City except to visit a monument? Its presence as a well-maintained, scenic property is an asset even if it had no historic relevance.

The Johnson family, by the way, was not well regarded in town when Lyndon was growing up. Relatives in the previous generation had gone broke when the Hill Country land they invested in went belly up and they owed money to lots of people. Lyndon’s own family was teetering financially, and his behavior - while probably typical of a young man who had identity issues - was not what you’d consider pre-Presidential. Except it did turn him into a hand-shaking, deal-making fellow, and those are assets to a career politician.

This is the courthouse in Johnson City.


This is the only courthouse photo I took in Texas. Every county has a county seat (a “capital” of the county) where its government offices are located. The ones I saw were all lovely creations built from limestone. There are LOTS of them because Texas has LOTS of counties.


There are 254 counties in Texas. In comparison, California which is about half the physical size of Texas, has 58 counties. Why does Texas need so many? They were originally set up when people rode horses and drove wagons. The theory was that a resident should be able to travel from any point in the county to its county seat in one day. In most towns, the courthouse was in the center of the town, in a town square.

In California, the county governments are well hidden. In Sacramento, for example, the county building looks like any other building downtown, and you have to navigate a series of one-way streets to get there, then pay a fortune to park. If too many people figure out how to access the building, they change the direction of the one-way streets, sending citizens in a maze through the hostile downtown area. Next time that citizen wants to protest something the county government has done, he’ll think twice and probably just stay home.

In a lot of ways, I admire the citizens of Texas. They aren’t as sheep-like as we are in California. Here is an example:


It was a grand jury in some limestone building in the middle of the county, a grand jury made of people who might even know the two people involved, who made the decision.

I might not have disciplined the cop, either, he'll surely suffer plenty of public humiliation for needing a taser to deal with a tiny little old lady, but I would have given her a medal for sticking up for herself.