A Price Tag on an Ocotillo? Linda Walker Had Never Heard of Such

Carlton Leatherwood's Texas:

A Price Tag on an Ocotillo?   Linda Walker Had Never Heard of Such

"Oh, that's a great story, that's a great story," Linda Walker of Big Bend Stone and West Texas Plants in Terlingua said when I asked how she got into the business of marketing plants.

She also has Big Bend-Lajitas Stables in Study Butte.

"It was all interconnected," she said about the beginning of the plant operation. "A lot of interesting things happened. I had--I no longer do them--but I had run trips in Mexico for 15 years or so. And we kept our clients at La Gloria's in San Carlos.

"My mother came down one Christmas, and I took her to Gloria's--not on horseback--but we spent two or three days over there. She's the parent who was from Colorado. By that time my father had passed away. But my mother had never forgot nor forgave her first impression of Texas. So all my life my folks moved back and forth between Texas and Colorado. Like where the winds blew. But my mom never liked living down here, and my dad never liked living in Colorado.

"And they had a pact, and we honored it. The pact was between them that whichever one died first, the one that survived got to plant the one who died in the state that the survivor wanted to be buried in. And so consequently my dad is buried in Colorado. That's where my mom wanted to be buried and she outlived him. But she's dead now.

"That's a sad story. Nobody should have to be the oldest living person in their entire family when they are 53 years old. I have no aunts, no uncles, no grandparents, no parents. So I have to be the keeper of all memories.

"At any rate, Mom came down and while we were at La Gloria's, which is Gloria Page, Rick Page's ex-wife, while we were at La Gloria's, which is a lovely place to go to, Gloria had a bunch of rocks with holes, which she was using as planters. And my mom saw those rocks and said, 'That's the coolest thing I've ever seen. I need some of those.' Well, Lico said, 'I can get you some of those.'

Lico is my husband, and that's a whole story in itself. He is northeastern Jewish descent, but he was raised in Mexico. So he is not just bilingual; he's bicultural. And he was partly raised in San Carlos.

"He's a trader at heart. And so at that point, the crossing in Lajitas was open, people went back and forth. We were one community with a strip of water in the middle, and Lico was trading washing machines, auto parts, shocks, and you name it. So he said, 'You know I can trade for some of those rocks.' So he traded for a couple of planters for Mom. I got to looking at those things, and I said, 'Hell, Lico, those people in Taos are crazy. They'll buy anything.'

"I have horses up there in the summer. And I take empty horse trailers up there toward the end of the summer and bring horses back. So we can trade for some of those rocks and see if we can sell them in Taos and pay for our gas. So we traded for 20 or 30 of those rocks with holes, which are now known as tinajas. And when we got to Taos, the first nursery we drove into bought every single one of them. So Big Bend Stone was born.

"So he would drive around New Mexico, southern Arizona, and Texas and sell them to nurseries. That went on for a couple of years. And we were coming back from Taos, and we still had some rocks in the truck. And Lico stopped at the old Iron Skillet truck stop on the east side of El Paso--that's been there as long as I can think of, 40 or 50 years. Right next to it was a nursery called Nurseryland, and it had been there forever. So we stopped there, and Lico went in to try to sell some tinajas, and I was walking around.

"I'll be damn if there wasn't an ocotillo with a price tag on it. I had never heard of such a thing. And they were big ocotillos. And there was also, well at this point I just called them yuccas. This was the year after Steve Smith bought Lajitas. It was 2002 or 2003.

"We got back in the truck, and I said, 'Lico, they're selling ocotillos in there. And he said, 'Oh, yeah, when I stop at these nurseries, they ask me if I have ocotillos to sell.' I said, 'Really, people will pay for ocotillos?' He said, 'Oh yeah, they buy 'em.' I said, 'I know where we can get a bunch of ocotillos.' He said, 'What are you talking about?' I said, 'Steve Smith, he's bulldozing that air strip out there.' He said, 'You're nuts.' I said, 'No. I think I can get the ocotillos.' And Lico thought I was out of my mind.

"As for the yucca, it is a variety that while it grows all over Mexico, the only places it sticks its toe across the border is Big Bend National Park and the Dead Horse Mountains. It is the Yucca rostrata, and it is the single most popular yucca and the single most expensive yucca in the world. It's the one everybody wants.

"What I really hadn't figured out was the 7,000 foot runway and a thousand feet wide would give a big load of plants. It's almost 40 acres. It was a lot of ocotillos and a lot of plants. And they were going to bulldoze them, so we pulled all the ocotillos, and we pulled all of the yuccas. We brought them in and stacked them next to the stables in Lajitas, the old stables, not the one that is there now. So I had this huge bank of ocotillos and yuccas.

"And the other chapter in this story is that while I had that mountain of ocotillos, I had a couple pull up one day. She didn't speak much English--they were obviously northern European. So this guy comes in and said, 'We'd like to take a horseback ride.' And I get ready to collect money from them, and I said that will be such and such for both of you. 'Oh no, I'm not riding. She's riding,' he said. I said, 'OK, fine.' So I got her all situated, and sent her on her merry way with my guide.

"And the guy, who is driving a rental truck, is walking around by the ocotillos. He said, 'Tell me about these plants.' And I said, 'Those are called ocotillos,' doing my whole spill. He said, 'I understand what they are. What do you do with them?' I said, 'Oh well, I think we can sell them to nurseries.' He said, 'What about these other plants?' I said, 'Those are called yuccas.' He said, 'Yes, I know this, but what are you going to do with them?' I said, 'They were going to bulldoze them, so I will just plant them around my house and the stables here.' He said, 'You have quite a few. I might be interested in buying them. He said, 'I don't have time on this trip, but in January, if you still have these plants, I will buy the yuccas from you.' 'Sure.'

'Dig a trench and put them in it, and they will do OK,' he said.

"So I planted the yuccas I wanted to, and I had a ton of them left. I dug a trench up by my house, and I put them in it. Lo and behold in January, he showed back up, and he bought the yuccas from us.

"And it turned out he is a very dear friend of us now. But he is the largest desert plant importer in Europe, and that is what he does for a living. He imports containers of plants. He was driving through here because he loves the area."

That is how Big Bend Stone and West Texas Plants came to be, according to Linda Walker, an exceptionally fine storyteller.