Sidebar to the Oil Story to Follow; Interview with Rush Warren

Sidebar to the Oil Story to Follow

East Texas was home to the largest oil field in the world in the 1930s. Dallas tycoon H. L. Hunt made his fortune in the field after J. M. (Dad) Joiner persevered to drill the discovery well.

That well, the Daisy Bradford #3, still pumps oil as far as Rush Warren, who returned to Terlingua from East Texas late Monday night, knows.

In an aside on that well and personalities surrounding it, Warren said that in his youngest childhood, his best friend was Duel Glass, who is one of the sons of Joanne Bradford Glass, who was a niece and sole heir of Daisy Bradford.

"Our families have a long history since probably before the discovery well," Warren said, since my great grandfather, James Rush Warren, whom I was named after, was the district judge for Smith, Wood, and Upshur Counties for 20-30 years. The well is in Rusk County, but just barely out of Smith County. Tyler was the "urban hub" of that day.

"Coincidentally, his wife, my great grandmother, was Daisy Barnwell Warren. I reckon Daisy must have been a popular East Texas name back then."

Warren said he sees Duel about once a year. "I saw him last December at the 31st Annual Crude Club Christmas Party in Tyler," he said.

He said he has a sample of oil from the Daisy Bradford #3 that Duel gave him several years ago. It is in his desk at his ranch.

"Duel's family still owns the property, and I am pretty sure that they bought back the wells from H. L. Hunt many years ago," Warren commented. "I used to go out there to their house summers and swim. The house had a swimming pool, a novelty in those days."

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.

The Coffee Cup: Pam Priddy on the Olympics

The Coffee Cup: Pam Priddy on the Olympics

By Carlton Leatherwood

With the start of the Winter Olympics, I sat down with Pam Priddy, teacher of world geography in Terlingua School. It was apropos because the Olympics are being held at Sochi, Russia, right on the Black Sea.

"It's the first time they have had the Winter Olympics in a subtropical climate," Priddy began our discussion. "But it's near Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, so even though it is considered a subtropical climate, supposedly they have the snow and the elements they need not far away."

Mt. Elbrus is in the Caucasus Mountains in the Kabardin-Balkar Republic.

Sochi is a port city of 224,000 population, the latest figure I have available.

"I heard on the news that they were storing snow in case they did not get enough," Priddy said. "I don't know how you store snow, though--I guess moving it to higher elevation."

Mt. Elbrus is 18,481 feet elevation. Supposedly skiing would be at lower elevations due to the thinner air at that high an elevation.

But all the events in the Winter Olympics don't require snow? I asked.

"Right, the ones in the city itself, like ice skating, don't," the teacher responded. "They have built a huge arena and stadium for those events. They've been working on this for seven years.

"It should be interesting, too, because a lot of countries are making political statements about human rights in Russia," Priddy continued.

Cupette: I got away from coffee today with my early morning rise. Had the drink Ovaltine, which goes back to my youth and the label claims is rich chocolate and a good source of a variety of vitamins and minerals from A to E and iron to zinc.  

 

JOURNEY to the EDGE OF TEXAS

Journey to the Edge of Texas

(Editor's Note: This is the introduction to a book written by me circa 2000. This is the first printing. A chapter will appear each week.)

Mental illness derailed my train of thought a dozen times as I contemplated and worked on this book. I began writing it twenty years ago as a journal, but it was relegated to a side track as my psychotic explosions intensified. I often lost reality for three months at a time. Then a miracle drug, Risperdal, came my way and I improved--significantly. The journal got back on track.

This narrative tells of my odyssey through the wonders and beauties of Texas, a journey of heart, but the book also follows a parallel rail, a journey into the center of the brain. Try as I might, I cannot ignore my brain. At first I mostly wanted to offer something steeped in nature, outdoor recreation, and history. The collected wisdom of the caretakers of our landmarks have found its place in this work, too. But the dark moods that interrupted my efforts to create a fireside "chat "--they thunder to be heard as well. Having repelled them leads me to also tell the story of a scientific achievement that offers a beacon of hope to fellow sufferers.

I enrolled in a Continuing Studies course on memoirs at Rice University with the objective of breathing new life into this writing project. One of the first things the instructor asked us to do was to describe our intended reader. In retrospect, I must face the fact that I have done what I didn't want to do. I have written with the most appeal for those with mental illness. At the outset, and fooling myself all along, I considered the subject too depressing and figured that enough volumes have recorded all-too-many psychotic episodes.

I do brush over my episodes. I believe the interested will benefit primarily from the views of doctors at a federal health discrimination trial. A national authority on manic depression focused on the illness in expert testimony. A benevolent doctor of the plaintiff was apparently too close to the case. And the expert witness for the defense, with hindsight, was the one who best summed up the implications of my fifteen extreme bouts with psychosis.

The ill can also take comfort in knowing of an East Texas state hospital that is more like a wooded college campus than a stereotypical "nut" house. Its treatment, take heart, is on the cutting edge.

Given that I suffered in part from a trauma created in the workplace, I had the opportunity to claim disability. I was also blessed with a doctor who stepped in to keep me off the streets where many with my acute condition languish.

I think many who go in and out of mental hospitals as I have will celebrate that I and they can now find freedom in the discovery of new medication. It allows many to live outside hospitals for long stretches. The advancement is not a panacea, however. The best of the drugs can cause neurological side effects such as tremors and Parkinson's disease.

But this book is not altogether for, or about, the afflicted. Many readers, I hope, will go with me beyond the darkness to share in an exaltation of our landscape, thrill to the awareness in our nature of flora and fauna that overcomes an evil wind, and who may even enjoy observing my-all-too-human weaknesses as I literally lose a woman friend on a mountain trail.

I have also sandwiched in other aspects of my being, such as touching on marriage (why I didn't) and death (its coming to the fore in more frequent funerals). I have not taken much note of things before age forty (about the time of the confluence of manic depression and the odyssey). My writing instructor, however, gave the class an assignment to relate our earliest childhood memory. And I oblige.

I must forewarn you that my college English professor gave me the same assignment. When I was through and he passed back the paper, he said I couldn't have remembered what I wrote. In truth, I might have been remembering from pictures, and I don't know for sure.

I was four, and we were living in an orange frame apartment over a store that sold lumber and hardware. This was in McCamey, Texas, out in the Permian Basin President George W. Bush is so proud to include in his childhood history. My one sure recollection is a sandstorm that billowed into our residence. I remember the thickness of the air. I don't know how he--or we--survived.

Stairs led from the front door, trimmed in white, to the ground, and off to the side was a tin roof, over the lumber yard. We had a pet, a white and black fox terrier, which my paternal grandfather had given me, and we named her Lady.

She had one trick. She may have had others, but that I don't remember.

When there were passersby, she would jump from the stairs onto the tin roof and then run to the edge--it had a pitch--hang her head over, and bark. She was genuinely on the edge.

My thoughts of those days, though, are fleeting. I have found inspiration to finish the writing task before me in the award-winning autobiography of Christopher Nolan. A quaedriplegic, he wrote Under the Eye of the Clock by having someone hold his head while he tapped at a typewriter with a stick attached to his forehead.

My family has helped me. My parents' final Christmas gift, when I was down and they were going down, was a computer that would allow me to work at home. My mother never accepted my disability as permanent. "What a waste," she said, pausing before adding "of money."

What of the old word processor I had started the journal on? A friend suggested I "bronze it like baby shoes." 

Diesel Is Featured Artist

Diesel Is Featured Artist

Terlingua artist Mary Paloma Diesel is the featured artist this month at the Gallery on the Square on Holland Avenue in Alpine. Visit with Mary at a reception on Friday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Bring your valentine for refreshments and view the art of all the gallery members. Sign up for a chance to win a giclee print of Mary's work.

You can see her work online as well. Visit her website at http://marypaloma.com/

 

Desert Bike Fest of Universal Appeal Under Way Tomorrow

Vol. 1 No.1

Desert Bike Fest of Universal Appeal Under Way Tomorrow

An event of universal appeal gets under way in the desert Thursday. It's the Fourth Annual Chihuahuan Desert Bike Fest, running through Saturday.

But let a veteran bike enthusist, Alex Bowling, from Canada and Colorado, describe it for you:

"The event is a homecoming, where friends old and new come together doing what we love--mountain-biking some of the finest trails in all the Southwest.

"It's not a race. It's an event, it's a spectacle, it's a laid back affair full of smiles and single track."

He says the trails offer something for everyone--smooth, fast, easy-rolling desert to tough, grinding, technical canyon routes that really do take you "way out there."

Returning long-time local sponsors include Starlight Theatre, Big Bend Telephone, and West Texas National Bank. Further afield are Bicycle Sport Shop of Austin, Bike Barn of Houston, and Richardson Bike Mart of Richardson.

The event benefits the Big Bend Trails Alliance.

Rides will take place in Big Bend National Park, the Lajitas Trail System, and Big Bend Ranch State Park. For more information on the festival, the Internet site is www.desertsportstx.com

"There really is nothing like it," Bowling said, "an annual reunion of friends, family, and fat tires." 

An Editorial of Birth (published February 20, 1941

Thursday, February 20, 2014

An Editorial of Birth

February 12, 2014

Astrologists might be happy. The founding of this online newspaper is 2-12-2014.

I have undertaken this Fourth Estate business because I consider it a unique opportunity to serve my fellow citizens and to satisfy the juices in me. I pledge my all.

The paper will carry some news of the Terlingua community, though the present Terlingua Moon is a satisfactory outlet for most posts. My devotion will be to features on people and places throughout Texas, but especially in the Big Bend. And I will heavily invest in columns catering to the thirsty appetites of Terlingua readers.

Nor has the arts been adequately covered. We will correct that.

Nor has the oil and gas industry been truthfully covered. We will correct that.

The depth of our coverage will expand as we grow. Where we have an inkling of truth or a light hearted moment, we will write The Coffee Cup, a revival of a social column which first appeared in our college days.

Right now, plan for this newspaper "to hit the streets" on Wednesdays.

Happy Wednesdays to you all.