Short for "GeologicalScienceBlog", subjects will include Geology, Climatology, Environmental Science, NASCAR, Beer, Property Rights, Politics from a Christian Conservative/Libertarian viewpoint, and random thoughts. My background is two degrees in Geology (BS, MS), 8 years of geology/environmental employment and almost 8 years of teaching Geology and Environmental Science on a Junior College level. <68>

Monday, February 27, 2006

Late One Night Near Terlingua, Texas

By way of Ace of Spades blog, I found my way over to Demure Thoughts blog, where host Jennifer posted on the new James Bond actor, Daniel Craig, and his inability to drive a straight-shift in the Bond Aston Martin.

I commented that my redneck sensibilities were offended and I remarked that when I lived in Texas, in order to be considered an honorary Texan, you had to be able to shift gears, while holding a longneck bottle in your shifting hand (and not spilling any). Now when things got more serious and you had to lean over and shift into 4WD or low range, you had permission to shift the beer to your steering hand.

All kidding aside, I am glad that my daddy taught me the finer points of driving a 4x4, which have paid off in that I have never been stuck in mud. Part of that training was in a late-1940s Jeep, with no power steering, of course.

I have been stuck in loose rocks, loose sand (with a 4x2 pickup), stuck when the ruts were too deep and the truck bottomed out, once with my 4x4 Jeep pickup (there were some memories with that truck) and once with a state-owned 4x2. The last instance was the only time I had to be pulled out by another vehicle, a tractor, 'cause a front wheel had dropped into a hole at a wellsite.

The first time I had to get my Jeep unstuck, I wasn't driving it, a friend was. It was February, 1977, a few weeks after I moved to El Paso for geology grad school at UTEP, and a classmate had said "Hey, let's take off down to Terlingua for the weekend." It was to be a warm weekend, so we left out after our last Friday classes and it takes several hours to get from El Paso to the Terlingua area. After Marfa and Alpine (and a few beers), it gets pretty remote and I was getting tired, so I let Will drive my almost-new Jeep pickup (it only had 5,000 miles on it at that point).

I should have known trouble lay ahead when he said "I know a short-cut" and a few miles later, it was "damn, that gate wasn't there last time". This happened two or three times when we finally ended up, back at the main road, which led to Terlingua.

Once we found the town, we had to find a place to camp out, so we went on past the town, to a road that led to some old cinnabar (mercury) mines (where we planned to do some collecting the next day). Another locked gate and this time there wasn't a place to turn around, so Will was backing down this one-lane dirt road at about 1:30 AM, parallel to a deep arroyo (a dry wash), when I felt the left rear wheel drop into a deep rut that he had driven around on the way up. As I got out to survey the situation, I said something to the effect of "damn Will, what did you do to my new truck?". The left front tire and right rear tire were crammed under their respective wheel wells, essentially the truck was balanced on those two tires. The right front was barely touching the ground, as was the left rear tire, which was in the rut.

We were miles out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so there was no hope of even finding a place to call a tow truck, plus it ain't a good idea to knock on the door of an isolated ranch house in the middle of the night, unless it was a life-or-death situation, 'cause you might get shot.

Anyway, by that time, adrenaline had awakened me sufficiently to take over the driving duties. I made Will sit on the right front corner of the hood, so as to get some weight (and traction) on the right front tire, as I rocked the truck back and forth - reverse to first to reverse to first,... each time gaining a little momentum, all the while smelling my new clutch burning. After what seemed like 5 minutes, we somehow got out. I was pretty proud of myself, but I was also concerned about what I had done to my poor clutch. I was so busy concentrating on getting out of that deep rut, I don't know how Will managed to cling to the hood. Hey, he was the one that backed the truck into that rut.

[Years later, I had to do the reverse to first to reverse...rocking when I got that 4x2 state truck stuck in loose sand, with an automatic transmission. I hated to do that, but it would have been a long, hot walk (in June) to find someone to pull me out. I am glad that Chevy makes good transmissions.]

After we got out, it seemed like we had to back about a quarter mile (or more) further down that road until we found another road, where we pulled up onto a flat area and called it a night. I slept in the camper of my truck, while Will slept out on the ground (after all, this ain't Brokeback Mountain).

Will, ever the concientious cowboy-type, handed me his loaded .357 magnum and said "If I scream, use this". Rrrright. If he screams, I am supposed to squeeze off a couple of shots into the pitch-black night. There are mountain lions in that area, but fortunately, nothing happened during the remainder of the night. [To paraphrase Jerry Clower, "Just shoot in here amongst us, one of us got to have some relief", in reference to a tree-top encounter with a lynx, while 'coon hunting in the Mississippi Delta.]

When the sun rose the following morning, it was worth the trouble of the night before. The view of the surrounding mountains and hills was breathtaking. We didn't find much in the way of good mineral collecting, but we knocked about the Terlingua area for a number of hours and checked out the town itself, which is largely a ghost town. We did find a small bar in Study Butte, where we encountered an old geezer that swore he was a government agent. Will just leaned over and told me not to argue with him, that either he was telling the truth or he was crazy and we were still relatively in the middle of nowhere and we hadn't told anyone in El Paso where we were going.

It was possible that the old geezer had been contracted by the government to keep an eye on things that might have been "coming or going" in the border area. Again, you don't argue with crazy folks that might be carrying guns.

In all honesty, the Alpine, Texas area is a very pretty area, if you are into arid-climate scenery, where you can see for miles and miles. There is a small college there, Sul Ross State University, where Will eventually transferred to get his Master's Degree in Geology. He later had a small drilling firm, until the "big crash" of oil prices in the 1980s. I have long since lost touch with him. I tried a few years ago to make contact, writing all of his "namesakes" in Texas (that I found on the internet), but to no avail.

Will was the first person I got to know when I moved to El Paso and he was quite a character, the stereotypical redneck cowboy, except he had the utmost respect for rattlesnakes. He would go out at night and catch them for the UTEP Biology Dept. and then release them after their venom had been "milked". He would never kill a rattlesnake, in contrast to a roommate (Tom) I later had from Boston, who wanted to go out and kill rattlesnakes just on general principles. I had never deliberately killed a snake until last summer (2005), when I had to kill a small copperhead that was around a swimming pool, where there were also kids, so I was more comfortable with Will than with Tom. Them damn Yankees.

Anyway, it seemed to be the guys from Northeastern cities that wanted to go out in the desert and shoot snakes and coyotes. Maybe the Texas guys had gotten that out of their system when they were in high school. And maybe the cultures of the Northern cities (NYC, Boston,...) made guns seem like forbidden fruit, so when the Yankees migrated to the southwest, they were fascinated by this taboo. Will was always more responsible with guns, 'cause he had grown up with them, in contrast to the "Northeasterners", including my roommate.

Sorry for rewriting "War and Peace", but the inspiration for this post triggered a lurch down memory lane.
Posted by: on-the-rocks / 12:11 AM
Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home
|

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?