Spring

Everywhere I looked in Panhandle someone was doing something preparing for the surge of outsiders who would make and spend enough cash to sustain the town through the summer and into the Fall when the harvests of cotton, alfalfa, and sorghum plus the sale of beef cattle would fatten bank accounts for the long, profitless winter months ahead. The activity made me think of places like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where merchants eagerly await college Spring Breakers and their money, except that there are no beaches or bikinis in Panhandle.

It was late March. Cotton and alfalfa farmers were looking over fallow fields, planning acreage, reading long range weather forecasts, making decisions about exactly when to begin plowing and planting. Too early or late, crop yield could fail. A late frost like the one six years ago could wipe out any hopes of profit at harvest. They read weather forecasts from the AG agency, listened closely to the NOAA reports, studied the satellite pictures from NASA and kept a copy of the Old Farmers Almanac on the end table next to their recliners for backup.

Caravans of migrant laborers were due in a few days to prep the land. They would move on, working their way north to the vegetable fields in Wisconsin and Minnesota then back again in the Fall for the melon harvests in Marfa.

Cowboys from the western states were drifting in for the roundups and branding. Many of them liked to work in pairs while others preferred to go it alone, thinking their thoughts, perhaps not thinking, just doing a job. They’d be gone again by mid-summer, off to pastures in their home states where the seasons came and went a little later than they did in Panhandle country. In between, there were rodeos, where the young unbroken men would risk life and limb for prize money that would seem paltry compared to a broken neck.

Ok. We have all the brown ones. Now go get the black and white ones.

Oil wells have no season. The men who work the wells and pumps are here year round but their numbers swell and fall depending on the wildcatter’s luck at finding oil they can’t see, touch, or smell. A roustabout’s life is hard and the rewards few but they have a proud air about them, something they want everyone to see; that they’re tough men who work hard, play hard, die hard because nothing in life is easy but they can take it better than anyone else, especially you, whoever you are. It’s easy to knock the chips off their shoulders. Sometimes all it takes is a smile.

At the high school, the Senior boys and girls were giving each other final looks, making their choices for who they would marry in the coming months. Some set their sights elsewhere, like college or the Army. All of them are wistful about leaving childhood and anxious to get started on adulthood. Time was simultaneously passing too slowly or rushing by too quickly.

For Jackie’s bar, Spring brought more customers, longer hours behind the bar, less talk with the regulars. Rollie and Tim would do well recycling the empty bottles and cans in Jackie’s dumpster. They’re best friends, occasional handymen or laborers whenever they need money. Rollie, now in his 40’s never had a steady job and that’s how he likes it, his natural inclination being to do what he wanted when he wanted. Tim was a younger version of Rollie, an orphan who settled in Panhandle after finding life in big cities like Lubbock too stressful. If you needed help with anything involving manual labor you could usually find one of them where they lived in a trailer behind the bar.

Anticipating the Spring crowds, Sheriff Tom and Deputy Dudley prepared the drunk tank for receiving rowdy customers from the town’s four bars. Dudley laid in extra disinfectants, cleaning supplies and old towels in the cruisers and the supply closet at the jail. Mona, the dispatcher, threatened to quit every year around this time, complaining she didn’t sign on to wipe vomit off the floors and walls, and if the Sheriff didn’t like it, he could do the cleanup himself. The Sheriff just shrugged it off but to be fair, both he and Dudley did their share of cleaning.

Jackie’s is one of the four bars in Panhandle. Jackie’s Cold Day Inn got its name from an old timer visiting the bar the day it opened. When he learned the owner was a woman he declared it would be a cold day in hell before he ever came back.

If you’re looking for live country music, dancing, crowded tables, lots of noise, and watered down drinks you’ll probably wind up at Billy’s Last Stand. If you happen to be Mexican or some variety of Hispanic, Chato’s is the place to go. There’s a jukebox that plays Mexican country music, the drinks are reasonably priced and the beer ice cold. You can order Mexican botanas (hors d'oeuvres) from Mamacita’s Diner next door. Mamacita’s stays open from Friday night to Monday morning, serving up time-tested but unproven hangover cures.

If your tastes are more “refined” you’ll probably visit a chrome and leafy fern bar named Touch of Class, a place with low lighting, high prices, clean floors, table linens, and a pianist who plays so softly the music seems to be coming from across the street.

If you like what I like, you’ll go to Jackie’s Cold Day Inn. The drinks are mixed well and the beer is cold. (Sorry, but no craft beers are on offer. Water is served from a tap next to a dry sink full of chunky ice and cold beers.) It’s not a dive but let’s say the maintenance is casual. There is no jukebox and no live music. The patrons are people who like quiet conversation be it trivial or serious. Or others who want to have time for themselves and drink alone. I once overheard a pair of young ranch hands leaving the bar, one of them saying the place was like a library without books, and the other one asking when he’d ever been in a library.

Nearly everyone in town was busy getting ready for Spring except for me. This time of year no one wants to hear my sales pitches. They’ve already bought what farm equipment they needed last winter. If anything, I need to check with my home office to check on spare parts inventories. I know what equipment everybody has, how old it is, and a fair idea of which parts are likely to fail. It’s a good feeling to say, “Yeah, the torque converter is in stock, be here tomorrow by noon.” That earns me lots of atta boys and free drinks not to mention more sales later on. I love springtime. I can take my salesman hat off and drive from ranch to farm to ranch and talk to the men and women, human to human, hear their stories and tell them mine without a nickel changing hands.

And so it was that I was the lone customer at Jackie’s. Wendy and Jackie were too busy setting up extra mugs and bar rags, folding chairs and tables to pay any attention to me. Cases of beer and whiskey were stacked outside the storage room next to sacks of beer nuts the same color as the bags of kibble at Hanson’s feed store.

I went behind the bar and poured myself a Jack on the rocks, logged the drink next to my name on the ledger and went back to my table near the door. Out the window I could see Milo and Laurie across the street. Milo owns a crafts store and Laurie owns a gift shop a few doors down. Neither business gets much traffic from the spring visitors.

They appeared to be speaking cordially. Laurie’s hand kept going to her hair, brushing it behind her ear while Milo didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, in his pockets, out of his pockets while he smiled and looked straight at Laurie then breaking eye contact and looking past her down the sidewalk.

Those two had been seen at each other’s stores and, of course, that started rumors about them as a couple. Neither one has an ex-spouse and aren’t in a hurry to acquire one. I know both of them and it seems to me that they’re suited for each other but it’s an opinion I keep to myself. It’s town business and I’m from out of town. The Postmistress, Millie, whose uncanny ability to know things before they happen hasn’t said anything about it yet.

I stopped at Les’s General Store earlier that day to buy an extra pair of work gloves. The story goes that he opened his store with a $500 loan from the bank when he was just a 17 year old high school Senior with no collateral at a time when money was so tight the only credit you could get was for showing up for work on time.

He was busy arranging and re-arranging his stock when I walked in. Lucky for him he only sells dry goods, which means there’s no spoilage to worry about. What he does worry about is knowing which cowboy fashions are “in” this year. He still has an impressive inventory of Stetson knock offs that didn’t sell during spring four years ago. That mistake cost him several hundred dollars that he hopes to recover if that style ever comes back. I told him he should try removing the big fluorescent feathers and medallions on the crown. He fussed with a rack of belts and said he’d think about it.

Be back in style someday

Hand-tooled belts sell very well at Les’s. Stan, a former rodeo cowboy whose classmates used to call the Invisible Man, carves them. After a few years on the rodeo circuit he had had enough kidney-rattling bronco riding, came home and married a girl who was his opposite in every way. While no one, even his friends, can describe him without struggling a bit to find the words, no one has any difficulty in telling you about his wife, Corrina, a beautiful, vivacious woman everyone wants to know. How they ever got together confounds their friends to this day.

Bronc busting? It'll be fun, they said

I went to the bar to fix myself another drink. I glanced out the window and saw a delivery truck stopped in front of Doc Harris’s office unloading several boxes of what I guessed were medical supplies. Most bar fights that take place during Panhandle’s spring invasion aren’t too serious but Doc has to see all the injured. He stocks extra quantities of Ace bandages, surgical tape, cotton balls, antiseptics, and butterfly staples. During Spring he sleeps in his office on weekends so he doesn’t have to drive back and forth to his clinic every time he gets calls from the Sheriff. I think he gives the County volume discounts from March to end of May.

Doc Harris took over his father’s practice when the old man retired. People who knew the old Doc Harris swear his son looks exactly like he did many years ago. His medical diplomas from Baylor and Texas Tech hang on the far wall behind the receptionist’s desk so that you have to lean over her desk to read them, and Doris discourages leaners. Doc and Doris have been married for 20 years but haven’t bothered to go through the ceremony, so she’s still Miss Duncan to the patients, and nobody cares anymore.

I was still standing behind the bar when Mike rushed in and gave me a letter for Jackie. He touched the brim of his hat, said hi, and rushed out again. People who don’t know Mike underestimate him. They see his dirty hands and grimy coveralls and think ‘grease monkey’. The fact is, Mike works at his Conoco station and mechanic shop but he doesn’t need the job or the income. His money comes from land he leases to the Love's Truck Stop where the interstate intersects with SR1459. That intersection happens to be a crossroads for most of the trucking and tourism that passes on to South and East Texas.

Years ago when the slick moneymen from Dallas tried to buy three acres of his land he said no, but he’d lease it for a small percentage of the net income. Everybody thought he was a fool to pass up selling for a percent or two. Mike saw it differently figuring that the truck stop would be a success and would need to expand sooner or later --- on to ten more acres that he owned, at a higher percentage of the net income. Sheriff Tom told me Mike is doing what he wanted to do from the time he was a child, own a two-man gas station with a mechanic shop on the side.

To me, Mike symbolizes what the people of Panhandle are like. They know when they have enough. Their goals may be modest but they are achievable. Sheriff Tom sees everything that goes on in Panhandle close up. Cruising up and down empty county roads for years in a relatively crime free atmosphere, the Sheriff has a lot of time to think. He told me once that Panhandle was a town too small to grow and too good to die. It’s located in the center of a triangle of big cities that attract national business chains, medical centers, and universities.

Unlike at other small towns, the kids who grow up here go off to college or try their luck in the big cities often coming back to take over their parents’ ranches or businesses. Others who return take jobs in the big cities, combining small town life with big city wages. Look around, Tom said. Dying towns don’t have young folk like we do here. Well, I did look around. The Sheriff had a point.

I was mulling that over as I watched Jackie and Wendy wipe down the extra tables they’d set up. Those two get along so well you’d think they were mother-daughter or older sister-younger sister. It was half seriously rumored that Jackie had been married three times and had outlived the last husband with a well-placed shot between the eyes. To me, Jackie doesn’t seem the type to have led a wildly disordered early life. On the other hand I have witnessed her as an invincible she-bear when her friends are threatened. The set of her jaw and the glare in her eyes is enough to make most men wonder if maybe they’d be better off backing away. In a way she’s like a stick of dynamite, harmless until you light the fuse.

Jackie said something that made Wendy laugh. It’s hard not to look at Wendy. She is stunningly beautiful, and much to the sorrow of the young men of Panhandle, Wendy is gay. Doc Harris said it best when he remarked that at least one young gallant, Gary, would saw his fingers off one at time if that would make her straight. Sheriff Tom and Doc Harris are probably the most respected men in Panhandle. I was at Jackie’s with them one night when an exiting cowboy stage-whispered to us that Wendy was a #&#%$ queer. Both Tom and Doc stood up. Tom said, “So?” and Doc took one step towards the cowboy and followed him out.

Wendy and her wife, I think, are professional students who dabble in science then switch to the arts and literature, to history, to geology depending on who knows what. A good friend of mine is a professional student who by age 40 had accumulated enough credits for six unrelated degrees, and he wasn’t done. I haven’t heard from him in long time but I’m guessing he’s still piling up the credits toward some goal he hopes to find. Wendy’s most recent ambition is to become a teacher while her wife looks to have finally settled on a divinity degree.

Whatever they do, more power to them. I’ve been around long enough that I’ve learned not to judge. I’m a city boy born and bred. How I went from studying liberal arts and beach babes in California to selling farm equipment in Texas is a story I would tell if only I could make sense of it myself. One day I woke up, put on my jeans, boots, and hat, drove to my office in Amarillo where my boss presented me with an award for 20 years of stellar sales. There is no logic to my life nor can I find that moment when I said to myself that I was born to sell furrow makers in Texas for the next 20 or 30 years.

I know I’ve had too much Jack when I start thinking like that so I decided to go to my room at the Lazy Bones Motel, order some take out and watch TV but that plan went away when Sheriff Tom, Les, and Doc Harris walked in talking and laughing.

Tom was saying, “So when I said, ‘Doc, are you ready for the Poodle Shoot next Saturday?’ she screamed, hit me with her purse and kicked me in the shin.”

Jackie looked up and said, “Hold on, Tom. I wanna hear this one from the beginning.”