Tag: Amarillo

The Salt of the Earth

Clarence and Nita lived in Lebanon while he was a missionary. Many times I remember him praising the hospitality afforded to guests by the Lebanese people. It is not only a local or national cultural characteristic, but extends through much of the region. My family experienced it during our time in Turkey. I don’t know if my in-laws were raised that way, learned it in the Middle East, or adopted it afterward, but they were the consummate hosts when anyone came into their house. I just know that from the time I first met them until Clarence passed away and Nita moved in with one of their sons, they treated everybody as greatly honored special guests. That even extended to the young guy dating their oldest daughter, who eventually became a son-in-law…

I don’t remember when I started drinking coffee, but I do know I drank a LOT of it during my college years. I still drink quite a bit of coffee, and love my Keurig – it makes a consistently good cup of coffee.

This story takes place after Vonna and I had been married a number of years. We were at Clarence and Nita’s house the day after their return from a week-long stay at a cabin in the mountains of New Mexico. As Clarence and I sat in the living room talking, Nita asked if we wanted some coffee. We both said we did and she went back to the kitchen, where she and Vonna were talking, to put on the coffee. Not long afterward, Nita came back carrying mugs of coffee for us. It wasn’t necessary, but as I mentioned, being hospitable was always important to them.

Clarence and I differed on how we liked our coffee. He liked his so hot it wouldn’t have cooled a nuclear reactor. He also preferred his coffee black. I, on the other hand, like my coffee hot, yet cool enough that my taste buds don’t take days to recover. And while I also like black coffee, my preference is with some cream and sugar. Vonna and I had been married long enough, and Nita was observant enough to know exactly how much cream and sugar I liked in my coffee. So for years, whenever she had offered me a cup of coffee, she served it with those condiments stirred in. And it was always a great cup of coffee!

It has finally been resolved, but for decades Amarillo had issues with the salt content of the city water. At the time of this story, it was dramatically improved, but ice made from the city water still needed rinsing to remove the slight amount of salt forced to the outside by the freezing process before putting it in a drink. Cups and glasses, after being rinsed and allowed to dry upside down would sometimes have a slight salt taste when you first put the rim to your lips. So I thought nothing of it when I put the cup of coffee to my lips. Slight salt taste, no big deal. The temperature was just right for a large sip of the liquid…

As I brought it into my mouth, my expression must have changed dramatically. Clarence looked over at me and smiling, asked, “What’s the matter? Too hot for you?” I couldn’t answer, I had a mouth full of coffee. But it was unlike any coffee I had ever tasted! As I sat there, my face getting more and more red, I couldn’t decide whether to swallow it or spit it back into the cup! I finally decided on the latter action. Then I could respond to him and Nita, who, hearing his question had come back into the room. It was extremely salty! It took just a minute for Nita to figure out what had happened. When they had gone to the cabin, she had put several things in similar jars – flour, sugar, and SALT, among other things. Since they had just returned home, she was using the items she needed from the jars rather than the regular canisters. Unfortunately, the salt and sugar looked very similar and being distracted by the conversation with her daughter, she confused the two jars. I’m just glad it wasn’t something like detergent!

Apologizing profusely, as we all laughed about it, she brought a tray with a fresh cup of coffee, a spoon, sugar bowl and cream. I “doctored” my own coffee. To this day, over 30 years later, she has never again put cream and sugar in a cup of coffee for me…

Porsche – again…

In a previous post, I described a near-accident in a Porsche and how its extraordinary capabilities both got me into and out of trouble. It is the blessing and curse of driving a high-performance car and not paying attention to or respecting that fact. I also mentioned there was another incident in that car where I believe it saved my life or at least prevented serious injury.

I was headed from Amarillo to the city of Canyon, 19 miles away, for a fraternity gathering. It was 10:00 on a Friday night and I was running late…

I had made that trip many times and knew the roads very well. Just south of the city limits of Amarillo, I was on a familiar, but very lightly traveled country road. I was observing the 65 mph speed limit before rounding a curve onto a long, straight stretch with a slight drop before a small incline in the middle of that stretch. To make up some time, I increased my speed…to 110. With my halogen lights on, I could see fairly well, but quite honestly, not for that speed. Then, way off in the distance, I saw the taillights of a car ahead.

“Knowing my luck, that’s a cop…” I backed off of the accelerator some. I was now heading into that slight down slope so my headlights were shining onto the road, not parallel to it because of the beginning of the slight upslope. My distance vision was radically reduced.

“What was that?” I thought I saw a small flash in front of me. I moved my foot from the accelerator to the brake. I reached the bottom of the slope at about 95. When the headlights were shining parallel to the road again, I saw them! The flash had been the reflection of my headlights in a cow’s eyes!

Two black steers were walking head-to-tail across this narrow road. It was blocked! I hit the brakes hard but was so close I was upon the cows going somewhere between 70 and 80. I couldn’t go off road and around them at that speed, so I took my only option – go between them. Great idea, but the space was smaller than the width of the Porsche.

I hit the front leg of the second cow, then I felt it hit the side of the car and things got squirrely. The car headed left, so I cranked the steering wheel back to the right. The car got a little sideways pointed to the right and as I looked out across the grass on that side of the road, it looked flat, but there was a barbed wire fence probably 20 yards away. I remember thinking, “If I go off the road here, at least it’s flat. But I might hit that fence…” I twisted the steering wheel back to the left then adjusted to the right. The car fishtailed, straightened up and I pulled it off the road.

“There’s a dead cow in the road…I need to get it off the road before somebody else hits it!” I tried to open the driver’s door – no luck. I crawled over the shifter to the passenger seat, opened the door and stepped out. I walked around the front and looked at the u-shaped dent in the bumper. Then I looked at the completely collapsed left front fender that was shoved back against the door wedging it shut. As I walked to the back and saw the dent in the left rear fender, it was beginning to register that even if there is a cow on the road, I’m not going to be able to drag over a thousand pounds of literally dead weight off the pavement. But I did want to see if the cow survived. It was nowhere to be found! I knew he couldn’t have gone far because the dent in the bumper said his leg must be broken…

I walked to a nearby farmhouse and called the Department of Public Safety. When they arrived, they agreed that the cow couldn’t have gone far. Shining their spotlights at the fence, they noted that the fence was down. Texas is not an open-range state, so the cows were definitely guilty of jaywalking.

When they finally located the cow, it was dead. Its neck was broken. It was lying in a ditch hidden by tall grass on the left side of the road. When they were finished, they told me I could drive the car home. There was only one problem. By then, my father had come to pick me up and using a crowbar, we couldn’t bend the metal fender off of the left front wheel enough for me to turn the steering wheel more than an inch in either direction!

Saturday was very sobering intellectually and emotionally. I went back to the scene of the crime. On the left side of the road was the hidden ditch where we found the cow, but on the other side of the road, was another hidden ditch about 10 feet wide with a 6-foot drop-off. Based on the skid marks, it was where I thought the ground to the right was flat. It would have been much worse had I gone off the road there! At that point during the accident, I remember turning the steering wheel through more than 90-degrees in each direction from center. Afterward, I couldn’t move it more than about 10-degrees because of the fender collapsed around the wheel.

The car was back on the road in three weeks – a testament to Porsche’s engineering and construction quality. I have no good explanation why the steering wheel turned so easily during the accident and almost not at all afterward…other than to say that my faith that God has a plan for me was strengthened.

Cheap Thrills in an Expensive Car

Porsches are great automobiles! They are very high quality and probably saved my life – on two separate occasions. That particular one was painted “Crystal Blue”. (The same color as the Porsche 917 featured in the Steve McQueen movie “LeMans”.) It had mechanical fuel-injection, dry-sump oiler, 5-speed manual transmission, and was air-cooled (all Porsches and VWs were at that time). And it was FAST!

The problem with high-performance cars is that they can be a handful and can get you into trouble faster than you can blink! Porsches are well-balanced for superior handling, but the 911-series is rear-engined. That’s something you can’t forget because they can swap ends quickly and suddenly you’re out of control or facing the wrong direction!

July 3rd. My future wife and I were westbound on I-40 in Amarillo. It was about 5:00 pm and a week day. Traffic in Amarillo is never very heavy, but with the holiday almost upon us, a lot of vehicles were passing through town. It was sunny, hot and dry.

Uncharacteristically, I was driving the speed limit (70 mph), in the middle lane as we topped the bridge over a cross street. In the congestion, a slower-moving car in the right lane moved into my lane as I was about to pass him. I quickly veered toward the left lane to keep from hitting him. That was my first mistake – moving BEFORE looking to see if it was clear. It wasn’t…

That’s when I made my second mistake. Seeing a car, I immediately cut back to the right, over-correcting a bit, and was now heading into the right-hand lane and toward the guardrail designed to keep vehicles from sailing off of the bridge. Now the adrenaline was pumping and I made my third mistake! I cut the wheel sharply back to the left to try to stay in the right-hand lane – and on the bridge. A little too much adrenaline in that move and I over-corrected again! At the same time, I tapped the brakes to slow things down – mistake number four. That’s when the rear bias of the engine weight plus the braking action on the front end conspired against me. A lesser car would probably have flipped over, but not the Porsche! Suddenly, we were in the center lane again, skidding backwards, looking at the cars and semis coming over the top of the bridge. That’s when time slowed down…

In that adrenaline-induced timeline, I realized what had to be done. First, shift to neutral and let the engine speed drop. Then, I slammed the shifter into Reverse, cut the wheel to the right and backed through the small gap in the left lane traffic and onto the narrow shoulder where the center guardrail separated us from the eastbound traffic. Just enough room to again be facing west, I put it in 1st, steered back into the left lane and burned rubber! I pulled off at the next exit, stopped, got out, and looked the car over – especially the Michelins. No damage! It was as much my fault as his, but I don’t think the guy in the car who started it all even knew what had happened behind him!

The guy I almost hit in the left lane pulled off and asked if we were okay and my fiancée’s  comment was, “Just like an amusement park ride…”

She still married me. I think it was for the car…

Hair today…gone tomorrow…

There exists a photograph, a snapshot really, of a young man standing with his mother on the southwest rim of the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle. Taken in the early 1970s, his hairstyle is completely appropriate for the time.  His hair was long, but not overly so.  On a normal day, it would have been combed and parted and neat. He was tall – six-foot three – thin, slightly tanned, and his hair was naturally a dark brown color which matched his mustache and very dark brown eyes.

That day, however, his hair was sun-bleached to an almost red color – not uncommon whenever he spent some time in the sun. The Texas Panhandle is largely a prairie and notorious for things such as its hot, very dry climate, and constant wind. The average daily wind is 14 mph. That may not sound like much, but there are a number of days when the wind doesn’t blow enough to speak of, so to average out at 14, means there are days when it really blows! There are occasions when the measured wind velocity between Amarillo’s downtown buildings hits 100+ mph. Those times tend to be a bit expensive for the insurance companies who pay for the damages done. The hot, dry summer wind that day was apparently a little above the average and as evidenced by his hair. It was wild…unkempt even – the result of all of these factors and the fact that it was naturally very curly. It looked like a reddish “Fro”.

Ask anyone with naturally curly hair if they like it and more often than not, you’ll get a negative response – especially the younger crowd. It is hard to control – it literally seems to have a mind of its own. It is harder to cut because the curls may be tighter one day than the next. So the hairstyle can vary with the humidity, the weather, the wind, the way it was slept on, etc., etc. At times it even seems to vary with owner’s attitude that day – or maybe it’s the attitude that varies based on how attractive the hair looks… Either way, the result doesn’t vary – it is still difficult to deal with. But maybe not for much longer…

In the July, 2016 volume of National Geographic magazine, there is a short article discussing some of the characteristics of curly hair. According to the article, studies published in the journal of the American Physical Society describe the hair shaft as a very complex structure – influenced by gravity, texture and the shape of the follicle it grows from. Apparently, an asymmetrical follicle produces curly hair and the longer the hair grows, the more complex the structure. The more complex the structure, the more susceptible to heat. So Purdue University is investigating the styling temperatures best suited to maintaining healthy curly hair.

Having been that young man in the photograph and having not used heat to style my hair, I can attest to the fact that it did not contribute to having little remaining volume or that my much shorter hair is now controllable by a fine-toothed comb…

Texas Panhandle

A recent trip to Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, brought back memories of younger days. My wife and I met and married there – and one of our daughters was born there.  It is a great town…city…but often overlooked as people pass through on I-40 heading east or west, and to a lesser extent, I-27 as people go north or south.  It is usually seen as a good stopping point to spend the night because the next larger cities are 100 miles south, 280 miles west, 240 miles east, or 360 miles north.  Not enough people pause long enough to explore the area.

For those unfamiliar with the term or the geographical region, the Texas Panhandle is the northern rectangle of the state that consists of 26 counties bordered by the states of Oklahoma and New Mexico.  (Not to be confused with the country of Mexico that borders the southern edge of Texas.)

About twenty miles south of Amarillo is the Palo Duro Canyon.  Seventy miles long, averaging about six miles wide, and up to 1,000 feet deep, it is second only to the Grand Canyon!  In the canyon itself are a number of things to see and do – camping, hiking, horseback riding, and a musical drama called “Texas” which is performed in a beautiful amphitheater with a backdrop of a section of the canyon wall.  The entire cast are amateurs but they are very good!  It is an entertaining play – well worth the time, effort and cost to see.

But it is the canyon itself, combined with the indigenous fauna, that is the real draw.  The rocks vary from the normal sandy-colored dirt of the Panhandle at the very top and the off-white of the Ogallala aquifer just below, to the iron-oxide rich red claystone near the bottom.  In between, varying rock layers elicit streaks of white, gray, yellow and even lavender.  One of the prominent features in the canyon is the formation named the “Lighthouse”.  I have hiked up to the base of the Lighthouse…if you want to call it a hike.  It is actually a nice walk across fairly even terrain.  You can choose to observe it from your car and it is still impressive, but either way, never more impressive than with a typical Panhandle sunset.

Panhandle sunsets are often spectacular.  The sky, with no mountains and few other obstructions, stretches from horizon to horizon. Add a few clouds and as the sun retreats from view, the colors are amazing!  Bright gold in the west, with patches of orange shading gradually darker as your gaze traverses toward the east.  All on a background of blue darkening to indigo as time slips away…but in the canyon…

The last rays of the sun seem to ignite a beacon in the Lighthouse and along the rim of the canyon where the Ogallala lies.  The bright rust-red rock below the rim begins its daily journey to darker hues, passing through ruby to wine and ultimately to a dark, dark mahogany as another day draws to a close and it is time to rest and restore your soul for the morrow.