Midland, Texas

We left Ada on Sunday and went through Fort Worth in order to see them drive the

longhorns down the street and the gunfight that they have on weekends.  While Oscar was game to get up on a longhorn and take a picture and watch the huge animals come down the street, he was not game for the hokey gunfight.  As soon as they fired one gun in the air in the introduction, that was it.  It was too loud and too scary, so we took the chance to get out before the others and get back on the road on our way to Midland, 

Texas where I was born.  We got to the parts of Texas where it is flat and boring.  Then we went even further to towns that I started to remember like Stanton, Lamesa, and finally Midland.  We checked in to our suite on the interstate and didn’t have time for much site seeing.  But what I could see from the interstate did not impress.  After work and school the next morning, we headed out to see some things like the old house I grew up in, the schools I went to until 2^nd grade, the Pizza Hut I could remember, the George W. Bush childhood home, and my father’s gravesite.  I knew that it was against the fence and we were amazed when we were able to find it.  It was a heartrending visit.  I don’t want anyone I love buried because of the fact that my father sits in the middle of the desert with no one in his family to visit

and there is only guilt surrounding it.  Oscar tried to make me feel better by telling me that there were many other people in the cemetery to provide friendly comfort, but it’s not the same.  I did realize on this visit that while I hate that he is buried there, he is also buried in the place where he built his own business, had his family including me, his only child and some of his happiest times. 

So, there is that.  All in all, it was good to take his only grandchild there to see where he is buried, but there were too many horrible memories there for me that didn’t get overshadowed by the few good ones I can recall.  I was Oscar’s age when my father died and stopping at the Exxon station that he collapsed at when we stopped for gas, was not pleasant.  I was just too young to 

remember much else from that time, so we won’t ever be coming back here again.  But we took a day and drove out to Monahans state park to sled down the sand dunes there and have our faces sandblasted by the incredible wind that was blowing that day.  Oscar enjoyed the hell out of it, John and I could only trudge back up those dunes so many times before we gave out.   We also 

stopped at the Odessa Meteor Crater which was a fun walk about, with a little museum full of rocks.  The Petroleum museum is right next to the hotel in Midland and there is no way not to know that this entire area is built on oil.  There are oil rigs and derricks as far as the eye can see.  Odessa had a Christmas light display that was being worked on when we went to Monahans, so after another day of work, we went for dinner and then headed

out to see if they were on yet.  When we got there, the lights were on, but the gates were closed, but we got to walk around and drive around before they switched them off.  We got a glimpse though and that was enough for Oscar.  I can’t say that the food was even anything good on this stop, meh Mexican, ummmm barbeque, and burgers that were good, but overshadowed by the fact

    that they were colder because the person never explained to us how to use their curbside pick up and there were millions of starlings outside the car.  It was a Hitchcock scene for sure and Oscar loved it, but didn’t want daddy to get out of the car and get something out of the trunk because of the number of birds.