Texline Texas....

I just returned to Monument from a visit to my hometown, Dallas ,Texas . I decided to drive to Amarillo, Tx. and then catch a Southwest Airlines flight to Big D and rent a car there....saves about 12 hours of driving roundtrip and at current gas prices, maintenence costs etc it's probably no more expensive than driving the entire way.

Anyway, the cities I traveled through on the route to Amarillo included the city of Texline, Tx. which is on the border of Texas and New Mexico at the top of the Texas panhandle. As I was entering the city limits of Texline, my car was assailed by a giant tumbleweed bounding across the highway....get the picture! This is out in the middle of nowhere and trees are hard to come by.

I felt a real sense of "give up" in this town and several others I passed through in this drought and fire plagued area of the country. Nothing like the devastation in the Gulf region of the U.S., but store after store was boarded up and closed. I even saw some stores with product still in them...all closed down....

A few miles further into the Panhandle I noticed old oil gathering pumps churning away...some with new parts on them to pull the last few barrels of $60 oil out of the ground so it can be refined into that $2.50 gas I had to buy along the way. In case you haven't noticed, now that the "Spring Break" season is in full swing there seems to be a new "shortage" of some sort out there.....hmmm....