I was born in Dallas, Texas, and lived in nearby Grand Prairie until I was 6. My family moved to west Texas, where I lived until I moved to Arlington for my third year of college. I have lived in Fort Worth for the last 16 of my 42 years. But I grew up in Plainview, Texas, on the South Plains, not quite in the Panhandle. The road between here and there became somewhat familiar to me through the years, as my dad’s sister lived in Arlington, and we made the trek to visit them at least once a year.
We traveled down FM 400 south from Plainview to Idalou, where we headed east on US 84. That road took us to Jacksboro, where we got on Texas 199, which in turn took us into Fort Worth. I remember waking up more than once just as we passed all the car dealerships and the First Methodist Church as we went down Henderson Street west of downtown Fort Worth. (My mother always commented on how strange the church looked with its uneven towers.) We got on the central freeway and then took the turnpike (now I-30) to FM 157. We went south on Collins Street and turned left at the fruit stand on Abrams. Finally we went east to the neighborhood where my aunt and uncle and cousins lived.
My brother and I drove it in his Volkswagen Beetle when we were in high school. We had fun along the way – it was fall and the farmers were taking their cotton to the gins in bulging trailers. We would point and wave as we met a trailer, as if there was something wrong with it. We would laugh impishly as we watched behind us and saw the harried farmer pull over to check his load.
The first time I drove this route, I was a senior in high school. My friend Kaci and I wanted an adventure, so one Friday afternoon we headed out. I drove to Arlington the only way I knew. It is a wonderful way to see the changes in the geography as you head east, and you go right through the small towns along the way – Idalou, Ralls, Lorenzo, Crosbyton, Dickens, Seymour, Guthrie, Olney, Jermyn, Jacksboro, Joplin. You also go right through parts of the 6666 Ranch, with the logo emblazoned on buildings and fences along the way.
The road leads through a harsh and beautiful country. I have come through it at various times: once through a thunderstorm where I feared for my life, again through the hottest wind I have ever felt, and once through miles and miles of snow. I have seen dust storms that made the sky a depressing and dirty brown. I have seen the land scorched by months of drought. I have also seen it a hundred shades of green at the end of one of those springs when the skies are generous with rain.
I remember wanting to move back to this part of the world for most of the time I lived in Plainview. And here I am - in a land where trees grow wild. But the wide-openness of the country I left behind has a beauty and appeal that I have come to appreciate in the years since I left it. After a college year in the mountains of Idaho (which are glorious in their own way), it was wondrous to be able to look around and see the sky - in all directions!
On one solo trip home while I was in college, I stopped at a roadside park somewhere this side of the Caprock on a moonless winter night to stretch my legs. I looked up at the sky, and I gazed as long as I could until I had to get back into the car - to escape the vastness of the sky more than the cold. I felt like I was being taken up into it, the stars and the Milky Way were so close.
I have not driven the road in several years, because with small children, you drive the route which is the quickest and requires the fewest stops (US 287 through Wichita Falls to Vernon, then US 70 all the way to Plainview). Someday I will share the road with my children – for it is a part of me and my history.
Spring 1998