And it was the smell of money. Technically, yes, it was the smell of oil on the early morning air. Things are booming.
Mark bought us both fortifiers at the nearest Starbucks. The morning crew there could go to Broadway. They called each other "Extreme Barristas." As warm and honest and entertaining as a fire in winter. As here, I got called "Hon" repeatedly in Texas and loved it. What male (yes, it's sad) does not want to be mothered?
I never got around to taking:
(1) a picture from the air of the vast oil and gas fields that extend forever across the Permian Basin. The region looks like a dirt-road org chart. There are wells everywhere, to the horizon. The wells are all sucking up fossil fuels. They are about as far apart as the houses in a McMansion housing development. The Permian Basin is where Texas got its planetary reputation for Big Oil, my taxi driver believes. And there's still plenty left.
OR (2): a picture of the West Texas town that spelled out its name using a patch of woods and cut-down trees. You could only see it from the air. I couldn't get the name. I was too drowsy to dig out my camera.
I am speaking in Odessa. Next door is Midland, headquarters of the Nonprofit Management Center. They hired me.
Both nights I eat thick Gulf shrimp for dinner. Shrimp worth driving here for. Big and meaty as chicken legs, in an addictive (second night for me), crunchy, deliciously spicy fried coating.
Odessa was the subject of a non-fiction best-seller called Friday Night Lights, which reports on the victorious 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, the Odessa High School football team. It became a 2004 film called Friday Night Lights and made this desert region of West Texas famous.
They take their football very seriously. Like if the coach had a heart attack on the sideline, they would see him off in an ambulance ... and then continue to play. That kind of serious.
L-r: The Ten Commandments Sign engraved in granite that stands 10 feet tall to greet all visitors to the hotel I stayed in. On speaking day, as I waited for Mark to drive up, I did a quick tally. I can safely say I have not broken all 10. I agree with many of them, too. It's good, basic stuff that sets reasonable social norms, given our less congenial native instincts, and helps keep order. Next photo: my class eats lunch. I decide to punt my keynote speech (which I no longer love). Instead, we talk about problems and solutions, like how to capture email addresses. Last photo: How do I pass those lonely hours, waiting for my 4:30 AM alarm to go off, so I can get to the airport on time? I watch the reruns of the homegaming game for Odessa High School against Abigail/Albuquerque/Abilene/some other high school that begins with an A. That school won. Odessa's quarterback was not having a legendary night. But Odessa has an incredible band this year, even if the team fell a little short -- even though in front of my eyes a NEW RECORD FOR RUSHING WAS SET, breaking the old record stretching back to the 1940s. On one of the teams. I don't quite recall which.