after some maintenance checks on the bike I rolled on toward the grasslands that had eluded me the day before. I stopped first at a national park visitors center on the edge of black kettle recently built to narrate the events of a massacre on the banks of the washita. standard custer...settlers who were squatting on land assigned to the cheyenne by treaty complained loudly to the feds that they were terrified of the continued and sometimes violent indian presence. something must be done to protect their 'rights.' (these are ancestors of the self-starter modern westerners who rail against washington while happily consuming two federal tax dollars for every one they contribute -- alaska comes to mind. some things never change.) just a few years removed from the sand creek massacre, where he chose to attack a band of elderly, widows, orphans, and otherwise disabled cheyenne under the protection of chief black kettle, custer again chose the weakest possible target. there were encampments of actual cheyenne warriors downstream, but custer knew (for the most part) to pick on defenseless parties. the exaggerated results looked better in the paper. (sound familiar?) in fact, this was again the camp of black kettle, who had broken with the war faction in the cheyenne to sign a treaty with the governmend even after sand creek, and he and his community were shunned as a result. so...predictable slaughter, falsified reports (custer claimed to have killed 103 warriors, when in fact he killed 40 men/women/children). the visitor center represented all the best of current american museum work. there was a strong introductory video that didn't pull punches, with a graphic reenactment that showed what actually happens when soldiers attack a village but more importantly abundant reference to native traditions about the event. there were displays that told the story in the words of those involved, indian and white, instead of an omniscient 'this is what happened' voice. and a visitor comments board that I'm sure some academics in the crowd will mock. but it's great to read how others have absorbed the material, what other thoughts they bring, and so on. in the gift shop I finally found the book for this trip. I'm toting along a ridiculous and ill-conceived library of deloria's 'god is red,' essays on collective memory by maurice halbwachs, and 'nine innings' by daniel okrent. not really into any of them. but this is a book on custer that's more about the myth of custer than the never-to-be-resolved 'facts' of his life.
stopped at the battlefield itself, where a ranger was leading a somber methodist church group on a wander through riverside trees decorated with prayer ribbons. finally through the grassland, which isn't much different from the rest of western oklahoma except less cultivated...not the sea of tallgrass I was imagining. and texas. I had packed that long-awaited picnic lunch but passed up a couple of roadside tables in the grassland hoping for that just-a-little-better spot, but no luck. so I pulled off at the border and sat hunched under a tree, resting on an old boundary stone and surrounded by keystone light cans. picturesque nonetheless. as soon as I crossed into the lone star state the red dirt disappeared under texas capstone, and the state lived up to its reputation. everything huge. a feedlot with tens of thousands of cattle. fields with hundreds of oil/gas rigs pumping away. and at buddy's country store where I stopped for a coke...in the back was a wrench as long as my arm that only texas oilmen could use. these legends were more ordinary up close, talking about family connections and picnics and whatnot, but that didn't shatter the strangely romantic image I have of wrenching a living from such vast inhospitable land. ranchers, farmers, oilmen constantly covered in dust, buffeted by frigid winter winds, baked by the sun. something attractive about the extremity of the conditions they work under, though their bodies certainly showed the effects of that work.
passed through the mid-size town of pampa before turning south on SR 207, which bisects the panhandle roughly parallel to the interstate that connects amarillo to lubbock. a billboard there bragged that pampa is the place 'where the wheat grows, the oil flows, and the wind blows.' well-off towns like pampa show signs of the oil/cattle/cotton ethos, with the BNSF freight barreling through the center of town at a full 70mph...no slowing down for safety here. towns further south were ghosts on a hot saturday afternoon. the matching brick streets and courthouse squares of floydada and ralls were completely empty...not dead on weekdays, presumably, but saturday looked almost as holy a day as sunday in west texas. very few cars on the roads (I stopped twice in the stretch of a couple miles on 207 to take pictures in places where there wasn't a shoulder, and nothing passed me either time, making me the only driver/rider for miles). and just as the relentlessly cultivated flatness, though beautiful in its own way, had me questioning why the atlas had designated 207 as a scenic route, I looked to the west to find crumpled dark terrain in place of endless cottonfields, and up ahead the 'silver mesa' ranch -- and the road started twisting dramatically down into the valley of the big bend river. I was pretty much shocked at the change, lulled into the sense that the pasture and fields were literally endless. so suddenly scrub backcountry and layers of the red earth otherwise covered over by capstone. historical markers for frontier pioneers, a the brilliantly red sand of the river bottom, and another, more scenic picnic spot. (though after I sprawled on the roadside grass and was covered in little ants, it occurred to me that this is fire ant country and that I should check more carefully before hitting the deck. these were benign, however.) climbed back to the plateau and continued on through more of the same, but now with the endless prairie myth dispelled.
in ralls I stopped at the only open place to grab some food, a taco place in a 'stripes' gas station. and there I had to make a decision. on this only weeked of the trip in texas a rodeo was very much on the agenda, and so far I was a weekend off...lots of action august 13th-14th. and in the tiny town of ralls there were banner for the lions' club rodeo and parade. perfect...except it was only 5pm, I wanted to cover more miles so I could reach big bend NP sunday, and there was nowhere to stay nor even to hang out (other than the taco stand) in ralls. so I gambled that I'd run into another one further along without losing those three hours of driving time. completely blind gamble, and I knew I'd kick myself if I traded a real live rodeo (as packaged as I knew a traveling show rodeo would be) for another hundred miles. I even got the 411 on the ralls rodeo from locals in ralls, a sherriff in his 10-gallon hat, badge, and bluejeans, and an older couple who encouraged me to stick around for the post-rodeo dance. but I rolled on, and after finding no nearby rodeos online when next I had wireless access, was resigned to a tactical mistake. but then I pulled into lamesa (lah-MEE-sa) for the night...and was greeted by banners for the rodeo, august 5-6-7. when I'm good, I'm very very good.
next up, the rodeo...but pics already posted.
