Experiencing a first taste of Texas

When this Norphlet boy and his Smackover bride left the Ozark hills, 12 years would go by before we left Texas and returned to Arkansas. That journey started the morning we left Fayetteville heading for Houston, where I had been hired by Exxon.

I had gotten off the elevator on the wrong floor and stumbled into the Southwest District Office of Humble Oil and Refining Company, which had recently been bought by Exxon. I was hired as a production geologist assigned to Kingsville, Texas.

Actually, I was hired because several Exxon geologists from Denver had turned down a transfer to Kingsville.

Vertis and I drove straight to Houston, where I stopped long enough to find a low-rent motel where Vertis waited while I went to finish filling out employment papers and get a company physical.

That took about an hour; when I exited the building on the opposite side where I parked, it took me another hour and a half to find my car. Then we celebrated with gulf shrimp at Christie’s Seafood & Steaks. When the server placed two scoops of green and red blobs on the table, we wondered what they were. Country boy and girl didn’t recognize colored butter.

The next morning we headed south on U.S. 59. As we passed through Victoria and the pine trees turned into mesquite bushes, my bride teared up.

We made it to Kingsville in time to set up our 10-foot by 35-foot trailer which Exxon had hauled down from Fayetteville.

The next morning I drove to King Ranch, the prize oil and gas holding of Exxon in south Texas, where the district offices were located. Richard King, a riverboat captain, started by buying a Spanish land grant and built the ranch up to almost one million acres. As the ranch got bigger, he went to Mexico and hired an entire village to work on the ranch.

We had been in south Texas a week when the district geologist sent everyone home early. “Hurricane Carla is supposed to make landfall south of Corpus Christi, and you need to prepare,” he said. We prepared all right, by leaving that trailer for a motel until Carla notched north and spared Kingsville.

It didn’t take long before we had a new set of friends, and on weekends we sometimes drove the 80 miles to Matamoros, Mexico. The border was safe then, and we could spend the weekend there for less than $20 a night and eat at the Texas Bar across the border, where $5 bought a meal with two entrees.

Occasionally we would drive 15 miles south of Kingsville to Ricardo, where Hubert’s Danceland was. Our first trip was to hear Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours. Instead of a theater with seats, it was a large hall with tables near the walls, surrounding a really big dance floor.

We didn’t come to dance, but evidently everybody else did. When Ernest kicked off the show everybody stood, including us. In a few seconds Vertis and I sat down. We were the only ones. Then as the Troubadours kicked up the music, everyone on the floor was moving counter-clockwise to the Texas two-step.

As soon as we got settled in Kingsville, a couple of friends took us to King’s Inn on Baffin Bay. I’ve dined at plenty of upscale restaurants, and King’s Inn ranks near the top of my list.

In south Texas, we found out quickly that home-cooked Mexican food was the best. At Christmas, a knock on the door followed by a young boy announcing, “Christmas Hot Tamales” set the standard for me.

We lived in Kingsville for two years, and my work as a geologist was to supervise the infield drilling of a major oil and gas field. I received the equivalent of 10 years’ experience getting over 100 wells drilled.

Then one afternoon when I was about to leave the office, the district geologist called me in offered me a transfer to Benghazi, Libya. Vertis and I checked it out and everything we could find out about it was bad but the money, which with the hardship allowance doubled my salary.

I think getting out of that trailer was really the key. We had to give it away when we left. We spent two years in Benghazi, and it lived up to its reputation: It was terrible.

Then we transferred back, this time to Corpus Christi. There are a lot of ways to fish in the Gulf, and I did most of them. My favorite was gigging flounder. On a dark night (no moon) you put on a headlight and wade into water above your knees and below your waist. Flounders are flat fish that lie on the bottom, and you have to really look to see their outlines. When you spot one, you gig it, then reach down to hold the fish while you put it on a stringer.

There is only one problem with floundering: Small stingrays look almost exactly like a flounder except for their pointed tails. If you gig one, remember: sting. Uh-huh.

Another way to fish is to wade in the Laguna Madre, a long shallow bay behind the Gulf beach. You move slowly in the shallow water, looking for speckled trout. These fish are large, sometimes weighing over six pounds. When you spot one you flick a shrimp-baited hook and hold on to your rig.

I also spent hours standing in waist-deep water and throwing my line into the open Gulf. Usually I caught speckled trout, and occasionally a red snapper. The one fish I remember was one I didn’t catch. I felt something hit my bait, reared back, set the hook, and wow! The water just exploded. A huge tarpon cleared the water, and I hung on until it snapped the line.

When you’re young you do some stupid things, like when a good friend and I took his 14-foot outboard into the open Gulf, without life jackets, to fish for mackerel. I remember one trip. I was in the bottom of the boat trying to unhook a big mackerel as the boat rocked and the fish and gunk smell in the boat bottom suddenly . . . yuck! Seasick!