Dalhart -- Closing the Circle

We left Colorado Springs mid-morning for the 5-hour drive to Dalhart.  Dalhart is where Marty was raised.  She was born in Clovis but spent all her growing years in a house on Conlen Drive in Dalhart Texas USA.  While I was ready to be there, I kind of dreaded bringing this thing to an end, because it sort of ends in Dalhart, that’s where the circle is closed.  

I haven’t been to Dalhart since 2012 when Marty’s mother, Jean, passed away.  It’s a cool little Texas town in the upper left-hand corner of the panhandle, in other words, a long way from anywhere, but at a highway crossroads that requires you driving through Dalhart on your way to New Mexico or Colorado or anywhere north and west.

We spent Christmases, summers, birthdays and plain old vacations in Dalhart.  We used it for a springboard to ski, we went to the XIT reunion and sat and watched parades and once I had lunch with a Miss Texas.  

I have driven or been driven all around that area.  Marty’s father, Arty, owned farmland and pasture all around Dalhart, so we would always go drive the dirt roads and open pastures checking on cattle, water, chasing coyotes and digging out of snow drifts when Arty drove through huge mounds of snow.  I have hunted pheasant in the snow and one-degree weather, I have even been in Coon Memorial Hospital after Arty shot me when we were hunting birds one winter.  As they said in Monty Python, “tis only a flesh wound.”

I got to know all the Watkin family friends and admired how people in Dalhart often would vacation in packs of Dalhartions.  There were great family friends there, unfortunately, few if any remain.  That’s what happens when your memories, when your connections to a place and its people, goes on for almost 50 years.

Skip and I drove into town and went by Arty’s first farm.  There is a dirt road that runs beside this farm where Marty stuck her car in the sand one time when she was home from college, that’s the folklore anyway. We pulled off and spread ashes and took pictures as the wind blew hair, weeds and cremains.

We then drove past NorTex Feedlot, a lot that Arty started with three other partners and we divested back in 2005.  We then headed past a small feed lot Arty had that was just his and was paid for…. he called it PD4…as in paid for…. that was Marty’s mother, Jean’s, doing.

We made it into town about 3 and spent some time seeing the sights.  We went past Marty’s old house and took pictures as someone peered out the door, we drove past the canyon, past Netha and Charles’s house, past the Phariss’s house, past the Kuper’s house and out to Rita Blanca lake and the city park where they have the rodeo and free feeds during XIT.

I can’t ever go past Rita Blanca without thinking of two things:  Marty and I spent part of our night before our wedding parked down there in her parents big Lincoln and Marty once told me she learned to water ski on Rita Blanca and had a hard time getting her back side up above her skis….she called it the Rita Blanca douche.  I didn’t say it…..she did…. just repeating.

We then drove past the church where we were married.  It was the First Presbyterian and we married there because it had a middle aisle.  It’s now some other brand church.  

We then wandered around the brick streets of downtown Dalhart, we saw the Veteran’s Wall in the park where I had wheeled Marty up to see her father’s name, we saw Coon Memorial Hospital where Jean had been so often and I had had my shotgun shot forehead repaired.  We saw the nursing home where Jean spent her last years and where we celebrated her 80^th birthday right before Marty’s second stroke.

 

We finally set out for the cemetery, the symbolic last spot for our little odyssey.  I drove right to the grave sites, but for whatever reason couldn’t find the huge cross with Watkins on it…duh...it took us a few minutes to find the marker.  On those trips, post strokes, when we took Marty back to see her Mom, Jean, I would always offer to take her to the cemetery.  Most of the time she simply didn’t want to go.  I’m not sure why she didn’t but I couldn’t drive 9 hours and not visit Arty’s grave.  Sometimes Marty got out, sometimes she didn’t.

I figured this spot, where both of Marty’s parents lay, would be the most emotional.  I figured right because I am a man in touch with my feelings.  It’s true, sometimes I’m not sure what that means, but hey…. I’m in touch.

I stood there for a while with Skip and talked a little about Arty and Jean and how important they had been to Marty and how important they had been to me.  I scattered Marty’s ashes over the grave sites and simply said, through my own tears,  “Marty, it’s done, I’ve brought you home to your mom and dad.”

We made our way to where the Holiday Inn had been.  It’s now a LaQuinta, both fine establishments but we had reservations at the Holiday Inn.  June, from Waze, our constant companion while driving, sent us out on the highway to the outskirts of town and we found the Holiday Inn and enjoyed a fine room, watching TTU get rookydooed and still enjoying each other’s company.

Tomorrow we head back to Mansfield and Sharon and then on to Waco.

The circle was closed.