I Tour Wink, Texas

    On March 1 I made 300 mile round trip to Wink TX to see where Roy Orbison, my favorite rock & roll singer, grew up. It has always seemed strange to me that his great, operatic voice came out of a remote, west Texas oil patch.

     Wink is 145 miles north of Alpine. The drive up was interesting enough.  First to Ft. Davis and then through the ruggedly beautiful Davis Mountains until I drove down into the oil rich Toyah Basin, passing though Balmorhea and Pecos before crossing the Pecos River into Loving County.

     Loving County was a secondary target of my trip, because, with only 82 residents, it is the least populated county in the United States. And now I can say I've been there. Take that you high roaders wintering in Palm Beach.

     And surprise, I read that Loving County is the richest county per capita in the U.S. because its 82 citizens have over 400 oil leases.

     I drove straight across the county on state highway 302, the only paved road in the county, and saw only flat, dry range land, all ranches and oil wells. There is only one town in the county, Mentone, pop. 19, the county seat. It contains the court house, the sheriff's office, a fairly nice school that has been closed since 1972 when enrollment fell to two pupils, a nearly closed tiny church (an out of town preacher holds services once a month), a convenience store that had nothing in it except beer, sodas and snack foods, a closed cafe, a scattering of sheds, small workshops and piled junk that looked like it was related to oil field maintenance, and handful of small, mostly dilapidated houses. In fact, the houses looked so bad I had to study each house for about a minute to decide whether it was lived in or abandoned. Until 1988 Mentone had no local source of potable water; water was trucked in from another county. I spent about an hour there, which was quite enough.

MENTONE - A hot, dry and dusty place, quasi ghost town Mentone TX (pop. 19) is a rather desolate oil patch town with unpaved streets. It is the county seat and only town in Loving County. It is a remote little berg, 30 miles across empty range land like above from Kermit, and we all know where Kermit is, right? Almost all the land in the county looks like this, flat and arid, recieiving only nine inches of rain per year. But there is oil under all that brush!

DOWNTOWN MENTONE - This lackluster convenience store is the only retail business in Mentone. The sand colored building beyond it is the Loving County Courthouse. There was a cafe across the street as well as other business around town, but they have all closed. The town's population is obviously much smaller than it used to be. And yet the oil fields around it are booming. It appears the fields are worked by companies and employees who commute from surrounding counties, thus leaving Mentone almost a ghost town.

     I was surprised when I crossed the famous Pecos River, which is Loving County's western boundary. The Pecos is over 900 miles long. Some 300 miles downstream from Loving County, where

PECOS RIVER - Only 4-5 ft. wide, a few inches deep and

flowing slowly, the famous Pecos River is shown here 600

miles from its source. Judging by the distance between its

banks - perhaps 30-40yards - it is never much of a

waterway in this area.

the Pecos runs into the Rio Grande near Langtry, it is a wide and deep river down in an impressively deep  and scenic gorge.  But in Loving County it is a measly, slow moving creek only four or five feet wide and a few inches deep, even though it has come 600 miles from where it rises in the mountains near Santa Fe NM. Yes it is dammed up in a few places, and raided by agriculture, but geez....you can jump over it.

     So okay. Least populated county in the USA. Been there, done that. Don't want to go back. Onward across arid range - dodging oil tank trucks all the way - to the next county east, Winkler, and the town of Wink, where grew up Roy Orbison, "the best singer in the whole world" according to Elvis Presley. Roy was not fond of Wink. He said there was "nothing there except oil, dirt, grease and sand," and he always counted himself lucky that he was able to get out of there.

     With Roy's appraisal in mind, I came to Wink expecting a very bleak and gritty place, something like a bigger Mentone. But wink is not like that at all. Though smaller than when Roy lived there, and certainly down at the heels, it appeared to be a proud little town trying hard to survive and get ahead. The preponderance of housing was dilapidated and had "lawns" of dirt, scrub and cactus, and many buildings along the main street were either closed or home to obviously marginal businesses. However, all the public facilities from sidewalks and streets to the schools and parks were clean and in good repair. I saw one nice neighborhood of mostly large, ranch style homes surrounding a pleasant green grass common with shade trees. The only thing hinting of Roy's "oil, dirt, grease" recollection was an oil tank farm on the western edge of town, but even it was a clean, nicely painted facility.

WINK, TEXAS - Although it has seen better days, Wink appears to be a proud little town that keeps itself tidy and presentable as possible.  Though the main street has many vacant lots and buildings, it still has a pulse. The building at left behind the white pickup truck is the town grocery store. Next along the street is a little white buidling containing the Roy Orbison Museum. Past that there are three empty brick buildings, the largest of which is the burned out movie theatre. The chamber of commerce is in the white building just beyond it.

ROY ORBISON MUSEUM - As small as it may be, there is

here than meets the eye. The museum only takes a a thrid

of the little building. The remainder is meeting space and

storage for the annual Roy Orbison festival.

     I quickly found the Roy Orbison Museum on the main street. It was a small, white cape cod style, cinder block building that was probably a little store or office once upon a time And it was closed. I walked along the street from there past three empty brick buildings, the largest of which, an old movie theatre, was not only empty but burned out, arriving at what appeared to be a combination town office and chamber of commerce. It was staffed by one busy woman. I asked her when the museum was open. She told me it was open when anyone wanted to see it, and she immediately set to work calling a list of museum volunteers at home until she found someone to come and let me in. Small town Texas at its best!

     In about 20 minutes a 20-or-so-year-old Chevy coupe pulled up and out clambered a petite, lively, platinum-haired octogenarian woman with her walker. She apologized for taking so long. Had to get dressed, she said, because she gets out of the house so seldom anymore she often doesn't bother to put clothes on. She was precious.

     In a moment she had the museum unlocked and me inside, and she commenced showing me just about everything they had, and there was no getting away. There were mostly newspaper and magazine clippings, album covers, show bills and pictures of Roy with this famous person and that. It was a shabby, small town, homemade affair operated with very little money, but they're trying. There were very few items authentic to Roy. They had the canceled $100 check that financed Roy's move from Wink to Memphis in 1956. They also had a pair of his sunglasses, which my dear little hostess insisted I try on. Boy were they thick! Made me seasick. Roy was nearly blind. And I thought this was funny: They had an old, badly beaten up old acoustic that had belonged to a neighbor boy or Roy's. It was in the museum because Roy tuned it up for the kid.

     After two hours, which was one hour more than necessary, and after the dear lady had sold me Roy's biography, two CDs, a replica pair of Roy Orbison sunglasses and seen to it I put my change in the donation jar, she turned me loose and I headed "home" to Alpine.  It was a good day.

FAMOUS TEXAN - This state historic marker stands in a vacant lot in Wink where the

house where that Roy Orbison grew up used to stand.