The distance between the city folks and the outlanders is infinite. Rarely does either side have an opportunity to examine themselves, much less understand each other. As long as I have been around the hollow horn and woolie fraternity, I find myself at meetings staring from the back row at the weather-burned necks and the bleached hatband lines above the ears, wondering what drives this determined breed of men to fight such overwhelming odds.

In the cities, I further lose myself watching the strange human forms ballooned into gym pants, bound in wrinkled tee shirts, and shod in run-over blue and white walking shoes laced with red-speckled strings. In parks, I go off course gazing at scantily clad joggers huffing and puffing up the trail, accompanied by big woolly-faced wolfhounds, or long-legged brindle greyhounds. Often I miss my floor on hotel elevators, stunned by the sight of the dinner crowd going out dressed as if off to a skating rink or a bowling alley.

Last month at a dinner theater given by Angelo State University, I looked over the crowd and realized it'd been 40 years since any man wore a seersucker suit and plaid bow tie like mine to a summer affair in West Texas. Other than the college lads, who expect antiquity in centurions (all adults over 40), the rest of the crowd must have thought I was part of the cast, a performer who was going to do a soft-shoe number, twirling a straw boater hat on a walking stick decorated by a red polkadot streamer.

The clincher came next week at the principal grocer's on the south side of San Angelo. Filling a big list, preplanned to pack the perishables in an ice chest to reach the ranch in the heat wave, I nearly missed seeing an old friend from a ranch north of town. She wheeled her cart over without coming to a stop and asked, "Don't you just hate to come to Angelo in all this heat? George (her husband) won't even come in the store. I warned him the car was going to heat up from running the air conditioner." And off she went without ever stopping to mention the drouth or the water shortage.

For the rest of the shopping trip, I watched for another ranch couple. The score on the back of the yellow tablet for grocery lists showed I'd recognized three ranchers at the store since May. George and his wife, Alice, made five. More than five people were riding the handicap carts at any given moment the store was open. Alice had made me realize we might be out of place living in the country.

The population of the wool capital is 96,000 citizens. From where the county road leaves Highway 67 going to the ranch for the next 25 miles, there are seven of us living on ranches. To make a 7 a.m. lab test or 8 a.m. appointment, we have to arise early enough to feed the horses and drive 600 blocks to Angelo. (To convert miles to blocks, multiply the miles by 10. Expedites communication with city folks.) The amount of time it takes to explain this to a 20 year-old receptionist is so tedious it often negates the results of the test and makes the appointment more critical.

Were the seven of us living on or close to the Divide able to pick up the support of 100 or so citizens living in Barnhart or Ozona, we might form a wedge thick enough to reform the Angelo healers and tooth grinders' sense of time and place. After the weather cools, (and we are hoping to have autumn since we missed having spring,) we need to meet and organize. Ranchers and rural folks aren't prone to being joiners, but lately there's been a good response to joining the Mr. Sam's club, so we may be becoming more gregarious.

Nevertheless, it is going to be slow going to bring the neighbors together. Alfredo over on the Brooks' ranch goes out the back way to shop in Eldorado. The neighbors down on the railroad track do a lot of mail order business. Folks west of the ranch split their trade between Ozona and Angelo. However, as hard as the drouth has been on our health, we are probably all going to be hitting the medical centers in San Angelo this winter.

Be nice to be understood somewhere. The opening of the new century promises to be a casual age. If it doesn't swing back soon, my old seersucker suit may not make another decade. But were I down to my last threads, I'd still like to spend an evening every once in awhile at a dressed-up affair, even if it is a town where we are outnumbered 96 thousand to seven…

September 21, 2000