In a deft switch of wording, San Angelo changed its slogan from The Wool Capital Of The World to The Wool Capital Of The Nation. The Chamber of Commerce office confirmed the change. While I waited, the telephone tape said over and over, "San Angelo is the oasis of West Texas, full of rich historical heritage from old Fort Concho." I don't think the office uses the slogan very often, as it took her at least 10 minutes to answer my question.

Holding the phone, I reviewed the tape's claim. San Angelo does qualify as an oasis surrounded by an area dry enough to make the Sultan's Sinkhole in the Sahara Desert seem like a turn around the bend on the Wabash River. You don't have to be a featherweight to win first prize at a Weight Watcher's meeting. Angelo is an oasis in West Texas, having the North Concho River dammed up through the town into a duck and geese waterway, composed of 40 percent moss and tangled fishing lines, mixed with scores of golf balls shot into the stream from the Santa Fe course.

So is the old prairie dog town an oasis over by the city barn and watered by the city employees. There are also the fish hatchery ponds off the San Antonio highway. On Park Street, the floating garden of exotic lily pads kicks the humidity up a few points. In the same neighborhood, Senator and Mrs. Bill Sims maintain an impressive backyard goldfish pond to further moisten the atmosphere. (Goldfish churning in a pond raise the rate of evaporation.) The swimming pool on Orient Street and the artificial fish ladder in the Chinese restaurant on Bryant Freeway must be part of the claim. Restorers of the historical district erected a 14-foot Aermotor windmill on the site, but I think they hit a dry hole as the red rod isn't connected.

The only water fountain of any consequence I thought of was a bronze sculpture of mermaids languishing on the river bank by a bridge. However, I don't think the Chamber of Commerce had the mermaid site in mind as part of the new theme, because certain elements in the city took offense at the topless forms of what were called "those fish women." Takes awhile even in an oasis to adjust to half-naked bronze mermaids, especially an oasis 350 miles from the sea.

One thing the new reputation demands is to discontinue rationing water as the city has in the past during drouths. (Once in the 50s, cars raced in the bed of Lake Nasworthy.) The city water department claims the reserve from four lakes gives a two-year supply of water even if the weather failure continues. "Salt water in Lake Spence might be blended into the mains next summer," a water superintendent reported over the telephone. I didn't comment, but the Big Boss related several times about the terrible stomach cramps he and a cowboy named Paul Patterson once suffered from drinking from the Pecos River. (The Spanish explorers named the Pecos, Rio Salado.)

Also, the millennium panic added a big stockpile of bottled water to Angelo's supply. One of the grocers told me his store sold so much water on New Year's Eve, he accepted a shipment of eight pallets from a trucker delivering to the wrong address and wrong store. "Things really got tense," he said, "once the water ran out and canned goods got low." Any situation serious enough to cause citizens to hoard canned sweet peas and snapped green beans is bound to be a tense moment in time. Canning takes an hour of intense cooking to prepare vegetables. The last fragment of flavor disappears in the first 15 minutes of preparation.

The millennium isn't the only thing making the wool capital folks uneasy. The whole community is on edge. In January, the Weather Bureau predicted "a winter storm watch with snow flurries likely by midweek." Stores sold all the small bundles of wood on hand. At midweek, the snow fell 150 miles to the north. The thermometer in the kitchen window at the ranch dropped to 30 degrees. And the ice on the water troughs melted by 10 o'clock, making it the most popular winter storm we could expect.

Quite a change in the character of a city once fielding poker-faced gamblers willing to bet their stake on a hand of cards, or a trainload of steers to summer in Kansas. Big switch from the times bootheels clicked across the tiles in the hotel lobbies to contract thousands of lambs, or walked up to the mezzanine to sell the spring wool clip on a dozen flocks. Might help revive the old spirit by blending the salt water from Lake Spence next summer to the water supply to help taper off the bottled stuff. Like the Big Boss said, old Paul and he became men of determined destiny once they recovered from drinking from the Pecos River.

February 17, 2000