Well, well, well

- 1974 Southwest Mapping Co. -

The reason for the big pit has come to light. Mojave 31, a horizontal well, will be drilled somewhere behind the pit, which will be used to hold water for the goings on of such a project.

There's been a lot of traffic up and down this road, a bunch of gravel trucks coming and going. It's a good idea to watch your lane if traveling out this way. Those shoulders can be tricky if you have to move over, and it would be easy to flip over or over-correct if the wheel goes into a rut between pavement and dirt.

The photo is of our area on an old oil field map I have from 1974. It's delightful to see the old names and get a sense of who begat who, landwise.

Local newspaper fails to verify AP story

The Sweetwater Reporter failed to verify a recent Associated Press article about an incident that was purported to have taken place on Interstate 20 near the town of Sweetwater.

The article, published by the newspaper around January 16, reported that an army soldier, on leave, stopped at a wreck and saved a man's life by performing a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen. The event has been found to be untrue.

The newspaper ran the story without verification from the Texas Department of Public Safety, The Texas Department of Transportation, the Sweetwater Fire Department, the Sweetwater Police Department or the Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital, all first responding entities that serve Sweetwater and Nolan County.

Two emails sent to Sweetwater Reporter publisher Rick Nunez on Friday January 18 were unanswered at the time of this publication. A letter to the editor the following week was also unanswered.

The trouble with the landman...

Here is a recent Eleventh Court of Appeals opinion that gives a little too much insight to the way mineral rights deals happen:

Kerwin Stephens; Thunderbird Oil & Gas, LLC; Thunderbird Resources, LLC; Thunderbird Land Services, LLC; Stephens & Myers, LLP; and Chester Carroll v. Three Finger Black Shale Partnership; Trek Resources, Inc.; Tiburon Land & Cattle, L.P.; L.W. Hunt Resources, LLC; and Richard Raughton Appeal from 32nd District Court of Fisher County
 
Here's an easier version to read:

Kerwin Stephens; Thunderbird Oil & Gas, LLC; Thunderbird Resources, LLC; Thunderbird Land Services, LLC; Stephens & Myers, LLP; and Chester Carroll v. Three Finger Black Shale Partnership; Trek Resources, Inc.; Tiburon Land & Cattle, L.P.; L.W. Hunt Resources, LLC; and Richard Raughton Appeal from 32nd District Court of Fisher County

A variety show

- Tillage radish -

Something new in the field

When temperatures drop around here, a conflagration of winter weeds takes the place of the summer crops. I thought this was what I was seeing as I made my daily tour around cotton and haygrazer fields.

Last week I noticed that the green was not random, that it had a uniformity. Then I noticed large roots on the plants, roots that can be seen as one drives by.

A little finagling on the internet led me to an article about cover crops, after I searched crop rotation. These new dudes are tillage radishes. They say they're good to eat, but it seems they're planted for erosion control, not a cash crop.


Whatever happened to Bobby Templin 

In 1974, Templin made the front page of the Rotan Advance as a newly hired lab tech at the Rotan hospital. He and his wife, Rhonda (Schlegel), were a newly married couple from Shamrock.

On April 11, 1976, Rhonda died in their home by electrocution, when a radio fell into the bathtub in which she was immersed.

Bobby was later convicted of murdering her, in 1981, where he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. That conviction was overturned, but he was convicted again, in 1986, and, again, sentenced to 99 years.

There are many articles and books written on the topic, but it's hard to figure out what happened as the years went by and the flash of the story wore off. It looks like he may have won an appeal in 1994 and been released, that he may live in Mesquite, and that he was alive as recently as March 2018.


Tess of d'Urbervilles

I hear people talking about ancestry testing and I wonder if they've never read the story of Tess and her dire dramas brought about by finding out who she was be related to. Also, I don't talk to many of my relatives who are living, and I'm fairly aware of my family history. Why would I want to know any more?

This thinking gave way to an imaginative conversation between two people, and one trying to convince the other that God is real. One could say, "But you believe in results given to you by people you've never met, in a lab that you've never been to," then the other could say, "But I've seen a lab." This conversation could wind on infinitely, I guess, just like any other philosophical query. "If you were on a railroad track and could pull a switch that would save one person on one track or ten people on another track, what would  you do?". "Oh, I'd save the ten people!". "But what if five of the ten were murderers?", and so on.


Links

Here are some links I came across this week:
The Forage Radish: Bane of Tillers Everywhere
Search for Justice, written by Rhonda Schlegel's father, Norbert
West Texas: A Portrait of its People and Their Raw and Wondrous Land, which has an excerpt of the Templin murder
A Science News article on genetic testing
Cliff Notes for Tess of the d'Urbervilles

The state of my rural Texas internet

- My internet service -

The way I get internet is to turn on my cell phone hotspot and connect to my laptop. The phone is placed in a strategic position, atop a mirror, to obtain the maximum service in this area, two bars.

I've had satellite internet, but not since 2012, when DishTV changed their provider from WildBlue to whoever, and expected me to pay for new equipment. Perhaps, if they had been forthright about the change, I would have been willing to pay. Instead, they used a service call situation to say my dish was irreparably damaged and I needed all new equipment (after I took down the old dish, I saw all it needed was a new transponder, a small one or two inch box, that water had leaked into after the casing was broken by hail ).

Also, I told DishTV, before the installer came out, that I would not be paying for a new pole or whatever, a gimmick that has been used on me at least three times, to get me to hand out $100 on the spot. The installer asked for the money, I yelled, and that was the end of that.

Every once in a while I'll do a long search session to find new service, but the heavy handed sales jargon and the contracts and  the credit check, which will cause my credit rating to go down a couple of points, discourages me.

Also, I want internet service that will allow the playing of video games. The kids like that. It's just not available.

Until a real solution is found, I will continue to transmit these words via hotspot.

We all fell in the pit

- West of Camp Springs -

Hopefully not! The title of this post is just an allusion to a sitcom I like, Parks and Rec.

Anyway, the purpose for the activity that was mentioned last post has come to light. It's a huge water pit being dug for forthcoming oilfield activity. A water well was drilled on this piece of land back in January, according to a well report on the Texas Water Development Board website.

Other interesting information from the TWDB site is that Fisher County is in the Clear Fork Groundwater Conservation District, atop the Seymour major aquifer, and Blaine and Dockum minor aquifers. I'm not sure how well I deciphered this, because I clicked on a random well on a map on the site, which just happened to come up as a well of one of my relatives, Floyd Weems, and it says his well was drilled in the Whitehorse Aquifer, while other information points to the Whitehorse being in the San Angelo area.

According to the Well Owners Guide to Water Supply, published by Texas A & M, we are considered the North-Central Plains.

This is one of those times when the amount of information is too much for my mind to hold. Go on, just do a search for Texas aquifers and prepare to be overwhelmed.

More digging and dozing is going on at a new spot just west of the Camp Springs Cemetery, in Scurry County. This is directly across from the Houston 76 Unit, a horizontal well. There was a patch of dead vegetation where they are digging. I guess I'll watch and listen and do some digging myself, and I'll report back here when I figure it out.

Another project

- Dozer work -

There's a little activity going on out here in the Hobbs area, this time a mile west of my place. I don't know if it's domestic or oilfield related. I haven't found any drilling permits for this specific site, unless it's like Tigger and it's an offshoot from another location. There's an old dry hole very close to where the land is being dozed, and there's a new permit south of the area. Time will tell.

Where are the pickles?

- Pickles -

I broke up with my boyfriend several months ago, and I have convinced myself, not once, or twice, but three times, that he has come back and stolen my pickles.

It's only a brief belief, but I go to get the pickles and can't find them and start frantically searching for them. One time it was as simple as moving the tea picture to find them; one time I was truly out; and lastly, there was a new jar in the cabinet.

It's truly ridiculous to think that someone would go to such trouble to take something so innocuous, which makes me think it's genius.

I don't want to reunite, but sometimes it nice to think someone would be thinking of me, even if it was just to steal my pickles.

Bulletin boards have the facts

- A sunrise in Scurry County -

I've found that going around to county courthouses and reading the notices on the bulletin boards is a quick and easy way to get a factual and interesting view of what's going on in an area. A lot of information can be gleaned in a fifteen minute stop.

I went by the Mitchell County Courthouse this week and found the agenda for the county appraisal meeting, a block of lots up for sale at Colorado City Lake, a nice office job opening, and a will probation notice for someone I do business with. What a quiet and non-invasive way to get news.

That being said, another way to quietly get news is to scour the internet, especially when you have oodles of time to plunge down rabbitholes, like I do. Here are some things I've found today:

Fisher County Tax Sales Dec. 4

Trustee Sale for 109 W. McArthur, Rotan, Dec. 5

Sweetwater properties for bid

The Sweetwater properties link is part of a website for the Texas Communities Group. It has many areas in Texas where you can buy little lots for little money. I found this page while perusing the Nolan County Appraisal District  site.

Back to actually, physically, finding information about properties: going down to the local appraisal or tax offices and getting a paper record usually nets more information. Sometimes the people I come across have a tidbit or two of news that will be useful or interesting. Ambiance is not overrated and is hard to come by in cyberspace.

Crazy about links

It's a cold and windy day, with lots of time to while away, so I thought I'd share some links I like to use. I'm a sucker for a database.

Texas Unclaimed Property
Texas Crime Records
(List of multiple links)
Texas Criminal History Search
(Small fee for search, less than $5)
Tx DPS Sex Offender Registry
Texas Criminal Dept of Justice Offender Search
Tx Board of Nursing License Verification
Tx Board of Nursing LVN Verification
Tx Board of Nursing RN Verification
Tx Dept of Aging & Disability, Nurse Aide Employability Status
(Employee Misconduct Registry, also includes Medication Aides and other employees at DADS regulated facilities)
Tx Health & Human Services Licensing, Credentialing and Regulation
(Check if Child Daycare or Nursing Homes are licensed, other links)
Tx Comptroller Taxable Entity Search
Texas Sales Taxpayer Search