Smokey City

Breaking camp in Amarillo and getting on the road to Borger was a breeze.  A mud-ball storm (more blowing dirt than rain that leaves red mud stuck to everything) blew threw during the night and the temps were the coolest we had seen in a week.  It was only a one hour trip across flat, open farmland as we made the approach to the Canadian River Breaks.  There was no doubt we were getting close to our birthplace.  As we passed the gate to the storied 6666 Ranch, we could detect the smell of the refinery and chemical plants, and farmland gave way to ranchland and oil fields.

The town of Borger exists because of oil.  Up until 1926 there was no Borger, but a wildcat oil strike in that year changed the population from zero to 10,000 in less than a month.  The first three or four years it was nothing more than a tent city, but growth continued and Frank Phillips (Phillips 66) chose Borger as the place to build a refinery that eventually became the world's largest inland refinery.  Soon there was a chemical plant then came the carbon black plants; several of them.  The town was ringed by them, there was one at almost every major compass point.

In the mid-1970's the CB radio craze was at its peak, you could not buy a used car in those days that did not have a hole drilled in it somewhere on its back end for an antenna mount.  And like today's texting, tweeting or whatever, it had its own language.  Everybody had a "handle", it was your name you were known by on the airwaves.  Today you have an avatar for your online presence.  But for CB'ers they extended handles to not only people but places and things.  With the flares burning off waste products at the refinery and the carbon black plants belching out columns of black soot, Borger was assigned the handle of "Smoky City".

Things are vastly improved today.  All but one of the carbon black plants are gone and advances in environmental control technology has reduced what gets away from these industrial complexes to a tiny fraction of what it was when we were kids.

Borger has no traditional RV parks.  Individuals have carved out some rough spots on gravel parking lots next to abandoned oil field supply businesses, and bare-ground lots intended for work campers, here on pipeline welding jobs or contract construction/maintenance, but nothing you would come to just for the camping.  However, the city of Borger had a moment of inspiration and built a 10-space RV park in the town's largest city park, Huber Park.  The response has been impressive.  The ten spaces stay full much of the time.  Most folks are doing the same as we are, they are here to see family and friends, attend weddings, reunions and funerals.

As we pull into Huber Park it is an unusual day as there are no RV's, we can pick from any site we want.  A favorite spot for us is at the far end, adjacent to the fence that encompasses the high school's baseball field.



Huber Park RV site 10.
We can watch high spirited ball games right out our door.



We even have some nice old elms to give a little early morning shade

Small towns are a hoot.  Everyone has heard about how everybody knows everything about everybody in a small town.  But I think it goes beyond that.  I think there is a balance in the psyche of the community.  We had no more than pulled into the park and started hooking up and my mother drove up.  She lives 5 miles north of where we are, we did not call and say we were getting close or anything.  We must have disturbed the "balance" as we drove into town and she felt it.

No time for kicking back.  We were on a mission, it is Friday afternoon and arrangements had to be made for getting access to trucks and trailers and working out a training regimen for Cyndee so that she would be ready for the commercial license driving test on Monday.

If you recall from previous posts, we took the written part of the driver license test in Livingston, TX.  But they were booked solid on the driving portion, the earliest they could take us was the end of July.  We have to be in Arizona, via a one week stop-over in Kansas by the end of July.  So we came up with an alternate strategy and called the folks at the DPS in Borger to see if they get to us sooner.  "Sure", they said; "Just come in and we'll do it on the spot".  Great!  We've got a plan.

Regardless, as soon as we were hooked up to utilities we went out to the DPS on the west edge of town and went in to schedule an appointment for Monday.  No go.  The earliest they could work us in was July 12.  I said; "The 12th, what happened to come in and do it on the spot?".  She said; "We got busy."  Now what, we have to be in Kansas on the 8th.  She picked up the phone and started calling neighboring towns.  She found that Pampa could get us on their schedule for first thing Tuesday morning.  Whew, we may make it after all.  It will be a 30 mile drive to get there, but what the heck.  We locked in the appointment headed out to find one of our life-long friends, Dean, to get the keys to his truck.

If there is anyone reading this that is contemplating the purchase of an RV, whether it be a Class A, Class C or 5th wheel, AND a Texas driver license, there is a hard line drawn for when you have to step up from a standard, class C license (the one you get to drive a car or light truck) to a class A-exempt license (this one is for farmers/ranchers to move their large equipment/horse trailers and such, and RVs).  The hard line is drawn around weight classifications.  If your RV has a GVWR (gross vehicle weight rating) or a GCWR (gross combined weight rating) equal to or greater than 26,001 lbs, then you have to have a class A-exempt license.  Our truck has a GCWR of 33,000 lbs, we have to take the truck drivers test.

The driving test requires that you do all the normal stuff such as driving forward, not running red lights, hitting curbs or having a wreck while driving the course.  But you have to do the test using the weight class vehicle that you are testing for.  We are going to have a medium duty truck and trailer.  And instead of parallel parking like you do in a regular driving test, we will have to back the trailer in a straight line for about a 100'.  Cyndee has driven our rig down the highway on occasion but she has always left the backing to me.  Hence the need to get our hands on a truck and trailer that she could train in.  The thought of packing up our house, hitching up and finding parking lots for Cyndee to do backing up exercises in for a couple of hours each on Sat and Sun was not pleasant.  Dean has come to the rescue.  He has a Chevy 4500 Topkick with flatbed on it that he uses to pull his fairly large backhoe with.  He took the backhoe off the trailer, handed us the keys to the yard gate and truck and wished us good luck.

We'll spend the rest of the day with Mom and Tommy.  Tomorrow morning will be drivers ed.