Another shot from Dougherty, this one of the remains of the school, which had a natural-gas explosion one day and just hasn’t been the same since.

My traveling companion and I stopped to look around, and just after we arrived, a man in a pick-up pulled up to see what we were doing. (I am almost positive his wife sent him.) He was very chatty, and we learned a lot from him:

1. He was working as a state trooper in Lubbock, about 70 miles away, when the school exploded, and was sent over to help. The explosion was during a school day, and there were several injuries but no one was killed.
2. He lives in Doughtery now, runs some cattle, and is scared that the drought will never end.
3. Used to, back in the day before cell phones, when “the boys” were done with the branding, they could relax over some “cold beers” (which he said like it was one word) before heading home, but nowadays, their wives start calling them and they can’t stay around as long.
(This comment came right after his wife called him to see what he’d found out about why the strangers were in town.)
4. He told us about an abandoned school in Roaring Springs, the next town over.
5. Then he told us about the last time there was a big rain. He said, “It was one-a those rains that came straight down for two, three days. That culvert in front of the house was full of weeds so that water wasn’t drainin’ and it kept gettin’ closer and closer to the house. Finally my wife sent me out there to fix it, and there I was, in my slicker and boots with rain runnin’ off my hat. I was pullin’ them tumbleweeds out-a that culvert. And I almost cussed the rain. Almost. But I didn’t.”

Dougherty, Texas
April 2, 2014