When I found an exit and went into the gas station it felt the same, the roughnecks dressed in coveralls slick with oil and grime wearing baseball caps and cowboy boots and playful expressions and talking to each other over the candy aisle about the bars and the Hooters and the Twin Peaks they’d visit later that night.ĭennis Elam, columnist The Odessa American I’ve traveled through most of the country and many parts of the world but on that Friday evening, crawling through traffic, needing to pee, I realized I was somewhere I’d never been before, that, as far as my eye could see, the landscape was a mess of smoke, flame, the flickering brake lights of the cars in front of me, trucks and semis covered in dust.

The sky was filled with flames: the sun setting ahead of me and the miles and miles of fiery refineries that hug the highway. On a Friday evening around 5:30 it was late November and the sun was in my eyes and my windshield was covered with the splattered bugs of a five hour drive from Dallas and there, in the lunar landscape of the western edge of the reddest state in the union I found myself in something unexpected: a traffic jam on I-20 between Midland and Odessa. After seeing the film and then reading the book I was obsessed with the landscape, the people, the timeless quality I expected West Texas to have. I came out to West Texas for the first time a year ago chasing a ghost, whatever traces could be found of the original Midnight Cowboy.