The old Grand Cherokee could have picked a better place to retire, but Hotel Street in Higgins, Texas is where the carburetor gave out, the transmission said “NOPE!”, and the head gasket went south for the winter.
The hot springs at Ouray would have been nice, and Hawaiian shirts and flip flops are in vogue year-round down in the Florida Keys---
But at least Higgins has trains.
Lots and lots of trains.
And when the battery went dead and the a/c no longer worked, he broke out the window for a little breeze and a better view.
He’s got good company to keep as well, like the old 1970 Chevy pickup that’s laid claim to the next patch of weeds over, and that hot little ’55 Mercury Monterey that’s ripped her hood off and likes to expose herself to strange men. Her interior sags a bit, but hey…
There are no HOA regulations to say she can’t, no Yard-of-the-Month club, and no Karens complaining about the visuals, just a daily visit from Sheriff Ty as he cruises the backstreets of Lipscomb County looking for riff-raff, stopping to engage a stranger with cameras strapped across his form, a friendly welfare check that included war stories and a chat about the twister of ’47 and what’s good on the menu over at the Haystack Café.
Innocence was established, hands were shaken, friends were made---
All while the commerce of a nation breezed through town at 70 per, trumpets sounding, lights flashing and gates lowering across Main Street every few minutes or so.
Hmmm…
Maybe it’s not a bad place to retire after all.
---RAM
Rick Malo©2024
It's 1:39 on the afternoon of April 18th, 2023, and 9-44CW 1077 brings up the rear of an empty eastbound grain train as it slips past the abandoned grain silos at Higgins, Texas.
With a Union Pacific motor fourth in line, a Saturday evening hotshot storms west from Higgins, Texas at 6:55 on March 30th, 2024.
Unlike so many small towns out on the plains, Higgins, Texas doesn't have a Railroad Street. But, if it did, it would be just like all the other towns: The trains don't stop at the depot on Railroad Street anymore.
The cabbages and the combines and the cabooses came off almost a full generation ago, and the doodlebugs that were the connections to so many small towns throughout the land couldn't justify their existence after the mail contracts dried up and blew away.
Soon the branchlines would dry up as well, the local freights cutting into the bottom line of the Wall Street investor.
At the railroad's insistence, the grain from Higgins and Perryton and Booker and countless other towns across the Panhandle found its way onto trucks for the ride to the super elevators at Amarillo and Shattuck and other places where it was easier to load unit grain trains, leaving the Russian thistle and summer cypress to grow unchecked along countless abandoned rights-of-way miles.
The blowing dust would settle about the ballast that was disturbed when the rails and ties were ripped out, and it would settle still about the back streets of Higgins, where the traffic at the corner of Hotel & Lipscomb Streets is not enough to disturb the sands that have blown about.
The hotel has long been closed, and the depot razed years ago.
The trains don't stop.
There's no longer grain to load at Higgins.
Old GE dash-9s still populate the Transcon in force, and on a Summer 2023 Saturday evening 4043 roars past the foundation of the old depot in Higgins with westbound JB Hunt containers on the drawbar.
"Simple Majesty."
In an evening vignette at Higgins, a westbound grain block rounds the curve and rolls into a setting Autumn sun on Saturday, November 11th, 2023.
A summer dawn in Higgins.
Welcome to Higgins, Texas---
The last Lone Star State outpost along US Highway 60 and the BNSF Transcon before one crosses east into the Oklahoma Territory. As time goes by, we'll provide more glimpses into the life of this tiny town that 'progress' has all but passed by, leaving it to wither amongst the sage and prairie sunflowers.
Our first two offerings will be a bit of a juxtaposition; the transformation of the seasons.
Above, we're just outside of town at 8:48 pm on the evening of July 5th, 2023. The great storms of the spring and early summer have turned the Plains into a verdant paradise for the ranchers, filling the playas and stock tanks with much needed water and thickening the sage and wildflowers and grasses that carpet the land. As one such storm moves off east to drench the land over Oklahoma way, an eastbound hotshot rolls fast toward its destination somewhere in the Midwest.
In the scene below, Autumn has laid its blanket upon the land; the Little Bluestem grasses taking on their characteristic rust color, the hints of blue and gray in the sage now muted, and the leaves of the old cottonwood have succumbed to the season and fluttered to the ground on the ever-present prairie winds. It's 5:08 pm on the glorious evening of November 11th, 2023, and a steak dinner awaits us in town at the Haystack Cafe as two GE ES44C4 motors head straight into the setting sun with a westbound stack train full of Prime and JB Hunt boxes a mile or so removed from the above locale.
