Off to the turkey races

Vets and a classic, Cuero, Texas.

Day 2.5, Cuero, Texas

No matter how tired we are, my friend Courtney Sacco and I relish in making new experiences in places that we co-habit (first Midland/Odessa, now Victoria, Corpus Christi). So when given the opportunity to see the tiny town of Cuero (pop. 7,000) turn out en masse to watch two turkeys race down the main street, we loaded up in Courtney's jeep and drove north.

Cuero is a tiny town that has benefited greatly from the oil and gas boom of the last few years. A new H-E-B was recently completed, there have been talks to expand the Wal-Mart, and a new gym is springing up at the high school. But now the community, like many others in shale oil plays, is being hurt by the downturn in the oil industry. Prices remain around $50 a barrel, the future remains uncertain, and many companies have announced layoffs. I'm sure that I'll get to cover such issues further, but today wasn't about oil.

It was about turkeys.

Cuero's 3x champion, Ruby Begonia.

Cuero used to be a major turkey hub in the U.S., and like cattle runs of old the turkey farmers would move their rafters (the name for a group of turkeys) down the main drag to get them to market. One November run had as many as 18,000 turkeys strutting down to their slaughter, killed and packaged at a processing plant next to the railroad tracks.

As the industry waned in the 1970s, word got around that Cuero had competition for the claim to "Turrkey Capital of the World" in the form of Worthington, Minnesota (pop. 13,000, about 50 miles east of Sioux Falls). In an attempt to gin up some PR for the respective towns the editors of the respective local newspapers, The Cuero Record and the Worthington Daily Globe, hatched the idea for a turkey race to settle the argument once and for all.

Forty-three years later and the turkeys still waddle down the main drag for 150 yards, their team of coaches close on their heels. This year pitted Ruby Begonia, Cuero's three-time champion, against Worthington's Paycheck.

An adoring fan snaps a shot of Ruby.

 The race and festival is nothing but pure Americana, as Courtney put it. The entire town seems to line the five-lane main drag. Local police crack jokes with locals. Pistols are carried by law enforcement and citizen alike on belt holsters. The football team (the Gobblers) are wearing their uniforms sin pads in the hot sun; the cheerleaders are dolled up and ready to go. Miss Cuero (in full wedding gown-esque dress and tiara) joins the mayor and others in welcoming the crowd. The truck carrying the two birds, side-by-side, trundles down the street. Cries of "Go Ruby, go!" echo up and down the drag, the crowd encouraging their bird onward to its fourth victory.

A football player rests as he waits for the turkey race to kick off.

Courtney does what he does best - works.

 With a shout the birds are off, their teams of four coaches following behind with rattlers and flags to (try to) keep them on course. Turkeys are no thoroughbreds, but they're no slouches either. Paycheck veered toward the crowd, which backed up against the curb, giving Paycheck's team room to work. Ruby was nowhere to be seen; his group trundled along next to the trotting bird.

Paycheck on the road to victory.

 A minute later Paycheck crossed the finish line. A small group of Worthingtonians raised a shout of victory. Ruby continued down the road at a steady pace, finally crossing the line minutes later. One coach cursed, wondering aloud why the bird had been so slow. The answer came in blood spots leading to a ripped talon; the bird had essentially lost a toe tip.

An exhausted Ruby breathes heavily as a coach assesses his condition.

Ruby's blood splatters the pavement after losing Cuero's turkey race.

Ruby shed dozens of feathers after the race, leaving many floating in the wind.

Worthington won handily, but the people of Cuero did not despair. The parade full of police vehicles, the high school marching band, and floats soon made them forget the loss. But soon they will have to turn back to the realities at hand - a local economy that is faltering, a small community that may not be prepared for the harsh economic reality of the coming months, and an oil industry that is going through yet another downturn. Hopefully Cuero's energy business will not suffer a similar fate to its turkey industry.

One last time in Midlandia

Flying into the pump jack forest.

One year ago I drove the last stretch into Midland in an overpacked Prius with two California plates. I was exhausted from the 1,600 mile journey and nervous of what I was walking into. The pump jacks grew thicker in a landscape devoid of life, tuned grey by years of drought and centuries of desertification.

I passed through Odessa first - low-slung, industrial, and blue collar. I passed by the names of Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger. Their lots buzzed with activity, the roads were packed with semis and trucks. In West Texas, the middle class blue collar dream was still alive - the promise of opportunity beckoned to thousands.

The ever-present pump jack.

And then the Tall City emerged from the shimmer of heat, 100-degrees of sunshine beating down on it. The tall towers of downtown Midland were the tallest buildings between Phoenix and Ft. Worth, with the Bank of America building soaring to 332 feet with a cross on top. At night the cross would be lit up, proclaiming the city's reach towards the heavens.

When I arrived at what was to be my home, I was greeted by Levi, Heidi, and Lance. Tired from the drive, I was uninspired to unpack and so they suggested we go do something else - eat. We packed up in Levi's truck (aka the USS Enterprise) and headed for a quintessentially Texas dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Loaded down with good company, beer, and not-half-bad barbecue, I thought to myself that this place may not be so bad after all.

Well a year and a month later I write this while sitting in Midland for one last time. My car again sits packed, though with some semblance of organization this time. This place, this outpost of humanity in the middle of an inhospitable desert (which some have called hell) has taught me much about myself and humanity.

Midland and Odessa have reinforced in me that one cannot consider people in absolute terms. Some are good, some are moral, some are religious and some are bigoted. All people have a little bit of it all in them, and while some people draw lines of tolerance in the sand, I've found that my lines have become more dashed than bold in my time here.

My next journey will take me to Victoria, Texas, an eight-hour drive east to a spot 20 miles inland from the Gulf Coast. What I will be covering I cannot say for sure yet, but I am excited to be getting the opportunity to cover oil and gas to a level I had been unable to before.

To my friends: keep each other sane, laugh often, and most of all, come visit me!

To my colleagues: Y'all are great people with limitless potential. As our good ol' Ed Todd has put it time and time again, keep them rascals honest!

Goodbye from Midland!

Loyal readers, I will be back soon with tales from the hot and humid Gulf, full of oil, flying cockroaches and maybe a hurricane or two. Until then, thanks for reading.

The last few months

Needless to say it has been a busy 2015. We were short staffed in the office after our esteemed education reporter Tessa Duvall left for the great Floridian city of Jacksonville. On top of that the price of West Texas Intermediate (the sweet crude oil that gets fracked in West Texas) plummeted after Saudi Arabia announced OPEC's decision on Thanksgiving to maintain production levels. The price of WTI as of this writing is around $50 a barrel, over half what it was in June 2014.

It can be hard at times to keep ones head up through the constant work, the blistering pace of projects and daily copy, but one of the rewarding bits about being a journalist is seeing your byline and hearing from the people about your writing. In a time of extreme uncertainty in Midland, the people here now more than ever before need the information that we can give them in order to have a better idea of what is going on in their oil-dependent economy and community.

Listen here for my view of what has been happening in Midland:
Marfa Public Radio interviews Rye Druzin

What is happening is nothing short of spectacular. The Houston Chronicle estimated that at least 100,000 oil field workers have lost their jobs worldwide, and one economist, Dr. M. Ray Perryman, said last week at a talk in Odessa that Texas is slated to lose around 150,000 oil field jobs, While the state as a whole will continue to add jobs at a rate unseen anywhere else in the country, the slowdown is putting a significant dent on an industry that just a year ago couldn't add enough people.

Desptie this slowdown U.S. production continue to rise, partly because of the geology of shale formations. When propped open using hydraulic fracturing, a process that pushes pressurized sand and other materials into shale to prop the rock open, a fracked well will produce at least half of its output in the first year of production and at a rapid rate. This is why U.S. production keeps growing, as fracked wells are brought online and rush even more oil onto the market. This production growth probably will not drop off for another six months to a year.

The eerie "stacking" of rigs in Odessa.

At the same time, hundreds of oil drilling rigs are being "stacked," with this yard of 30+ rigs growing in size in Odessa.

But some things have fundamentally changed in the oil field. Horizontal drilling allows for a single rig to drill in multiple directions upwards of three miles away from the pad site. Sometimes four or five pump jacks are in close proximity to each other because of this technological advancement. Newer rigs can not only drill four directions at once, but they can now "walk" to their next pad site under their own power, cutting down the amount of time and equipment needed to work on sites that may be only 10 or 20 feet away.

Vertical rigs are among the first to be cut because of their lack of the horizontal advantage, which is how many of the shale plays are being taken advantage of. Vertical rigs tap into more "traditional" oil pockets: reservoirs of oil that are sucked dry. The horizontal rigs drill for miles into the side of shale formations before explosive charges are inserted to crack the shale, which is then fracked. Because the Permian Basin is made up of pancake layers of shale deposits horizontal drilling rigs are being favored over vertical rigs.

Oil executives like Scott Sheffield, CEO of regional independent Pioneer Natural Resources, have said that this downturn will last between one and two years, and that the recovery will be slow. Recent estimate are that production will not begin reversing itself for another year before tapering off, drawing down some of the over supply that has led to the latest glut. Growing oil stockpiles in Cushing, Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast threaten to destabilize the market for WTI crude further, and potentially drop the price to lower levels as demand sags.

If you want to see more about what is happening, check out these articles that I have written at these links:

http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article_3d2f105e-bde5-11e4-a185-071b199d6286.html

http://www.mrt.com/blogs/news_blogs/article_9cf537aa-bc7a-11e4-a82f-174e9d05f4ee.html

http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article_f75b5092-bbc3-11e4-bf4c-0be1228a9c57.html

http://www.mrt.com/blogs/news_blogs/article_0785e7d8-bba2-11e4-a1d2-d7984b5a0170.html

http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article_ffb1c23a-b89e-11e4-999c-37d37c2e1e7d.html

http://www.mrt.com/business/article_eb3d28e2-b63e-11e4-b63d-cb75f2b7bbe2.html


Thank you all for reading, and stay tuned for more posts.