If I were to mention Abilene, Sweetwater, Roscoe, Colorado City, Big Spring, Stanton, Midland, Odessa, Monahans, Pecos, Van Horn, Sierra Blanca, and El Paso you would recognize that as the route of I-20 and say that is the ultimate connection within West Texas. And if I asked, "How about US Highway 80, most of you would recognize that as the earlier name for the same highway before I-20 came along and straightened out some kinks and leveled some hills. Then if I asked, "Does the name Bankhead ring a bell?" Hmmmm blank stares.

But all of you have probably seen the name Bankhead somewhere in each of those I-20 towns ... maybe a street name, a name like Bankhead Courts along an old US Highway 80 route, or more frequently an old Bankhead Cafe still hanging on in an older part of town.

Before the names I-20 and US 80 came along, that stretch of highway was known as the Bankhead Highway ... the longest and most famous roadway in America ... and West Texas was right in the middle of it.

In the earliest part of the 20th Century there were no cars. And when cars came along, there were no roads suitable for automobile touring. So as an aid to auto travelers a sort of ad hoc system of National Auto Trails was started ... marking suitable routes between towns with painted colored bands on telephone poles or fence posts. As traffic increased the roads were improved. Soon it made sense to coordinate these trails between states so that gradually a road network was forming. Then, as a sizeable trail became organized it was given an Auto Trail name. Seeing the value of this for transportation and commerce a Senator Bankhead of Alabama pushed through legislation in 1916 for federal funding to states to support this. In 1917 TxDOT was established to manage fed funds in Texas.

The most famous of the trails was named the Bankhead Highway .... and just imagine this! The route was from Washington DC; through Virginia; through North and South Carolina; to Atlanta, Ga; through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, to Little Rock, Ar; to Texarkana, Ft Worth, Dallas, Abilene and on to El Paso; then through New Mexico, Arizona and terminated at San Diego. Roscoe had the distinction of being the origin of a connector that ran to Lubbock, Plainview, Farwell, Roswell, Clovis to El Paso.

In 1926 another highway bill was passed that gave the Feds the authority to name and number all highways that received fed funds. Our highway, the Bankhead Highway, had the distinction of being named US Highway No. 1.

How did West Texas rate this route and this distinction. Easy, the Texas and Pacific railroad was finished in about 1883 from Marshall, Tx through Dallas and Ft Worth and on to El Paso. And following completion of the railroad, towns were formed along that track between Ft Worth and El Paso like pearls in a necklace. The fact that the railroad had scouted its route and birthed towns along side, it was a natural route for a roadway. This and the fact that each town along the route still had the same active boosters around who had aided in getting the railroad through their settlement. These same folks worked with the legislators to coordinate with neighbors in Arkansas and New Mexico to gain the route.

Consider this succession of names for the highway through West Texas we have traveled so many times: State Aid Road No. 1, Highway 1, Bankhead Highway, US Highway No. 1, US Highway 80, and then in 1969 to Interstate 20.

In those early day is Texas travelers had to carry along their bedrolls, food and tools but over time accommodations sprang up to form a backbone of commerce in all those towns. Although technically named US Highway 1 and later US Highway 80, the name Bankhead Highway remained in general use in West Texas through WWII. That highway was a godsend in WWII as troop convoys, war materials of all kind, and many conveniently located military bases made heavy use of its strategic location and route.

Beginning in the early 50s highways were altered and relocated and the name Bankhead Highway was slowly dismantled. But it served West Texas well while it lasted ... and is a bit of West Texas history that deserves remembering.

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 4/11/2006 1:04a).]

There are a couple of old West Texas sayings that may still be in common use. One was "Idle hands are the devil's tools" and the other was "Empty pockets are the devil's playground." Both sayings were appropriate to farm kids in the 50s in West Texas when the day's chores were done and three or four of us merged at one location.

With no TV, no cars available, and no money in our pockets the usual question that made its rounds was, "What can we do that it fun." Now let me explain the conjugation of comparative and superlative adjectives as applied to farm kids in situations like this: the term "fun" would be something like building some musical instruments for a neighborhood band, the term "funner" applied if the handiwork turned out to make a horrendous racket that would add some amusement to their usually mundane lives, and the term "funnest" if the collective genius hit upon some practical use for this wondrous instrument such as maybe scaring a classmate out of three years of growth or maybe causing some old farmer to bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night yelling "Whutwuszat? whutwuszat?"

So that is the way we got into the musical instrument construction for fun situation. (And that is where the devil came in ... if three of us got together, the devil was the unseen fourth who chimed in as we progressed up the conjugation ladder with urgings of "That sounds funner (or funnest), let's do it!"

The first instrument to come to mind was a "tub bass" because we had seen pictures of those with old time hillbilly bands. All the parts we needed to round up were a Number 3 washtub which every farmhouse and barn had a few of, a stout pole about four or five feet long for the neck and some stout wire for the "string" to strum. We had that thing ready to go in no time ... turned the tub upside down, knocked a hole in the edge of the bottom for the pole to go through, a u-bolt to anchor the bottom of the pole to the bottom side of the tub, and a length of 1/8th inch braided wire running from a hole in the middle of the bottom of the tub and tied securely to the top of the pole. Shoot, that thing worked like a charm. It was a three-man operation, one to hold the tub down, one to pull hard on the top of the pole to get the cable tight and the third to strum the string and we had an upright bass.

Now for you musically challenged folks, what we had built was a primordial version of what a symphony conductor would call a double-bass viol (or the less sophisticated would call a bull fiddle.) A finely tuned double bass is said to be able to go four octaves lower than middle C. (The devil chimed in about this point and said "Let's go for six!) Umm no. The pole holder just couldn't pull any harder to increase the tension on the cable and the string plucker said it was already too tight as it was hurting his fingers.

We were stymied a bit until someone had the answer (the devil again probably.) "Let's don't strum it, let's play it like a bull fiddle. All we need is a bow." Now you just don't normally have a fine horsehair bow on the usual West Texas farm but there is always a broom stick handy. And one draw of that broom stick across that cable and we went straight from fun to funner. Depending on the tension the pole man could get on the cable and the deft touch of the broom stick man to get the right vibration of the cable ... that thing let out a wonderful BROOOOOOOOOWWWOOOOOOOOUUGGGGGGGGG. The sound was indescribable, and loud, and so darned amazing it had to have a name. Someone said, "BULL BELLER!" and that name stuck. Now I make no claims to the invention of this contraption, or the unusual bow, or even the name we applied because as simple as things went together I am sure country kids have been making them for centuries. But all that was beside the point, it was time for figuring out a practical application. (Funnest!)

Now after ten o'clock at night all of West Texas was deathly quiet, except for maybe a pack of coyotes yipping or maybe a cow separated from her calf, or a real bull bemoaning being separation from his herd. To test our instrument, we wanted a dirt road, far from town, three or four farmhouses within a half mile or so in clear view so we could guage reaction. We found the right spot down on the Clear Fork of the Brazos not far from Sylvester.

This was our opening performance and we were nervous. Getting everything set up in the middle of the road was easy and the players were in position. In that clear night air that Bull Beller let out a sound that had not been heard since the Cambrian Period ... or maybe even the Permian when the animal remains being pumped around Odessa were walking around. The second drag of our bow even scared the bejabbers out of the artists. The coyotes stopped, the cows stopped, and the real bull even stopped bellering. For a mile around lights started popping on at farmhouses. One more sonorous draw of the bow and we dumped our instrument in the back seat of the car and left that area ... without lights.

Now let me explain about rural communication in West Texas at that time. We were just getting telephones on farms in West Texas ... but everyone was on a party line ... six to eight parties on one line. And it was not polite to do it but when one party's discrete ring rang, everyone on the line picked up particularly at night (just in case it was something important.) Well, if someone just happened to be calling to tell his brother that some feeerocious beast was moving around the the Clear Fork bottoms that was important! ... and with every one on 8-party-lines something like that could cover the county in a geometric minute. The next day in town seems like half the people claimed to have heard the beast and the other half were guessing what it might have been.

We waited about a week before the next performance ... over by the Royston community ... four drags on the bow and "Let"s get out of here." The next day in town the word on the street were ominous. Search parties were out looking for tracks (darn, why didn't we think of that!... just too much fun potential.) But also we figured someone might be out at night in their pickup trucks just hoping the critter would make an appearance near their house.

So, we retired our infamous Bull Beller after only two performances. And we went on to other interests as the talk in the town subsided ... content that the animal whatever it was had followed the Clear Fork on up toward Throckmorton or maybe as far as Possum Kingdom.

I don't know if any of my partners confessed to this foolishness over the years, but if not, you are the first to know the rest of the story about the Bull Beller on the Clear Fork.