Gazing into the Pit
I've been meaning to post something about Burr Williams' last column, in which he describes the simple attractions of the caliche pit. Wallace over at Streams pointed out a few minutes ago that I'm now into my second day of a non-blogging streak, and I take that as a sign that I'd better get off my duff and, well, just do it.
For the uninitiated, caliche in west Texas is a deposit of calcium carbonate in the soil. Caliche is pretty much ubiquitous out here; when you're digging a hole, it's not a matter of "if" but rather "when" you'll hit a layer of caliche. If you're fortunate, it will be only a few inches thick, and easy to break through. If you're not, it will be yards thick and will challenge the hardiest of backhoes. It's used throughout the area for the base of roadbeds...and for the roadbeds themselves on many ranches, and more than a few towns.
As with much of Burr's subject matter, this one resonates with me. As a mere ute, I whiled away many an hour in the caliche pits that dotted the landscape around Fort Stockton. Those pits were tailor made for kids (generally boys) with imaginations, and whose alternative terrains were flat and boring. Caliche pits made great mountain biking venues (although we'd never heard the term "mountain bike" nor seen any such animal); the occasional boulders made great hideouts; and even when they doubled as ad hoc dumps, who knew what treasures had been left under the cushions of those old couches?
Caliche pits even continued their attraction as I grew older, albeit for reasons somehow omitted in Burr's excellent column. Hypothetically speaking, one could take a '57 Ford with benchseats, a bolted-on 8-track tape deck playing some dreck by Rod McKuen or, perhaps, the soundtrack from "Romeo & Juliet," add a sweet young thang, and find that a caliche pit was the perfect parking space for that love machine.
Of course, even "perfection" could have its downsides. One of those could come if, again hypothetically speaking, the graded road down into the pit had a hump to it that, if not approached with just the right attitude and speed, could result in the high-centering of a hypothetical '57 Ford. In such cases, you might think that Rod McKuen's pre-New Age ramblings would be of little use, and you'd be right. Hypothetically-speaking, of course.
Hey, Burr...thanks for the hypothetical memories!
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Back before the city built that Scharbauer Stadium, one of the designs proposed on the Craig Anderson Talk Show Program was a Caliche Pit Stadium.
The sides of the Caliche Pit would be carved like the steps of stairs. At the bottom it would be flat so that they can play football. Soil can be brought to the bottom so that grasses can be planted. It would have been similiar to those ancient stadiums in Rome, Greece, etc.
Craig said, maybe we should bring here those gigantic coal digging machineries!!!!!
Left that way, the stadium would have been white. Or you could laminate it with a skin of asphalt or concrete, or whatever, even soil planted with grass. But caliche white would have been good enough and would have made it strikingly unique. April, of Greenwood, whose voice you sometimes hear on Radio Advertisements, thought that it might be a very good idea !!!!!
During the olympics, I said to them: If you built that Scharbauer Stadium the way the Eurasian told you to do as a caliche pit, because of its economy, we would have built not only one but several of them pits. Then we could have bidded for that olympic site AND THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST UNDERGROUND OLYMPICS EVER, RIGHT HERE IN MIDLAND!!!!
But all is not lost yet. Maybe, in the future. If not here in Midland, maybe someplace else!!!!!
You see, the stones alone excavated from the huge and deep caliche pit would have paid if not help substantially pay for the entire cost. Our city would have become the talk of the whole world. Instead, what we have are huge debts and taxes.
the-eurasian@earthlink.net
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Burr left out an important bit of local caliche pit folk lore in not mentioning "Rim Rock City", a western town[i.e. Tourist Trap] built in the early '60's and located in......a caliche pit between Midland and Odessa next to Hwy 80. It was sooo exciting I can't remember exactly what it offered except a daily shoot out between good guys and bad guys.
Posted by: Wallace at March 19, 2004 11:22 PM