Finding meaning in random events
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Friday, November 28, 2008 at 08:26 AM [GMT-6]

About the only interesting thing that happened during the A&M-UT game last night was when the camera showed Josh Beckett on the UT sidelines and the announcers pointed out that he was going deer hunting tomorrow.

Now, if that had happened two nights ago, I would have had three reactions:

1. Why is A&M playing Texas on a Wednesday night?
2. Who is Josh Beckett?
3. Why should I care that he'll be deer hunting on Friday?

The first question is moot, of course, as they weren't playing on Wednesday night (although I might suggest to A&M head coach Mike Sherman that he keep that in mind as a good strategy next year, as his team might have better success if Texas isn't on the field). But the next two questions are relevant, because of what happened yesterday afternoon.

Following our usual extravagant home-cooked Thanksgiving feast, my wife, her dad and I made a 70-mile round trip west and south of Fort Stockton to visit some old stomping grounds. More specifically, we drove about 20 miles west on I-10, hung a right on Ranch Road 2023 (don't bother looking for it on Google Maps; where it apparently doesn't even merit a highway number; you can find it on MapQuest, however) and drove fifteen miles back into the juniper-lined mesas, before returning via Highway 385.

Our destination was a motley collection of gas processing plants collectively referred to as Puckett Field. The Puckett Field and several directly offsetting it combined to make one of the most prolific onshore natural gas producing regions in Texas, and thus in the US. The common tie for our family was that my wife and her family lived for a while during her high school years in a house in the Phillips Petroleum camp, and I later worked summers at the Transwestern Pipeline Gas Plant just up the road from the Phillips camp and plant (and the larger Northern Natural Gas Plant). I won't go into further detail about these things except to note that when they mothballed the Transwestern Plant some years after I worked there, they dug a big pit, shoved the facility into it and buried it.

Anyway, as we were surveying the ruins of their old house (the camp was abandoned in the 80s), a man came out of the only habitable house in sight, walked across the field and greeted us. His name was Art, and he's a hunting guide (he and his guests were in the process of preparing the dove and wild turkey they'd shot earlier in the day for their Thanksgiving feast).

Art was a very affable fellow and told us all about his operation, including the fact that he was hosting some guy named Josh Beckett for a deer hunt beginning on Friday (today). I had no idea who Josh Beckett is, but I didn't want to appear unimpressed so I nodded in what I hoped was an impressed manner.

It wasn't until the aforementioned reference to Beckett during the football game that I got motivated to Google the guy, and discovered that he's some hotshot pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who didn't make the World Series this year, but neither did the Texas Rangers, so we can't jump to any conclusions.

What's the point to this story? Nothing, really, except that it can sometimes be a small world. That, and sometimes the most interesting things in a football game take place on the sidelines and aren't related to football at all.