What's in the Water in Midland, Texas?

 By: Dianne Neuman Whittington

I was 4/5 years old (1949) when we moved to Midland from Silver City, New Mexico.  My mother, brother, and I were all born in Silver.  My father was in charge of the silver mine in the town of Vanadium, a mining town of about 20 houses and about 15 minutes from Silver City. He moved there after college graduation with US Smelting, Refining and Mining and married my mother.  Our move to Midland began my father ‘s career in the oil business.  I am pretty sure that my mother cried for the first year that we lived there.  She thought we had moved to the flattest, most desolate place possible.  The heat was unbearable and the dust storms continually filled the house with sand. We had neighbors to the east but the west was a sea of vacant lots filled with tumbleweeds that always blew into our cinderblock fence.

By: Dianne Neuman Whittington

 We lived at 1909 Michigan and it was always hot most of the year.  Where our driveway ended the vacant lots seemed to go on forever.  My mother and father were campers and outdoor people so they cautioned us to not roam in the vacant lots as rattlesnakes had been found there.   They told us if we ever heard a rattle to freeze and not move.  I think I was six and my brother and I went out to play in the neighborhood—probably barefooted.  I heard the rattle as I went out the back gate.  I froze, looked down, and saw the snake coiled in front of me.  My brother got my mother and she killed it with a hoe. I will never know how I was not so traumatized that I never went outside again. 

By: Dianne Whittington   

Looking back on my childhood in Midland, the thing that first comes to mind is the freedom to be independent and to experience life as it happened.  I certainly had rules and expectations that I would hopefully follow them.  The rules changed as I grew older and they were always there to help me get older—not always the way I saw them.  The independence part came early—even before we started 1st grade.  It was leaving the house in early morning, roaming the neighborhood until lunch, leaving again and coming home for dinner.  There was no one organizing the games we played.  Imaginations ran wild and the only limits were to try not break the few rules. The 50’s and 60’s in Midland gave us an ideal time to grow up.  There were not the frantic times of today–no TV, no cell phones, and a slower way of life. I must really be old now as I am beginning to hear myself say what my parents used to say to me when I was 30.  I thought they had become senile.