On a sunny autumn afternoon we drive west on Nineteenth Street in Lubbock past the grand homes of the wealthy cotton farmers and oilmen who so long ago carved this city from the hardscrabble plains. 

In a few moments we clear the traffic lights and leave the crowds behind.     

It is beautiful this time of year.  The cotton fields are green and verdant and one can see the white bolls peeking from the plants like puffs of snow.

Still heading west, we pass through the tiny town of Smyer and a few moments later enter the eastern pasture of the Spade Ranch.  

Off to our right, like a scene from the past, a windmill spins in the breeze and a dozen or so large bulls graze in the knee-high grass.   

A few miles later we come to the Spade’s main gate and the road that leads to the two story house that Col. Isaac Ellwood, the co-inventor of barbed wire, built for his family.     

 A mile beyond the ranch’s western fence line we pass through Opdyke, a curious spot of a town that was established for the sole purpose of providing a home to Wayne-Bo’s, one of the giant drive-in liquor stores so common to Texas.      

Soon we reach Levelland, where we turn left on College Avenue, cross the railroad tracks, and pass the green lawns and main entrance of South Plains College. 

On the other side of town we pick up Farm-to-Market (FM) Road 300 and are immediately back in open country.       

We have entered the Slaughter Field, and I am struck by the enormous wealth of this land, with the white gold of cotton above and the black gold of oil beneath. 

The contours of the land and the road pull us in a sweeping curve to the south.  Except for a solitary Baptist Church, the scenery is open and clear.          

After a short distance we slow, and turn down on a narrow oil road that takes us to the middle of a large cotton field where we stop, kill the engine and step out of the car.

I am immediately taken by the silence.  Other than a soft wind passing through the cotton rows and its touch on our faces, there is no noise at all.     

Looking west across a prairie so vast it exceeds imagination, the horizon is as straight as if drawn with a ruler. 

In every direction as far as the eye can see are scores of pumping units.  Placed twenty acres apart, we can’t hear them, and they resemble a herd of giant horses silently grazing in the bright afternoon.       

In the distance a pulling unit is outlined against the horizon and we can see the tiny figure of the derrick hand leaning off the monkey board and the puff of black smoke from the engine as the driller runs the blocks up.   

We watch the hand slam the tubing into the elevator and the blocks slowly descend.  It’s not until they start back up that we hear the faint “clang”.  It takes all that time for the sound to travel over the staked plains.

In my mind’s eye, I remove the power lines and oil wells and listen to the stillness.

It is only then that I realize how people can love this hard “land of the high sky,” where the open spaces blend the ages, and the glint in the distance could come from a windshield or the polished steel of a Spanish helmet.