When I was growing up, Texas advertised itself as the “Land of Cattle, Cotton and Oil,” and the area where we lived had plenty of examples of each. We lived in an oil company camp that my father worked for in Gains County, surrounded by ranches and cotton fields, and after high school I worked several summers in the oil field there as well. Initially, at least in my memory, most of the surrounding land was cattle ranches, although being in the “drought of the 50’s,” there weren’ ...