I’ve driven all across the USA. When I was young and brash, I preferred the interstates. Straight, direct affairs that got to the point without any messing around. Get the drive done with and get me to where I need to be, I didn’t need anything else back then. I’d even dread the offramp a bit, as it meant getting into the traffic and maze of local roads that I saw as just slowing me down.

I was like that with people, too. I used to say, “I’m in the habit of being right,” as I ran across other people’s ideas with my own. When they agreed somewhat with me, there was a friendly sort of uncomfortable silence that went with that. When they didn’t agree with me, there was a hostile sort of uncomfortable noise that followed. “My way or the highway!” Agree with me or get out of here, I had no time for the indirect, for the intricacies.

I became a lonely person.

You know, the most barren landscapes I’ve seen are those long, flat stretches of interstates that just plow through nothingness, getting as fast as possible to the middle of nowhere. And once I got there, there’d be another straight shot through nothingness to get somewhere interesting.

But that somewhere interesting, well… it tended to have those local roads, those twists and turns. Intricacies and switchbacks, up and down the varied terrain. And those roads… those roads are beautiful roads.

My way was the highway, and it left me alone and desolate like I-40 going through New Mexico. Being alone is quiet. Sometimes we need that quiet. Sometimes, we need people. Thing is, if all you do is things that lead to quiet, you won’t have people available when you need them.

I started to listen, to slow down my mind to where I didn’t have to talk all the time. I found out that people could be boring. But I also found out that people can turn interesting at the oddest moments, like driving through a dense forest where you can’t see nothing and then suddenly coming around a curve to see a magnificent scenic view open right there in front of you. And then you’ve got a gem, a diamond, someone who will one day be an old friend.

Interstates aren’t bad things, in and of themselves. When we wish everything was an interstate, we miss out on the beauty we can see off those well-worn tracks. We miss out on time with people who have something to offer us if we’re patient enough to give ’em a good listen. We might even find out that we don’t disagree with others as much as we used to, if we don’t demand that our way is the only way.

I used to hate taking US 550 through the Rockies in Western Colorado. It’s a slow and winding road, can’t make money fast rolling on it. But now, I set aside my cares when I head up that road and ready myself for a slow roll with a beautiful world opening before me. Allowing myself to not have exactly what I want right now permits me to have what I need when I need it.

Old folks need old friends, and we can’t get old friends if we waste our youth on just ourselves. Take those back roads, don’t worry about the fastest way to get somewhere, and one day… when we’re old… we’ll find that we’ve got some old friends along with some beautiful memories of country we just can’t see from the interstate.

I’ll tell you this, I much prefer the quiet of a mountain overlook to the silence of being a loner. Like I said, I’ve driven all across the USA. I’m an old-timer, now, and I’m glad I found my way wasn’t the highway.

Getting folks to agree with each other is an art, not a science. Bobby Little Bear had the more agreeable townsfolk get with him first and laid out his ideas to them. They pretty much agreed with Bobby and made some helpful suggestions. That all served as a foundation for getting with the town’s more contentious land owners.

Betty Kay Epps and Vernon Parks ain’t bad people, let’s get that straight from the start. They just don’t get along much with each other. But being that we can’t be in a consensus with major holdouts, we needed them on the same sheet of music as the rest of the town. And that’s why we met with them separate from the others.

Other folks in town just owned their own home or that and the empty lot next to it. Some owned acreage outside the streets of Buckner. Betty Kay and Vernon owned much more than that and either one of them could take our plans for growth and knock ’em all cattywumpus. We needed the both of them on board.

I asked Bobby, “So why have them in the same meeting together and have our hands full tryin’ to keep ’em from killing each other? What about just meeting them one at a time?”

Bobby said, “They’ll suspect each other and disagree unless they see with their own eyes that they agree with us and each other. It’s gonna be tough, but it’s the way forward with Betty Kay and Vernon.”

When they came in, we were glad Vernon didn’t have his MAGA hat on, but Betty Kay’s Ann Richards do was still something of a partisan statement in the eyes of Vernon. Then again, the way Vernon breathed seemed to set Betty Kay’s teeth on edge. It was some kind of personal thing with those two. And if the both of them heard me say that, neither one would disagree, that’s just the way it is.

But they respected good manners, especially when guests in someone else’s home. They sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of iced tea and we got to talking. Growth was coming to Buckner, and developers would want to build out on their lands. I asked, “What kind of growth do you want? Big city sprawl that makes it where locals can’t afford property taxes or something that lets the folks here stay here?”

Vernon said, “Before I answer that, let’s be clear. Ain’t a one of you going to make me do anything with my property that I don’t want to do, savvy?”

Betty Kay said, “Oh hell no, here we go! Vernon, nobody’s telling you nothing! They’re asking you. Get off your high horse and listen to ’em, why don’t you?”

Vernon said, “Where did I say I wasn’t gonna listen to them? Geez, woman, tell me about a high horse, why don’t you? I just wanted to settle some ground rules for the discussion that we’re about to have, that’s all.”

Betty Kay’s eyes said, “Fine, whatever.”

I asked Vernon, “Well, what do you see happening in the next 10 years? 20?”

“I’d like it to be the same.”

“Me too, but we both know that’s not happening, with folks asking about buying property here. We’re about to be another suburb of greater Fort Worth.”

“Well then, why not just let things take their course? Let the market drive prices and see what the market will bear.”

“That gets a big ol’ Walmart where Hank Kleinschmidt’s house is now and most everyone here getting a check for their property and a moving van out of here.”

Betty Kay said, “They can build skyscrapers on Vernon’s property, I’ll make everything I own into a nature preserve.”

Vernon groaned. “Good… Lord! There ain’t no skyscrapers incoming and you know your kids wouldn’t sit for inheriting a nature preserve. Can we keep things reasonable in this discussion?”

Betty Kay’s finger got a little too close to Vernon’s face. “You tell me how letting the market take its course does fairly by all our neighbors? You know damn well all the fat cats’ll lowball the prices on houses here and then turn around to make the real money from growing here. They’ll flip the whole town and make it look like some kinda LA sprawl.”

Vernon dug in. “Well, I’m not gonna let that happen on my watch! Why don’t you let me just say one thing, why don’t you?”

Betty Kay growled like a puma ready to pounce. “Is what you got to say worth saying at all?”

Vernon looked at Betty Kay and then back at me. “I remember Flower Mound when it was less than 2000 people there. That was back in the 1970s. Almost 80,000 now, 50 years on. I remember Forney and Keller and Frisco and a whole lot of other towns that you now can’t tell where Dallas or Fort Worth ends and they begin. I ain’t no Socialist, but I believe in doing right by people and that’s what the law is for – to provide a just society that protects the powerless from the powerful. I want to see that here in Buckner.”

Betty Kay said, “Well, somebody sprinkle rock salt where hell done froze over, because Vernon Parks just decided to stand up to the money men, I tell you what!”

Vernon said, “I’m willing to stand up to bureaucrats and social justice warriors who want to take what I got and just chop it up and hand it out to everyone.”

Betty Kay’s finger looked like it was fixin’ to dent Vernon’s nose. “You can just cork your pistol and quit snappin’ my garters, we’re trying to keep a disaster from happening, not stroke your overblown ego.”

“So it’s my ego that’s overblown? Oh, that’s rich coming from the town’s center of attention!”

I had to cut in, “Y’all! Let’s just calm down and keep our focus on helping the town.

Bobby said, “We need to find a common ground, not a fighting ground.”

They liked that line. I saw them both nod a little and their body language towards each other softened a bit. Murders had been avoided. But Bobby’s plan looked to be barely on track.

Betty Kay asked, “All right, if’n we’re going to help the townsfolk keep their homes, item one has to be an answer to where 67 and 501 get widened. About half the town gets uprooted if those roads get any wider.”

Vernon said, “We need them to be a bypass road.”

Betty Kay said, “I agree, but that ain’t happening for a town that’s just two bumps in the road.”

I said, “Well, Bobby had an idea about that. We get some historical building designations, pronto. The Top Notch Hamburgers looks like it did for the last 70 years and the owner agreed to have it made into a landmark. It’ll mean it has to look like that as long as there’s a State of Texas, but it’ll also mean it stays right where it is. That keeps 501 from going east and 67 from going south.

“Hank Kleinschmidt and his son agreed to have his house there on the corner be made a local museum.”

Betty Kay said, “Shoot, that house has been there since the 1800s, it’s as historical as all get-out.”

Vernon leaned in, “You didn’t strong-arm them into that decision, I trust?”

“Nossir. We laid it out for them and Delbert said when Hank passes on or goes to hospice, Delbert said he’d rather keep living in his own place and make Hank’s place into a museum rather than renovate it for a new buyer or see it knocked down. He’s ready to start with the historical site designation process now. And that going through would keep 67 from getting any wider north.

“501 on the west side can be pegged in if we get the cemetery over yonder designated as a Texas Historical Cemetery. And that would make it where those roads stay the same size in town. They’d need a bypass for them both, like a ring road, for the growth coming in. But we’d keep the homes where they are.”

Bobby said, “What do you think of that?”

Betty Kay and Vernon both nodded before they looked to see what the other was doing. Neither was surprised the other was on board. Vernon said, “All right, nice plan. How do we make it reality?”

Bobby said, “County commissioners gotta approve it.”

Betty Kay said, “I can work on Lyndon Barrymore, he’s my commissioner.”

Vernon said, “I can have a word with Wayne Gipson and Ed Wallace.”

Betty Kay said, “That’s 3 votes for sure and I don’t think the other two would say no.”

Vernon said, “Especially when they can do the same strategy with other towns that want to keep their history. Nothing wrong with that.”

Bobby winked at me. I have to admit, it was nice seeing Vernon and Betty Kay not going at it like tomcats over chicken bones. I pressed on the agenda. “Now that we got a way to keep the town grid where it is, we need to talk about keeping houses affordable for the folks here.”

Betty Kay said, “All right then, hun. What’cha planned out for us all?”

“House prices are a function of density and availability. Not everyone needs to, but those who don’t mind can subdivide their lots and allow another house to be built on their current lot. We’ve got some empty lots around the town that are easiest to subdivide, as there’s nothing on them. That keeps the numbers of houses up for the old town. To keep them from getting too fancy and making the place a haven for a bunch of yuppies, we can use restrictive covenants in the property sale documents that can perpetuate the use of the land and specify the kinds of houses built out.”

Now, I knew that Vernon would hate anything restrictive, but he’d hate yuppies even more, even if the term was 35 years out of use. Vernon was gonna be damned if he was gonna let yuppies overrun Buckner. So, he said, “All right. Do we have lawyers gonna help us out with drafting the restrictive covenants?”

“Well, Vernon, first we gotta ask if’n you want to go down this road?”

“I’m assuming if we do, you’re going to ask me for a handout?”

“If we do go this way and you want to go with it, we won’t be asking for the handout because it’ll be something you want to do.”

Vernon had himself a little think. “All right. And we’ll get some good lawyers, too, I don’t want something that can save the town get tossed out of court on a technicality or some damn fool thing like that.”

Betty Kay had a question, “Are we keeping prices low just for us? If we are, that dog won’t hunt. Fair Housing Act.”

I said, “No ma’am. Not just for us. I’m all for having low-cost housing for newcomers, if you’d like that, too.”

Betty Kay nodded but Vernon got stern. “Low-cost housing to me sounds like artificially depressing land values, and that sounds like robbing the owners to reward the new folks.”

I said, “Nossir, I wouldn’t put it that way. I look at growth and we wind up being a place where folks just go to die if we keep prices so high only retired folks without kids can afford to buy them. If we want families, we need low prices because those young folks got more health than they do cash, usually. But we can have the city act as an intermediary in the sale to where it takes an overall loss on the deal, hoping to make it up on the back side with property tax revenue from new businesses.”

Vernon said, “Well, all right, you’re a riverboat gambler with the city treasury. Making a bet our growth is solid.”

“Do you think it won’t be that way?”

“Can you guarantee it will be that way?”

“Well, what were those numbers for Flower Mound that you mentioned earlier? I think we’re in store for some of that.”

“Well… hmm… Maybe you got a solid bet, there, Clark.”

Betty Kay asked, “Now what if someone wants to build out a huge house on a non-subdivided lot and goes to the owner to keep restrictive covenants off of the property? We’re gonna have a big ol’ McMansion on our hands, all ugly and such-like.”

Bobby said, “We need to look beyond current boundaries and pick where the big houses will go. They’re going to happen, but we can specify pretty much where.”

I said, “That’s right. If we draw a circle around some part of the map around Buckner and say it’s for an exclusive community, rich folks wanting to be rich won’t go anywhere else. It’s just a question of where.”

Vernon cut through my BS. I knew he would. “You’re dangling that in front of us, knowing we stand to profit most both from selling land for a bypass as well as making a so-called exclusive community. What do you want from us in return?”

Bobby said, “Your hearts.”

Vernon shook his head with surprise. Betty Kay, even, was taken aback. I said, “If your hearts are in this, you’ll find your way to be generous. Sure, you’re about to get a windfall, but that was coming your way, regardless. With or without us, folks are coming to talk about development and buying up your land at a premium. Consider this to be like the three spirits from A Christmas Carol visiting you and hoping you come out of this with holiday cheer to spare, in spades.”

Vernon made a small smile as Betty Kay chuckled. Vernon said, “All right, you got your bargain. Old Vernon Scrooge here is going to be a generous feller, all right. I’m on board with you even though I presume I’ll be funding a big chunk of the costs?”

Betty Kay said, “I’m funding just as big a chunk as you, hot shot. We stand to gain the most, so it’s fair we cover the costs the most so we don’t lose the town.”

“All right, then, Miss Ma’am. We presume that we will be funding a big chunk of the costs.”

“It takes a village, Vernon.”

“Village, nothing, this is compassionate conservatism in action.”

“Oh, please, you’re an old man trying to get into heaven at the last minute!”

“And you’re an old biddy who can’t stop working my last nerve!”

Bobby cut in, “So, we’re all agreed with the plans? Historical markers, bypasses, and restrictive covenants? And you two will handle the lions’ share of the costs?”

Both of them said “yes”.

Bobby asked, “So, we got your hearts?”

Again, two “yes” statements.

Bobby then held out his right hand. Stronger than the written word in these parts was a body’s word and a handshake. Asking for a signature on a document would be insulting and only hold a person to the letter of the law. Asking for a solemn handshake was the highest form of trust and respect, and held a person to the truest spirit of the deal as possible.

The bickering stopped and the emotion dropped right off the faces. We all four of us shook on it, firm grips going with unbroken eye contact, sealing our intentions for all time.

After they left, I said to Bobby, “Well, I reckon you kidnapped them both and made them part of your tribe.”

Bobby Little Bear smiled. “And they’ll kidnap 3 of the 5 county commissioners for us. How does it feel, Clark?”

“Feels like we’ll have a good deal for the people of Buckner, present and future, if we can keep it all together.”

Buckner’s always been a small town. It came into being when two roads crossed near a creek. They used to be old trails, now they’re US 67 and FM 501. Buckner never had a boom and never had a bust. It did have more people, once upon a time, but not all that many more than what’s here right now. Couple hundred or so. Most folks got a home here because their ancestors had a home here, and it’s been that way ever since those roads crossed.

It’s out in West Texas, so not a lot of rainfall. Ranching’s possible, though not all that profitable. There’s an oil field under much of the area, so more than a few folks make a living off of leasing their land to a drilling company and getting a royalty check. Price swings can affect earnings, but even in hard times, that check is something that helps to make ends meet. The central business district is all of three stores, a gas station, a drive-in diner, and a parts store, that’s all. Each on a corner of the crossroads, with a house on the fourth. Besides the main roads, there’s 6 streets going east-west and 4 north-south. And that’s the whole of Buckner, a little rectangle covering about 60 acres, if I’m generous.

Dallas and Fort Worth used to be impossibly distant. The twin pressures of urban house prices and increased telecommuting have made those cities much, much closer in the minds of many a young would-be home buyer. And then there’s the folks from back East, saw one of them the other day, driving around in a minivan with New York plates, looking at empty lots and asking questions like they wanted to buy and build on one of them lots.

Bobby Horton was there with me when the New York plates rolled by. Bobby said, “Hey Clark, you got a look on your face like we did when Columbus showed up.” Bobby was half-Choctaw, all-Assiniboine, half-Cherokee, and half-English. Math did funny things when it got to Bobby Little Bear. And he was right.

“I’d always thought we were too far out to see the city come to us.” I said to Bobby.

“It was just a matter of time, Clark. Just a matter of time. I remember when I was a newcomer here. I came here because disability checks go a lot farther out in the country. Bricks and dirt are cheaper here, too. If you don’t want to rent, the city’s got nowhere to get started.”

Bobby had come to Buckner 30 years ago and aside from a few kids born here, he and his family were still the new folks in town. I’d grown up here, got into country music, lived a while in Nashville, and came back to Buckner when I wanted a quieter place to make my guitars. Not everyone wants a Clark Williams guitar, but those who do, well, they keep me in clover, as it were.

“Changes are coming. Anything we can do about them?”

“Best thing we can do is open arms and welcome them. Better to make friends and hope for the best than to make enemies and get wiped out as soon as we’re outnumbered.”

“Well, that’s the people part. What about the infrastructure part? If a developer gets hold of a big enough parcel, we’ll have too many people for the utilities and roads we got now.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be the toughest struggle, the planning. That’s why we need friends. There’s not many of us and potentially a whole lot of them, and we’ll need them to incorporate as a city. Buckner is small, it’s a general law town – same kind of law as applied to unincorporated parts of the county. State of Texas requires 5000 for a city to incorporate as a full legal entity, and then the county commissioners have to approve it. I never guessed the activism I did in rural areas was preparing me for this day. And if cars from Dallas and New York are rolling on Buckner roads, you can bet money that there are already moving vans hitting Oldham and Wyler. More than just Buckner are going to be incorporating.”

Bobby said, “We don’t know what kinds of developments are coming here. Could be single homes on acreage, could be lots that fit the grid we got going, could be apartments or condos.”

I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if they built up big ol’ apartment blocks with artist’s impressions of Old West saloons and what-not on the ground floor?”

Bobby cracked his big ol’ grin and said, “Maybe we should beat ’em to it and add in a bunch of wigwam motels, like from the fifties. Or maybe go the other way and make a huge statue of Crazy Horse scalping General Custer and when people complain ask if it would be better if we glorified different losers and put a Confederate general up?”

As we considered other ways to mess with newcomers, Bobby got serious and said, “We’re going to need Bead Mountain with all the changes stuff coming here.”

Bead Mountain wasn’t that much higher than the surrounding plain, but it was over a thousand feet above sea level at its summit, so it was, technically, a mountain. It was also a place that had been sacred to the Comanches, once upon a time. With the Comanches driven from the place, Bobby had taken it upon himself to win it back for Native Americans in general. He had worked hard at raising money to buy that land and was proud that wildlife had a refuge there. He said, “The medicine is felt there, in the quiet and stillness at sundown.”

Bobby said, “Men assume they construct their place. Men assume wrongly. Men do not design their place. Place, instead, designs its men… the Old Magic is still here, it won’t die. The freeways can’t kill it.”

“So you think we can get the newcomers to build houses like we got here and not make it all look like Southern California?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not my point. The kind of house or road isn’t as important as the person in the house or on the road. We should get with the folks that own the land and talk with them about how they plan to sell it. We should talk with them about if we want to help folks whose property taxes are about to be more than they can afford. We need to ask where the Walmart will go, where the sewage gets pumped, where the Home Depot and the Whataburger will go. We need to ask them which road will divide the rich from the poor, the Armani shops from the Dollar Generals. We need to ask them where the big fancy houses will go and where the tenement slums get set up.”

“Now, nobody’s gonna come in and build slums or poor neighborhoods.”

Bobby said, “They build them. They just pretend that there won’t be any social or economic or racial division so that we all smile and act happy to see new buildings going up. We think that’s progress. But, over time, the plan for the place reveals itself in divisions. If we’re honest about them now, we won’t be surprised when they happen. I only say there’s progress when there’s no poor people in a town.”

I said, “Highway 67 is likely to be the dividing line, then. It’ll get made into a freeway and the places on the north side are going to be the rich people houses and shops. South is going to be where the industry and poor people get put.”

“And the prisons and the waste treatment and the landfills.”

“Of course. There’s more floodplain on the south side. East of 501 would be more floodplain for the poor.”

It was brutal how easy it was to think like that, with money and profits driving choices. But if we didn’t do anything, that was what was going to happen or at least something that rhymed with our scenario.

“You want to get the meeting together at your place, Bobby, or should we have it at my house?”

“My place, it’s closer to the cemetery that gets moved or plowed under if we don’t have a meeting.”

“Am I gonna have to move? You know I like it quiet.”

“You ain’t moving. And neither am I, Clark. Buckner needs all its folk to keep it together. You know that.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We all need each other. Even the folks that ain’t here yet, who don’t even know yet that they’re coming here.”

“With the right heart, we might be able to share the medicine of Bead Mountain, let the place make the people who come here.”