Beyond Lubbock City Limits

Our drives into the boonies are always eye-opening.

You find a lot of junk of various sorts.

You do find horses and cattle and goats and chickens-- nothing wrong with that.

Maybe many of these people are hardy survivalists, and maybe they are armed to the teeth, ready to fight off marauding United Nations troops. Darn those blue helmets. I'm sure they value their freedoms.

Maybe these piles of crap and junked cars are intended to be barricades. Maybe at least some of the folks who choose to live out here, and live like this, have personality disorders...

You always have to wonder about meth labs. The smell usually gives them away. We didn't smell anything suggestive of that, and there was no tinfoil in evidence. Meth heads for some reason like tinfoil, especially on windows. They tend to be paranoid. They tend to believe that UN troops are coming to take away their guns. To a Texas meth head, freedom and guns are the same thing. 

Life Outside Lubbock City Limits

It's true, outside the city limits you are pretty much free of zoning restrictions and codes enforcement, except for the very loose strictures the county applies, but why then would you create conditions indicating that tighter controls might be required-- why create a toxic rathole? I must conclude that some people are really, really, stupid and really, really, destructive. And such people need lots of laws and codes and zoning restrictions to keep them in check. 

I don't know whether there were any meth labs out here, but this area is the sort of area where you would kind of expect to find them. I sometimes have the impression that the Texas Secessionist types, as well as the Texas gun lobby, are fueled with crystal meth. That's just my impression. Based on what I observe. 

At least, there's plenty of stuff for me to photograph.

And then you've got oil. It's the second foulest and second most destructive industry on the planet. Coal is at the top. We should be thankful that Texas has no coal to mine. Oil is bad enough.

Lubbock even has oil wells within the city limits, but this is out in Lubbock County.

You can have all kinds of livestock, and let's hope they are all well-cared for, even if you plan to eat them at some point.