It was on Second Street in Odessa, Texas back in the 50’s and home to every roughneck or service company hand in that boom time oilfield of West Texas. You could rent a bed by the hour down on Golder Street. Every boarding house, restaurant and or beer joint in Odessa was full. Most of these men’s families were back at home and would be until enough money was made to bring ‘em up. At least that’s the way it was with my Daddy. Times were very hard. My Daddy nearly had a college education but World War II kept him from finishing. Daddy felt that he should quit school and join up, just like everybody else. The war put everybody’s life on hold for years. These kids didn’t get a chance to mess around and go on spring break. They did spring break killing Germans, Italians and Japanese. A war can make guys values change.
Most of these guys didn’t have a car. They could walk from their jobs on Second Street to the Blue Top Inn and from there to their room. I wasn’t the only kid that got to go to The Blue Top Inn while visiting my Daddy. The Chicken Fried Steak was just about the best that money could buy and the Hamburgers were to die for. When you said to make it white and cut the tomatoes, they left them off and used mayonnaise. It was a pretty rough place, but not like down on South Grant. When you walked into the pool hall on South Grant they would frisk you, if you did not have a gun or a knife they would give you one for your own protection.
There was a funny smell in the Blue Top Inn. It was a mixture of old beer, cigarettes and oil. Sometimes it would smell like acid if the guys from The Western Company were there. I heard a Halliburton man say that he worked for Halliburton Services all day and talked about it all night. Everybody put in a hundred hour week, at least. Mothers raised the kids. The Daddies were always working. I remember going weeks without seeing my Daddy. If he came home at all he was normally gone again before my brother or I could see him. As a little kid in Odessa the telephone became your enemy. If it rang your Daddy had to leave. There were no cell phones. When he left you never heard anything unless you called the dispatcher. These wonderful people helped a bunch of concerned wives get through the day every night.
My Daddy was smart. He had been a much decorated bomber pilot during the War. All he would ever say about the war was that”War is Fire.” I guessed that was all that he could see from that altitude.
I believe that the men that returned from World War II had a more grown up attitude than kids have today. A twist of fate forced him to leave Ozona and seek employment as a truck driver in the oilfield. This was not where he wanted to be. It was where he had to be to make a living. Being honest, working hard and having a family were high priority for all of these men. Daddy saved his money and rented a house at 27th and Muskingum and brought us up. We loved being in Odessa where Daddy worked. It wasn’t long until we had our first television. There wasn’t anything on except the test pattern until after 5 pm at first. Remember the Indian Chief? We looked at it all the time. The Two Gun Playhouse was my favorite show. My Daddy got a company car and we knew that we had made the big time. Everybody smoked I thought. Lucky Strike, Camel, Pall Mall all had commercials on TV. On Sunday the Hub Jamboree was sponsored by Pioneer Furniture on South Grant. We would turn the TV off when that“ Rock ‘n Roll” guy from Wink, Texas named Roy Orbison came on at the end of the show. The only music real Americans listened to was country music. Rock and Roll, my butt. Nobody liked it. There was some beatnik from Lubbock named Buddy Holly and some weirdo named Elvis from Tennessee.
The music at the Blue Top Inn was country. Faron Young, Patsy Cline and Earnest Tubbs were the stars there. A chicken fried steak and an ice cold beer before going to bed was just what these guys needed. Just like the OilFieldTrash of today, they worked hard and played hard. Roy the Boy, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee and Elvis had to grow on OilFieldTrash. We may be slow but I think we finally got it. The people didn’t change but the place like the Blue Top Inn did. Now they call it Graham Central Station.