Pahrump!

I followed a link on my Panhandle news feed on the side and saw an article about the Fourth is a Fourth is a Fourth and decided to read it. ( couldn't pass up the alliteration, u c )

Pahrump was where the website was based, the town in Nevada. I knew I had heard that word before, but I was thinkin' it was like a father's admonishment at the turn of the last century. "You want to wear something less than 14 petticoats and a hem that will show your ankles? I forbid it! Pahrump!" (although I think I'm getting that mixed up with "Hurrumph!")

And I'm talking about LAST century, not this one. Anyway....

I wondered why the feed indexed a Nevada town (or that muttered, mild, massively mature mad mumble) then saw McLean being mentioned and this nice little paragraph about the Panhandle:

Just a minor personal discovery, but did you know that in the last few years, the Great Plains have shifted west several hundred miles?

Well, that is what it seemed like the other week when I was gone east on vacation. In the past, when I was a mere visitor to the Southwest, I would reach central Oklahoma and think, "Wow, the great wide open."

But now I've been out here, overall, for nearly two years without a break, and driving through the Texas Panhandle, quite a mental turnaround took place. I was hardly past Amarillo when I began noticing more green -- deep green grass up the knees of cattle, tall trees in woodlines and residential areas around, say, McLean. And long before I hit the Sooner State, I felt back amidst the foliage. By the point I passed by Henryetta, the plains were a memory.

I'm wondering if his "mental turnaround" was for the better, or for the worse? Only a Panhandler would concede to either way.