Short Cuts: Episode V 
Not-So-Loving County
No place in America has so few people, so much empty space, and such intense political feuding.
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Despite these hurdles, many Loving residents who hold elected office spend their afternoons working in the oil fields or ranching. They enjoy working the land more than shuffling papers, and their desk jobs usually don’t warrant more than a brief appearance at the courthouse each weekday morning. Their county jobs, however, ensure that, boom or bust, rain or dry spell, there will always be money to put food on the table—one reason why no one raises an eyebrow at the fact that more than 40 percent of collected taxes go toward paying county salaries. The Hoppers, who first settled Loving County around 1900, have won a few key county positions, as have the Joneses, who wielded more power when Punk Jones was sheriff in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. But the Creagers, who mostly live in a cluster of homes north of Mentone nicknamed Creagerville, currently have the biggest piece of the pie. Don Creager is the county judge, his brother Royce is a county commissioner, his step-daughter Kathryn Putnam is the postmaster, and his son-in-law Richard Putnam is both the sheriff and the county tax assessor. The locals find it all amusing. One visit to Don Creager’s office was interrupted by a call from the postmaster, Kathryn.
“Well, now, you’d need to speak to the sheriff about that matter,” Creager said into the receiver, chuckling. “Oh, yes, I forgot. You’re married to the sheriff.”
ONE PLACE WHERE THE LOVING FAMILIES come together is the Mentone Cafe—a little spot with a plain pine floor, a few plastic-covered tabletops, spinning ceiling fans, and the sound of a deep fryer gurgling in the background. Carefully pleasant to one another, locals regularly discuss the oil business and share lunchtime gossip over heaping plates of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. The cafe lost its jukebox a few years back, as well as one of its more legendary visitors, J. J. Wheat, the oil-rich baron of Loving County who liked to barrel down unpaved farm roads in one of his gleaming Rolls-Royces. Many of Loving’s dramas unfolded here over the years: the killing of a truck driver on the Wheat ranch, to which J.J. pleaded no contest and for which he received ten years’ probation; the showdown between cafe owner Newt Keen and then-sheriff Punk Jones over Newt’s illegal habit of serving beer until the wee hours of the morning; and the trial of McKinley Hopper and others for allegedly stealing oil. And those are just the stories people will talk about. There are other darker secrets that locals refer to in passing.
“The reason I keep on tiptoeing around these stories,” says one longtime resident in a conversation that stretched on for an afternoon, “is because they are laced with the most disgusting, insipid politics.” Rivalries and squabbles—combined with an already small population—have led to the demise of any space, except for the cafe, where county residents might congregate—the school was disbanded, the church abandoned, and there is no cemetery. Families are buried in neighboring counties where they won’t have to spend an eternity together. Although residents insist that they always unite in times of crisis, spending much time together is usually avoided. Ten years ago, when Texas Monthly asked Loving County’s residents if they would pose for a Valentine’s Day cover, the answer was a resounding no. “I don’t like to take pictures with people I don’t like,” one woman replied, “so why pose as if we all get along great?”
Loving County, after all, was not named after the sublimest emotion, but for rugged cattleman Oliver Loving. And like him, locals cling to their land despite daunting odds. In 1867 Loving and a companion were attacked by Comanche Indians; the two took refuge in a ditch behind a sand dune and held their ground, though Loving was shot in the wrist and side. After his partner slipped away in the night to get help, Loving fended off the attackers for another two days before escaping into the shallow Pecos and crawling, swimming, and walking six miles upstream to a crossing, where travelers found him and took him by wagon to Fort Sumner, more than a hundred miles away. He died there of shock when a doctor sawed off his gangrenous arm, later becoming the inspiration for the character of Augustus McCrae in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. In many ways Loving’s fierce determination to survive is still felt in the county named after him, where the living is anything but easy. Until a new freshwater well was dug and a water tank built in Mentone, drinking water had to be hauled in. Groceries and conveniences must still be bought in Pecos, 23 miles from Mentone and much farther for those who live on ranches in remote parts of the county. The water from the Pecos River is so thick with minerals that it will destroy, in a year’s time, the plumbing of any dishwasher, toilet, or sink. Oil and gas drilling has declined so rapidly that the county’s tax base nose-dived from $518 million fifteen years ago to $119 million this year. And a hazardous-waste site, recently approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, may refill the county’s coffers, but at the expense of possibly contaminating the land’s fragile formations of rock, sand, and shale.
Despite these hardships and pitfalls—and the sandstorms, hailstorms, and months without rain—Loving’s residents aren’t planning to leave anytime soon. “When I first came to Mentone in 1953, it was quite a shock,” says Mary Belle Jones. “I said to my husband, ‘Punk, how long are we going to live in this godforsaken place?’ Back then, the pavement ended at the county line, and there was nothing in sight but steel oil derricks. I was twenty-one, with two babies, and I just couldn’t stand it; I cried practically every day for two years. But it’s home now,” she says cheerfully, looking out toward the caliche road and rolling plains that lie beyond her white frame house. “The isolation is what I didn’t like, but now I appreciate the solitude. There’s nothing prettier than a West Texas sunset or a rising moon. The nights are real clear and the stars shine and you can see forever.”
Sheriff Putnam isn’t going anywhere either. “I don’t like crowds much,” he says, twirling another toothpick meditatively. “I don’t belong in a place like Austin or San Antone. I need room. Besides, the folks out here are good, friendly people. Unless, of course, you’re trying to break into politics.”
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