Caddo, Texas

Loop 252

Caddo, Texas

I’ve been bouncing across a too-rough-for-little-cars gravel road for over an hour, its rocks sharpened daggers, listening for the inevitable flat tire. I’m deposited on the southern shore of Highway 180, on the southern edge of Caddo. Caddo the town, in Stephens County. If Texas & Pacific Oil’s Hohhertz Camp was behind me on that silent sojourn, I didn’t see it. It didn’t flag me down.

I have an hour to kill, my next appointment not til 3. I drive around Caddo.

Lots was here.

Little today.

This 1870s Anglo settlement is said to be on the site of a Caddo Indian camp. When the oil boom hit around 1916, the population swelled to over 1,000. Some say more.

I spy an old wooden tabernacle being reclaimed by the woods. Like always, I stop to hear what it has to say. Its shadows hide several hundred yards away from the freshly-painted Caddo church. I’m not sure if the church is open or closed. The tabernacle is closed. Is in its final moments.

The Caddo Cemetery to the north is immaculate, ironic among the left-without-saying-goodbye of this town. Or fitting, carefully maintaining what’s already gone, at least on this earth.

Loop 252 cuts through Caddo, two digits shy of an ever-diminishing second chance. The old bridge betrays Bankhead heritage, bricks probably sleeping beneath this asphalt.

Highway 80 bypasses where downtown Caddo used to be. Or still is, I get confused. This road gets some traffic, but no one’s moving out there to set up shop. No one gets it.

Traffic.

Second chances.

Even the proud Caddo Mercantile at the westbound Y junction of Loop and Bypass is closed, is for sale, after many bites at the apple.

Buildings here were once nailed together hastily in wood plank. Tents were pitched. Tomorrow would take care of itself.

There are a few nice homes sprinkled still – less than ten. Scattered mobile homes, well, doing what mobile homes tend to. These streets, the few nature’s not reclaimed, host once proud structures that have fallen to their knees, then given up their fight to the ground into which they rot.

Others should’ve been bulldozed, before this decay gained momentum. I have to believe someone said something. Once.

Whatever happened or failed to happen, few are here to see the result this day. Folks like me swing through, attracted to the poignant ghost stories digital photos can unspool onto our computers.

The post office is open, its lone employee parked out front.

Most driveways are empty. Folks at work. Others never coming home.

Cars whiz past as I pull back onto Highway 80. Traffic turns to the state park to the north. To Ranger going south. There was a time this traffic could’ve stoked some commerce, some jobs. But like the proud Caddo Native people, oil moved on. People moved away. Those left behind failed to adjust. Failed their future.

We are one quiet chapter from the end. It’s time to go.