Odessa, Tx

Odessa, Texas

I’ve heard a number of people tell me that Midland, TX is a lot like Bakersfield.  Maybe Midland is similar, but the sister city Odessa, is more like a mix of Oildale and Tijuana, Mexico.

I had the pleasure to go to Odessa for some training and I was kind of looking forward to visiting West Texas for the first time.  I was immediately struck by the lack of any style, charm or beauty in the city.  The locals say that Odessa is 5 hours from Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, or anywhere else that’s cool.  I think that pretty much defines “the middle of nowhere”. 

I flew in on the night of game 7 of the Stanley cup finals between Vancouver and Boston.  And the 3^rd period was just starting when I checked in to the Elegante Hotel.  This place may have been elegant in the 70’s, but it is now more like the “used to be Elegante” hotel.  It’s 8 stories high, seven stories higher than any other building I saw.  At the entrance, there is a granite tablet of the 10 commandments 8 feet tall.  The lobby is pretty cool with all the leather furniture and the rooms are nice.  It’s just seems cheesy.  I thought that the hotel bar might be showing the Stanley Cup game 7, but what I found was a 70’s style bar with a thick cloud of cigarette smoke and cowboys drinking beer, smoking cigaretts and checking their Blackberries.  There were lots of TV’s but they were all were showing baseball, Nascar or poker.  I turned around and my colleagues and I went to the Hooters down the street to see the last of the game. 

The food at Hooters is really not very good.  I had a buffalo chicken sandwich and fries.  I sent the fries back because they were cold.  It’s Ok for a sports bar, but I wouldn’t go for the food.  For lunch the next day we were treated to a restaurant called the Barn Door.  It’s located in a rundown old building and has that classic low class Texas steak house feel to it.  I wasn’t very hungry so I had a blackened salmon salad.  That was a mistake.  The salmon was over cooked and so tough it wouldn’t even flake apart.  They did serve huge sweet white bread rolls that were brushed with butter.  The décor is fun with a cow hide on the wall and fake flowers in cow horn vases.   Is that a glimpse of the Texas charm I was looking for?

Dinner was bitter sweet.  The Hog Pit Pub and Grub is a roadhouse off the main drag to Midland.  It’s in the middle of nowhere, like this whole town, next to a rundown trailer park and abandoned storage building.  The Hog Pit is in an old metal building that turned out to be a Texas Hold’em poker place that happened to serve alcohol and barbeque.  The ribs were really good and the beer was cold.  They served spare ribs that I literally ate with a spoon because the meat fell off the bone with the slightest touch.  I saved my left over’s for the stray dog at the office, unless I’m hungry for breakfast.  God, please help to get out of here.