Breakfast spots in Southwest Texas

I like eggs, coffee, and toast

And potatoes, that meal’s the most!

It’s truer and truer

That the choices are fewer

But there are 6 that this town can boast!

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I did telemedicine, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in Iowa, worked at the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, held part-time positions close to home, worked 10 weeks in western Pennsylvania, had a 5-month assignment in Northern Iowa, then several months of telemedicine.  I am now in Texas, a big place with a lot of Spanish speakers. 

I rode my bicycle from Connecticut to Colorado, with my friend Al Willard, in the summer of 1972.  We each started with about $60 and 30 pounds of gear.  By the time we finished we had spent about $40 each and lightened our loads by 6 pounds.  We spent 20 days on the road.

We camped out in a tube tent and though we cooked most of our meals, the vast majority of our expenditures were for food.  Diner breakfast at the time cost $.60.  In a situation where we calculated how much each calorie cost, we ignored coffee as a non-nutritive fluid. 

Almost every town big enough to have a gas station had a place for the locals to have a hot morning meal. 

The number and variety of breakfast spots has steadily decreased in the last 50 years.  Our home town, with over 100,000 population, only has 6 places where a person can get eggs over easy and breakfast potatoes. 

(I don’t count the national chains and franchises where the only choice of eggs is scrambled.)

The municipality where I currently work might have only 1/8^th the people, but it has at least the same number of breakfast places. 

Breakfast with a colleague is more than nutrition, even if it’s the most important meal of the day.  An opportunity to exchange medical cases remains an opportunity to improve clinical skills.  And in the process, guard against professional isolation. 

What are we seeing?  More STDs than COVID and influenza put together.  Lots of allergies.  One of my colleagues sees a lot of Lyme disease but hasn’t mentioned babesiosis. 

Surprising that I haven’t seen a horse-related injury yet. 

Despite the fact that bird flu has hit the cattle industry in Texas, I have seen little in the way of zoonoses (infections contracted from animals).

Although Texas enjoys a lot of sun and the people spend hours outside, about half the vitamin D levels that I order come back quite low.  I start the patients on 5,000 units daily for 2 months followed by a repeat test. 

I won’t be working here when the patient returns. The facility will onboard a new doc in June, and I’ll finish 2 weeks earlier than expected.

The scenic, historic but dry Rio Nueces

An interpretation of treaties and laws

For a war, it served as a cause

Now Rio Grande is nigh

The Nueces is dry

And history is loaded with flaws

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I did telemedicine, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in Iowa, worked at the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, held part-time positions close to home, worked 10 weeks in western Pennsylvania, had a 5-month assignment in Northern Iowa, then several months of telemedicine.  I am now in Texas, a big place with a lot of Spanish speakers. 

Over the weekend, Bethany and I took a drive to the Rio Nueces. 

Few people recognize the name of the river that played such a pivotal role in the war between the US and Mexico.  The Nueces runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 50 miles north and east. 

Mexico won independence from Spain in 1836.  Texas won independence from Mexico shortly thereafter, then joined the United States in 1846.  The US claimed that the original document bringing peace between Mexico and Texas specified the border at the Rio Grande, Mexico claimed the border at the Nueces.  Troops sent to the border provoked an attack, allowing President Polk to declare “American blood shed on American soil.”  The popular Mexican War 1846-8 brought more than half of Mexico’s territory under the control of the US. And just before the California gold strike at Sutter’s Mill in 1849. 

I couldn’t come to the area and not visit the historic river.  We crossed it on a divided highway, and took a marginally paved turnoff.  Drought has ruled the area for years, and we found nothing but a quarter mile of sand in the bed of the once might Nueces. 

The country between the Rio Grande and the Rio Nueces remains hostile and unforgiving.  Not even the Comanche went there very much. 

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I like talking with ranchers.  I have to ask if they raise cattle or giraffe.

Land managers measure quality of grazing by the number of acres required to support a grazing unit. 

The cow and calf that constitute that unit need 10 acres of the local biome, meaning you need a square mile to sustain 64 cows with calves. 

One rancher asserted that 5 jackrabbits eat as much as a calf, but later on said as much as a cow and a calf. 

As do a lot of ranchers, he works on horseback.  People might not ride a horse into town but they don’t take off their spurs to go into a restaurant for breakfast. Many but not all who wear cowboy hats ranch.  Those who do refer to posers as “all hat and no cattle.”

The English-speaking ranchers face the same problems as the Spanish-speaking ranchers.  In the last few weeks, they have had to deal with high winds and thunderstorms. 

Since we arrived, most of Southwest Texas has had an unusual amount of rain, such that I’ve not been able to ride my bicycle to work more than 2 days a week. 

But not so much rain as to get even standing water in the bed of the Nueces.

Texas adventures on the way to work

Behold the Barbary sheep

Who hang out on slopes oh, so steep.

They don’t do much harm

On a game farm,

And compared to a big horn, they’re cheap. 

Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa.  In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and, honoring a 1-year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand.  After 3 Community Health years, I took temporary gigs in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska.  Since the pandemic, I did telemedicine, staffed a COVID-19 clinic in Iowa, worked at the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, held part-time positions close to home, worked 10 weeks in western Pennsylvania, had a 5-month assignment in Northern Iowa, then several months of telemedicine.  I am now in Texas, a big place with a lot of Spanish speakers. 

Barbary sheep (also called aoudad and udad) are endangered in their native range in Africa.  But in 1956, New Mexico Game and Fish introduced 12 into the Canadian River drainage, in an effort to give sheep hunting opportunities to those who couldn’t afford a big horn sheep hunt. 

In the 30 subsequent years the animals spread to Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Texas.  When we arrived in New Mexico 1982 the Department limited hunters to 1 per year, with a 4-month season.  Before we departed in 1985 the limit doubled, the season tripled, and the population quadrupled.  Smarter than most New Mexico hunters, breeding without regard to season, and able to survive indefinitely without drinking water, they became targets of opportunity for deer hunters, because so few could outsmart them. 

Only by hunting 1 square mile for 3 years could I bring one into my sights. 

By then most of my nimrod colleagues knew that chili constituted the only palatable end for the meat, no matter how great the horns looked on the wall. 

Imagine my surprise when Bethany and I saw a herd of about 100 on our way to breakfast this morning, at a local game farm, behind an 8-foot fence.  She had never seen one in the wild, and she listened politely while I indulged my pedantry by regurgitating aoudad facts. 

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Prickly pear cactus (Spanish nopal), with connecting lobes of leaves, remain an icon of the Southwest, and a staple of Mexican-American cooking.  While I have eaten lots of prickly pear fruit, I hadn’t eaten the leaves until today.  I ordered the nopalito breakfast: cactus leaves cut into julienne strips, fried with onions, tomatoes, and eggs, and served with tortillas and refried beans.  Bethany ordered the chilaquiles: corn tortillas with chili and cheese and a side of chicken sauteed with onions.  Halfway through we switched platters, both of us more content with the trade.

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Of my 9 morning patients, 4 broke into tears less than 2 minutes into the visit.  All I did was introduce myself, say, “How can I help?” and listen.  Which also means not interrupting.  A 5^th patient didn’t cry until after I’d said, “Tell me more,” then asked, “What else?” and rehashed what had already been said, proving that I had listened.