Further Adventures with Marfawitz, Doctor Who Edition

I always see, hear and learn new things when I am on the road with Marfawitz. But this one was a doozy.

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Friday, January 30, 2026

Loyal (or even Disloyal) Readers of Life Its Ownself know that, from time to time, I meet up with my friend Marfawitz, who considers it his personal mission to explore and catalogue the wonders of the Texas Trans-Pecos. And well he should, for there is not a more magical part of the great state of Texas.

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A Brief Word About Texas

For most people, even Texans, the word “Texas” conjures up images of stunning landscapes, untamed by man or machine, that stretch as far as the eye can see. In the distance, a huge herd of cattle moves slowly across a dry, treeless range, urged on by a cadre of cowboys driving them to their ultimate destination. In another direction, oil wells and pump jacks dot the countryside, their silhouettes dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape. The towns are modest and unadorned, but the people are friendly, years of wind and sun and dust etched across their pleasant faces. They look you straight in the eye when they talk, and say “yes, ma’am” and “thank you, sir” as the occasion merits. From the porches of their frame or adobe houses, they look out across the rugged territory to watch the distant mountains turn golden and rose and violet as the sun sets. After the gloaming, the stars make their nightly appearance, filling the heavens with a glow that is, literally, otherworldly. What appears to untrained eyes to be a bank of clouds resolves itself into the Milky Way, peering down upon the world with patient radiance.

In vain would someone search the towering buildings of Houston or Austin or the sprawling suburbs of Dallas or San Antonio for this magical realm. If this mythical Texas exists at all, it is in the endless Chihuahuan Desert and the mountain ranges – the Davis, the Chisos, the Del Nortes – that give texture to the Trans-Pecos and the people who inhabit it.

The Spanish called this region the Despoblado – “the place without people.” Texas prides itself on its modernity and fast growth, but in its heart it is still immense and rural, where the land and the climate are still a mortal enemy.

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Marfawitz Tries a New Method of Travel

Typically, when David and I meet up, we venture out into the place without people, preferring the back roads where we might see more cattle, bighorn sheep or elk than humans.

On our last adventure, we went down the Pinto Canyon Road, which runs southwest out of Marfa to the Chinati Hot Springs and the little town of Ruidosa. We ran across an inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, checking in with ranchers to see if their cattle had been infected with New World screwworm. He’d come out of Clute (near El Paso) that morning, which means by the time we saw him he’d been bumping around in the backcountry for six hours. He was the only person we saw on our three-hour journey.

This time, David has a surprise in store. We met in The Sentinel coffee shop in Marfa. As we quaffed our coffees, David pointed out that, usually, the first hour or two of our road trips was devoted to getting far enough out into the country that we could experience its rugged pleasures. As an example, he said, we were over two hours away from Terlingua, our destination for that day. What if we could get there more quickly?

Well, I agreed, that would be nice, although sometimes the magic is in the journey itself, not the destination.

“In this case, ‘magic’ is the right word,” he replied.

We went out to his truck, a white Ford F-250 with four-wheel drive that had been our galleon on multiple trips. He started the engine, then picked up a plastic thingamajig shaped like a game console and fiddled with a couple knobs.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

The next thing I knew, he and I were standing upright in a box like a telephone booth, but a little larger. I cried out, but David opened the box and we both stepped out …

Into the open desert. Except for the box itself and a barbed wire fence running alongside it, we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

“What the hell …“ I said.

David laughed. As I got my bearings, I saw David’s truck parked a few yards away on the other side of the barbed wire and, beyond it, a road stretching away from us in both directions. Eventually, I un-discombobulated myself enough to realize we were on the road between Alpine and Terlingua.

David was enjoying himself immensely. He pointed to the phone booth, which I now realized was an old English police booth made iconic by the Doctor Who television series in all its incarnations.

(English police booth, meet middle of nowhere. And vice versa.)

Marfawitz never explained how we got in the booth. Or how we arrived 100 miles from where we’d started. Or how the truck got there. I guess it was just more of that ol’ Marfawitz magic.

Anyway, we continued into the Terlingua Ghost Town, past the half-hearted sprawl of domes, yurts and Air BnBs that surround it and have turned Terlingua into a “destination spot.”

“DON’T MARFA MY TERLINGUA!” lament the old-timers.

We headed west on the River Road to the other side of town, to the Long Draw Pizzajoint. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we headed back to the Ghost Town, which doubles as the Central Business District (CBD) of Terlingua.

We cruised around for a bit – it doesn’t take long to circumnavigate the CBD of Terlingua – and then stopped for lunch at DB’s Rustic Iron BBQ along the Cemetery Road. We got some vittles –David had brisket, I had pork ribs – from Ramira, the friendly server, then settled in for lunch. The view of the Chisos from our table was, as expected, stunning.

After lunch, we moseyed over to Venga for some coffee and atmospherics. Marfawitz is a practitioner of the “early afternoon coffee” brand of modest hedonism, and Venga had all the necessary elements: good coffee, friendly staff, and a ready supply of strangers to strike up conversations with. By the time we finished our coffee, we’d met a traveler whose car had broken down and was eyeing the highway for the UPS truck with replacement parts and a woman from Rhode Island who was on her way to the deserts of Arizona with her two dogs.

Afterwards, we headed back through Study Butte and onto the highway to Alpine. After a few miles, we returned to the police phone booth alongside the desolate stretch of highway. I asked Marfawitz if we were going to pull over, enter the booth and magically return to Marfa.

“No such luck, amigo,” replied Marfawitz, adopting the grizzled mien of a lifelong cowboy as he winked at me.