The breezes have lifted dust off the South Plains and carried it north, washing the sky into a faded shade of duck egg blue. The sunlight filters through the haze and falls gentle upon all it touches, softening the shadows of late afternoon.
Aromas of local feedlots and diesel exhaust lay siege to the nose.
Extended-hood Peterbilts and Kenworths roll through town, shined and bedecked in amber ‘chicken lights’, straight pipes rumbling along the highway as the driver splits an 18-speed Road Ranger, their slat-sided Wilson trailers filled with Hereford and Black Angus cows that bellow loudly with displeasure at their displacement.
Their counterparts, Tupperware Torpedoes with automatic transmissions and droop-snoot hoods and aerodynamic fairings shielding Thermo King refrigeration units mounted on the fronts of 53-foot insulated trailers, roll the efforts of the packing houses off to market.
The trains roar through in a seemingly incessant fashion.
Hereford, Texas is a busy place.
The Friday afternoon local gets the green from the dispatcher and eases westward with cars for Black and Bovina.
An eastbound intermodal slams by at 70, corrugated boxes stacked on well cars whizzing past in blurred and dizzying fashion, a never-ending conveyor belt that doesn’t stop in Hereford.
Yet, through a fraction-of-a-moment gap, we spy an old warrior.
Though modernity has extended its brow, and ground planes and air conditioning have nested atop a spartan cab, the Cascade Green hasn’t faded so much that our heart doesn’t quicken for a few beats, and the dust isn’t rustled from a few memories.
The ‘3027’ stenciled on the cab doesn’t quite blot out the old familiar BN herald, yet if one digs deeper, or scrapes off a bit of green paint with a handy pocket knife, a surprise of 1966-applied Chinese Red might be uncovered.
Some say that 60 is the new 40.
And GP40 3027 wears 60 pretty well.
---RAM
Rick Malo©2026
Hereford, Texas. Friday afternoon, May 30th, 2025.
Thank you!