by Marlys Hersey, Editor

Drat. Once again, someone I like a lot but don’t know all that well has died. There goes the chance to know ol’ D.B. better.

I don’t recall exactly when I met D.B., but I can’t really remember a time in the five years that I’ve lived in the Big Bend that I didn’t know who he was. I think I found his website before I even moved to Terlingua. I know that I always got a kick out of him – at the post office, at meetings, and even at the Terlingua Ranch Bunkhouse renovation party a few years back when he was wearing a mad hatter hat and calling me “Darlin’” even though we’d pretty much just met.

Last fall, I did a ride-along with D.B. It started off as a story about all the weird stuff that goes on with people trying buy land on Terlingua Ranch, and more to the point, trying to find tracts they have already purchased, sight unseen, sometimes only to learn after paying D.B. for his locator and mapping services that their little slice of paradise in the desert was so cheap because there is no possible way to access it by vehicle. A couple of hours into our day together, however, I realized the real story was D.B. himself. I thought to do him justice, we needed at least another day out in the field - and we had been trying to arrange that ever since.

D.B. was funny, salty, and very warm behind the gruff exterior. He was such a fiercely independent, can-do kind of West Texan, emblematic of a passing era of “folks” (as he would say) who first re-settled Terlingua in the ‘60’s & '70’s.

Plus he was full of great anecdotes and great lines.

“It’s not arrogance,” he insisted, when I asked if anyone else could do this locating and mapping stuff. “Darlin’, I just happen to be the best at what I do.” Of course he was smirking (and smoking) when he said this.

We were in “Big Blue,” his trusty old pickup truck, which he praised many times throughout the day. (I’d like to tell you the exact make and model, along with what he said about it, and a few other things which I know I wrote down, but I cannot for the life of me find my notes from that day; I chalk that up to D.B. extending his impy-ness from beyond the grave.)

While he was supremely confident in his abilities, he wasn’t foolhardy: across roads that probably only a handful of people drive in a year, D.B. drove that hulking mass of an old truck – with an ATV on a trailer in tow. And he carried a satellite phone. Just in case Old Blue broke down.

At the gas pump in Study Butte that morning, he told me about how just the previous month he had driven over a hole covered in brush, gotten his truck stuck, and had to walk out to the main Ranch Road. He told me how stupid he felt on that walk, thinking about his sat phone and ATV sitting idle back at home. “It don’t do no good back there!”

Later in the day, as we crested the “top of the world” road in the Solitario portion of Terlingua Ranch, near the Lefthand Shut Up, D.B. mentioned that if he ever did get stuck this far out, he'd be screwed: even if he used the sat phone, it wouldn’t do him much good, since no one knows the Ranch as well as him. “Except maybe Art Eatman. They’d have to call him. And he might be able to find me.” He thought this was really funny.

Thanks to D.B., I saw parts of Terlingua Ranch that day I may never see again.

“Say good bye to civilization, Darlin’!” he mused as we approached a steep downhill somewhere way out behind South County Road and he got out to put Big Blue in four wheel drive.

At one point that morning, he discovered that the data for the tracts for which he was searching, for a client, was not on his laptop. “Oh, well! let’s go take some pictures of some of my properties for sale, then!”

He told stories of huge crystals and other desert treasures he used to find some 30-40 years ago out in these parts, and how they got pillaged; now he’s really careful about what he’ll reveal and to whom.  

He told stories of his successful - albeit often accidental - business ventures: “I just have a talent for making money.”

He told me about his daughters. He told me about his mom.

He told me about a woman in whom he’d once been somewhat interested, and why it didn’t work out: “See, I’m an Alpha Male. So that crap doesn’t work with me. You wanna play, you wanna have a good time? Great. We can have a goooooood time. But you ain’t gettin’ my money!” I found this really funny.

D.B.’s lunch that day was a can of mini franks. That was it. I was in awe, though I didn’t let on. Imagine needing to eat only a little can of franks and smoke cigarettes and go like he does all day? I’ll never be that hardy.

A few weeks later, I mentioned to some girlfriends at a party my great day out with D.B.; they were a bit stunned, and then very amused. “Daddy Bob? You spent a day with ol' Daddy Bob?!” Out poured the stories.

I didn’t know until then that “D.B.” stood for “Daddy Bob.” I emailed him the next morning, telling him he’d been hot tub discussion fodder....

“LIES! All lies!” he responded. “Don’t believe a word!...LOL... I guess there are a few tales out there. Some go WAAAY back. I got few secrets. The story of ‘Daddy Bob’ is rather long and involved....”  

So sorry I never got to hear it straight from you, D.B. Rest in peace, my friend. Or perhaps a more appropriate send-off to you: "Whoop it up wherever you are, my friend!"

A man and his tools: D.B. last fall in his old truck with his new laptop, using sophisticated software to locate and map tracts on Terlingua Ranch. (MH, photo)

Robert “Daddy Bob” Smith II taking a cig break in the Solitario of Terlingua Ranch last fall. (Marlys Hersey, photo)