Speeding down a flat stretch of desert highway, my radio is blasting Roy Orbison. As he belts out “Blue Bayou,” pumpjacks fly by.
I feel so bad I've got a worried mind
I'm so lonesome all the time
Since I left my baby behind
On Blue Bayou
Orbison’s trembling ballads are the perfect soundtrack for my trip through the West Texas oil fields.
Today, I only have one goal - find Orbison’s famous sunglasses. Over the years, I’ve heard there’s a pair in Wink, TX, a small town nestled in the Permian Basin. So I set out to see for myself.
Pulling up to Wink, a large orange sign welcomes me to the “Home of Roy Orbison,” his name framed by a silhouette of sunglasses. The rock and roll star rose to fame in the early 60s, touring with the Beatles and earning the respect of Elvis Presley who once said he was “the greatest singer in the world.”
Before all of the hit songs and awards, he was just another teenager in Wink - and a tiny museum is trying to make sure his West Texas roots aren’t forgotten.
A mural of Orbison stares down at visitors as they approach the Roy Orbison Museum. When I get to the door, Barbara Sabonya is waiting.
The 77 year-old has volunteered here for over a decade, sharing Orbison’s story with museum guests. Originally, Barbara wasn’t really a fan of Orbison before she started working at the museum.
“Unfortunately, the only song I knew was “Oh! Pretty Woman”, which is what most people know,” she says. But, over the years her dedication to Orbison has only grown. Her phone number - along with the numbers of the other volunteers - is listed on the front door, so anyone who happens to show up can give her a ring to be let in. This means Barbara has to be ready at the drop of a hat to give Orbison tours, but she doesn’t mind.
“It's almost as if I'm giving someone a gift when I come and open the doors and let them come into the museum,” Barbara tells me.
Pins stick out of maps on display that show where people have traveled from to visit the museum - Barbara says people have come from all 50 states and around the globe. Most of them are “die hard loyal fans,” she says, if they’re coming all the way out to Wink. But Barbara understands because Orbison’s story is so compelling.
“It really is phenomenal to me that this young man growing up in Wink, TX, which is kind of the edge of the world, became so famous because he did have such an incredible voice,” she says.
Orbison was born in 1936 in Vernon, TX, but eventually moved out to Wink in the 40s and spent his high school years here. He started two bands while living in West Texas: the Wink Westerners, then the Teen Kings. There are stories of the bands playing at school dances, and Barbara tells me they’d regularly appear on local television stations out of Midland-Odessa.
The museum isn’t professional looking. It's a little dusty, dimly lit, and the collection is a random assortment of mementos: a bowling ball, a ticket stub from an Odessa concert, a quilt made out of Roy Orbison tee shirts, and a guitar he strummed a few times. But that’s what’s so great about it. Small town, hyperlocal museums are some of my favorite places to visit when I stop somewhere new - you can tell they’re a labor of love.
Barbara ends all of her tours by going behind a counter and bringing out a small box. When she opens it up for me, I finally get to see what brought me out to Wink - Orbison’s sunglasses.
“I pull them out like a magician,” she tells me. “It does make kind of a statement. “
Orbison was known for performing concerts wearing a dark pair of shades. While Barbara says she’s heard a few different stories about how this started, the most common one is while on a tour, he forgot his regular pair of glasses on a plane. So, at that night’s concert, he was forced to wear his prescription sunglasses and the look stuck.
I was expecting to see a standard pair of black sunglasses, but lavender lenses stare up at me. “They’re tinted, kind of, rose colored,” Barbara says. “ I like to think he looked at the world through rose colored glasses.”
They’re heavier than I expected when I put them on. Suddenly the world is a blur filled with shapes and colors. Orbison had terrible eyesight, so his coke bottle glasses have a strong prescription.
Barbara has shown Orbison’s glasses to so many people over the years, taking their picture as they pose with his cardboard cutout. She had never tried them on herself, but today she humors me and puts them on…then immediately takes them off because they made her dizzy.
Orbison died in 1988 from a heart attack, and it wasn’t long after that the Wink museum opened its doors. He is still a hugely influential musician that left his mark on history, but over time his notoriety has faded - even in his hometown.
“There's not too many people left around Wink who actually knew him personally anymore,” Barbara explains. “It breaks my heart because he grew up here in Wink, but a lot of people just don't know.”
To be honest, I wouldn’t call myself a Roy Orbison super fan. I like his songs a lot, but I didn’t come here out of nostalgia. The reason I wanted to see his sunglasses is because they feel like some kind of hidden treasure that doesn’t belong in West Texas. But, standing in this museum, filled with intimate, prized memorabilia, it's crystal clear they’re right where they should be - in his hometown, with people like Barbara who cherish his legacy.
Caló
Despinchado - It means separated from its pinche, which means notorious in Romani or Caló. We’ve covered this word in a previous episode. Something that had the reputation of being pinche, but then lost it, is no longer useful or desirable. It’s despinchado, broken, undermined, or useless. People, machines, tools, relationships, and even situations can be despinchados.
Caló is a borderland dialect. You can find more episodes here.
Other recent programming:
The Blackwell School in Marfa was one of the many de facto segregated schools across the Southwest where Hispanic children were taught. And in some instances, like at Blackwell, they were barred from speaking Spanish. The effort to preserve the old adobe schoolhouse in Marfa and get it formally designated as a national historic site has been years in the making. The Biden administration finalized the designation this summer, and Carlos Morales attended the celebration - check out his photo essay here.
High Five
This high five comes from artist Julie Speed, who's new exhibit, The Suburbs of Eden, is opening at Ballroom Marfa this weekend. Here are five songs on constant rotation in her studio:
- Enter Sandman - Apocalyptica
- Mal Hombre - Lydia Mendoza
- I Will Not Be Sad In This World - Djivan Gasparyan
- The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird - Shawn Colvin
- She’s Got Her Ticket - Tracy Chapman
PSAs
The Marfa Public Library will be hosting a reading group on Saturday, September 21 from 9:30 a.m. to 11a.m.
In this first meeting, which will take place in the Library’s Community Room, the group will be discussing Chapters One and Two of Jean-Paul Sartre’s book “The Age Of Reason”.
For more information, visit MarfaPublicLibrary.org
If you have PSAs you'd like to hear on the air or see in this newsletter, head to www.marfapublicradio.org/psa.
