OUT WHERE THE RADIO SIGNALS FADE to static, past where the telephone poles and speed limit signs end, lies one of the loneliest spots on earth: Loving County, where the oil wells outnumber the people ten to one. One hundred and two humans live here, to be exact, making it officially the least-populous area in the nation. “If we have two people with the flu,” says county judge Don Creager, “that’s an epidemic.” The county seat, Mentone (population: 15), is the kind of town you’d miss if you blinked, just a few scattered homes, a short-order cafe, a filling station, a post office, and the courthouse—a boxy yellow-brick building whose interior was lavishly remodeled with Georgia marble and pecan paneling back in the seventies, when oil was flowing more freely. Beyond Mentone, sprawled out beneath the enormous West Texas sky, lie 673 square miles of relentlessly flat land, marked only by bobbing pump jacks and a few shotgun shacks from long-gone boom times, their corrugated tin doors flapping in the wind. No schools, no churches, no banks, no grocery stores, no movie theaters, and no bars. But there’s plenty to do if you’re involved in Loving County’s favorite blood sport: politics. And almost everyone here is involved in politics.

Let's see, kleinbl00 I know you've written, uh, nostalgically about West Texas. Anyway this piece captures the pith of that strange far country. insomniasexx you might enjoy this as well.