PREMONT (AP) — Robert Allen stood at the foot of Premont’s iconic Cowboy sign on U.S. Highway 281, straddling some invisible line between the town’s oil-boom heyday and a future not thought possible two years ago.
At the edge of Premont’s downtown square, the ghosts of Premont’s past surrounded him: boarded-up storefronts and empty buildings with broken windows, some with strips of yellow caution tape and graffiti.