Trip 5 of the 254 county adventure was conceived as a relatively short foray that would enable me to hook up with old friends in Houston, while adding 15 new counties to the tally. Here’s the circuit, spread over 3 days:
While that sounds undramatic, to me this trip had overtones of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. I was born on and grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast. My parents and grandparents on both sides have roots on the Gulf Coast. Most importantly, by the time I got out of Houston (my birthplace) for the first time, in 1968, it was with the resolve NEVER to go back, except to visit the parents or other family.
We called Houston “The Pit”, and that should not be understood as flattery. It was flat, swampy, sultry, stifling, and over-run with mosquitoes. That notwithstanding, I had a great, adventurous childhood, and it was only after getting away from Houston for brief intervals that it became “the Pit”.
Ironically, the places I later lived in place of the Gulf Coast, and loved, included Bombay, Bamako (Mali), Bangkok, and New York. All hot, congested, steaming places. Don’t ask me to explain – it would have made more sense if I’d gone to Colorado, but there’s something about the hot, steamy places that is woven into my destiny.
My mental picture of the rural Gulf Coast is just wet flatness, punctuated by rusting hulks of cars, boats, and appliances. So it was not with a great sense of high expectation that I loaded the Harley up for its first multi-day adventure.
Thursday, 26 April 2018
First stop, Gonzales, seat of Gonzales county. My paternal great-grandfather was born and is buried here in Gonzales county, and some of my earliest memories are of being a little boy in the country up here. Gonzales is most famous for being the site of the first battle in what became the war to establish the Republic of Texas, briefly an independent country.
The Mexicans, who then owned Texas, made the mistake of allowing non-Mexican settlers into the area, and even gave them a small cannon with which to resist the depredations of the Comanche. When the people of Gonzales showed signs of joining the revolution against Mexican rule, the Mexicans decided it would be a good idea to get the cannon back before it wound up being used against THEM. Too late for that – by the time they got there to reclaim the cannon, the local citizens had called for reinforcements, and they greeted the Mexican contingent with this flag:
In this area (I live only about 60 miles from Gonzales) it is still common to see pick-up trucks flying either this very flag, or the modernized version with an AR-15 assault rifle in place of the cannon. There’s another version around that I like better:
Anyway, after the near ghost towns of west and northwest Texas, Gonzales is a flourishing little metropolis:
And a very fine courthouse:
Thirty-three miles further down the road is Cuero (Spanish for “leather”), seat of DeWitt County. Somehow Cuero became known unofficially as the “turkey capital of the world”, an odd choice of distinctions. The high school athletic teams are all known as the “Gobblers”, which I would assume is a source of great amusement for their adversaries. But another spectacular courthouse:
Next stop, Goliad, seat of Goliad County. Goliad was one of the original counties of Texas, and the settlement dates to the 18th century under the Spanish. Texians revolting against Mexico briefly occupied Goliad, and while there did the first version of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately for them, they could not hold on to the garrison, and led by James Fannin they were defeated by General Santa Anna – the same one who emerged victorious, eventually, at the Alamo. Santa Anna decided to reward the insurgents by killing almost all of them – between 300 and 400. This was known (to Anglos) as the Massacre of Goliad.
Apparently that did not put an end to the killing, as there is a glorious old Hanging Tree right in front of the Goliad County courthouse:
The Hanging Tree is conveniently located opposite the Republican Party HQ – a good place from which to keep the Hanging Tree relevant.
My grandmother has told me stories of a similar tree in the plaza of either Mission, or McAllen, in south Texas, where soldiers or raiders from across the border (Mexico, before the wall) were hung. She saw them there as a girl.
Goliad also hosted a mission, and the remains of are still standing, still beautiful:
From Goliad, due south to Refugio and the environs of the Gulf of Mexico. Vistas like this:
In Refugio the architecture turns from Spanish to coastal, with these old house reminiscent of the gingerbread houses of Port-au-Prince, or Key West.
Refugio lost most of its coastland in the 1870’s after a political dispute, with the coastland going to our next destination, Rockport, seat of Aransas County.
Rockport is the current Mecca for sport fishermen and salt water aficionados of all sorts. Rockport once had one of the most beautiful courthouses EVER, but it was taken down and replaced with something looking like 1950’s elementary school, or mental health center. For better or worse, that courthouse was destroyed in 2017 by Hurricane Harvey, along with much of the rest of Rockport. It is gradually rebuilding, but as of now the Aransas County courthouse is housed, unidentified, in a grubby strip mall right on the main road.
I’d be inclined to give Rockport a little time to get itself back together – the Hurricane was devastating.
Shadows growing long, I headed northeast toward Port Lavaca, seat of Calhoun County. There once had been a town in Calhoun County named Indianola, and it was a big shipping center – some of my relatives went through there. It was destroyed by fire, disease, and finally a hurricane that was repeated 25 years later in the great storm of Galveston. Indianola was never rebuilt, and Port Lavaca got the honors of county seat…
And from there, through the long grass wetlands on up to Victoria, last stop for the day. In my experience, Victoria was just a place we stopped for gas while going down to Port Aransas, Corpus, or Port Isabel for surfing trips. In fact, though, Victoria is one of the most charming little towns I’ve visited in the half of Texas I’ve covered so far. It was almost dark, so photo ops were few, but here’s the courthouse:
Victoria town square:
And something from my early childhood I had completely forgotten: Magnolias!
Spent the night in the worst Motel 6 I’ve been in yet – one of the occupants warned me I’d better keep a close eye on that Harley – vehicles were frequently stolen from there. I put on all the locks, left the front window unshaded, and kept the .380 at hand. All still well the following morning, bright and sunny in Victoria!
Friday, 27 April 2018
Headed northeast on 59 to Edna, county seat of Jackson County – named, of course, for Andrew Jackson. Highest elevation in the county is 150 feet – low incidence of vertigo and related issues…
From Edna, continuing northeast on 59 toward Wharton. I was reminded along the way of exactly where I was:
Like I had seen elsewhere along the way: “If you are bored in Wharton, it’s your own fault…”
Well, when I was growing up the town of Wharton was a synonym for red-neck sinkhole. Obviously, with the arrival of Full Auto Firearms things have perked up a bit, and the town itself, into which I had never before set foot, was very pretty, and with a gorgeous courthouse:
From Wharton, turn south to Bay City, seat of Matagorda County, and what I expected to be another little non-descript Texas coastal town. Understandable, since “mata gorda”, also the name of the Bay, means “thick brush” in Spanish, and I’m sure that once upon a time it was apt.
But the courthouse, even though stylistically kind of modern, has a nice look to it:
Around the corner from the courthouse, I had the best omelette I’ve ever eaten in my life. I’ll post the name of the place if I can find the card…
Bay City to Angleton, county seat of Brazoria County, named for the Brazos River which empties nearby:
Beginning from here, I headed off into my former haunts. Between about 1965 and 1967, I surfed every beach on the Gulf Coast – we would arise at dawn, drive to the beach to be there to catch the glassy morning waves (if there were any), and then drag back home sunburned and exhausted. I was on the competition team for the California board maker Dewey Weber, sponsored by Bryson Williamson of BJ’s Surf Shop in Houston. For a while I was a member of the Kona Surf Club in Memorial, and then was invited to join Treasure Isle in Galveston, which was home to the best surfers on that part of the coast. They were glory days, and heading from Angleton toward Freeport/Surfside, and then right along the seaside up to Galveston, was truly a trip down memory lane.
In the old days you had to cross a time-consuming and irregular ferry, so it was not easy to commute between Galveston and Freeport – now there’s a fine highway by the water, and it was easy to get up to Galveston and my “native haunt” of 37th Street. There are numerous jetties in Galveston, but we all believed that the best waves were at the 37th St. Jetty, so that was the center of the surf world. Here’s me, 50 years later, at 37th street:
It all looks almost exactly the same as before (including the lack of waves).
And lest we forget, the Galveston County courthouse:
The plan was to zip from Galveston up to Houston, where I would overnight at my parents’ house, then do Harris County on Saturday morning on the Vespa, and then connect with my friends.
The reality was a 3-hour long crawl in blazing sunlight and bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Gulf Freeway. It was horrible, but I was pleased to discover, once arrived in Houston, that cold beer could still be bought and consumed. I did both.
Saturday, 28 April 2018
Houston is where I was born and raised, so I guess it still qualifies as my home town. I had no zeal for trying to go downtown during the work week, so my idea was to take the Vespa 300 GTV from my parents’ place, where it lives, downtown to Houston on Saturday morning. This would be the first and only opportunity for the Vespa to get into one of the photos – so far it has only been the BMW and the Harley.
It turned out to be a cosmic outing. Not wanting to get the little Vespa on the Interstate, I headed east on Memorial Drive, a road I had cruised practically every night of my senior year in high school, either in my red ’58 Impala, or on borrowed motorcycles. It is shady, and cool, and was a great way to go into town. I had intended to go through Memorial Park, but wound up going down San Felipe and into neighborhoods that were just like the brownstone ‘hoods in Brooklyn. I had no recollection of such places when I lived there, and even my old ‘hood of Montrose, where I lived while a student at the U. of Houston, was upscale and very cool.
I did find the Harris County courthouse, and as hoped, it was uncluttered. This is Vespa 300, with me, at my hometown courthouse:
I was very disappointed not to have allocated more time to downtown Houston, because it is nothing like the downtown I remembered. That will be the excuse for another photo jaunt, but here’s what I got while there:
Sunday, 29 April 2018
I had to scurry back to Wimberley, because Sunday was my day to shuttle my mother down to the rehab facility to see my Dad. Back on the Harley, first stop was Richmond, which is by now just about a suburb of Houston.
Heading west toward Columbus, I came across this place near East Bernard:
Columbus is yet another of those places, like Victoria, that I associated with nothing but gas stations and eateries, though to be fair I do have a couple of recollections of events in Columbus from the Summer of Love that remain worthy memories. (Those really WERE the days…)
But again, Columbus, once you get off the interstate, is a very pretty little town.
And then one last stop before getting back home to Wimberley – Halletsville, county seat of Lavaca County. Along the way, there was this:
A herd of very skittish Santa Gertrudis (they all ran away when I crossed the road) – this was the breed raised by my grandfather, D.E. Lomax, who was one of the early adopters of this breed developed at the King Ranch. And finally to Hallettsville:
And then I raced back home to Wimberley for parent duty. I wanted to stop off at some graveyards where my ancestors are, and I’d have been happy to down a few Shiner beers in Shiner – but next time..
Anyway…by the end of this trip, I’ve tallied 141 of the 254 Texas counties (55%), and racked up 9,063 miles so far. Unfortunately my mother had a fall, so I’m putting a temporary hold on these adventures, though next up is the Red River and north Texas, which should be another 1,500 miles and 33 more counties. It is truly a grand adventure.
Here’s the map so far:
S.