Author: Sandy as Admin

Apparently the penance I had done on Day 1 was rewarded with a glorious, cool, dry Texas morning – the kind you get out west after a rare day of rain.

Day agenda here:

First destination of the day, Haskell, seat of Haskell County.  It seems like every one of the little towns on the Texas prairie are trying to gussy themselves up and provide some point of interest that would suffice to attract tourists (tourist dollars, actually).  Anything will do:  the Pecan Capital of the World (San Saba); Wild Hog Capital of the World (Crowell); Fishing Capital of Texas (Port Aransas).  To its credit, as far as I could tell the town of Haskell had made no effort to do any promotion beyond what it says on its web site (!):

 Haskell is a slice of small-town living at its best. Here you’ll find homes nestled next to cotton fields, family owned retail shops where the owner knows you by name, as well as a community spirit rooted in family values, good-will and the future.

You have to appreciate that low-key honesty, though there’s not a whole lot in the photographic department.  I may have to go back and try again…

And besides, with roads like this, between Haskell and Throckmorton, who needs any other attraction?  And probably the irresistible tendency to “see what this thing will do” on roads like this must provide revenue well in excess of what tourism could produce.  Luckily I was not recruited into that revenue-generating process, though I did find out that the BMW would do 128 before I spotted an oncoming car on the distant horizon and dialed it down.  There was more left…

While blasting along toward the prosaically named Throckmorton, I spied a dark mass in the distance.  I initially took it for a rare tree of some kind, but then formed the opinion, like looking at clouds, that the tree had somehow taken the shape of a giant cow.  Giant cow indeed!  It actually WAS a giant cow (bull, actually, as more careful study of the photos made clear) made of metal, standing alone out on the treeless prairie.  I can understand that living out here gives rise to unusual urges…

But the “road goes on forever, the party never ends…”  – thanks to Robert Earl Keen, Jr.

It may not end in, but leads to Throckmorton, seat of Throckmorton county.  I guess they liked that name so much they decided to use it twice, rather than think up a different name for the town.  It’s a pretty little courthouse in an area reminiscent of the Panhandle (see Trip 3) – and no, that’s not a cross on top of it, it’s a kind of compass/weathervane that LOOKS like a cross.  That’s probably not accidental, though technically it’s not a challenge to the separation of church and state…

What IS, a challenge, however, is the tablet-looking (another odd coincidence) monument in front of the courthouse.  It contains a verbatim transcription of the ten commandments (or Ten Commandments, if you prefer).  I had thought that was no longer legal, but I’m not sure.  Legal or not, it doesn’t seem to fit all that well with the principles on which the US is supposed to be based…

Another of those metal longhorns.  I’m seeing a theme emerging here in Throckmorton.

Moving on along, a new creature theme emerges in the town of Seymour, seat of Baylor county (no doubt named after the Baylor of Baylor University…).   Apparently the Seymour area was a hot-bed of dinosaur activity during the Permian Era around 300 million years ago – I’m not sure if the town of Seymour had been established then, though there’s some that opine that people and dinosaurs co-existed.  If that’s true, then maybe Seymour WAS here then.  In any case, one of the main attractions of the museum (regrettably closed this morning) is an “…adult dimetrodon femur with a chewed-off knee joint”!  (Say that out loud in the accent of your choice…).  Hot damn!!  As if an adult dimetrodon femur ITSELF weren’t sufficient cause for interest!  It seems that the dimetrodons were unfortunate in having to share Seymour county with their unruly neighbors, the T. rex.  I would hope that things are more civil these days, but it’s Texas, you never know…

You don’t find many signs like this one out in front of the electric company any more…

The county courthouse is a little unassuming, but with T. rex, dimetrodon, and pterodactyls in the ‘hood, it’s probably best to keep a low profile.

It is always with apprehension that I leave the country roads for urbanized areas, but next stop on the agenda is Wichita Falls, seat of Wichita county.  The whole way there I was thinking of the ’80s record by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls”. (Hey, don’t ask me, I didn’t make that up…)  The dreamy music, however, fit perfectly…

Wichita Falls is a beautiful and well-maintained little Plains town.  I was thinking that I’d like to get married and settle down there, until I recalled that that chapter of my life is now in the rear-view mirror.  Oh well, it’s still fun to poke around.

This is the town hall and city cultural center – really quite spectacular.

In comparison with city hall, the county courthouse seems to have been short-changed a little.  It looks like they just converted an elementary school from the Fifties to county work…

Skedaddling out of the big city as fast as possible, I headed southward for Archer City, seat of Archer county.  Jesse and Frank James, with the rest of their gang, used to come stay (e.g., hide out) with a local family when things were hot up in Missouri.

The Archer City Visitor Center.  No sign of the James boys…but…a stunningly realistic mural that includes, I am told, a ’54 Chevy.  It’s so realistic you can barely tell, in the lower left-hand corner, the difference between painted vegetation and real vegetation.

Looks like it’s all happening at the Spur Hotel in Archer City.

Home sweet home in Archer City.

Between Archer City and the little paradise of Graham, I come to a screeching halt in front of a seemingly endless elephant’s graveyard of automotive Americana.  I parked the bike and spent nearly an hour strolling along the high fence that protects this amazing place.  There are too many good images to include in this travelogue – I have posted those pix separately on Google Photos – but here’s a sampler:

So I finally could drag myself away from this holy place and head on in to the little town of Graham, seat of Young county – kind of a dull name, but the most beautiful little town you never heard of.

And, I now note but overlooked at the time, a pine tree in front of the courthouse.  More on that in tomorrow’s travelogue…

Courthouse detail.

A diorama in metal of cowboys on the Goodnight-Loving trail, which actually originated right here in Young county.  The first drive took place in 1866, and the trail eventually went all the way to Wyoming.   In the drive of 1867, the herd and herders were attacked by Comanches, and Loving died from his wounds rather than suffer an amputation.

Downtown Graham.

White on white in Graham.

More murals

Moving now eastward from Graham to Jacksboro, seat of Jack county.  Along the way we see the odd sight of an Israeli flag flying along with the flags of the US and Texas.  If you followed the discussion of this picture on FaceBook, you’ll now know that this way of flying the flag of another country alongside that of Old Glory stirs up quite a bit of discussion.  I have to think that the person doing this fully intended it to do so…

Starting to dry out in Jack County (literally, I mean.  I didn’t swear off the akkahol.)

A historical marker in Jacksboro says that a “corn club” was established here in Jack county in 1907, and that this was the forerunner of the international 4H agricultural club for rural kids.  I never heard of a “corn club” before, but I’m willing to concede that it may well have been more entertaining than the alternatives out here (which were probably zero).

From Jacksboro due north to Henrietta, seat of Clay county and the beginning of the west to east run along the Red River.  Horse country from start to end at the Arkansas border.

Right opposite the courthouse was a high-end gun shop, now defunct.  (You’d be surprised at how many Texas towns have a gun shop across from the county courthouse – I wonder if that means anything?)  I was taking photos of it, when a garrulous fellow who owned the truck started up a conversation with me.  It turns out that he is a Comanche who conducts firearms and tactical training, and in addition is a weapons dealer.  (I have his contact information if you need it.)  We talked guns and politics and history for half an hour.  The sordid tale of how the Native American tribes were treated is something that is always glossed over in the “history lessons” associated with the official monuments.  In Texas, at least, the focus is always on the white heroes of the “Indian wars”, or the Mexican “banditti” (a word I first encountered in the Texas declaration of secession from the Union in 1861), or the dashing and gallant heroes of the Confederacy who fought in a “just cause”.  The grimy details of actual history paint a different story than the stories that are widely purveyed as “history”.  I am only conscious of knowing, slightly, one other Comanche, so this was a thought-provoking exchange for both of us.  This is the kind of thing that happens on the road…

And here’s another.  I’m not sure if it was also in Henrietta, but I was parked by one of the courthouses taking pictures when a fully-outfitted Yamaha Tenere 1200 whipped a quick U-turn and came back to stop near me.  Now I’m pretty thoroughly equipped, but this thing had extra fuel cans, industrial-strength bags and top case, and was ready to go anywhere on earth.  The guy was from Dallas, headed for Amarillo.  Like me, traveling alone.  Somewhere in the conversation, I mentioned that I had had another BMW in Thailand.  Well, it turns out that he too has a retirement situation in Thailand, with a sweetheart from the same area as mine (Isaan), and his residence is about a hundred clicks from my ground zero.  It was as if I had met my own clone!  What a day!  Yeah, we exchanged Thai phone numbers and I’ll probably see him next trip back.

Continuing eastward, through Nocona (of cowboy boot fame) to Montague, a sleepy little town.  While I was taking photos, a man came up and I asked him how to pronounce the name of his town.  How would YOU pronounce it, he retorted.  Well, I said, there’s a street by this name in New York City that they call Mon Ta Gyuw.  I, being from Texas, would probably call it Mon Taig.  He laughed, and said that, “yeah, round-a-bouts here we call it Mon Taig”.  I thanked him for giving me tools to avoid embarrassing myself in public, and he told me to be sure to catch the town of Decatur, which was two days later on my agenda.

The Chisholm Trail also passed through Montague.

Montague LOOKED like a sleepy little town, but I guess there’s no end to the mischief that people get up to.  In any case, the Sheriff is ready for it.

Heading out of town, I was conscious of a vivid transition from the dry and wide open plains to greenery and grass…and humidity.

Last stop for this day was in Gainesville, a bustling little town right on Interstate 35, which is probably why it is bustling.

I ended up In Lindsay, TX, at the Lindsay Inn.  I went there in honor of my daughter-in-law, Lindsay, who appreciated the fact that it was spelled correctly.

Another wonderful day on the road in Texas…  Tomorrow morning, eastward bound (straight into the glaring sun…).

End of Day 2, Red River Trip

So, with my cocky and ill-advised confidence about the weather, I bade farewell to my mother and set off toward the Red River.  Here’s the Day 1 itinerary:

My confidence began to erode almost immediately, and by the time I got to Llano, only about an hour away, the mist had already started.  Anyway, I had a chance to photograph the still-clean motorbike at the Badu 1891 hi-so (high society) restaurant in Llano.  It’s a new establishment being set up by some Austin entrepreneurs on the beautifully-restored framework of the old Badu house, named for the French family that once owned and loved it.

From Llano on to San Saba, where I wanted to revisit Young’s BBQ.  I had gone there two weeks earlier with my dear Khun Lin, only to find it closed.  This place has the best pork ribs I’ve yet sampled in Texas.  The secret, I’m told by one of the Young boys, is that they use mesquite wood, which he said has largely gone out of fashion in the Texas BBQ circuit.  I don’t know why, but these ribs are in the stratosphere of flavor and tenderness.

And a corner set aside for Steve Mitchell, Singing Cowboy…

By the time I got to Early, Texas, the first torrential downpour had arrived on the scene.  I loitered at the gas station until the worst had (for the moment) passed.

First courthouse stop:  Brownwood, county seat of (see if you can guess…) Brown County.  Whereas typically, except for the big city courthouses, I’ve been able to shoot my obligatory courthouse photo without the clutter of other vehicles, Brownwood was doing a roaring business.  Or else people had just come there to get out of the rain…

The Brown County museum was unfortunately closed, but it looks interesting…

Looking very “inner city”…

Quite a nice building for a local museum…

On the road between Brownwood and Santa Anna, a juxtaposition of the still partly clean BMW and a local red, white and blue background…

A smarter person than I might have reconsidered proceeding.  But nah, it’s bound to clear up before I get there…

A version of memory lane…

That’s not really rain up there…is it?

I wanted to stop in Santa Anna.  Recent excavations in family genealogy had identified a distant female relative who worked in a nursing home in Santa Anna, which was then apparently a bustling location because of the railroad.  As best I can tell, she burned to death in a fire at the nursing home, so I wanted to look in the cemetery for any evidence of her.  Beautiful cemetery, but I did not find what I was looking for…

Possible new home for me in Santa Anna?

First Christian Church, Santa Anna

Downtown Santa Anna

By the time I got to Coleman, seat of Coleman County, I was soaked.  I travel with rain gear, but the onset of the deluge was so quick (how could I have possibly anticipated it?) that I was drenched in a minute or so.  Leather boots sloshing water, every article of clothing dripping water.  I waited around for an hour or so, hoping the socks and shoes would dry out, but that was in vain.

Note to self:  Go to great lengths to avoid starting a 4-day trip with every single thing you own wet.  When are you going to dry things out if you are traveling all day?

Coleman County courthouse, looking as wet and bedraggled as me.

Murals at the Coleman County Library

When the rain slacked off, I headed for Abilene, and managed to catch up with the worst of the rain, which accompanied me all the way to the Taylor County courthouse.  Abilene was a much smaller little city/town than I had expected, but it had a fortress-like courthouse, of which this was the best view, as recommended by one of the local police guards…

After a renewed soaking between Abilene and Baird, seat of Callahan county…

Wet afternoon sights in Baird…

Finally, wet but not raining – on the road from Baird to Albany…

The gorgeous Shackelford County courthouse in the charming little town of Albany.  The trees on the courthouse grounds were, uncharacteristically, mesquites, and they fit the scene perfectly…

Me, hiding behind the bike luggage.  My jeans were so wet and heavy that my belt was unable to cope with the challenge.  If I’d been wearing boxers this day I could have been very stylish with a 2-4″ strip showing from the top of my jeans.  Though even at my best I still don’t have much of a plumber’s crack..

According to the historical plaque, Albany grew up around Fort Griffin, and “…the lawless settlement that grew up around the Fort attracted buffalo hide hunters and cattlemen driving herds up the western cattle trail”.  That may have been a better time to have been in Albany…

Finally, headed west from Albany, the clouds began to clear and the road to Anson became gorgeous.

I was rewarded for the day’s efforts with perfect afternoon lighting on the red brick courthouse of Anson, seat of Jones county.  This courthouse is situated in a garden in the middle of a large traffic circle, so you can just drive round and round admiring this fine building.

This county was named for Anson Jones (he seated in front of the courthouse), who was the last President of the Republic of Texas.  Recall that Texas was an independent COUNTRY from 1836 to 1845, when it joined the United States as a state (and from which it seceded in 1861 – more on that when we get to the monuments to Confederate glory later in the trip).

The Opera House facing the courthouse, Anson.

I’m not sure what the intended meaning of this little arrangement was originally, but I’d say that if you are a praying person, this might be good advice.

The streets of Anson (to the tune of Streets of Laredo…Marty Robbins’ version).

On the road in Texas affords many opportunities for Fine Dining.  This evening, still with water sloshing in my boots, at the Fish and Chick in Anson, Texas.  Puts me in mind of Townes van Zandt’s immortal lyrics from “Pancho and Lefty”:

Living on the road, my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron;
Your breath’s as hard as kerosene
You weren’t your momma’s only boy
But her favorite one, it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams

And I sank into my dreams here at the Anson Motel, hoping for beautiful weather on the morrow…

End of Day 1 of the Red River Trip

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.

Well, I went to bed in Sweetwater, dreams of rattlesnake fritters in my head, thinking that the next day would be a leisurely 300+ mile waltz back home to Wimberley.  “Planning ahead” is a good idea, but as the Buddha taught, “expecting ahead” is not.

Here’s how the itinerary panned out:

My motel was just a couple of hundred yards from Highway 70, which is a straight shot due south to San Angelo.  The BMW was just purring as we navigated through the wind power generators and rolling curves that were familiar from two previous trips.  It was serene.

As you head south, you start hitting literarily-named towns, the first of which is Bronte, named for Charlotte Bronte, though now pronounced in good Texas style as “Brahnt”.  After Brahnt, you come to Tennyson.

I, however, did not easily get to Brahnt.  As I was zipping along, I saw a huge cloud of black smoke on the near horizon, and what was obviously a fresh and fully raging fire by the roadside.  I could have blasted on through – the cops weren’t there yet, but I thought I’d put on the telephoto lens and see what I could see.  As it turns out, a fuel tanker had somehow caught fire at a roadside fueling station, and the whole thing was threatening to simulate Kilauea if the fire got down into the underground tanks.  Here are some scenes:

After about half an hour of ogling, a local fire official suggested that IF the underground tanks went up like a bomb, I might get more excitement than I had bargained for.  He also mentioned that there was a dirt road that skirted the events, and would eventually bring me into Brahnt, from where I could branch westward to Robert Lee (Coke County) before continuing on southward to San Angelo.

Me being me, I would at that point have simply dialed the BMW up to 100+ and hoped that the explosion did not happen during the 2-3 seconds of maximum exposure, but by that time there were authorities on the scene and I found the prospect of getting arrested more daunting than death by explosion (having already had that near-career-ending experience in Afghanistan in 2013) – so I set off on the dirt road detour to Brahnt.  So did everyone else, so I had a half-hour dirt-eating experience that was reminiscent of the old days driving from Bamako (Mali) to Banamba – except that one lasted 3-5 hours, depending on the weather.

You did get an interesting view of the fire from the dirt track, however, as the wind was blowing it directly toward us:

Once arrived in Brahnt, I headed due west to Robert Lee, county seat of Coke County.  This place is WAY out there.  Though the Confederate commander Robert E. Lee was based at one time in Texas, I am not 100% certain that this town is named for him.  In any case, it feels like the end of the world.

The flags here, as at other courthouses on this trip, were at half-mast in honor of Ladybird Johnson, who had just passed away.

To my chagrin, I saw a historical marker that I believe was here in Robert Lee, but I did not photograph it.  My recollection of the text is that it began “When the Indians left Coke County in 1875…”  This area had been the center of Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, and Kickapoo tribal activity.  The way the historical marker reads, it makes it sound as if the “Indians” just decided to up and leave.  In fact that was when they were forcibly rounded up and marched off to, mostly, Oklahoma.  If we are going to accept that historical locations have value in “teaching” history, then I argue that confederacy, slave-holding, and betrayal of Native American groups merit an attention to factual detail that is certainly not in place now.  (Recall that the Confederate flag still flies over the courthouse in Goldthwaite, presented in one of the Day Trips.)

The ride south from Robert Lee to San Angelo was through a barren but beautiful countryside that I had never imagined.  It is equally difficult to imagine how white people could have prevailed over the Native American tribes that lived there.  (Guns and gunpowder may have helped…)

I had never been to San Angelo, and had imagined it as having more sheep than people, like Rocksprings, but in fact it is a charming little town with a stunning courthouse.

San Angelo also had the prize-winning mural, so large that I had to break the photos up into segments:

The courthouse is the most prepossessing of all the ones I’ve seen so far – it looks like it came from Greece.  It’s also well-protected, as this was one of the only courthouses at which I’ve had the authorities come out and question what I was doing.  They radio’d back to their handler that it was just some old guy takin’ pitchers.  I could not actually see it, but I assumed that the snipers loosened their touch on the triggers.

The courthouse minus me:

While I cannot prove that there are in fact more people in San Angelo than there are sheep, I guarantee you that I did not seen any people at the courthouse that were any prettier than this sheep…

The security guards told me that this tree beside the courthouse is sacrosanct and has a special place in San Angelo history.

The courthouse was constructed exactly 90 years ago.  San Angelo itself began as the site of Fort Concho, which was home base for the African-American cavalry known as the “Buffalo Soldiers”.  They were used to fight against the Native Americans (thereby solving two problems at once…).

From San Angelo, to which I plan to return, I headed out northeast toward the town of Ballinger, seat of Runnels county.  Mostly agricultural country, leading to a small town with a very nice Italianate courthouse:

Last stop on this trip was Paint Rock, seat of Concho County.  Like many of the previous counties on this trip, this area had known extensive occupation by Native American tribes – the Paint Rock for which the town is named is an artifact of that era.

Even though the town is practically a ghost town, the courthouse is gorgeous.

From Paint Rock, a few hours south to Wimberley and home.

This trip added another 1,713 miles to the tally, and brought the total number of counties visited to 125 – just short of halfway!

S.

This first day of the Lower Panhandle trip started out with a sense of reassuring familiarity.  The first stop was to be Menard, after a couple of hours running through parts of the Hill Country that I’m familiar with from my boyhood.

Here’s the itinerary du jour:

So I get to Menard, another of the goat/sheep centers of this part of Texas, find the courthouse, and do my whole time-consuming photo shoot of the courthouse, wondering why there’s so little room in front of it.  After it’s all done and I’m packed back up, I discover that the main functioning entrance of the courthouse is at the BACK, and I’ve done my thing on the wrong side of the courthouse.  So I run the bike (back on the BMW) around front and re-shoot the whole thing.  It turns out that the Menard courthouse recently got approved for a renovation, so I guess next trip back the front entrance will be open again, and the gnarly plant life will have been replaced with something equally gnarly, but prettier.

Menard is a picturesque little place, in a post-apocalyptic way…

Next photo is of the Burnham Brothers shop – they specialize in making calls that lure predators in to the hunter.  When I was a kid, there was a big Burnham Brothers outdoor shop in Marble Falls, and a trip to BB’s was always a great adventure because the entire front window was a live rattlesnake exhibit.  I never knew that Burnham Brothers was actually HQ’d in Menard.  Tip of the hat for many fond memories, including the pair of bobcats my uncle called up in the night on his father’s ranch near Burton.

Unbeknownst to me, with the single exception of Odessa later in the afternoon, I had begun today’s trip from the high water mark of West Texas culture.  Heading west, then north, it just got starker and starker…

Next stop, the optimistically named Eldorado, seat of Schleicher County.

It turns out that Eldorado was in fact named for the mythical city of gold for which the Spaniards were searching.  More disappointment…

The Eldorado Woolen Mill apparently made blankets for the military during WWII.

One claim to fame for Eldorado – it’s close to the Yearning for Zion ranch, where sex offender Warren Jeffs set up HQ for his offshoot LDS outfit.   Federal authorities removed 400 children from that place in 2008.  The state of Texas took possession of the 1700 acre ranch in 2014.  Making history in the outback…

From Eldorado, northwest to Mertzon, seat of the sparsely-populated Irion County.  Mertzon was not the original seat of Irion County, but became so in the 1930’s because it was benefiting from being a stop on the amazingly-named “Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient Railway”.

The courthouse is situated at a high elevation, from which you get great views of the rolling plains around:

From Mertzon, deeper into the weird, next stop Big Lake, of which I had never heard before.  The reason for that might be that the only thing that would bring you to Big Lake would be oil and gas.

Big Lake had its share of service stations jammed up with oil tankers and oilfield trucks, but not much else – it’s a pretty desolate place.

Westbound to Rankin, seat of Upton county, and source of very amusing wall art, but first, the courthouse…

Greeting committee of one:  The ubiquitous chaparral:

Scenes from Rankin:

One more westbound leg, to Crane, Crane County.

From Crane, the road headed north to skirt the border with New Mexico.  These were wide open spaces, and the descending sun and high travel speeds reduced the number of photo ops.  But what a surreal landscape!

But the first stop is also the last semi-urban settlement on today’s adventure:  Odessa, seat of Ector County.  Odessa is named after the Ukrainian city of the same name because the prairie is reputed to bear a resemblance to the steppes of the Ukrainian Odessa.

Odessa has some of the best street murals and art that I’ve yet seen:

The famous Texas Longhorn breed of cattle, with horn spans up to 7 feet, were a blend of Spanish Criollo cattle and English Longhorns.  Most of them got herded up the cattle trails in the 1800’s to ignominious ends in the stockyards of Kansas.

Two folksy Permian Basin murals in Odessa…

Many Texas towns have adopted a “mascot”, and then the town is sprinkled with hand-painted representations of that mascot (Wimberley’s is a cowboy boot).  The jack-rabbit is the mascot of Odessa.

As the shadows lengthened, I grew more mindful of the lengthening shadows, and uncertain of what I’d find along the road north.  So I scurried out of Odessa toward Andrews, seat of Andrews County:

From Andrews, barreling north to Gaines County, Seminole as the seat – Tanya Tucker was born here.

Running the Beemer at autobahn speeds, north to the aptly-named Plains, seat of Yoakum County.

I think – stupidly, I did not photograph it – that it was on the stretch of road between Seminole and Plains that warning signs began to appear beside the ribbon-straight highway cautioning against going off the road because deep sand.  And indeed, the landscape looked more and more like the northern Sahelian region where I lived in Mali.  Hell with “Odessa”, one of these towns should be named Timbuktu!

There was some place to stay in Plains, but I unwisely thought, based on the size of the town dot on the map of Texas, that there’d be better prospects in the final town of the day, Morton, seat of Cochran County.

In fact, Morton was a tiny speck of a town – the only people I saw were a few cholos and cholitas parked on the other side of the courthouse, standing around looking at their cars the exact same way we used to do at Price’s and the Whataburger.   I did have a little time to pick up some scenes from the square:

Morton – The New York StoreI’ve seen stores in New York that looked about like this, and could therefore be called “The Morton Store”.

Luckily, a member of the Morton PD passed by and told me that for a place to stay, I had to go all the way to Levelland, about 25 miles east.  It was now almost dark, so I flogged the BMW off to the east.  Here’s what I saw on the way:

I drug in to Levelland after having done 569 miles.  I guess I don’t have to explain why this town is named “Levelland”.

I was beat, and after checking in to a budget motel, went to the only place I could find to eat that was still open – they forgot to put in my order, so just before closing time they brought me a salad, which I ate while the 14-year old staff bussed the tables and mopped the floor.  Adding insult to injury, when I went outside, the BMW had a flat rear tire.  Luckily I was close to the motel, and was able to push/cajole it back to the motel, where I did an in-the-dark diagnosis, found the nail, made the repair…and then incinerated my little portable air compressor without getting the tire re-inflated.  Having had enough fun for one day, I discovered on Google that there was a tire repair place ACROSS THE STREET from the motel (!), and a Walmart (new compressor) within a mile.  I was elated, and, exhausted, turned in for the evening, ignoring the fact that in 1957 Levelland had been ground zero for much-publicized UFO sightings by multiple people.

What would turn out as an EPIC day of motorcycle touring began early in Big Spring, where I awoke early wondering how I’d have woken up here about a hundred and fifty years ago.  I think I can guess:  the worse for wear…

Here’s the itinerary:

It was nippy in the morning, but by the time I reached Colorado City, seat of Mitchell County, it had warmed up.  Somehow I had never thought much of Colorado City, but I learned that it was, due to a brief moment of glory, once known as “the Mother City of West Texas”.  It was at that time the largest town between Fort Worth and El Paso.  It was believed to have more saloons than any town in the West, and more millionaires than any place in Texas.  The first sermon preached in Colorado City was in a saloon, and the “jail” was a length of chain attached to a mesquite stump.  (The thought of running afoul of that chain might have made a better boy out of me.)

The old glory (inglory) may have been lost, but it’s still a very interesting little town.  Beginning with the courthouse…

From Colorado City, due north to Snyder, seat of Scurry County.  Snyder is the birthplace of the late Powers Boothe who, among other things, played the scrofulous Curly Bill Brocius in “Tombstone”, challenging Doc Holliday and the Earps.  For me, Boothe’s voice is the quintessential Texas male accent.

Never having been to Snyder before, I was surprised by several things:

First, it has the strangest courthouse I’ve ever imagined.  It is totally windowless and is in an architectural style called “brutalism, characterized by repetitive angular geometries”.  It looks like a pseudo-Buddhist mausoleum (who needs windows if you’re dead) or a bomb shelter of some sort.  Here’s a couple of pics:

The second surprising thing was that it was another Grand Central of the buffalo hunting trade.  It’s most famous citizen of that era was a transplated Vermonter named J. Wright Mooar, who in addition to personally killing upwards of 22,000 bison, also killed (to Hell with Native American sensibilities) one of the two albino (white) buffalo in that region.  Now we have a statue to it:

Then there’s this at the corner of the courthouse, just in front of the white buffalo:

Third and finally, I have wondered my entire life where to get good crap.  Now I know it is available in Snyder…

I reluctantly left curious Snyder, headed due west for the place that is farther “out there” than any “out there” I’ve been to on this trip – Gail, seat of Borden County.  (Note to self:  This isn’t the only Gail I know that’s “out there”…)

Long before you get to Gail, it becomes evident that you are heading into Terra Incognita (except that there’s a town and courthouse there, but let’ not split hairs).  Here’s what it looks like:

Here’s how you know you are coming to civilization:

If you stand on the porch of the courthouse, you are looking due north into what looks like wilderness.  Beautiful wilderness.

More scenes from Gail (there don’t seen to be any operating businesses, except for one…)

Interestingly, and keep this in mind before we get to the next surprise, Borden County is named for inventor Gail Borden (male), who was the founder of Borden’s milk, including inventing the condensing process.

From Gail, you launch due north into the wild, bound for the town of Post, seat of Garza County.  Some scenes along the way:

The road is only 30 miles long – you wish it would go on forever, but then you arrive in the little burg of Post.  Named for…yet another surprise…Charles W. Post, founder of Post cereals.  He established this prosperous little self-contained model community out in the middle of nowhere, not for profit, but to give reality to his vision of how community living should be.  I’ll be damned.  I never knew this place existed…

Not all of Post’s experiments worked out.  Between 1910 and 1910, he tried his hand at rainmaking by setting of explosives in the atmosphere.  Hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained…

Now northeastish to Crosby County, of which Crosbyton is the seat.

Nice courthouse, but after the thrill of Post and Borden, a slight deflation.  No, it’s not named for David Crosby (I checked).  Cosbyton’s predecessor was established by a colony of Quakers, so I guess if I’d had to choose between Crosbyton or Colorado City in the day, I’d have been taking my chances with that length of chain fastened to the mesquite stump.

Anyway, there must be folks in Crosbyton with a sense of humor:

I guess in case people were having too much fun in the Crosbyton of the 50’s, the lingering memory of the Quaker founders must have been there to provide an antidote:

It doesn’t look like either camp fared very well…

From Crosbyton we now head eastward, as the temperature heats up, for Dickens County, county seat of Dickens.  I assumed that it might be named either for Charles Dickens, or the phrase, which I heard a lot in my early days, “I’ll beat the dickens out of you!”  (I decline to identify whose mouth that came out of the most…)  Instead both were named after one of the men who died in the Alamo – a worthy cause, at least compared to the Confederacy.

The Dickens County courthouse is a solid little lump of rock, suggestive of a Sumo approach to courthouse design.  Certainly it could hold its own against the legal profession, who was opposite the courthouse in this:

Here’s the grand design:

And some of the neighbors on the same square:

And headed out of Dickens, bound for Guthrie, seat of King County:

No time to stop for groceries…

And the damned motel is closed too…

Oh well, there’s some fine road between Dickens and Guthrie…

Jack Kerouac drove through Guthrie, as mentioned in “On the Road”.

Guthrie is basically a corporate-owned town – evidence of the giant 6666 Ranch and Pitchfork ranch are everywhere (hmm..if they had called them the Pitchfork and THREE Six ranch…).  This is also horse country – you ask how I know that?  A keen eye for observation, even at supersonic speeds:

So, umm, saddling up the Beemer, we head toward our easternmost point on this trip, the town of Benjamin, Knox County.  Weird fact – the country was named for Washington’s (George, yes) Secretary of War, Henry Knox, while the county seat of Benjamin was named by some guy in honor of his kid who got killed by lightning.  Doesn’t augur well for the future of your town – he might’ve taken a page from Trump’s book, and named the town for a kid who’d managed to live…

Anyway…the road to Benjamin…

…yielded this sad spectacle.  I saw the cow and the three buzzards first and could not figure out why they were so close to her.  Then I saw the little black lump in front of her and understood what I was seeing.  The cow kept looking over at me as if she expected me to do something.  But I guess she and I both knew that the “doing” would be done by the buzzards when she got tired of watching.

Arrived in Benjamin, the courthouse was a nice, chunky, tidy affair…

…but what was more interesting was the jail, just opposite me, that had apparently been tastefully converted into some kind of cottage or B&B.  Take a look:

Very cool!  As was the abandoned gas station on the other corner of the square:

Starting to watch the sun and the clock, I head back southwest now toward Stonewall County, Aspermont the county seat.  I had never heard of Aspermont before, so the whole way there I’m thinking “Aspergum”, a favorite remedy of my grandmother.

Passing through the town of Rule on the way…another mural.

Then welcome to Aspermont…

West from Aspermont to Jayton, seat of Kent County.   Beautiful views along the way, going back to farming country:

By the time I got to Jayton I had run the BMW plumb down to the last drops of fuel.  Jayton does not have a filling station, but it had a pump for agricultural implements where, with a credit card, you could pump low-grade ag fuel into your vehicle.  The BMW normally prefers Premium, but we were able to stock up on ag-grade fuel, then off to the courthouse…  Sorry I failed to photograph that pumping station, I know it would have added interest to this tale…

By now I’ve decided that I’ll overnight in Sweetwater, but to get there I have a long, circuitous route to traverse.  First stop, Roby, seat of Fisher County.

Unfortunately, the main shopping center in Roby had closed before I got there in late afternoon…they did not advertise it as “high quality crap”, but I knew that it was.  (I’m my daddy’s boy…)

Roby is much better equipped for modern life than poor Jayton – it has a Sheriff’s office and a gas station.

Last run of the day, south to Sweetwater, seat of Nolan County, and home of the annual Rattlesnake Roundup, which my herp-friendly youngest child has persuaded me is a bad thing.  It did not take too much persuasion – roaming the countryside with cans of gasoline to dump down wintering snake holes is a fairly grotesque form of entertainment, and I’m not hostile to snakes to begin with.

That said, Sweetwater is an attractive little hub city for cotton, oil and cattle.

Also, Willie Nelson’s film “Red Headed Stranger”, after the album of the same name, was filmed here.  It is the center of the Western Hemisphere’s leading wind power generation region.  The Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce says:

“If you’re bored here, it’s your own fault.”

Time for bed, tomorrow back to Wimberley.

Waking early in Levelland (I saw no UFOs) to deal with the flat tire, after a convenience store breakfast I was at the tire repair joint when it opened at 7:30.  They said that their insurance would not allow them to work on a motorcycle tire, but they somewhat reluctantly gave me some air for the tire I had repaired the prior night.  (Thanks, guys…)  I was delighted to discover that the tire seemed to be holding air, so I headed over to the Walmart to buy a new compressor and another handful of tubeless tire repair stuff.  I was then ready to head for the court house.  Here’s the itinerary for today:

Levelland, it may be noted, is the birthplace of Ronny Jackson, who was the physican to Bush, Obama and Trump, also noteworthy for his failed candidacy to head up the Veteran’s Administration.

And on a glorious Llano Estacado morning, I set sail due north for Littlefield, seat of Lamb County, named for another of our distinguished Confederate forebears.  I saw this unusual sight while northbound:

So I’m a little excited going in to Littlefield – my tire hasn’t gone flat yet, Littlefield will be my 100th county seat, and I’ve realized that Littlefield is the hometown of Waylon Jennings, legend of outlaw country music and frequent flyer compatriot of Willie Nelson, himself no stranger to extremes, either.

A cop tells me that there’s a Waylon Jennings Avenue (I was on it), and that there’s a museum that doubles as a convenience and liquor store.   I had seen it on the way in, but couldn’t find it a second time (these Panhandle metropoli are hard to navigate early in the morning).  But here’s Littlefield:

My uncle used to build mini-storage warehouses that looked exactly like this.

I have to admit, while there was nothing objectionable about Littlefield, I could easily imagine being driven to a life of excess and extreme (like Waylon) if I had had to grow up in this little town on these immense and immensely flat plains.  I’m sure David Byrne would have gotten it:

You start a conversation you can't even finish it
You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?

Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Emboldened by the fact that I still had air in my rear tire, and optimistic that if I were going to have to get a new tire or something my next stop would be the only feasible place to do it, I turned the Beemer to the south, Lubbock-bound.

Lubbock is home to Texas Tech University, where my niece just completed her freshman year.  I was pleasantly surprised by Lubbock, it is a nice, smallish university town out on the vast and endless plains – you could fight off the Psycho Killer impulses for an above-average period from here – but they’d still get you in the end…  Lubbock is the birthplace of Buddy Holly, Delbert McClinton, Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Lloyd Maines, whom I photographed two days ago with Terri Hendrix!  Looks like Lubbock is a good place to be…from.

Breathing a sigh of relief that I had successfully (meaning no law enforcement engagement) completed the most urban stop on this trip, I fumbled around until I found the southwest exit from Lubbock toward the romantically-named next stop, Brownfield, seat of Terry County.

Continuing the David Byrne train of thought, I discovered after I was here that Brownfield has some distinctive characteristics:  Double the national murder rate; double the national teen pregnancy rate; triple the national rape rate; bottom 20% of safest cities in Texas.

On the positive side, however, Wikipedia notes that “The most notable geographic feature of Brownfield remains its red soil.”.  Also – I confess I did not see this, otherwise I’d surely have photographed it – the city has a mural at the post office called “Ranchers of the Panhandle Fighting Prairie Fire with Skinned Steer”.  Here’s what Google shows of it:

I guess they had two ropes attached to the skinned steer and raced around the fire dragging the carcass.  You won’t see this kind of art up there in that New Yawk City!  Eat your hearts out!

Also, Brownfield seems to be world HQ for the card game I have heard of, but never played, since my childhood – Skip-Bo:

Getting out of Brownfield before I added something to the statistical tally, next stop was due east to Tahoka, seat of Lynn County.

Along the way, grape vineyards:

Tahoka’s court house is another being renovated, though how the cost of renovation could be justified to serve a widely scattered population of less than 6,000 is a mystery to me.

Tahoka purportedly means “fresh water” in one of the Native American languages – probably Apache, Comanche, or Kiowa – who prevailed in this area.  This was one of the centers of buffalo hunting until the buffalo were decimated and the Indians along with them.  In this area a group of soldiers and buffalo hunters, chasing Comanche raiders in the month of July, ran out of water and five of them died.  There’s a great link to the tale here:

Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877

From Tahoka, turning south to Lamesa, seat of Dawson County.  I was advised by the County Attorney, whom I met at the courthouse while trying to figure out which side of the courthouse was the front (he also was not sure, even though he worked there!), that you can differentiate between natives and visitors by how the pronounce the name of the town.  Locals call it “Lameesa”, with a long “e”, while visitors use the (obvious) Spanish pronunciation of “La Mesa”, with a long “a”.  I would have used the local pronunciation, but I had already given myself away by having asked the question (not to mention wandering around cluelessly in motorcycle garb).

The Dawson County courthouse is one of the strangest ones yet encountered.  There are entrances on at least 3 sides, possibly 4, and each side has a strange painted tile mural above the door.  The large trees around it provide lots of (needed) shade, but obscure the building.   It actually looks more like a Montessori school than a courthouse.

Note to designer – if your murals require a telescope to be able to make out what is being represented, they probably aren’t scaled or designed right.  But there are some interesting sights in town:

South from Lamesa down what is probably the most dreadful ride of the 254 County adventure – to Stanton, seat of Martin County.  Here’s what the road looked like when it was clear enough for me to stop the bike, prop it up, protect the camera from the howling soil, and shoot a picture:

Most of the 45 mile ride to Stanton was much worse (in terms of wind and wind-blown dirt) than this, with the added attraction of oncoming truck traffic.  Sometimes you could see the pumping heads:

I arrived, filthy, in Stanton and got this picture for my trouble:

Stanton did have, however, its own mural:

…and a kind of cute downtown area:

For once, getting back on Interstate 20, westbound to Midland, was (initially) a relief.  It did not take long to realize that Interstate traffic with whipping winds and dust was not a huge improvement over the Dust Bowl two-laner from Lamesa to Stanton.    At 21 miles, it was at least shorter.

Downtown Midland actually looked like a city, though with a massive construction project in the middle of it, it wasn’t so easy to see much of it.  I did make it to the courthouse, though…

The way out of Midland led past a group of restored homes, including this lovely one:

U-turn and head back eastward to Garden City, seat of Glasscock County.

This little courthouse felt like a forlorn “Little House on the Praire”.

Kept heading east to Sterling City, seat of Sterling County.  This area was once inhabited by Comanche, Kickapoo, Lipan Apache, Kiowa, and Wichita tribes.  Frank and Jesse James also kept their horses in this area.  There’s a very interesting landscaping feature in the shape of Texas in front of the courthouse:

Tuckered out, I pointed the BMW northward again, heading for Big Spring, last stop of a long day, though short in comparison with the previous one – only 372 miles, but that included a delay in the morning for tire repairs.  I made it to Big Spring with the tire still intact!

And the drive up from Sterling City to Big Spring is beautifully scenic, and panoramic.  Not a lot of curvature for the bike, but beautiful nonetheless, Texas at its “wide open spaces” best.

Big Spring itself is named for…you guessed it, a “big spring” that was a source of water both for Native Americans and, later, subsequent settlers, buffalo hunters, and soldiers.  The latter group added “fire” to the “water”, and along with other settlements in this area, it became a wild and sinful place.  Now it’s just sinful (I’m guessing…)

Jon Voight’s opening scenes in the Academy Award winner “Urban Cowboy” were filmed in Big Spring,

Hotel Settles, a classic that I’d have stayed in, but there was no room – oil field folk had it all.

I had a good Mexican dinner with several beers, saw a beautiful sunset though I could never find a vantage point from which to photograph it, and settled in for the evening.

Off to an early start from Vernon, seat of Wilbarger county.  Here’s the day 5 itinerary, including back to Wimberley:

From Vernon, southwest to Crowell, through very agricultural lands, with a Cowboy Church out in the fields along the way.

All along the highways in this part of the country are tufts of cotton, sometime so extensive as to look like banks of snow.  I guess they either blow off the cotton plants during harvesting, or blow off the trucks while they are being taken to the gin.

The landscape suddenly changed, with actual rows of trees putting in an appearance.

Through the little settlement of Thalia

and then in to the little town of Crowell.

Crowell turned out to be a very scenic little burg:

On to Paducah, seat of Cottle County

Continuing due west from Paducah to the town of Matador.  I had been hoping that now that I was in the southern part of the Panhandle, the winds would give me a break.  No such luck, but I did get another chance to let the landscape tell the usually invisible story of the winds.  Leaving Paducah, the winds were just entering from the west:

And a few hundred yards farther on…

While the dust was intermittent, the wind was constant throughout the entire Panhandle trip.

On to the forlorn little town of Matador, seat of Motley county.  (No, this is not where the Motley Crue are based…)

And on to the last stop on this Panhandle trip, Floydada, seat of Floyd county.

Floydada is pretty quiet:

And from Floydada, an 8 hour drive to the southeast.  Along the way, scenes of cotton country

…the little town of Ralls

including the Ralls Community Tornado Shelter

And down off the escarpment…

And after hours of riding, I came into the lovely Hill Country town of Fredericksburg, where the mountain laurel was blooming and the air was redolent of that honeysuckle-like smell.  It was a fine welcome back to central Texas, and I was given a very fine sunset on the Henly road 15 minutes from home.

This was a grueling but wonderful trip.  The Panhandle of Texas was more beautiful, interesting, and thought-provoking than I had imagined before this trip.  While there are pockets of prosperity, it is no easy place from which to make a living, and a place where dreams turn, literally, into dust.  I’m glad I came here…

Next trip, Trip 4, is likely to be the Buddy Holly and Flatlanders country from Lubbock south to San Angelo and Medina, again mostly new territory for me.  Looking forward to it.  Had the BMW oil changed after the Panhandle trip, so just waiting for a weather window…

One of the nice things about staying in a decent hotel, such as the Holiday Inn Express, is that there is a great breakfast at the ready, so you can take off at first light with the knowledge that you won’t have to go through the undress-redress routine at some breakfast joint on the road.  (Remember, it’s not a car – losing the gloves, the helmet, the jacket, the zippers, the snaps…it takes time, and if you are cold it takes a LOT more time…).

Here’s the day 4 itinerary:

So stuffed with 2 omelettes and sausage, I headed due south from Hereford to Dimmitt, seat of Castro county.  Over here on the western edge of the Panhandle you really become aware of what the economy here is based on:  energy (oil and wind), cattle (dairy and beef), and agriculture.  All three are prominent here on the west, but you get a real and vivid sense of how much the whole American – nay, global – way of life is based on the hard work of tough people living beyond the periphery of the consumption and bling-based prosperity that you see on TV – or, if you live in an urban area and have a job, that you actually live.

The food chain actually begins – literally – out in places like the western Panhandle.  The version of the “good life” out here is a hot, dusty, windy, isolated one.  If you were born here, it would not be so easy to go elsewhere.  It’s lucky that so many stay, because the good life we enjoy in urban areas, or retirement communities, is 100% founded on what comes out of places like these.

Anyway…on to Dimmitt.

From Dimmitt, due west to the border with New Mexico and the town of Farwell.  Along the way, the sights of big agriculture and big livestock.  Vast fields of cotton, corn, peanuts, hay (to feed cattle) and wheat are made possible through these enormous sprinkler systems that slowly move around in a circle, spewing water and liquified fertilizer.

And then, near the aptly-named town of Bovina, the city-sized commercial livestock world, larger than anything I’ve ever imagined.

This is the beginning of the road to the meat counter at your local grocery store.  I again consider going back to the vegetarian way of life, this is hard to see…

Once again, I had no expectations for any kind of positive surprise in Farwell, and once again I was very pleasantly surprised.  (Instance number 10 million of the wisdom of having no expectations…)

Farwell being at the extreme west of the Panhandle, we now turn back to the east – next stop, Muleshoe, a place I have romanticized my entire life.  When I was a boy, entranced with imagery of the Wild West, and the southwest, I was a fan of a black-and-white TV program called Death Valley Days, sponsored by a product called 20 Mule Team Borax.  I had no idea what borax was (still don’t), but somehow my convoluted little brain co-mingled images of Death Valley, mule teams, and the Texas town of Muleshoe.  Actually Muleshoe is in the middle of the flat, high plains agro-cattle complex, and not in some “head ’em off at the pass” western fantasy.  Reality will always come back to bite ya.

From Muleshoe followed a long windy haul to, eventually, Plainview.  BUT, along the way, I passed through Earth:

After amazing Earth, Plainview was just another town to get into and out of without mishap:

Plainview boasting an apparently defunct White’s.  We had one in Spring Branch, Houston, where I grew up, and the adventure of the week was going there on Saturday with Dad to get auto parts (something always being broken down).

Plainview also boasts the obligatory red brick Main Street:

With it’s own movie theatre!

From Plainview, due north to Tulia, where I was expecting to find just a boring, bleak little I-27 wide stop in the road.  Yet upon arrival, here’s the first thing I see:

These things are hand-painted murals on the rolling doors of a storage facility!!  They are very witty, and very funny, and very good.  Next stop, the Tulia courthouse, apparently being landscaped (or maybe they just like bare dirt, what do I know):

Unbeknownst to me, upon leaving Tulia I was to launch into the richest visual experience of the trip, as I headed eastward to Silverton, and then on the incredible Highway 256 to Memphis.

The next photo is of someone’s home out in the middle of nowhere, set well back from the highway.  It’s a nice place that cost something to build.  This was someone’s idea of paradise, and I’m not saying it isn’t – but boy is it an austere one…

Speaking of the middle of nowhere, I’m driving along at 85mph when I have to slam on the brakes, U-turn, and unpack the big lens:

These metal sculptures (they are flat) are absolutely uncanny out here in the grasslands, which was home to the Comanche and other famous plains Indian tribes.  I understand this to be a loving tribute to a way of life long since gone – we’ve already seen where the bison wound up, and there’s more to say, later, on the Comanche…

On to Silverton…

Last stop out of Silverton heading east:

So I’m driving along and I see a road sign that shows squiggly curves and a 30mph speed limit ahead.  I laugh out loud in my helmet and then, with no warning (other than the squiggly road sign):

No sooner do you drop down off of this escarpment into the plains below, then you have – this is no lie – the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River:

And here’s the river:

We aren’t even halfway between Silverton and Memphis (Hall county seat, not the one in Tennessee) yet, and then we land in the middle of this:

I don’t even know what you’d call this place, but there was more ahead:

And if that weren’t enough food for thought, this comes up next – I found out yesterday from a friend who knows this area that Turkey is actually a town:

Good grief, will we EVER get to Memphis?  How many times can I play that Lonnie Mack song in my head?

So now I’m kind of at the base of the Panhandle, in the east, and headed next for Childress, which, other than Dalhart, Amarillo, and Plainview was the only place I could have named from the Panhandle before this trip.  I’m beginning to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that surely the insufferable winds (let’s remember, those have been our constant companions since Dalhart) will now begin to abate.

Memphis to Childress turned out to be the worst leg of the entire trip, from the wind point of view.  I could not even take photos because the dirt was blowing across the highway looking like red cirrus clouds.  But to Childress I did, in due course, arrive:

From Childress to Quanah, seat of Hardeman county.  I’ve been doing some genealogical research lately, and have discovered that some of my maternal ancestors may have started their gritty life journeys from Hardeman county.  So I’m resolved to explore a bit more than usual.  But first stop, as usual, the courthouse:

It turns out that the town of Quanah was named for the Comanche chief named Quanah Parker.  Quanah Parker’s mother, Cynthia Ann Parker,  was an Anglo who had been captured by the Comanche when she was nine years old.  She was raised as a Comanche and became the wife of a Comanche chieftain, Peta Nokoni,  The Texas Rangers eventually recaptured Cynthia Ann Parker and took her away from the Comanche, against her will.  Her son, Quanah Parker, never saw her again.  Quanah Parker fought against the US for years without ever being defeated.  Realizing, however, that the tide of history was against him and the Comanche, he took the remnants of his group of Comanche to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he surrendered to the American authorities in the spring of 1875.  Before he reached Fort Sill, he dismounted from his horse and released him to run free, declaring “there goes the spirit of the Comanche”.  I believe it is true that every single treaty that the US authorities ever signed with the native Americans was broken, to the disadvantage of whatever tribal group it had been signed with.  In other words, every single time the Americans gave their word, they broke it.  You can’t have a reality-based perspective of America’s place in history without taking this into account.  Not to mention, of course, the whole slavery deal, yet another story….

I was supposed to go south from Quanah, but because there was still light, I decided to proceed to Chillicothe, a small town near the Oklahoma border from which I believe my maternal great-grandfather may have come.  Here’s what I found in Chillicothe:

I inquired around, and found the whereabouts of the Chillicothe Cemetery, where I went to see if I could find some Taylor graves.  No such luck, but it was a beautiful high plains place:

And so the day ended.  I was supposed to head south, but instead headed east, with the sun, and wind, at my back, and I overnighted in the town of Vernon, seat of Wilbarger county.  Tomorrow, headed back west first, and then due south, home to Wimberley.

When I decided to launch this long trip, the decision was based on the weather.  I knew that it would be cold, initially, but expected it to warm up gradually through the week.  And remain dry.  So much for planning.

I left Wimberley for the 600+ mile direct trip to Dalhart on a sunny, cold March morning.  Temperature in the mid-40’s.  Before I had gotten to Blanco, 20 miles away, the sun had vanished and the chill factor began to set in.  By the time I stopped for lunch in (aptly-named) Winters, I was frozen.  Knees knocking, fingers unable to unsnap jacket and helmet fasteners.  I was not stopping for courthouses and photos along the way because the objective for this first day was simply to get to the starting point of the Panhandle trip – Dalhart.

Once you get on the plains, the sky is so huge it gives you (me) vertigo.  When, while riding the bike at speed, I’d look up, or over, it was completely disorienting, and I had to quickly return my attention to the road ahead.  In summer of 1978, I was a student pilot and before completing my instruction and getting certified, the instructor, an F4 pilot from Vietnam, took me up to 5000 feet to practice stall and spin recoveries in a Cessna 152 from which all the flight instruments had been removed (they don’t like spins).  The drill is that you are flying along straight and level, and you reduce engine power and pull back on the yoke until the plane’s angle of attack is too great for the engine to power the climb, and the plane will stall, and begin to fall out of the air.  To put it into a spin, just before it stalls you “cross” the controls, meaning that you apply LEFT aileron (like turning the steering wheel to the left) and RIGHT rudder (with your feet).  The result of that abnormal process is that the plane suddenly flips over on its back and falls, spinning, nose first toward the earth.  The purpose of the lesson is to recognize the onset of such a thing, to avoid it, and to learn how to recover from it if you are a bad enough pilot to have initiated it in the first place.  My recollection of it – we did it numerous times, at my insistence – is of utter, abject terror.  It is very physical – when the plane inverts and starts to fall, your stomach stays at the original altitude while your eyes no longer see a horizon, you just see the ground, spinning in a circle.  That’s what it felt like when I tried to peek up at the infinite sky above me while driving at 85mph on the road north.

I finally thawed out by mid-afternoon, stopped at a roadside park north of Lubbock – I knew I was in the Panhandle then:

And then:

Here’s the map for Days 1 (Wimberley to Dalhart) and 2 (Dalhart to Amarillo):

Overnight in Dalhart, nestled up in the northwest corner of Texas adjoining New Mexico and Oklahoma.  This was the take-off place for 4 days of back and forth, west-to-east, jog south, east-to-west, jog south and so forth until the entire Panhandle had been covered.

On paper this seemed like a good idea.  In practice, however, there are constant strong winds blowing gustily from, mostly, the west and southwest.  That phenomenon became the dominant feature of this trip, as you’ll see.

I awoke in Dalhart to a temperature of 33 degrees F, and meandered through town to the courthouse.  I was already cold in the three minutes it took me to get there, and the gray skies should have given me a premonition.

This was my first exposure to what seems to be a universal stylistic convention of red-brick streets in the downtown and vicinity of the courthouse.  It is very charming, but when wet is anathema to motorcycle tires.

Dalhart houses the museum of the XIT ranch, a defunct ranch from the late 19th century of over 3 million acres.  It was given to its owners in exchange for them building the state Capitol building in Austin.  It went defunct in around 20 years, but lives on (along with the King Ranch in south Texas) in legend.  On the front of the museum is a collection of distinctive brands that were used to establish ownership of cattle (heated irons with the “brand” were applied to the skin of the cattle in question).  The brands were all registered with the state cattleman’s association – my grandfather had one – S7S – that we applied every spring to the new calves of his herd of registered Santa Gertrudis, up until the time I went away to college.

My friend Deepak asked me about how the folks were up in Dalhart.  Other than hotel staff, I could not really say, but Wikipedia told me that Dalhart is ranked by a Seattle newspaper as the being 8th most conservative city in the US.  Three other West Texas cities (using the term loosely) joined Dalhart in the top 10.  I would not, on that basis, recommend wearing that pagdi  (turban) on your next trip down here.

So the idea was to leave Dalhart and head east across the counties that border Oklahoma, then turn south to the next “row” of counties, and head west.  Well, it was just about freezing all the way from Dalhart to the town of Stratford, seat of Sherman county.  By the time I got there I was shaking so hard that it took me ten minutes to get my gloves and helmet off and get the tripod and camera ready for action.  Here’s the result:

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.  I went in to a convenience store to get coffee and warm up, when I overheard a man say “it’s trying to sleet out there”.  In disbelief, I stepped out the door and sure enough a good healthy sleet (frozen rain) was coming down.  I drove into the sleet for 53 miles to Spearman (Spear Man, as I thought of it), seat of Hansford county.  Here are some examples of what sleet clouds look like in the Panhandle of Texas:

It’s not all that amusing to ride a motorcycle at 80mph through that for an hour, but arrive I did at the town of Spearman.  Along the way, however, I was astonished to see the evidence of a very quirky sense of humor.  I’m thinking I might have to go back and try to buy this place, it suits my style…

Arrived in Spearman, I was relieved that the sleet had stopped.  But then it turned to rain, so my nice clean bike was about to get filthy on the first morning of the first day.  Oh, and I was about to get wet.  And it was still about 35 degrees.  Oh well – it IS an adventure, right?  😀

Not a place to be left behind, culturally, Spearman boasts of…

From Spearman, I made my way east to Perryton, seat of Ochiltree county.  By the time I got there, the rain had ceased and all I had left to contend with were cold and wind.  That seemed like a good deal at the time…

Perryton is actually city-like:

From Perryton, due east past the quaintly named town of Darrouzett, almost to Oklahoma, and then due south to Lipscomb.

The great thing about this adventure is that every stop is different, and with unexpected allure.   Lipscomb is barely a wide spot on the road – I did not spy a single operating establishment, and I think the county population is less than a hundred souls, perhaps less than fifty.  Anyone with a job must work for the county.  But this place turned out to be one of the most interesting and unique county seats yet encountered.  See for yourself:

So that’s the county courthouse, now look at what is around it:

What an incredible place!  I never saw a single human being while I was there, though to be fair that was true at quite a number of stops along this tour.

Following Lipscomb came another big surprise – as you head south, suddenly the terrain becomes more rolling and then brushy, and you cross the Canadian River, which I belatedly realize must be the inspiration for the Michael Martin Murphey song “South Canadian River Song”.  The town of Canadian, unlike its predecessors on this leg, looks very upscale and shi-shi.  The judge came out while I was taking pictures of his courthouse and explained that the special thing about Canadian is that it is on a river.  Apparently they have summer music festivals and it is quite the touristic destination.  Who wouldda thunk it.

From Canadian, the road turns west toward Miami, and I get my first taste of the head and cross winds to come.  Just a taste, on this leg…

More wind on the way to Pampa (pronounced as “Tampa (Bay)”, not like the Argentinian savannah.  Also headed back into the inclement weather I had punched through on the eastward bound leg in the morning.

Upon arriving in Pampa, I discovered that when Woody Guthrie was 17, he left Oklahoma and worked for three years as a soda jerk in Pampa at this very place.

And out back was…Alice’s Restaurant!  (OK, so the real one is in Massachusetts, I think – picky, picky).

From Pampa, further westward to the town of Stinnett.

And on to Dumas

From Dumas, a wonderful afternoon ride on a completely deserted rural road, heading more and more into the nowhere-land along the border with New Mexico.  Upon arrival in Channing, I could not find the courthouse, until I was directed to cross the railroad tracks behind the tire repair store, and look for trees.  (Actually, looking for trees is part of the art of finding courthouses without use of a map or GPS.  Water towers and grain silos also help…)

Imagine my surprise when I happened on a beautiful little postage-stamp size courthouse in the middle of a shady grove of trees.  I hated to leave it…but the shadows were getting long and my tires were OK…

Due south to the penultimate stop of the day, Vega.  I vaguely (get it?) remembered this place from having gassed up there on a drive from New Mexico some years ago, but it is mostly an I-40 lodging/fuel/food stop.

And from Vega, last leg of the day, with thankfully the sun and wind at my back, headed to Amarillo for the night.

400+ miles on day two of the Panhandle trip, next blog begins in Amarillo.

I will turn 70 in April.  The life circumstances that have kept me in place – an unnatural state for me – for two years are changing.  I have 3-4 day windows of time now in which to breathe and play.

Having traipsed around the globe for over 50 years now, I turn my attention to Texas, the US state of my birth.  I’ve resolved to try to visit all 254 of the Texas counties by motorcycle, and take photos in front of each courthouse.

At present, the plan spans 10 separate trips, shown on the color-coded map below.  The purple trip, to South Texas, was just completed last week, and if all goes well the pink trip, to West Texas, comes up this week.

The exact itineraries of the ten trips are found on the link below – click on it for more info.

Ten Trips Planned Itinerary