Nor’East Drive ’26

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Howard Johnson, it turns out, is serious about renovating its rooms retrostyle. What says Howard Johnson midcentury, the heyday of the much-diminished chain, better than orange? – a lot of orange.

I’m just old enough to be nostalgic for midcentury motels. Maybe I’m just the right age, since as a kid, I didn’t have to concern myself with the details of getting to the motels or paying for them. I was along for the ride and the stay. I did, however, starting with the Cave Vacation of 1972 at age 11, concern myself with packing – my own stuff, but also the items everyone would need, put in the trunk of the car. To the mild amazement (I think) of my mother.

The Portsmouth, New Hampshire Howard Johnson, whose full brand name these days is Howard Johnson by Wyndham, checked a lot of the other boxes besides raw orange overload.

Not sure if these are precisely period lamps, but they remind me of the period.

The room had a modern TV, naturally, and as befitting our time, a lot of outlets, including USBs. Unfortunately, there was no bottle opener attached under the sink. Or a gossamer paper ribbon around the toilet announcing that it had been sanitized for my protection. Just quibbles. The room had the right feeling.

I found myself in New Hampshire in mid-April headed east to Maine. More than a week earlier, on April 4, I’d left metro Chicago by car for the Northeast again. I returned on April 24 after 3,499 miles on the road. Dang, I should have gone that extra mile we’re always hearing about.

After visiting the Northeast last October, I hadn’t intended to return quite so soon. Then Lilly and Dan scheduled their engagement party for April 11, 2026, in Midtown Manhattan, which meant a return to New York City at least. The easier (and cheaper) thing to do would have been for all of us to fly there, spend a few days, and then fly home.

I wanted to go to the party, of course, but that approach to getting there didn’t appeal – so I drove by way of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where I squeezed a day into my schedule to look around. Yuriko and Ann flew in the day before the event, and we attended the party in the upstairs Manhattan Manor room of Rosie O’Grady’s on 51st, between 6th Ave. and 7th Ave. I’d never heard of the place before, but eventually learned that Rosie O’Grady’s is a sentimental favorite of Lilly and Dan’s when they visit New York. That only goes to show that one’s children have, or should have, aspects of their lives you know nothing about.

We had a large time that evening, meeting members of Dan’s family and many of his friends, and seeing many of Lilly’s friends for the first time or the first time in years. My nephew Dees was able to attend from Austin and my nephew Robert and his fiancée Meredith came from Brooklyn.

That wasn’t quite it for NYC – my nth visit, Yuriko’s third and Ann’s first – since we had another day and a half to kick around. We spent time strolling in a budding springtime Central Park and at MoMA and in a couple of Greek diners and one of the locations of the delightful Angelina bakery. All in all, an enjoyable time, all too short. Yurikon and Ann flew home, but I made my trip just a little longer.

Namely, I had another large time, this one in Boston, with my friends Rich and Lisa and Steve. That was slated for a week after the party, so I had a few days to spend between NYC and Boston. Where to go? Maine. Geographically not between those major metros, but nothing is that far apart in New England, as all drivers who grew up in Texas know.

After my visit with my Boston friends on the weekend of April 18-19, I took a (fairly) slow drive home, passing through western Massachusetts and stopping in upstate New York long enough to visit historic places I couldn’t in October because the federal government shutdown. From there, I traversed Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana again, along a somewhat different route than I’d come. Of course.

The last night of the trip, I stayed at another Howard Johnson. It had the location I wanted, in western Ohio, and the price wasn’t bad, but I was also curious how orange it was going to be. The answer: not quite as much as the Portsmouth property, but more than most places.

Including the same circular mirror array. Wyndham must have gotten them in bulk.

The unusual thing about the Lima, Ohio Howard Johnson is its sizable enclosed atrium — visible from my room’s balcony, also unusual in a limited-service hospitality property.

I asked the clerk if the property had been something else, once upon a time, and she said it had, offering a name I didn’t recognize and don’t remember, though I expect it might have been an independent property trying to make a go of it. Tough going in Lima, I bet.

GTT ’26 Details

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Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 26, when it might actually be spring in northern Illinois. There have been a few days recently when I’ve been able to sit out on my deck comfortably, which is my idea of spring, but not that many.

The recent trip to Texas seems like a while ago now. As usual, though, there were many details. A lot more than I can convey, but here are a few more.

Faces

At the National Funeral Museum in Houston, one display featured, chronologically, 20 photographs of Abraham Lincoln. The third to last one, from February 1865, is one you don’t see much.

On a wall in downtown Nacogdoches, familiar figures from Texas.

I didn’t work out who this was supposed to be, in downtown Houston. Better that way, I think.

Signs

This place in Austin, well known to Tom, serves most delicious tacos.

Bastrop: Cobbling runs in the family.

Belton.

Structures

A re-creation of an ancient Caddo home.

Durst-Taylor Historic House & Garden in Nacogdoches.

The Old Stone Fort Museum in the same town, which is made of stone, but was never a fort. On the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. Recommendation to the university: if you want people to visit the place, provide just a little unrestricted parking. A little visitor parking anywhere on campus would be good.

Then again, the university seems determined to move the structure anyway — which might mean taking it apart, and then not putting it anywhere where because such a move would cost too much.

A place that has seen better days in Houston.

Downtown Lockhart.

The Southwest Museum of Clocks & Watches is permanently closed, alas.

Items

Cosmic in Austin is a bar and a collection of food trucks that surround an informal plaza with a lot of tables and chairs and shade. It’s a very pleasant place, and within walking distance of Tom’s home.

Houston manhole covers.

An artifact at the Old Stone Fort, but from San Augustine, and a hyperlocal soda bottle.

The New Mexico flag near Carlsbad NP.

Landscapes

Not just any landscapes, but within the Sierra Madera Astrobleme in West Texas. US 385 cuts right through the ancient crater for about eight miles, on the way to Marathon. You’d never know but for signs telling you that you’re entering the astrobleme, and one telling you that you are leaving it.

Memorials

The Houston National Cemetery.

RIP, Richard Allen Wilson. I don’t think that I’d ever seen an infinity symbol on a national cemetery stone. That, of course, made me curious, and I checked: it is one of the 98 various symbols that the National Cemetery Administration allows. The list is here.

I’m familiar with most of them, but not quite all of them, such as the Church of World Messianity, which is a Japanese new religion – it’s hard to keep track of all of those – and the Aaronic Order Church, which may or may not be part of the LDS movement, but in any case is an American sect. Hard to keep track of all those, too.

The NCA says: “No graphics (logos, symbols, etc.) are permitted on Government-furnished headstones or markers other than the available emblems of belief, the Civil War Union Shield, the Civil War Confederate Southern Cross of Honor, and the Medal of Honor insignias… Emblems of belief for inscription on Government headstones and markers do not include social, cultural, ethnic, civic, fraternal, trade, commercial, political, professional or military emblems.”

So (for example) symbols for the Loyal Order of Moose or some odd emoji or maybe a grawlix will not be considered, though as a comment about the Army, the latter would be funny.

Finally, a less formal memorial, but I’m sure just as heartfelt.

A memorial for Francisco Lin Herrera happens to be near the Giant paintings outside of Marfa. He died in an accident along that stretch of US 90. RIP, Francisco.

More Marfa

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Entering Marfa, Texas, from the east on US 90, I spotted this off to the side of the road.

A side road offers a view but not, as far as I could see, access to the site.

Also no signage, which I took to be a bonus. Like the Cadillac Ranch, the thing was just there. It can be looked up later, of course, to reveal that it’s a large bit of sculpture called “Sleeping Figure” by Los Angeles-based artist Matt Johnson and only moved to Marfa in 2024 from its original place in the Coachella Valley.

In town, we took a stroll down Highland Ave. and around the courthouse. The former Marfa Opera House.

Later the Palace Theater. Various sources, which seem to be copying each other, say that the theater closed in the 1970s, which is probably accurate, and that an artist uses it as his studio now, which I’m less certain about, since there place looked wholly vacant. Still, as an art town, you’d think Marfa would use the space for something closer to its original uses – live events, maybe standard theater and movies, but also popup performance art from time to time.

A number of churches ring the courthouse. St. Paul’s Episcopal.

First United Methodist.

First Christian Church.

It’s a coincidence of placement, probably, but it still looks like the church and the pickup truck are a set. An answer to the longstanding theological question, WWJD, What Would Jesus Drive?

Marfa Texas

Elsewhere in Marfa, an example of something you see when doing something else – in this case, buying gas.

West from Marfa on US 90, on the road to Valentine and Van Horn, are characters from the last of James Dean’s three movies, the one in which he implausibly grows old. Some of that movie was filmed in the area – on the ranch behind the barbed wire, in fact.

“A donation to the city of Marfa, the mural by artist John Cerney honors the movie Giant (1956), which was partially filmed in this small west Texas town,” says Texas Time Travel. “The mural is a collaboration with singer/songwriter/musician Michael Nesmith who made possible the addition of an audio element to the mural installation. The sounds of Nesmith and his First National Band Redux play continually on a loop from hidden speakers near the automobile in the scene.”

Further down the same road, in fact close to the hamlet of Valentine, is the Marfa Prada. Not the Valentine Prada, because who has ever heard of Valentine, Texas (pop. 217)?

Texas Time Travel again: “Prada Marfa is a site specific, permanent land art project by artists Elmgreen & Dragset, commissioned by Art Production Fund and Ballroom Marfa. Modeled after a Prada boutique, the sculpture houses luxury goods from the famed brand’s fall 2005 collection of bags and shoes.”

Detail near the road. Not sure if it was added by the artist or someone else.

The fence partly around the locked building is festooned with love locks.

And a love chain? For a more spicy time.

The Marfa Lights, During the Day

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The area around Marfa, Texas, is very arid but there are some nearby ranches that raise cattle, whose diet includes a subspecies of a desert scrub plant, Devil’s Paintbox. Various chemical properties in the plant make bovine flatulence especially volatile, often resulting in a small, colorful explosions when the cows emit gas. Cow farts light up, in other words.

That’s the scientific explanation for the Marfa Lights, which people in the region have reporting seeing, going back all the way to a young cowboy in the 1880s. Or it could be, if I hadn’t made all that up, except for the part about the cowboy.

I’m not going to make a close study of the Marfa Lights, but will note that people do seem to see them, and sober opinion chalks it up to optics. Literal optics, not the kind politicians fret about.

East of Marfa, along the highway US 90, the country looks like this.

A few miles out of town, that same highway has an unusual rest stop. Unique in the world, if you think about it. We stopped to take a look. I’d stopped by in ’18, and wanted to share that five-minute experience with Yuriko.

“In 2003 the town [of Marfa] used $720,000 from the federal government and the Texas Department of Transportation to expand that area into the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center,” says Texas Monthly.

Whatever the truth of the lights, that’s an unusually creative thing for a municipal government to do.

The San Angelo Riverwalk

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Saw an ad today about paleovalley beef sticks (no caps on the package). Not only is that the funniest thing I saw all day, that brand name is genius. Also, Paleovalley could be the title of a gritty reboot, as there are no other kinds, of the incredibly obscure Korg: 70,000 BC.

Into the rabbit hole: that made me wonder whether Cro-Magnon is even a scientific term anymore. Has it been replaced by some newer and more precise, or more politic, term?

No. It’s still Cro-Magnon. Most definitely. Who has the first Cro-Magnon skull discovered? The Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian notes about its Cro-Magnon: “Cro-Magnon 1 was among the first fossils to be recognized as belonging to our own species — Homo sapiens. This famous fossil skull is from one of several modern human skeletons found at the famous rock shelter site at Cro-Magnon, near the village of Les Eyzies, France.”

So the Cro-Magnon were actually early Frenchmen? Never mind the gritty reboot, this is comedy: cavemen with goofy French accents (and I know about Gaul and the arrival of the Franks in historic times, but this is TV we’re talking about). It probably would be bad comedy, for sure. As It’s About Time and Cavemen tell us, it’s hard to wring good comedy out of Paleolithic material.

Then again, consider this from the Wiki entry about Cavemen (2007): In the series, cavemen were never really fully supplanted by modern humans, but integrated into Homo sapiens civilization as a separate species sub-group. Cavemen are a small but widespread minority group that have been present in every global civilization since the dawn of recorded history… Effectively, Cavemen form another ethnic minority in the modern world, which faces several prejudices from Homo sapiens... Although these cavemen self-identify as Cro-Magnon, their facial appearance and physical anatomy is reminiscent of the Neanderthal.

I’d guess that the writers of the show, and the original GEICO commercials, didn’t invent that idea. But what a good idea for fiction, comedy or drama. I didn’t see any episodes of Cavemen, but by all accounts the show was very stupid indeed, so as often the case, it’s an example of a terrific idea badly executed. Too bad.

The San Angelo Riverwalk

San Antonio has a great riverwalk. Everyone should know that. Not as great, but still a pleasant place for a stroll on a warm day, is the riverwalk along the Concho River in San Angelo, Texas. Technically the North Concho River, since it joins the South Concho not far downriver, on its way to the Colorado. It has everything a riverwalk needs: a river, sidewalks and park lands next to it.

Artwork along the way.

A foot bridge.

The Abe St. bridge.

And a mermaid.

“Pearl of the Conchos,” it’s called.

“The bronze statue is an enlargement of Jayne Charless Beck’s original mermaid sculpture,” says Mermaids of the Earth. “Jayne was a San Angelo resident artist, who passed away in 1993. In 1994 this bronze casting was donated by friends of Jayne Beck to the City of San Angelo, and was placed next to a pedestrian bridge close to the San Angelo Museum of Fine Art.

“In this area, a freshwater mussel species produces lustrous pearls in many colors, famous since the time of the Spanish conquistadors.”

Downtown San Angelo

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I had a fondness for maps as a kid, and few were better than the Texas State Highway Maps produced by the Texas Highway Department, a predecessor agency of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). One of the maps’ features was a small stroke of genius – one later dropped, of course – that put the very largest urban areas in yellow, mid-sized ones in green and relatively small cities in brown. At a glance you could size up the size of a place you might be driving, if you didn’t happen to know.

Under that scheme, San Angelo, Texas, came in green, if I remember right. Not in the same league as yellow Houston, Dallas, San Antonio or Austin, or even El Paso and Waco, but bigger than places like Pampa, Killeen or Orange, again if I remember right (the old maps are tucked away in San Antonio). Why was there a mid-sized city in San Angelo’s location, I don’t ever remembering asking.

Easy enough to find out now: a frontier fort at confluence of two sizable rivers whose town grew as nearby cattlemen prospered, and oil services took root. In our time, there are also other usual-suspect major employers, such as schools and hospitals, and the military never left, considering the presence of Goodfellow Air Force Base, which managed to survive the wave of base closures and consolidations in recent decades (unlike some).

On a drive from DFW to West Texas, San Angelo seemed like a good place to stop for a night, and we arrived just before dark. The next morning, we took a look around, especially downtown. First, a handsome train station.

Mostly, San Angelo isn’t a high-rise city.

With some small-city exceptions, such as the Hotel —– building.

Street art.

Chicago has cows, San Angelo sheep. Back the USDA for ag stats: cattle are by far the most common livestock in Tom Green County, with $49.5 million in sales in 2022. But there are a fair number of sheep, with sheep, goats, wool, mohair and milk selling $4.2 million that year. For cattle production, the county comes in at only the 30th highest sales volume in Texas; but for sheep etc., the county ranks fifth statewide.

Again with the overrepresentation of cowboys. If there are art sheep on the streets of San Angelo, why no art shepherds? Then again, a modern shepherd probably looks a lot like a modern cowboy, so maybe that is a shepherd.

I had to look him up. Elmer Kelton (d. 2009), San Angelo resident, wrote a lot of Westerns.

An unassuming exterior, but a fair amount going on inside, at least most evenings. I had to look up FiFi DuBois, too. The association of the San Angelo establishment with New York entertainer isn’t quite clear — is Fifi an owner or part owner, or is there some kind of licensing agreement?

Anyway: “The House of FiFi DuBois in downtown San Angelo is on the market for $1.3 million as its owners seek a new buyer to continue its legacy,” San Angelo Live reported in February.

“The property is located at 123 S. Chadbourne St. and is approximately a 16,250-square-foot building that includes the ground-floor bar and venue, an Airstream trailer feature, plus a massive upstairs loft and additional rentable spaces that offer potential for multiple income streams, such as office use, short-term rentals, or expansion.

“The business remains open, thriving, and operating normally, according to information found online…”

Now I’m repeating information “found online.” But it’s probably reasonable to assume that the House of Fifi DuBois, with a lineup like this, is alive and well. Looks like the joint has both kinds of music, country and western, and plenty of drag shows. Cowboys and drag shows: now that’s West Texas variety, if you asked me.

Airstream feature? Tucked away in the venue is an Airstream that can be rented separately, it seems.

Meeting Chadbourne St. at the perpendicular is Concho Ave., named for the river, which was named for its bounty of shells. Near that intersection is a building that looks a tad underutilized.

I’ve interviewed too many real estate developers not to think, man, if that building could only be teleported to Brooklyn – or even Scott’s Addition…

The nearby block is mostly occupied, however. With local shops.

Also, it sports a stretch of raised, plank sidewalk.

The plates are flush enough with the boards not to be a trip hazard, fortunately.

A stuff shop: J. Wilde’s.

San Angelo Texas

Is Miss Hattie’s a serious museum about underrepresented local history or a commercial venture romanticizing 19th-century prostitution? I don’t know. Miss Hattie’s, like Fifi’s, was closed at that moment.

One more detail from Concho Ave.

The only reason I know what that is, is that St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, a place I knew well, was founded before the advent of the motor-car. As such, a few iron rings were mounted in the curb in front of the sanctuary – exactly like the ring pictured above. A place to tie up your horse. I might have asked about the feature, or my mother might have pointed it out, but anyway I learned about the iron rings. Does it matter to us auto-mobile drivers that we know this? No. But it adds just a touch of hyperlocal color.

Stephenville & Ballinger, Texas

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Regards for Easter. And Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter Saturday. Back posting on Easter Monday.

This seemed like a fitting set of images for the occasion.

A 100-foot steel cross rises on a small hill a few miles south of Ballinger, Texas, seat of Runnels County. Couldn’t very well pass that up, considering that we were passing through Ballinger (pop. about 3,600) anyway, toward the end of our drive that day from metro DFW to San Angelo, Texas.

“The Ballinger cross was built by a local construction company and commissioned by Jim and Doris Studer, owners of Buddy’s Plant Plus,” notes the Austin Chronicle. “The company is the only U.S. factory making water-soluble fertilizer for Miracle-Gro. After 20 years of making fertilizers in Florida, the Studers went looking for a drier climate. In 1988, they moved the company to Ballinger, where it quickly became one of the largest employers in the county.”

Jim Studer reportedly had been considering the construction of a cross about half that height, as a token of gratitude for a successful business. Then, during a visit to Florida, he was nearly electrocuted in what could easily have been a fatal accident – and decided to roughly double the size of the structure. A thanks to the Lord for not being offed at that moment, perhaps, but no doubt sincere gratitude regardless, for his thriving business. The cross went up in 1993.

We’d left Dallas that morning in mid-February, skirting the cities on I-20 West, except for a brief stop in the Fort Worth museum district. Specifically, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Yuriko had heard about my visit in 2019 and been slightly miffed, since she too wanted to see the Tadao Ando-designed structure. So we shoehorned a visit for a look at the structure on the day’s itinerary, though not the museum collection. It loses nothing on a second viewing. Gets better.

Go southwest from Fort Worth on US 377 and soon enough you’ll arrive in Stephenville (pop. 20,800 or so), seat of Erath County.

A dairy industry in Erath County? Yes, indeed: sales of $350.9 million in 2022, according to the USDA, by far the largest ag product in the county, and third highest for milk sales among all the 254 counties in Texas, and 24th in the nation. Meat cattle in Erath County are a distant second at $82.7 million that year, so a milk cow standing in the shadow on the Erath County courthouse is just about right.

I had to look it up: number one county in nation for milk production by dollar volume is not in Wisconsin, but rather Tulare County, California, at more than $2.8 billion in 2022. First out of 1,770 counties nationwide producing milk. Now there’s a Jeopardy answer to stump everyone.

We ate lunch in Stephenville at Greer’s, which served a chicken-fried steak to beat all, then took a constitutional around the Erath County courthouse. Starting with one hefty former bank building, vintage 1889.

For Texas county courthouses, James Riely Gordon (d. 1937) is a starchitect, but of course that wasn’t all he did. When he designed this bank, he was 26.

Every town worth its late 19th-century salt has to have an opera house.

Also, a musical favorite son: Milton Brown.

Wiki: “Brown began his musical career in 1930, when he met Bob Wills and guitarist Herman Arnspiger. They were performing at a local Fort Worth dance and Brown joined the duo on a chorus of ‘St. Louis Blues.’ The trio decided to team up to play medicine shows around Texas and Brown landed a regular radio spot on WBAP for the group, where they played a show sponsored by Aladdin Lamp Company, which had the band change its name to the Aladdin Laddies.”

Man, there’s another streaming platform limited series for you: the founding of western swing. Add a fictional love triangle between Bob Wills and Milton Brown and a fictional fetching woman, and some fictional tension between Bob and Milton, who nevertheless produce terrific music to enthusiastic audiences early in the Depression, until Milton dies suddenly in the last episode in a car wreck, as the real musician did in 1936 at age 32. Bob is left to carry on.

Milton’s not the only one honored near the Erath County courthouse.

There were a fair number of plaques like this, too many to read, so I picked one.

Chicago had its art cows (that was in 1999?!?) and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, has its sturgeons, so Stephenville had boots?

You’d think maybe, considering the importance of dairy locally, there would also be — do dairy workers wear special boots? If so, there should be one of those on display too.

More Stephenville.

US 67 joins US 377 for a run southwest of Stephenville, through such burgs as Dublin, Comanche and Brownwood. Then US 377 peels away to the south; but we followed US 67 west to Ballinger. That town was mostly a stop to get our bearings, really, but I also did a short walkabout while Yuriko napped in the car.

I made the acquaintance of Charles H. Noyes (d. 1917).

Charles was a young Runnels County man who died by being thrown from his horse while minding cattle. His parents tasked no less than Pompeo Coppin to do the sculpture honoring his memory. Nice work, Pompeo. RIP, Charles.

Moonward

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I wasn’t persuaded Artemis II would actually launch today, what with its delays so far, but I found out it did a few minutes afterward, and watched a tape of the launch on YouTube. As one can. Then I nicked a NASA picture of the launch. As one can, since it’s public domain.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

All well and good, but the boy I used to be asks, “Why did this take so long? Why no moon base by, say, the actual year 1999?” The man I became answers, “Money, boy.” An entirely unsatisfactory answer for both of us, but so it goes.

Palestine, Texas

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Terrific lightning storm rolled by to the south last night at about 11. Little rain but a prodigious amount of cloud-to-cloud lightning, unlike anything I’ve seen in years. The last time might have been when we were under such a near-rainless storm in North Dakota nearly 20 years ago. After watching in fascination from the back door, I got my phone and recorded about 30 seconds of the spectacle.

As usual, video only conveys a fraction of the visual power of the moment. But, in spite of the channel it’s on, it isn’t AI.

I was curious today which volume of the Encyclopedia Brown books — whose protagonist is a sharp grade-school boy who solves crimes and mysteries — mentioned the town of Palestine, Texas. Even though I grew up in Texas, I’d never heard of the place until I read an EB story in the early ’70s that mentioned a string of places that some international jewel thief was traveling to: Moscow, Odessa, London, Paris, Palestine and Athens. The boy detective determined that the criminal would be in Texas, since those are all places in that state, and especially because “Palestine” is called “Israel” now, as he said.

You might wonder (I do now, anyway) what business an international jewel thief would have in a place like Moscow, Texas (pop. 170) or London, Texas (pop. 180), but never mind. It didn’t take long for me to find a YouTube review of Encyclopedia Brown Keeps the Peace (Book 6, originally published 1969), including the case that mentions the Texas towns. The reviewer takes the book to task, asking “can grade-schoolers be expected to know this information?” No, of course not. They can be expected to learn it, however.

Now I know exactly where I learned about Palestine (Pal-es-TEEN) more than 50 years ago. I didn’t arrive in Palestine in person until this February, on my way to Dallas from Nacogdoches. During my visit, I made the acquaintance of this fellow.

The sculpture is called “Chuggin’ ” (2020), created by Dewane Hughes, a sculpture professor at the University of Texas in Tyler. Railroads are important in the history of Palestine, so much so that one terminus of the Texas State Railroad – a linear state park along a former short line RR – is in the town. The other terminus is in Rusk, about 25 miles away. Not running in February, unfortunately.

“Chuggin’ is near the town’s visitor center, a former RR depot.

Also nearby is “Forging History” (2014) by Dale Montagne, with the base made of three actual rail car wheels.

Parking was easy to find in downtown Palestine, traffic light. Parallel parking was available right across from the splendid Sacred Heart Catholic Church, as it happened, an 1890s creation by Nicholas Clayton, who was most active in Galveston before the hurricane. Originally many of the congregation were workers on the International-Great Northern Railroad Co., which had a major presence in Palestine.

Palestine still has a sizable rail yard south of downtown.

Took a walk around downtown. Like most large towns, or small cities, there is a mixture of ongoing businesses –

— with vacancies.

Got some buildings with really good bones, as it’s been said in the real estate biz.

The Palestine City Cemetery is to the east of downtown, but not very far. Nowhere is that far in town.

City Cemetery, Palestine Texas

The crumble is on.

Something you don’t see that often. Not just the Stars and Bars, but the very first version with seven stars. In the fullness of not much time, six more stars were added.

Unknown CSA soldiers.

I assume United Confederate Veterans, the Southern equivalent of the GAR, placed this stone and those like it.

The cemetery has an impressive number of worn, broken stones, soldiering on through the elements.

Victorian sentiment in stone, said with due respect.

Would that kind of soft decay, the romanticism of stones worn by time and the elements, have appealed to Victorian sensibilities? Could be.

Caddo Mounds State Historic Site

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Underfoot, ants went about their business in the red soil.

Fire ants? An expert might know, not me. Could be, considering these ant colonies tunnel under the the grounds of Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Cherokee County, Texas, not far from Nacogdoches.

People, being proportionally bigger, make larger mounds, but for what we assume are entirely human reasons.

“The Caddo selected this site for a permanent settlement about A.D. 800,” says the Texas Historical Commision. “The alluvial prairie possessed ideal qualities for the establishment of a village and ceremonial center: good sandy loam soil for agriculture, abundant natural food resources in the surrounding forest, and a permanent water source of springs that flowed into the nearby Neches River. From here, the Caddo influenced life in the region for approximately 500 years.”

The historic site is large enough to include a winding trail. On a warm, dry day, a most enjoyable walk.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned, but I blithely ignored the warnings and took my walk. Nothing bad happened. A fair amount of life is like that.

Yarn bombing? Here? Why? It might as well have been done by the ancient Caddos, for all I’m going to get an answer to that.

Of course, that tree is gnarly, literally and in the way Jeff Spicoli used the word. So maybe a good candidate for some yarn.

My drive from the historic site to Palestine, Texas, took me on some ill-marked back roads, but we’re not talking the Sahara, so signed roads eventually appear to alleviate any navigational uncertainty. Near the site on Farm to Market 2907 – walking distance, really – is Weeping Mary, Texas, a hamlet that has gotten more attention that one would think, at least considering its small size (pop. 40). “The community was probably first settled soon after the Civil War by freed slaves from neighboring plantations,” the Texas State Historical Association says.

In our time, Weeping Mary is a small agglomeration of standard and manufactured houses and satellite dishes and cars scattered among tall pines, with the church in there somewhere, and it takes all of half a minute to drive through.