Category Archives: Architecture

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.

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.

San Augustine & Mission Dolores State Historic Site

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From Nacogdoches east to San Augustine, there in the thick of East Texas, is about 20 miles along the highway Texas 21. An excellent drive.

Gary the Builder

Approach San Augustine (pop. 1,920) from the west on the Texas 21, as I did, and you’re certain to notice an unusual wooden structure, as I did.

Roadside America calls it “Major Fun,” and I will say it was a major surprise, since I went to San Augustine knowing very little about the place. RA says: “Gary Brewer, a carpenter, has been adding multi-story decks and spiky wooden things to the outside of his house since 2006. The town has tried to stop him, but the woodwork is all code-compliant. Gary views his house an attraction, and wants people to visit it.”

The tower is at one corner of the county courthouse square. So maybe Mr. Brewer could file the paperwork for his construction by walking across the street. Do you suppose Mr. Brewer the carpenter has a friend named Carpenter who’s a brewer? Possibly.

The rest of the town square shows that many town squares aren’t what they used to be — sporting more than a few vacant storefronts — for all the usual reasons, such as big box retail elsewhere in the county. But businesses cling to life in the courthouse square even so.

Not pictured is the San Augustine Drug Co., a pharmacy near the square, a sizable place that’s more clothes and gift shop than drug store. You can buy ice cream at a counter near one wall. Not quite a classic drug store lunch counter, but distinctive. As I was looking around the store, one of the employees asked if this was my first visit. I told her it was, and she said that first-time visitors receive a cold drink from the counter, no charge. So I sat at the counter and drank a complementary lemon squash, as lemony and delightful as could be.

A Stripling Might Say My Name is the Alternate

A number of the vacant spaces had been recently used as Christmas stores. Even in February, seasonal décor lingered, because why not?

This space wasn’t vacant, exactly, but it was unmarked and its use a little hard to sus. Art space perhaps. The view reminded me of “Texas Sun” for obvious reasons.

There were ghost signs, which isn’t unusual. More unusual is Stripling’s on a building. I have to take an interest in that, an alternate of my name.

“The original town well was dug by slaves on this site in 1860, and a saloon was built over it in 1891,”says the Society of Architectural Historians. “The First National Bank acquired the property, filled in the well, and commissioned this building. Raif Stripling purchased the building several years later and reopened the well as a tourist attraction. In 2003, the San Augustine Historical Foundation bought the property, which is now operated as a gift shop. The entrance canopy’s curious pediment with miniature triglyphs was added to his father’s building by Raiford Stripling.”

You never know what a building has to say.

The Spanish Brought Horses & Frisbee Golf

Not far away from the courthouse, half a mile or so south on US 96, is Mission Delores State Historic Site. Once upon a time, but not for that long, Mission Nuestra Señora De Los Dolores De Los Ais was there.

Mission Dolores has a name that evokes the stone relics of a backwater from the Spanish conquest of the Americas, but I’ve got bad news: the mission seems to have been built of wood, a material not known for durability across the centuries. Modern wooden poles ring part of the site, but otherwise you’ve got to bring a lot of historical imagination to the place.

The actual site wasn’t known until late 20th century archaeology confirmed the location, part of which was destroyed by the building of the highway. The modern state historic site grounds extend far enough to offer a pleasant walk, provided the weather is pleasant, as it was that day.

Gashes in the earth run through the wooded grounds.

They’re something like the ghost signs – ghost trails, you might call them, carved by horses and wagons and Indians and Spaniards and, remarkably, not yet lost to time.

Also part of the park: a Frisbee golf course.

An homage to the fact that the Spanish brought the sport to the Americas as surely as smallpox and horses. If you tell people that with some conviction, wonder how many would believe it?

The Hermann Park Japanese Garden & A Side of Rice

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My go-to data source for gas prices is AAA, which tells me that the national average today is $3.983/gal, and higher in Illinois, at $4.228/gal. As everyone knows, up markedly this month. People have long seemed to believe that the President of the United States has a magic button that made gas prices change. That was nonsense, of course, but now it looks like the administration has found such a button, except it might be stuck on “rise.”

Be that as it may, I’m glad my recent long drives, and long flights, aren’t scheduled for this year. The summer of ’26 could be a time to stay closer to home. Then again, prices north of $4/gal – in fatter 2008 dollars – didn’t keep us from driving to Great Smoky Mountains NP that year.

In Houston last month, I did a fair amount of driving, including in the airport-area industrial submarket. That is, among the warehouses and distribution centers that form part of the sizable metro Houston industrial market, which totals about 700 million square feet (for comparison, metro Chicago’s market is roughly 1 billion square feet). I’m probably one of the few tourists anywhere who gets a kick out of driving by behemoth industrial buildings, but there you have it.

I also drove the short distance from downtown Houston to Hermann Park, a legacy of the City Beautiful Movement and the landscape architectural talents of George Kessler (d. 1923). He was a younger version of Frederick Law Olmstead, it seems, busy in a lot of places, though more important in planning for Dallas than Houston.

Always thought “City Beautiful” is too far a reach. Like most people, I’d say City Pretty Nice or City Not Bad would be good enough, but that’s not the kind of movement name that inspires grand projects.

The Japanese Garden occupies part of Hermann Park. That seems to be the generic name. I made my way there. It’s a pretty place, even in February.

A mix of imported Japanese flora and the pines of East Texas. Hermann Park itself dates from the early 20th century. The Japanese Garden, the late 20th century, a prosperous time for Japan, and when that dustup between Nippon and the USA had mostly been put in the rear view mirror.

Where there is water, there is waterfowl.

Just outside the Japanese Garden are tracks for the Hermann Park Railroad, a narrow-gauge line that makes a loop through the park. I didn’t ride it, but of course thought of the Brackenridge Park RR in San Antonio, the one by which all others are judged (by me).

Just outside Hermann Park is Rice University. I considered Rice, but decided not to go — or I wasn’t admitted anyway, I don’t remember after all this time. As a result, my short stroll this February was my first visit to campus.

Not a very long visit. Rice has some fine buildings.

But also long sightlines. That make for long walks.

I’d already spent time walking around downtown Houston, and then the Japanese Garden. There’s only so much walking even indefatigable sightseers can do.

Downtown Houston

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Who made these skyscrapers possible?

Considering that they are in Houston, Texas, that would be Willis Carrier, father of modern air conditioning.

Heat wasn’t an issue in Houston in February, which was one reason to make my way downtown for a walkabout. Another reason is completely idiosyncratic: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been downtown. Not 2019, though we could see downtown from Buffalo Bayou and visited Houston’s alt downtown, the Galleria district; or 2015, when we made it to the Menil Collection. Close each time, but no cigar.

A surprising amount of pre-air conditioning Houston remains downtown, though of course even the oldest building has been retrofitted for HVAC.

Nice ironwork on the green one.

Structures surviving from the 1880s.

Imagine those 1880s buildings back in the 1880s. In July, say. Couldn’t have been pleasant. Or any of Houston in 1873, the date of this map.

The 1880 Census counted 16,513 residents of Houston, a near doubling from 1870. Hardy souls who endured the heat and malaria and fetid dung underfoot, among other conditions. Back then, Houston wasn’t quite the port it would be later. The major port then was Indianola, Texas, pop. 5,000 in 1875, before the vicious hurricane that year, that is, the first of two that reduced Indianola to the status of ghost town.

Not all the remnants of an older Houston are buildings, but are underfoot.

There’s a story behind the ghost tiles advertising Loewenstein’s Cigars: an early Texas mercantile family.

Also underfoot.

The splendid former Rice Hotel, designed by John Mauran and completed in 1913, though it only had two towers at the time, becoming triune with a later addition. These days, it’s an apartment building.

The 1910 Harris County courthouse, with enough heft to be a state capitol building.

“An imposing, domed neo-classical edifice, it is a prime example of the civic architecture of Houston of the 1900s and 1910s and is the only example in Houston of the work of Lang & Witchell, a leading Dallas architectural firm of that period,” notes the Texas Historical Commission.

Downtown Houston is also a city of murals. Tall murals.

Even on the parking garage I used.

That one lauds the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which just ended for this year. “A total of 2.6 million people attended the Houston rodeo this year held across three weeks at NRG Park,” Houston Public Media says.

Bastrop, Texas

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Consider Philip Hendrik Nering Bögel, an 18th-century Dutchman who at one point in his career was collector general of taxes for the province of Friesland. The Texas State Historical Association takes up his story: “In 1793 he was accused of embezzlement of tax funds and fled the country before he could be brought to trial. After the Court of Justice of Leeuwarden offered a reward of 1,000 gold ducats to anyone who brought him back, Bögel adopted the title Baron de Bastrop.”

Those were the days, no Interpol butting into your business. No one ever collected those gold ducats, because the self-titled Baron de Bastrop spent the rest of his days in the New World, doing well for himself in New Spain and then Mexico, dying in 1827.

“One of his most significant contributions to Texas was his intercession with Governor Antonio María Martínez on behalf of Moses Austin in 1820,” TSHS continues. “Because of Bastrop, Martínez reconsidered and approved Austin’s project to establish an Anglo-American colony in Texas… Although his pretensions to nobility were not universally accepted at face value even in his own lifetime, [Bastrop] earned respect as a diplomat and legislator. Bastrop, Texas, and Bastrop, Louisiana, as well as Bastrop County, Texas, were named in his honor.”

Reminds me of the psychologically astute moment (one of a number) in Mad Men, when Bert brushed off Pete’s accusation that Don had stolen another man’s identity – which happened to be true – with, “Mr. Campbell, who cares?” Bert also quoted a supposed Japanese saying, “A man is whatever room he is in.” Give credit to the scriptwriter for inventing a saying that could well be Japanese, but apparently is not.

Bastrop’s location was an important spot, once upon a time, where the Old San Antonio Road met the Colorado River.

These days, Bastrop (pop. 9,600 or so) is only a short hop by modern vehicle from Austin or San Antonio. Day-trip material from those metros, that is. That was probably true the last time I visited Bastrop, sometime in the late ’80s, but maybe not with the same retail intensity you find near the intersection of Main and Chestnut in 2026.

This part of town has a good stock of late 19th- and early 20th-century buildings. Pleases the eye, pleases the day-trippers.

Around Main and Chestnut, you’ll see Paw Paws Catfish House, Simply Sweet Cupcakes, Bastrop Beer Company, flower designer Greenleaf Gatherings, Urban Beauty Bastrop, the Hobby Hub trading card store, another trading card store called Game Time Cards, DivineLites Soap Shop, Lost Pines Art Bazaar rug store, In The Sticks–Eclectic Gifts and More, Rhinestone Rattler Boutique, Monarch Art Gallery and Main Street Yoga Bastrop. A partial list. The town seems to be doing OK.

Looks like a newer building. The architect did a good job of blending it into its surroundings.

Plenty of these.

Advertising.

Not far from Main St. and next to the aforepictured Bastrop County courthouse is the old county jail.

In 1979, nearby Bastrop State Park, not the town itself, was the scene of Pine Cone Wars, Midnight Backgammon and our slightly older “chaperons” who holed up in a separate tent much of the time to make the beast with two backs. The youthful antics of two successive camping trips with high school friends that spring are something of a blur now, but a pleasant one.

Five More Texas Courthouses, 2026

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The Republic of Texas started out with 23 counties, with more carved out of those in the years afterward, until the most recent establishment, Kenedy County, in 1921. In our time, there are 254 counties, including (slightly) infamously, Loving County, pop. 64 last time I checked. If you go looking for a county with fewer people anywhere in the entire United States, you’ll be out of luck. Loving is it.

Strictly as a tourist proposition, county courthouses have a lot to recommend them. In all but the largest cities, they’re usually easy to find, on a square ringed by smaller buildings, and pretty much in the middle of their towns. They’re free, but not always open. Some have small museums; a few former courthouses are themselves more sizable museums. A good many date from the golden age of U.S. courthouse building, which I’d put from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I.

With all that in mind, the following are five more Texas county courthouses I saw this time around.

Hill County, Hillsboro, Texas.

Presidio County, Marfa, Texas.

Runnels County, Ballinger, Texas

San Augustine County, San Augustine, Texas.

Scurry County, Snyder, Texas.

My maternal grandparents grew up in Scurry County. The courthouse I saw wasn’t the one grandpa would have seen as a young blade. That would be this.

My idle musing about visiting every 254 Texas courthouses was no mere musing for an architect who did exactly that, and blogged about it. About the modern Scurry County courthouse, he said, “Without a doubt, the 1972 alteration of the historic Scurry County courthouse is the most offensive desecration of a Texas courthouse to date. It’s truly sad.”

“These redesign plans are — interesting. Where are the windows?”

“Window are passé.”

Another resource for courthouse (and postcard) enthusiasts: Courthouse History, a collection of postcards depicting every county and parish in the United States. Now that’s an epic project.

Five Texas Courthouses, 2026

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The first time I remember making my mother laugh was in the courthouse square in Denton, Texas, seat of Denton County. Kids make their parents laugh sometimes, unless the parent is completely sour on life, and then woe be to the child. We’d gotten out of church one Sunday noonish when I was maybe six. After church, it was our habit to drive over to the courthouse square to visit a small store for sodas and snacks. A highlight of the day, as you’d think. I remember the long outline of that store, and the rows of candy I explored.

The streets were crowded, maybe more than usual, and it probably meant that we, my mother that is, temporarily couldn’t find for a parking space. “The Baptists must have just gotten out of church,” she said, referring maybe to a specific church, or to the fact that many Baptists tended to be out and about on Sunday, this being Texas. (Quotes are reconstructions, because of course.)

“Do they know we’re Episcopalians?” I said.

That day or any other that I saw it in the mid-1960s, the Denton County Courthouse was a hulking presence, the focus of attention for blocks around, and, for a young kid, a mysterious place. Obviously an important place, but what goes on inside?

Last month, now in my own mid-60s of age and armed with a somewhat better knowledge of civics, I stopped to take a look at 10 or more county courthouses in Texas along the routes of my travels.

Anderson County. Palestine, Texas.

Bastrop County. Bastrop, Texas.

Bell County, Belton, Texas.

Caldwell County. Lockhart, Texas.

Erath County. Stephenville, Texas.

Sometimes I could get in, sometimes the building was closed. With one or two exceptions, I managed to walk all the way around the courthouses. There’s a niche travel blog for you (and I’m not the man to do it): circumambulate all 254 Texas county courthouses. Why? Because they’re there.

Oak Grove Cemetery, Nacogdoches

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Houston’s Glenwood Cemetery sprawls out near downtown, adjacent to much of the parkland along Buffalo Bayou. In Nacogdoches, Oak Grove Cemetery is a more modest burial ground. Nacogdoches is a more modest city. The entrance to Oak Grove is about a half block from the Main St., but the grounds are still tucked away in a residential neighborhood along Lanana St.

Decent flora, but not a garden cemetery.

It’s an old cemetery by modern Texas standards – the first burial was the year after independence – so the cemetery punches above its weight in one way: noted early Texans. Such as Harden Edwards.

The state saw fit, during the 1936 Centennial, to put up a new stone for Edwards, an empresario and “Leader of the Freedonian Rebellion,” who must have penned the rousing tune, “Hail, Hail Freedonia,” for future generations to enjoy.

The stone of a great-great granddaughter of Edwards who died in 1963 seems eager to bask in his remote glory. Why not?

One of the cemetery’s four signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (60 men in total signed it).

A big name around here: Thomas J. Rusk.

He was a signer, fought at San Jacinto, and had a notable career in antebellum Texas and U.S. politics. There’s is a town a county over from Nacogdoches named Rusk, seat of Cherokee County. Also, strangely, a font based on his handwriting was created in our time, “Texas Hero.”

Some regular folks.

I don’t know how ordinary this person was, but perhaps he was gifted with Victorian prolixity. Or maybe his family was.

Brick tombs of the kind I’ve seen elsewhere in the South from roughly the same period, that is, sometime in the 19th century.

Adjacent to the cemetery but not associated with it is the former home of Zion Hill Baptist Church, one of the oldest African-American Baptist congregations in Texas, founded in 1878. The church is on the corner of Lanana and the delightfully named Bois d’arc St., as in lumpy “apples.”

The congregation hasn’t used the structure, designed in 1914 by architect Diedrich Rulfs, for nearly 40 years. It’s a fine little museum these days, restored to its early 20th century glory.

Rulfs was a German who made good in Texas, as so many have, within a very special niche: most of the buildings worth seeing in Nacogdoches are his work.

Inn at the Art Center Bed & Breakfast

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It’s Burl Ives. It has to be.

Not quite as sure about this one.

I thought of Ed Wynn, but his glasses tended to be round, if Google images is to be believed. I asked AI for some suggestions about which famed entertainer was known for his oval-rimmed glasses, and it returned the following suggestions from most to least likely: Harold Lloyd, Peter Lorre and Buddy Hackett. Not sure “Buddy Hackett” in this context is an AI hallucination. Just a lousy opinion. Maybe there’s no single inspiration anyway.

Which came first, the chicken or the art center? There’s a definite answer to that, the chicken. Lots of chickens.

By the early 1970s, a sizable chicken farm in San Angelo, Texas, had run its course, and artists took to the task of redeveloping the place into the Old Chicken Farm Art Center. Fifty-plus years is a long time, but if you wander around the property in the morning sun, as Yuriko and I did, you’ll get a sense of the old chicken haunts.

No mere coops, but a poultry complex of an earlier time. I’m sure it was made obsolete by larger facilities and automation. These days, most of the spaces are art studios.

Because I can, I checked the numbers for chicken production in Tom Green County, of which San Angelo is the seat. Relatively few chickens, turns out: $220,000 in chicken sales in 2022, compared to $54.7 million in cattle sales for the county. Sounds like that might be a single chicken farm out somewhere from town. The town chickens, you might say, long ago flew the coop.

Being an art complex, there’s a lot of art and other objects on display, besides the wooden faces.

Being fairly early still on Monday morning, most of the studios weren’t open yet – they would be in the afternoon, when were already on the road to Marathon. We’d passed the night at the Inn at the Art Center Bed & Breakfast, in a room that opens onto a breezeway.

Artists had clearly been turned loose to design the rooms. Much to the better, I’d say. Ours was a two-bedroom unit with the sheen of an upmarket forest lodge, but without a particularly high price.

Unique woodwork for the walls.

Floor designs that I’ll take for unique.

In our time, you don’t even need hallucinogens to ramp up some trippy floor action.

All you need is a basic AI image generator, while you remain sober as a judge.