Tuesday, 28 July 2020
I ended up staying 2 nights in Lubbock, feeling like a little rest between long drives might be a good idea. Which it was. It'd be nice to think I've finally learned to pace myself, though I doubt it'll last.
In the campground I saw a young couple who were staying in one of those traditional campers on top of a pickup truck. And they progressively unloaded both themselves and their supplies, and also a large yellow Lab and a very small infant. I don't know how they did it.
And I saw another young couple staying in a pop-up camper - no pets but a very active toddler and his big sister. The toddler was at that growth stage where independence is his primary goal in life and his parents had a hard time keeping up.
The campground was almost full on Sunday night but far fewer campers on Monday. Since so many folks travel with one or more dogs, Monday came as a relief to me.
While it was still dark Monday morning, when the dogs and I were out for a walk, I noticed someone coming out of one of the cabins, and after a few minutes I saw him ride out of the campground on the quietest motorcycle I think I've ever heard. In fact, I might have missed him if it weren't for his headlight. And then I saw a 2nd equally quiet motorcycle follow the first. Very considerate guys.
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| today's route |
Down the road I passed the Silver Falls rest area, and the state's road sign says it has a tornado shelter. Which gave me an idea of what their weather might be like out here. Very attractive rest area.
I was back in the land of mesas and valleys and steep hills. Even that rest area was built on very hilly terrain.
I'd passed 5 historical markers a ways back and now passed 2 more, but both sets were off the left side of the road, and I didn't want to try to pull off and then back on the road. Even though it was a weekday, the traffic was thankfully as light as an early Sunday morning - but I was taking no chances. When I come back to Texas for my month here, I'll want to remember to take this road in the opposite direction.
Lots of cows and corn, or maybe maize. (Wikipedia says they're the same thing, but my Daddy told us when we were growing up that they weren't. I remember he stopped the car once, when our family was driving past a planted field, and got out and picked an ear of maize to show us city-raised kids. Now I'm thinking maybe what he picked was what the wiki article called "red-colored maize" because I remember it being red.) (I also remember him stopping once to pick a boll of cotton to show us; he grew up working on a small family cotton farm and was appalled we didn't know where cotton came from. But he hadn't realized that us growing up in Waco was as limiting as him growing up in Little River, TX.)
I passed through Dickens, pop. 264, an odd combination of up-to-date public buildings and dilapidated homes and private businesses.
Lots of red dirt, juniper, mesquite and scrub in this area. For some distance I passed lands marked "Pitchfork Land and Cattle Company, since 1883." It was obviously still doing all right, based on its land holdings.
I passed a lot of horses, in addition to the fields of cows. I passed a container that must have rolled over with its puller: I saw a destroyed container, heavy lifting gear and a very large tow truck.
All the towns out here are about 30 miles apart, suggesting early settlers didn't want to be too isolated. Passing all this wide open land, I thought that a kid growing up out here would have a much better idea than I did of the vast size of Texas, and also likely be more self-sufficient that I was. Totally different way of growing up.
A burn ban is in effect for much of the area I've passed through these last few days, and I heard from lots of people that they needed rain. Bruce told me that much of their annual rainfall comes in July and, though it rained quite a bit while I was there, weather reports said they were behind the average.
I passed quite a few land areas marked as belonging to Spike Box Land & Cattle Co., with signs appearing to be advertising hunting trips. I was surprised to learn online that it's a relatively new enterprise, dating only back to 1979 (as opposed to 1879). Their logo is a character I can't find the equivalent of online but looks like a box with short prongs extending diagonally from each corner. I have no idea what a spike box is because I couldn't get any answer at all online, let alone a straight one.
I came next to the town of Benjamin, county seat of Knox County, complete with elaborate courthouse, built in 1936 to replace earlier, less substantial structures.
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| Knox County Courthouse |
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| Knox County Veterans Memorial |
I came to a construction zone and, very fortunately, happened to notice a pilot car turn around at the front of the stopped traffic ahead of me. Otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue about how to get through the lengthy one-lane road, because no signs told me there'd be a pilot car or gave me any instructions except to stop at the red light. Well, it was red the whole time the vehicles in front of me were following the pilot car, so I went too.
I saw lots of wind turbines both when I was coming into Lubbock 2 days ago and now as I'm leaving Lubbock. But coming in, all of them were working while today, dozens were stopped and only one was moving (in a very desultory manner).
Near the town of Seymour, pop. 2,740, I came across the Henson Cemetery.
Next was Holliday, pop. 1,748, after which a coyote crossed the road in front of me. Their coloring is good camouflage.
I passed a smallish house with a couple of outbuildings, all set on a small near-island in the middle of a smallish pond/lake, almost as if it had a moat. Not sure where all the water came from.
Coming into Wichita Falls I passed a road sign directing me to turn left for Parker Ranch Road and right for Turkey Ranch Road. Wichita Falls may have the 104,553 residents on their sign, but it's still a pretty rural area.
Because I was going right by them anyway, I made a side trip past the places I remembered from the 2 years we lived here, and almost nothing rang a bell in my memory. Of course, it's been 56 years since we moved away, but I still thought I might see something familiar. I drove by Rider High School where I went to 9th grade and past the house we lived in not far from the school, seeing nothing I recognized.
Then I drove by Barwise Jr. High School and got a shock: it was completely different. I remembered a dark, somewhat forbidding building and instead saw a bright, fairly cheerful one. What's more, their sign said they were Home of the Eagles, and I can still remember most of the words of the school song (no wonder I have memory problems, stuffed with such trivia) which proclaimed in part, "Bobcats, O Bobcats, champions of our school." But honestly, how many schools are named Barwise Jr. High School, as the sign says?
After I drove by a vaguely recognizable University United Methodist Church (that we attended and where Momma worked as secretary for a preacher who called her the "secutary"), my route took me back by Barwise. And then it hit me. There's no way that building was 60 years old. It had to be a new building, which would explain why it didn't match my memory.
I spent some time online trying to find out when the new building was built and found nothing but a confusing and flowery article in the local paper explaining the history of the school while totally glossing over the facts I wanted. I'm sure both the church and the high school have been added on to, and the various owners of our house would have changed the landscaping over the years. But I'm certain that junior high isn't the same building I went to, and I can't figure out where the original is/was. The changes apparently had something to do with Wichita Falls's resistance to desegregating its schools after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but that dumb newspaper article couldn't bring itself to be very specific.
The church, true to its name, is right next to the campus of Midwestern State University, which advertises itself as one of the 4 Texas public universities that isn't affiliated with a state system, and it's the only Texas public university focused on liberal arts. Its mascot is the Mustangs and there's a really nice sculpture in front of the school. I couldn't stop to take a photo and there's not one publicly available, but I'm including this link to the school so you can see the statue (if it doesn't pop up, click through the photos on the home page). https://msutexas.edu
On my way north to Burkburnett, I passed an exit for Bacon Switch Road. Of course I was curious but can't find anything online except realty websites. I have no idea where the name came fromt.
Burkburnett claims more than 11,000 people and I stopped at a local grocery store before going to the campground. I was honestly amazed that every single person in the store was wearing a mask. Yes, the governor's mandatory mask-wearing order covered this area, but still these are the sturdy, rural, God-fearing folks that usually spurn such things. Yet, here they were, every one of them, putting on a mask to go in the store. Old people, young people, rednecks, cowboys - all of them.
The Burkburnett KOA is a smallish one but fairly comfortable. They'd somehow forgotten they'd promised to give me a site with ready access to the public areas and had planned to bury me in the middle of the campground. Fortunately, when I caught the mistake they quickly changed the campsites with no fuss at all, but I was reminded that eternal vigilance is the price of a lot of comfort.
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