Texas - Day 48 - courthouses down to Blanco

Blanco State Park, Blanco

Sunday, 20 December 2020

I left Ft. Parker right at sunrise this morning and saw 5 deer on the way out.  Dexter had been telling me he thought there were deer around, and it turned out he was right.  I also saw the only squirrel I'd seen all weekend.  Odd, considering all the trees that were there.

today's route

On the road

I'd passed through Groesbeck, pop. 4,328, on Friday, and today I went looking for the county courthouse there.  It dates back to 1846.

Limestone County Courthouse
in Groesbeck

typical wind turbine

I passed a wind farm that was notable because of the unusual appearance of the wind turbines.  Either the blades on these were longer than usual or these turbines were shorter than usual: the blades reached almost to the ground.  Usually they're a lot higher in the air than that (see example at right).

This is an internet photo of a typical wind turbine.  It's as if the one in this picture is a ballerina and what I saw today was a Fantasia hippo in a tutu.

In Mart, pop. 2,209, I passed a liquor store called Firewater, and it surprised me that I haven't seen that before.  I passed large grain elevators, which again surprised me that I haven't been seeing more of them in Texas.  This small town supports at least 2 Baptist churches and a Methodist church, and I'm sure several other denominations, which is again surprising in such a small town.  I'm guessing a resident who isn't religious has a very limited social life.

I heard on the radio that we had a quarter million new cases of the virus in the US just yesterday - in just one day.  That's the equivalent of the entire towns of Abilene and Beaumont combined.  

Why, oh why, do so many people still think it's not a real thing?  (Answer, apparently, is that the president continues to downplay it, when he mentions it at all, and many people believe he's the only one in government who tells them the truth.)  I do believe it's a real thing and if I could figure out a way to sit in one place and have no contact at all with another human being until this thing is licked, I'd do it.  Sadly, I haven't yet figured that out and hope hope hope in the meantime I don't get infected by one of these deniers.

Waco

The highway department didn't put up a sign, but the internet tells me this town has a population of about 139,000+, about a third larger than it was when my family lived here in the mid- to late '50s.

I came into town from the east, which took me past some of the Baylor University campus.  Baylor, chartered in 1845, is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas, now with 14,000 students.  It's a Baptist school and, as such, didn't allow dancing on campus until 1996 (those Baptists hold tight to their beliefs).  I passed the Bear Pit (the arena for the Baylor Bears), the new Baylor football stadium, and other large brick buildings on their spread-out campus.

landmark ALICO
building

I remember this building well from when we lived here.  ALICO stands for Amicable Life Insurance Company.  I knew that because either my 3rd or 4th grade teacher was married to someone who worked there, and she gave the whole class miniatures of the building, and when we pulled the string on the back a canned voice said, "Get Amicable protection."  Those words were unintelligible to me, and Momma had to tell me both what the words were and what they meant.  Clearly the intended audience was our parents, who must have been driven crazy when we all pulled those strings.  And 60 years later, I can still hear it.  Kids have very retentive memories.

McLennan County Courthouse
in Waco

I came across a group of sculptures that was new to me.

I saw online that when this sculpture group is finished, it is intended to commemorate the Chisholm Trail cattle drive that passed through Waco from the 1860s to the 1880s.

I was interested to see that a new road in Waco is called the Jack Kultgen Expressway.  When we lived there, Daddy knew Jack Kultgen, who owned a very successful Ford dealership and was extremely active in civic affairs, so naming an expressway for him seems appropriate.

I found an oddball website listing some of the unusual facts about Waco's history - a wide range including when a 1953 tornado hit the ALICO building (see above) squarely but didn't knock it down, and when the New York Yankees played an exhibition game here, and when Elvis Presley used to hang out here when he was stationed at nearby Ft. Hood, and when Clyde Barrow broke out of the local jail using a gun his girlfriend Bonnie had sneaked in to him.   http://www.wacohistoryproject.org/Did-You-Know  

Something that website didn't mention, and neither did several others I looked at, but that I found on still another website, was an absolutely ghastly example of a public lynching that happened here in 1916, along the lines of what happened to Emmett Till.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Lynching-of-Jesse-Washington  I'd never heard about this, but it makes sense since the KKK was active here in the first half of the 1900s and the schools were segregated until the '70s.  In other words, Waco has a checkered history.  It was a nice place for a little White girl to grow up, but apparently not so much for a little Black girl.

Back on the road

I drove through a series of small towns, passed the Cotton Belt Parkway, a Purina plant and other manufacturing locales, and then came to Gatesville.

Gatesville, pop. 15,751, is proud that its Hornets (yet another team's mascot is the Hornets) were 3A State Champions in 2000.  I saw a bumper sticker there that said, "Many can shoot straight but few are straight shooters."  

A massage business there is called Kneaded Relief.

I was unaware that Gatesville is a county seat and stumbled on the courthouse accidentally.  It was built in 1897-98.  Gorgeous, isn't it?

Coryell County Courthouse
in Gatesville

Continuing south I found lots of hills (this is the Texas Hill Country, after all) and juniper and cows and meadowlarks.  Also lots of oaks and Trump signs and flags.  Still.

At Evant, pop. 426, I stopped at a rest area next to the Buena Vista Wildlife Safari.  That gave us glimpses of the exotic wildlife living there.

At the unincorporated town of Adamsville, the fire department had an ominous sign posted: "Please water your trees so we don't have to."

I came to the town of Lampasas, pop. 6,681 (in 2010), which bills itself as "Historic Lampasas."  It was founded about 1850 around the numerous mineral springs in the area, which had been credited with healing powers even by the early Indians who came there each year.  The town didn't bother to incorporate until either: (a) 1873 when it wanted a law to keep livestock off the public square or (b) 1883 when the county courthouse was completed, depending on which website you believe.  (Wouldn't you think this was a matter of public record?)

Lampasas County Courthouse
in Lampasas

I saw one horse in a large flock of goats and wondered if the horse were lonely.

Next up was the town of Burnet, pop. 5,987, and is pronounced BURN-et.  Most people think the accent is on the 2nd syllable, but residents say it's BURN-et, durn it.  It's another county seat.

Burnet County Courthouse
in Burnet

This courthouse was a WPA project, built in the mid-1930s.

Marble Falls, pop. 6,077, bills itself as the Granite Capital of Texas (on a large granite slab).  As I was coming into town I passed a plant for Lhoist North America, which sounded like some sort of Buddhist retreat.  But they describe themselves as a major supplier of lime, limestone and clay products to North American markets.

There are actually falls in Marble Falls, created by water flowing over a shelf of limestone.  The limestone there looked like marble, hence the name.

Not far down the road is Johnson City, pop. 1,656, the Hometown Of Lyndon B. Johnson, they say.  He had actually been born and died in Stonewall, an even smaller town down the road, but Johnson City has always claimed him.  

And Johnson City captured the county seat designation from Blanco, which is odd since the county is named Blanco.  The county seat was moved here in 1890.

Blanco County Courthouse
in Johnson City

Blanco itself, pop. 1,739, is about 15 miles down the road and uses the old county courthouse as office buildings now.  I didn't take this photo (below), but this is the building I saw.

Old Blanco County Courthouse
in Blanco

Johnson City having snaggled the county seat designation, even though the county is named for the town it left, and even though Johnson City is smaller than Blanco, almost sounds like one of the political deals LBJ was famous for.

And then on to Blanco State Park.  Sunday apparently not being considered part of a weekend by the Texas Parks Department, I was allowed to stay here only this one night.  I found it to be a pleasant little park that's extremely popular with a whole lot of people on a sunny Sunday.  The campground was nearly full overnight, and a few of the cabins were also in use.  Between them and all the local folks who came in during the day to picnic and fish, I had a hard time finding somewhere to walk my dogs that was away from other dogs.