Texas - Day 122 - back to Mount Pleasant

Mt. Pleasant KOA, Mount Pleasant

Friday, 5 March 2021

today's route

I made my first stop in Rockwall at Luxury Coach Services.  I came here a little while back to get one of my rear lights replaced, a service they refused to charge me for.  And it was only a short time after that, David was helping me back out of their driveway and reported that one of my back-up lights was now out.  I didn't want to get back on the road without an essential safety feature, so I stopped off once more and this time insisted on paying them.  The owner didn't want to charge me, I suggested $75 for the 2 trips, and we compromised on $25.  A bargain, since they supplied the specialized light bulbs and did all the work and caulked them to keep out the rain.

I spent the entire trip on small state and farm roads I've never taken before.  It was typical east Texas farm country, with cows and sheep and goats and horses.  One of the only things I saw that I haven't been seeing in other parts of the state was a very large number of dead animals - mostly skunks and some other slightly larger mammal that I don't think were raccoons.  There were so many dead critters - especially in the area of Quinlan (pop. 1,394) and Lake Tawakoni - that I started wondering if hitting them was seen as a sport by local idiots.

While I could still get the DFW NPR station, I heard the BBC Newshour talking about something they pronounced as GLASS-ee-ers.  I finally figured from the context that they were talking about glaciers.  I guess that's in the same line as pronouncing aluminum "al-you-MIN-i-um."

A cold front was forecast to blow through today, and ahead of it came a lot of rain, which I spent most of the day driving through.  The only time it was a problem was at one stretch of the roadway where ruts in the pavement had so much standing water I couldn't get consistent traction.  This was, of course, the only section where the speed limit was raised to 70 mph.  I went about 55 instead and was glad there wasn't much traffic.

Mostly what I found were 2-lane roads through small towns and farms, lots of RV parks and several large lakes - Lake Tawakoni (Ta-WAH-cone-ee) of course, and Lake Fork, which I hadn't heard of but is quite large.

I was surprised to see only 5 places today with Trump flags or signs.  I know from when I was in this area a few months ago that Trump had very strong support in this area.  Seeing only 5 hold-outs gives me hope.  I feel sure that, if he runs in 2024, many of these folks will vote for him again, but for most of them to take down their signs means they see the election as - finally - being over.  Reassuring.

All day I drove through fairly small towns - West Tawakoni, pop. 1,576; East Tawakoni, pop. 883; Emory, pop. 1,239; Winnsboro, pop. 3,404 (looks like a poor but thriving farming town); Pittsburg, pop. 4,497 - as well as some unincorporated towns (e.g. Leesburg), and some that no longer really exist (e.g. Coke).  When I got to Mt. Pleasant, pop. 15,564, it looked like The Big City in comparison.  So it was a surprise when I asked the young woman at the grocery checkout whether this was a nice place to live, and she said, "It's small.  Very small."  She said she'd lived here all her life and was ready to move to the Dallas area.

Aside from being the Titus County Seat, as I noted a few months ago, Mt. Pleasant has some industry I hadn't noticed on previous trips.  I passed a large facility with a sign saying, "Newly Wed Foods."  Such an odd name, so I thought it might be a joke, but no - they claim to be the "premier global purveyor of customized breaders, batters, seasonings" and so forth.  They say they're the "largest producer of customized food coatings in the U.S."  So there.

I also noticed another very large facility labeled "Priefert Ranch Equipment," next door to "Priefert Steel."  They say they're "one of the largest farm, ranch, and rodeo equipment manufacturers in the world" and offer the "number one selling squeeze chute of all time," which I think refers to the movement of cattle.  So those are 2 good reasons why Mt. Pleasant has 4 times the population of those other towns I drove through today.

I also noticed an old gas station that had been converted into an eatery called "Pittsburg Hot Links Factory."  Apparently this is a branch of the real location in Pittsburg, established 1897.  They claim Pittsburg is the Hot Link Capital of Texas, a designation sanctioned by the state legislature.   https://www.kltv.com/hot-link-capital-texas  They need to put up signs in Pittsburg if they want travelers like me to stop, which I would have.

What I did see a sign for in Pittsburg was the Ezekiel Airship.  Of course I had to look this up and learned it's an early experimental aircraft, named after the wheel in the Bible book of Ezekiel.  The design included 4 wheels within wheels powered by a gas engine, and unconfirmed accounts claim it got off the ground a year before the flight at Kitty Hawk.  There's a small museum there with old farm history as well as this airship.

I went on to the campground, and we all settled in to the site we'd stayed in before.  The owner had told me that after I left last fall, they'd had trouble filling the campground and had decided to take in some workers who were in town installing a solar farm in the area.  She said other local campgrounds had made the same decision, so I was lucky to get my site back.  And sure enough, lots of pickups file out of the campground every morning at going-to-work time.