Graham/Fort Belknap

The weather had broken over Texas allowing us to travel in sub-100 degree temperatures and an actual cool wind to swirl around us from far away Colorado.  Air conditioners could be heard shuttering to a halt throughout Texas. The state  has been suffering under the worst drought since the last historic droughts in the Lone Star State. Rainfall has been recorded in Texas since 1896 and the worst one-year droughts were in 1918 and 1924. Each of those ended the following year with above-normal rainfall ending those droughts. The worst extended drought remains the massive 1950’s event when Texas suffered under drought conditions for 10 years from the late 1940’s until the late 1950’s. We have exceeded the drought numbers during 2011. The water districts are claiming that only historic rainfalls this fall, winter and spring will allow us to water next summer. Time will tell.

We road off into west Texas to check out Graham, Texas and the historic frontier Fort Belknap just north of town. The land around Graham was purchased by the Graham brothers ( Wow, what a coincidence) in 1871 and incorporated in 1877. The town puttered along until first the Chicago, Rock Island and Texas railroad came up from Fort Worth to connect Graham to the rest of the nation then, the cattle industry and the discovery of oil in 1917. The city was the site of the organizational meeting of the group that became the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, created to police ranching and put a stop to cattle rustling. Graham claims, on a downtown mural, that they have the largest town square in America. Graham is also one of only a handful of towns in Texas still to have an operational drive-in theater.

After a brief political struggle with the town of Belknap, home of Fort Belknap, Graham became the County Seat and is on it’s third Courthouse. The current 1932 Courthouse was built using Work’s Progress Administration (WPA) funds and replaced the 1884 Courthouse. The front door facade is now, appropriately, an historic monument behind the current Courthouse. I say that because of a little known event back in 1915 causing the loss of the life of a brave Young County Deputy Sheriff doing his duty to protect the records of the second Young County Courthouse.

 

Deputies Tom Cherryhomes  and Riley Dolliins had been employed by the Young County Commissioners Court to guard the Court House at night until the next scheduled District Court could be convened. There were accusations of government misconduct by the former County Judge Eugene Fryand the Commisioners decided to hire Cherryhomes and Dolliins to protect the records from theft or destruction.

On a dark night on  February 25th, 1915 , Cherryhomes and Dolliins were finishing their evening meal when they heard noises outside. When they went to investigate, they were accosted by four armed men demanding they surrender. Cherryhomes refused and drew his revolver on the four striking at least two but receiving a fatal wound from one of their assailants. The assailants retreated when Dolliins repeatedly fired his shotgun at them.

As Cherryhomes was taken away, other townspeople followed the trail of shoe prints and blood to the home of Judge Fry and found a seriously wounded Pat Carlton and Fry's brother Pete. Seems the Judge had conspired with Carlton and his brother to break-in to the Courthouse to destroy records. Unfortunately, a subsequent trial acquitted all the defendants of the murder of Deputy Cherryhomes. A plaque honoring Cherryhomes is on the grounds of the 1932 Courthouse.
 

The Courthouse also contains a monolitic War Memorial to all the wars up to the present. A common thing to see in Texas is their passion with honoring their war dead. This is one of the longest granite walls of honor I had seen in our travels. I couldn't help but note a similar theme to others we had come across.

Rural Texas has many extended families which, for the most part, never really stray very far from their ancestral homes. So many of these types of memorials will contain successive names of war dead from the same families.

On this wall, we saw several series of Akers, Adams and Armstrongs in several of the panes of granite. The same surnames could be seen across several wars. It was plain to see that many families had sacrificed their young men over the span of wars from the Civil War to the Gulf. It gave one pause to look at.

Graham is like many of the small Texas towns we have visited. The very clean and picturesque downtown still holds empty storefronts and old historic buildings in need of a paintbrush but cool to look at. There wasn’t even a restaurant in the historic downtown. We (well…I) was hungry when we got there and I sought out a jogging resident to point me to restaurant central on the south side of town.

After a very scenic drive south on Elm Street (Texas State Highway 16) through an old Victorian neighborhood, the road opened up to a glut of fast food, restaurants, grocery stores and car care centers. We chose Mi Familia and enjoyed a great meal. With all the Tex-Mex rolling around the state, it was nice to get into a traditional family run restaurant. I got the beef enchiladas and Dianna got the chicken flautas. Very fresh and flavorful. The sweet tea had just the right amount of sugar and, I want to say, I think they even make their own tortilla chips instead of those bland chips most restaurants just pull out of bags and store in heaters to warm them up.  For dessert, we had a Cheesecake Chimichanga. Wow! It kind of reminded me of sall the fried stuff we saw at the Texas State Fair. Fried Cheesecake, a true culinary coup. With my blood-sugar now at the appropriate levels, we made our way north to Fort Belknap.

Once known as “Belknap” it is now referred to as Newcastle, Texas. Established in 1851 by brevet Brigadier General William G. Belknap (his son, Bill W. became Secretary of War under Grant) to protect the Texas frontier against raids by the Kiowa and Comanche from "Indian Territory" (the future State of Oklahoma). It was the northernmost fort in a line from the Rio Grande to the Red River. It doesn’t present as the frontier Fort you might see in the movies. It is an expansive campus of rock walled buildings without the fortified log walls fencing it in. There had been some shallow trenching done for protection but, back in the day, as you rode up on Fort Belknap, it would have been like riding up on any other small town or Indian Agency.

Today, although the Fort has been made into a State Park, there are private homes which have been built literally right up to the borders of the Fort. As we walked around, there were folks washing cars and mowing their lawns as though the Fort was just another “green belt” within a housing development.

We entered what had been the Fort’s Headquarters building which is now the Fort Museum. Although the Fort had been established in 1851, it was abandoned at the outbreak of the Civil War (TWONA) and briefly used as a base of operations for the Confederate Texas Frontier troops to keep a lid on the Indians and hold back the North from invading the South through North Texas. It was taken back over by Federal troops at the end of the Civil War but abandoned for good in 1867.

The museum is an ecclectic collection of memorabilia from the Fort’s past as well as a collection of tools, personal items and news articles of the period donated by former residents and the memories of others from all over Texas. Most of this stuff is laid out in glass cases and really needs to be digitized or better cared for before the paper and cloth turns to historic dust.

I was reminded that the Fort structures I was seeing had mostly been rebuilt and very little of the original construction is visible. After their abandonment, locals began dismantling the buildings to use the materials in other buildings throughout the area. Luckily, for the Texas Centennial celebrations in 1936, the State reconstructed most of the buildings to their original design but with new materials. The only original building is the Ammunition Magazine which is now used as a church. As the museum staff told us, most of the other buildings are only original from the bottom of the windows to the foundations.

The other interesting structure is the grape arbor. This expansive natural “patio cover”  shelters a huge picnic area from the intense Texas sun. It was planted in the 1940s and has grown continuously since. The staff said they don’t even water it. It grows from several thick grape vines and only sees water when it rains.

The Fort also has the obligatory old west cemetery about half a mile east of the Fort. Established in 1855, the cemetery has plots dating back to the early Republic, Civil War and even some fairly new internments. A short drive through a cattle ranch (always lock gates behind you, Code of the West ) we arrived at the cemetery in view of some resting beef up against the back fence.

Every now and then in Texas, you come across a Texas Ranger grave. All Texas Rangers get a special monument when they pass away and Private Smith got his.

On August 5, 1841, Texas Ranger Private Abram Trig Smith, a member of Captain Eli Chandler's Robertson County Rangers, came upon a party of either Cherokee or Kickapoo, who opened fire at close range from atop a rock cliff, killing Private Smith. Other Rangers were able to beat off the attack and the attackers melted back into the woods. Whenever a suspected fallen Ranger burial site is located, decendants of the Ranger apply to the Texas Historical Commission and the Former Texas Rangers Association who provided the memorial cross for Private Smith in 2005.

Other graves sites included a couple designated as historic with the Republic of Texas badge affixed to them. This signifies a deceased person who lived in Texas when it was an independent nation (1836 to 1846). There were several sections which were dedicated family plots of families which have been in the area since the fort was established in 1851.

The Graham/Belknap area is very scenic and rustic. Like many parts of Texas, it has a certain rugged beauty that's hard to quantify. The rolling hills and winding back roads allow you to suppose what it may have been like for the early settlers to be out here, building up their farms or ranches, trying to scratch out a living, dodging marauding Indians and putting food on their family's table. Except for the occasional modern home, cars and concrete roadways, it's pretty much unchanged from those early days of no refridgeration or air conditioning. How did they do it?

So having worn out the bottom of our shoes walking the Fort Belknap State Park, we booted up Patty and after a quick stop for our Sonic RT 44 Strawberry Limades (light ice) we headed for home.

Thurber, Texas

On a beautiful Saturday, while waiting for the satellite to fall from the sky, we embarked on our adventure to Thurber, Texas. Thurber was a true “company town” back in the late 1800s. No one else was able to call Thurber home except miners, brick makers, shopkeepers, teachers and a couple of preachers who served at the pleasure of the owners of the Texas and Pacific Coal and Oil Company. Thurber always had labor troubles, which didn’t necessarily go away in 1903 when the United Mine Workers Union were voted in. But it then became the first all-Union “closed shop” town in America. If you weren’t a Union member, you didn’t work in Thurber.

Located in Erath (pronounced “E-rath”) County about 75 miles west of Fort Worth, Thurber (now Mingus, Texas) lies right along the I-20 in the rolling green hills which belie the desolation of the West Texas to come. Established in 1886, at its peak in 1920, it held about 8,000-10,000 people in what was a virtual melting pot of various Europeans mostly Italians, Poles and a smattering of 18 different nationalities. They were experienced tradesmen in the art of extracting first coal then shale for brick making. Thurber was one of the largest deposits of bituminous coal in Texas and the workers were attracted and mostly recruited by management for their skills, the higher pay and a chance to join in the great American experiment.

To their credit, those groups left their indelible mark on America (and Texas) with their culture by way of their religion, food and some of the games they played. Still today, in a park adjacent to the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas you can see two Bocce (pronounced “Bachee”) courts where Thurber descendents still meet to play a little Bocce Ball. Bocce (the plural of the Italian word boccia, which means, "bowl") is the great-grandfather of modern Lawn Bowling originally played on natural ground courts by the early Romans. The word “bowling” refers to the uneven shape of the balls. Unlike lawn bowls, bocce balls are spherical and have no inbuilt bias. Because the Romans took the game throughout the Empire, the game spread throughout Europe and has crossed the oceans to places like Australia and South America.

Thurber was a pretty amazing place for its time. Thurber was built by the Johnson Coal Company that was later bought out by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company in 1888. Its mining operation provided the fuel for the then prevalent coal-burning locomotives of numerous railroads, including the Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, the Texas & Pacific and the "Katy" (Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad). Probably as a marketing ploy to keep the railroad business, the town was named by the company for a major stockholder of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, H.K. Thurber.

Thurber was pretty amazing for its time in that it was, because of its self sustaining power generation ability (remember all that coal?) the first all-electric powered city in America and soon after natural gas was being piped from the coal shale, it became the only city with piped in gas for cooking and heating in every home and business.

The residents of Thurber were admittedly very restricted in how they could live but it didn’t seem to bother anybody much. Except for a couple of strikes by the early unions, the occupants had a pretty good life. There was little crime and, for its time in the “wild west”, was extremely safe and peaceful. The Texas and Pacific Coal (and subsequently Oil) Company tried to keep the captives happy by bringing in just about all the comforts or services a citizen could want. Every worker could rent a “Company” house and it was well known that the residents of Thurber could buy any number of foods, clothing and dry goods from the huge Company Stores from beans to fur coats. They had even dug, filled and stocked the man made “Big Lake” to fish and swim in.

Thurber had a very ornate 650-seat opera house, which drew in top acts from all over the world including Broadway plays, musicals and world-class opera singers. Because the railroad came by Thurber, it was often the host of a traveling circus came every summer. They had one of the largest ice houses built in Texas up to that time and residents worshiped at company churches, learned at company schools and drank at company saloons.

But let’s face it, you “owed your soul to the Company Store” ("Sixteen Tons" is a song about the life of a coal miner, first recorded in 1946 by American country singer Merle Travis a 1955 version recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford reached number one) was not just a lyric in a song, these folks were virtual prisoners and didn’t even have real money to spend. The Company issued “script” to all the workers who could only spend it at the various Company stores. Not my idea of paradise.

 

When the railroads didn’t need the coal it was heavy Thurber paving bricks that paid the bills. Thurber bricks were universally used throughout much of Texas and can still be seen with their distinctive triangle logo in the streets of Austin, in major buildings, which still exist in Fort Worth and Dallas as well as Seawall Boulevard in Galveston. At its peak, Thurber produced a reported 80,000 bricks daily.

Thurber came to an end in 1936. It was its own executioner in a way. The arrival of the oil boom, which the Company kicked off with its Ranger Oil field discovery, killed it. Suddenly it was more efficient to fuel trains with oil rather than with coal. Oil-based asphalt replaced brick for road construction. The mines and brick factory closed and Thurber’s residents scattered in search of new work. The Company made a business decision to end operations in Thurber. Most of the town was razed. The frame houses were either disassembled and the lumber sold or homes were sold and carted away for $40 each to anyone willing to haul them away. The town became a ghost town almost overnight.

Company House

There are still a couple of original buildings left. The firehouse is still there as well as the huge brick smokestack, which was built to be part of the power plant, towers over the landscape, and continues to be a highly visible landmark off the I-20. There is also the “SmokeStack” Restaurant, which resides in the old General Store building. This is the SmokeStack Restaurant's second location. Once in the old company Drug Store building just east of the General Store, it was consumed by fire in 1992 and the owner, Andrea and Randy Bennett moved the operation to the General Store. Randy passed away in 2000 and Andrea and her son continue to operate the restaurant. Andrea still lives in the former company doctor’s home and her son lives in the old manager’s home. They are the only Thurber residents occupying the town.

The other gem left in Thurber is the cemetery on the hill overlooking the old town. It has over 1000 gravesites and many with custom brick or metal enclosures. It is a Texas State Historical monument and has security cameras at the entrance to upload vehicle photos and license plates as they enter and leave. It was put in after a serious vandalism occurred a couple of years back. The Thurber Cemetery Association had restored the cemetery, which straddles both the Palo Pinto and Erath County lines, in 1990. Soon afterwards, with the use of ground penetrating radar, they identified 758 people buried in unmarked graves and commissioned a monument maker to make two-stone monuments, etched with these names. Among other damage to gravesites, both those monuments were toppled and shattered.

Pete here helped build the Smoke Stack in 1908

The cemetery also contains a large number of graves of children who died before the age of two. Death certificates of the era state causes of death as either "natural causes" or common childhood illnesses. Nobody is sure but there are suggestions that the causes may have been the flu epidemics during the early 1900s and Tuberculosis which was very prevalent in Europe and some of the children may have acquired it from their parents. The cemetery is considered haunted and some visitors report seeing little children walking around the cemetery or seeing images of them in their photos of the gravesites. We had no experiences like that but what a rich source of history and display of the burial practices of the eastern Europeans who were there.

Tony here dug his own grave, put a door on it and had a glass faced casket
so relatives could peek in on him
from time to time. 

If you have any questions about Thurber or the history of the region, just drive under the overpass and visit the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas, a research facility of Tarleton State University (Go Riders, Bleed Purple!) part of the Texas A&M University System. William Knox Gordon, a native of Virginia, was hired by the Texas and Pacific Coal Company in 1889 as a civil and mining engineer. He was instrumental in expanding the company’s operations into brick building and convincing the company to explore for gas and oil in a place just further west, called Ranger, Texas. Gordon used his knowledge of both geology and the local terrain to convince the company there was oil in West Texas and with a $20,000.00 investment (wouldn’t you want to have been in on that deal), McCleskey No. 1 “blew in” in 1917 and the Ranger Oil Field began a long and prosperous oil boom in West Texas.

An interesting by-product of the sudden Texas oil wealth had its origins in 1839, when the Texas Republic Congress set aside 50 leagues (221,400 acres) of land for the endowment of a university. Of course, the Legislature wasn’t going to put up really good land so, as politicians do; they secured some really poor land in arid West Texas. What goes around comes around and, guess what, the arid West Texas land ended up to be right on top of some of the biggest oil deposits in the state known as the West Texas Permian Basin.

The Santa Rita No. 1, discovery well of the Big Lake Field, blew in on May 28, 1923, in Reagan County. It was drilled on University Lands. So much money was coming in, that in 1931, the legislature split the net income of the Permanent University Fund, with two-thirds going to the University of Texas (Hook’em Horns!) and one-third to Texas A&M University (Go Aggies!). The Permanent University Fund, which receives all revenue from oil, gas, sulfur and water royalties; increases in investments; rent payments on mineral leases; and sales of university lands, is one of the largest university endowments in the world.

It is a little eerie when you stand on the bluff of the New York Hill Restaurant (New York Hill was the name given to the neighborhood for the white-collar clerks and brick-counters that the company recruited from the East Coast....yeah, probably not segregation) and take in the land below and realize that there once was a thriving community, which used to be where several thousand people lived and worked. It’s hard to imagine a town completely removed from the landscape where those who called it home can’t even return to their place of birth, sit in a park they played in or attended school. Like the hand of a tsunami washed away the place and replaced it with trees and grass as it receded. Next time you find yourself in West Texas looking for a place to rest yourself and grab a bite to eat, just look for the Smoke Stack, jump off at the TX-180 and check it out.

Pottsboro, Texas

Dianna and I are amateur wine drinkers and were once again invited to the Landon Winery wine cruise on beautiful (and getting ever lower in this drought) Lake Texoma. You may recall awhile back we had gone to the last trip in May of 2011 when I noted the lakes surface ran between 610 feet to 615 feet above sea level. When we got there this time, the lake, from it’s historic high of 640 feet in 2007, was heading for the all time low of 610 feet and, without any rain in the near term, the crew felt the lake would probably dip below this historic low by the end of September. It is this same drought and historic high temps that caused the most recent stir. The Army Corps of Engineers, who maintain the lake, had just about killed off any business on the lake by announcing a toxic algea plum had invaded the water and ended all swimming and water sports for the duration of the Summer.

Thankfully our prepaid room at the Tangelwood Resort and the cruise were safe because the party boat was exempt so we made our way north on Texas State Highway 289 to bucolic Pottsboro, Texas to find the meaning of life and consume our prepaid dessert wine selections.

Of course, Lake Texoma is a man-made reservoir created by pinching two points of the Red River meandering it’s way, at once bordering and buffering, the placid State of Texas from the recalcitrant alumni of the University of Oklahoma (Go Sooners!) and the citizens of Oklahoma. The area is rich in history, well except for the fact the Army Corps of Engineers put most of it underwater in the late 30s when they halted this Rivière-Rouge.

It was after noon and, well I was hungry, and by chance saw an intreguing sign at the side of the road “Area 51 Café”. I can’t resist a teaser like that so I pulled back around and headed east toward the North Texas Regional Airport. On arrival, we could clearly see this airport had to be a former military base switched to civilian use. Rows of large hangars, oversize runways and the boxy two-story barracks plainly visible.

We found the Area 51 Café but it was closed for a family emergency. We decided to wander around a little to see what the airport had to offer. As we approached an intersection, a set of propeller blades in a planter caused me to look left and saw we were passing the unassuming location of the Perrin Field Museum. It was open and we were met inside by the museum’s tour guide, Charlie Brown. The retired Mr. Brown was a Senior Master Sergeant (SMSgt) for the then, Perrin Air Force Base in the 60s and one of the co-founders of the museum.

We sat down to watch the Museum’s video history of the field which began in 1941 as an Army Air Field training base flying Consolidated Vultee Corporation built  BT-13 “Valiant”  (also referred to as “Vibrators”). The base provided training for WWII, Korea and Vietnam era pilots flying Cessna 137 "Tweetie Bird" trainers until it’s closing in 1971. Some famous folks passed through it’s hallowed halls. In 1951, a young Denison, Texas resident (and future Air Force Captain) Chesley Sullenberger of Hudson River ditching fame, credits his interest in becoming a pilot from watching planes fly in and out of Perrin Field.

 

Air Force Colonel Frank Borman, Command Pilot of Gemini 7 and Commander of the first orbital flight of the Moon in Apollo 8, got his wings at Perrin. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did their water survival training prior to their Moon landing on Apollo 11 at Perrin’s water survival school on the banks of Lake Texoma. Unfortunately, for the residents of the area, the base became expendable when the Air Force determined it no longer needed Perrin's training function and ultimately shut it’s doors because of it’s proximity to the north landing approaches to the new DFW airport that was being built. Since then, it has been repurposed by Grayson County as a regional airport, campus for Grayson County College and part of Grayson County’s Probation and Juvenile Detention Centers.

The museum is very well layed out and the walking tour follows the history of military history from WWI all the way to the Middle East conflicts but I have to say, the coolest thing I saw was a leather jacket signed by Brigadier General Paul Tibbets (and his radioman, Richard Nelson) the leader of the of the 509th Composite Group who flew the Enola Gay and dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan on August 6^th, 1945. The jacket was ceremonial and also signed by several surviving members of the famous “Flying Tigers” as well. But pretty cool for war historians to view. You can have your opinions over the use of such destructive devices but, at some level, you have to recognize that they were patriotic Americans who were just doing their jobs to end a terrible war, which they were instrumental in doing.

The museum is a little gem and typical of so many organizations who pulled up their bootstraps to preserve a slice of history in a very big world that has all too easily forgotten it’s history. Like so many organizations, this is a shrinking alumni of people who were there and have tried to imbue the local youth with the history of the area and what part Perrin Field played. But the Air Base was closed in 1971. My kids were born in the middle 80s and haven’t been taught much about the early wars much less about the Cold War and it’s implications in today’s world. I fear, once these folks leave us, the Perrin Field story will probably die with them. It will become irrevelant like the vibrant Air Force Base it once was.

On the way to the lake, to give the trip a semblance of respectability, I had done a little research and had to check out two little known points of interest which happen to be within the area of Pottsboro along Preston Trail SH 289. The first was the town of Fink, Texas.

Hopefully most of you may recall the use of the word "Fink" or sometimes "Rat-Fink". It became a popular "friendly  insult" in the 1960s. It actually originated from an incident involving Mike Fink a 19th Century Mississippi keelboat operator. Some might remember that Mike was a character featured in the Walt Disney Davy Crockett series of the 1950s. Well he was a real person with a reputation for heavy drinking and a bit of a ladies man.

One of the stories about Fink places him in a shooting match with his best friend. The two were also rivals for the attention of one particular woman and this supposedly non-lethal "duel" had the men shooting targets off of each other's head (oh, those wacky drinking games) - winner would get the girl. When it was Mike's turn he put a round through his friend's forehead, killing him. Debate has raged over the years as to whether Mike's "unfortunate shot" was lucky or premeditated. Fink himself, wasn't talking.

Thus a "Fink" came to mean someone who was capable of betraying one's best friend, although the years have softened it a bit to that of an informer or snitch. As a verb - to "Fink" on someone was a petty betrayal for little reward. The term of "rat" for informer was added in some circles making the term "rat-fink".

So we come to the town, Fink, Texas. Originally named both Reevesville and Georgetown, Fiedrick George Finke and his family decided to settle in this part of North Texas right after the Civil War as part of a mass influx of new settlers in search of the cheap Texas land of that period to encourage migration.

A note on the name "Fink". Seems when the Sixty-sixth Texas Legislature designated every fourth Friday in June as Fink Day in Texas, in recognition of the "National Fink Week" celebration held by people who share the surname "Fink(e)". The rumor is that the Governor of Texas at the time, Dolph Briscoe, thought the spelling with the "e" was too long and shortened it. Who knows.

The second was in a place called Preston, Texas. Originally known as Preston Bend, it was part of the larger Glen Eden township which started out, like many places along the Red River, a crossing point called Holland Coffee’s Trading Post. On, what was then, the border of the Indian Territories, it was a place where frontiersmen, hunters, trappers and Native Americans could come and pick up some things on the way home for the tent or cabin.

Around 1837, Coffee established his trading post on the river and was quite prosperous. He married the beautiful Sophia and built a pretty nice home they turned into a little 19^th Century Bed and Breakfast for travelers. Unfortunately, the region was a lawless and violent place (think East L.A.) and Coffee was shot and killed in 1846. Sophia let the business go but kept up the B&B with her new husband James Porter.

Sophia is a kind of local heroine in that, during the War of Northern Aggression (Civil War), she was a closet loyalist of the Confederacy and made it a point of entertaining military officers of both sides like Grant and Lee. Being a good hostess, she would listen in on the Union plans and report back to the Confederacy to help thwart the Union war effort. She is renowned for her late night ride across the Red River to warn Confederate (and Texan) Colonel James Bourland that the Yankees were coming for him. He was able to slip away and preserve his hold on North Texas. The Union forces were never able to invade or hold North Texas for the duration of the war.

The historic marker is situated just outside the Preston Bend Cemetery fence in, what is now, the Pet Cemetery. The cemetery was on a bluff just above the Glen Eden community. When the water rose in the new Lake Texoma, it consumed the Glen Eden town below the cemetery forever. If you peek around the corner of the markers, your eye follows the gravel road to the water’s edge a few hundred yards away.

We made our way to our hotel, the Tanglewood Resort just north of Fink. After disgorging our (Dianna’s) load of luggage, we settled in and caught some PBS television of BBQU TV and it’s host Steven Raichlen. Raichlen is a champion griller who runs a school for grilling on the Greenbriar Hotel resort in West Virginia. You might remember the Greenbriar was the secret site of the end of the world bunker for the US government until uncovered by the Washington Post in 1992. BBQU TV is a bad idea to watch if you’re:

A. Hungry and

B. A Bad Griller (like myself).

This guy makes entire meals on an open grill. Between all the cast iron and farm implements he uses to make his scrumpcious looking delicacies (including desserts) it, at once, mocks and pales my lowly efforts to char anything I put on a grill. He should be locked up.

But the magic time arrived and we made our way to the dock and boarded the SS. Minnow (actually the Oasis Yacht). Captain Tommy was our Skipper again and John Landon and his happy band of vinificators dragged coolers and boxes loaded with grape squeezings on board to join our fellow Wine Club members. The deal included one wine selection a piece, food catered by FastTrac charters and live music by the Tu-Tones. The stage was set.

I want to point out we are closet drinkers, not alcoholics. We got a Chocolate Finale and the Peach Wine. Forget all those foo-foo Cabs and Merlots, these babies tasted like fruit juice and candy. Nobody’s sniffing for aromatics or checking their glasses to gage the “legs” of their selections in this crowd. Just a bunch of adults drinking from plastic cups and eating finger foods while cruising around in the dark. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Like most of our travels, we always run into interesting people to meet. On this trip Emily and Gary asked to join us at our table and began a marathon discussion of everything Texan (Emily’s from Southern California, Gary’s from Minnesota) to comparing travels. The couple has had quite a colorful life together (they're married 16 years, we 36, we win!) unlike our sedate lives. Emily and Gary beat us mightily, Emily has even been to Antarctica with her mom. Emily even gave us her exclusive pick of a hotel with a room veranda that is at gondola level in Venice. We got the distinct impression she REALLY likes Venice, a lot.

The conversation made the three hour cruise zip by. I last recalled squinting at the sunset, leaving the breakwater (where Captain Tommy reminded us all that there was no nudity inside the breakwater during the safety briefing) and the next thing, we were gliding back into the darkened harbor with the occasional sound of a barking dog or the distant Country Music song wafting from the bobbing Condo Docks as we passed.

Dianna had convinced the Landon staff (some of whom had been imbibing as well) to allow us to keep our spent bottles for a future arts and crafts project. So, with tinkling bottles in hand, we debarked back to the 4Runner for the run back to the resort. The food aboard hadn’t satisfied us (well…me) sufficiently. We had the munchies and I insisted on grabbing a half Canadian Bacon and half Pepperoni pizza from the Island Bar and Grill at the Highport Marina before returning to our room and an alcohol induced sleep.

That's Lucy with the horns

The following morning we checked out and, on the way home, took a detour off the 289 to a great little breakfast place, "Lucy's Grill" in the square in Celina, Texas. "Lucy's" is a great place to eat anytime but especially on Sunday. If you get there before church gets out (generally before noon) you have the place and the breakfast buffet to yourself.  I had the eggs and chorizo with a set of pancakes while Dianna got the fresh cut fruit and a big ol' Belgian waffle in the shape of the State of Texas. After a time, we were able to waddle back out to the 4Runner and made it home without incident. Empty wine bottles, a half eaten waffle and leftover pizza put away, we finished out a lazy Sunday and looking forward to a Labor Day holiday Monday.

Decatur, Texas

It was another tinder-dry North Texas Saturday with temperatures soaring, for way too many days, to 104 degrees in the shade. I made my way to  Decatur, Texas, the County seat of Wise County. Decatur was named for a young naval officer, Stephen Decatur, who found fame in the Barbary War of 1802. He was a young 1^st Lieutenant on the USS Essex. Commodore Dale’s squadron sailed into the Mediterranean with the mission to confront the Barbary pirates operating out of North Africa who were routinely attacking American shipping, stealing cargoes and often holding crews for huge ransoms (sound familiar?).

In December of 1803, the USS Enterprise along with the USS Constitution confronted and captured a Tripoltian ketch Mastico. It was named Intrepid and Decatur was given command. He then masterminded a daring attack to deny the enemy one of our captured ships, USS Philadelphia by boarding and setting the Philadelphia on fire right under their noses in Tripoli harbor. Decatur was rewarded for his efforts by being promoted to Captain making the 25-year-old LT. the youngest Captain in the US Navy. This bold event gave the American’s the advantage and on a second attack in 1804, after a very effective bombardment of the city and further destruction of the Tripolian fleet, The Navy brought an end to the conflict and a surrender of the Bashaw of Tripoli (now Morocco) in 1805 and added a stanza to the Marine Hymn.

Originally named Taylorsville, early town pioneer Colonel Absolam Bishop petitioned to change the town's name to Decatur after becoming disappointed with the performance of the town’s namesake, President Zachary Taylor. The area was originally settled by the Wichita Indians, which was the case when Coronado and his band of merry men rolled through in 1540. The first white settler was Sam Woody who built his log cabin in 1854. The original cabin was moved from its Deep Creek location to the grounds of the Wise County Museum where I started my visit. The cabin had undergone a recent refitting with new mud and straw chinking between the timbers. Looked like it could use some air-conditioning.

The Wise County Heritage Museum is located inside of what originally was the Northwest Baptist College. The school operated from 1892 to 1965 when it moved to Dallas and became Dallas Baptist University. The Wise County Historical Society took the place over in 1967, raised funds and have been restoring it ever since. The three-story building houses the complete collection of Wise County agricultural, industrial, and military as well as the everyday life of its residents.





Motto of the 131st Field Artillery

On the second floor is the Museum’s prize collection representing the actions and history of the 131^st Field Artillery and survivors of the USS Houston CA-30. The 131^st is the famed “Lost Battalion” of WWII who shared Japanese POW status with the survivors of the Houston after their defeat under Dutch command in Java. The Houston was a heavy cruiser launched in 1929 and part of America’s Asiatic fleet sent in as a last ditch (and historians say ill advised) effort to help the Dutch and the British protect the Netherlands East and Australia against the overwhelming force of the Japanese fleet.


The 2^nd Battalion of the 131^st Field Artillery (made up mostly of volunteers from Wise, Jack and Montague counties in Texas) were thrown into the battle under-equipped and without the possibility of relief or rescue once they landed on Java to support the Dutch. On January 11^th, 1942, 35 days after the start of the war at Pearl Harbor, the Dutch capitulated and the 131^st were interned.

On February 28^th, the Houston was sent to halt a land invasion by the Japanese, which became the Battle of the Java Sea. A valiant but one-sided battle ensued and every ship, including the Houston was sunk.  Of the 1011 men aboard the Houston, only 368 made it off the ship and were taken prisoner. Of the 558 men who landed on Java, 534 became prisoners of war.

Both groups of men ended up being held in camps in Thailand, which was, became the force of workers who would build the Burma Railway and the infamous Bridge over the River Kwai. They suffered under unimaginable conditions for 42 months before repatriation at the end of the war.

USS HOUSTON CA-30

The 131^st was considered the “Lost Battalion” because for most of their internment, the Japanese never disclosed the Battalion had been captured or allowed the Red Cross in to allow the exchange of mail or communication with family. Of the 902 men from both the 131^st and the Houston taken prisoner, 668 were brought to Burma for work on the railroad and 133 died working on the railroad. After completion of the railroad, they were then dispersed throughout Asia as far away as Manchuria in China before being repatriated.

The survivors of the Houston and the 131^st organized a “Lost Battalion Association” in 1945 and have held reunions ever since. Unfortunately, like many of America’s “Greatest Generation”, there are only about 22 surviving members left today. Oh yeah, the movie was crap, the bridge wasn't blown up by sappers, it was bombed by B-24 Liberator bombers in early 1945. At the end of the war, as part of Japanese reparations to the Kingdom of Siam, they rebuilt the bridge where it exists today.

A word about the room where the Lost Battalion exhibit is. Clearly, the room is sacred and holds a huge amount of memorabilia about WWII and specifically both the Battalion and the Houston. It is the only exhibit room with its own door (which is locked when other events take place in the Museum’s restored College Auditorium) and is the only exhibit room that is air-conditioned. The room’s contents run from glass cases to stacks of books and newspapers you can just pick up and peruse. Literally, I was in possession of page after page of 1940s newspapers chronicling all the events of the war as well as articles about things reported about everyday life during the war years in Texas. School awards, openings of new businesses, births and deaths of residents and soldiers in battle. Reams of yellowed and tattered pages just lying about. It spoke not only to the deep reverence the Historical Society has for these men but a commentary of how the men and their experience will one-day disappear. It’s our job not to forget them or their struggle.

I left the museum and rode east on E. Hale Ave. to one of the last remaining remnants of the Tourist Camps of the 1920s and 30s. At the intersection of Hale Ave. and US Highways 287/81, is a pristine example of a camp, the forerunner of the modern-day Motel. Back in 1927, a local businessman, C.F. Boydston, put in a gas station to provide services to the motoring public. The newfound freedom of having your own automobile was also a great way to vacation and camp. These early RVers would just pull off the road in their Model A Fords or new Chevrolet and pitch tents on the side of the road. Mr. Boydston saw potential and began allowing travelers to use his property around the station to put up their tents and light campfires to cook with. In 1931 he put up three wood cabins and by 1935 he had refaced his gas station and the cabins using petrified wood rock he had acquired.

A lunchroom was added in 1929 and a second floor was added to accommodate small hotel rooms. It was covered in petrified wood in 1935 and renamed the Texas Café. More cabins and garages were added completing the complex we see today. It was operated by the family until 1988.  No longer an operating motel and gas station, the restaurant still operates as the Whistle Stop Café harking back to the times the railroad used to stop to allow travelers and employees to get a bite to eat. Unfortunately, it’s only open Monday through Friday and not on this hot Texas Saturday.

Well, my hopes dashed to experience the menu at the Whistle Stop, I had to return to downtown Decatur to the next area favorite, Sweetie Pie’s Ribeyes restaurant at the corner of W. Main and State Street. Sweetie Pie’s is part of the well known Vinyard family’s "Bubba’s/Babe’s"  restaurant chain and, like Babe’s, has an old town family style feel to it.

In 1993, Paul and Mary Beth Vinyard opened the first Babe's in Roanoke, Texas, “Bubba” is Paul’s nickname. "Babe" is Mary Beth's nickname; she developed the recipes so they named the restaurant Babe's. Lot’s of home-style cooking which generally involve copious amounts of grease, gravy and grits. The best biscuits you have ever had are deposited on the table when you’re seated and call to you to be buttered up and consumed.

According to legend, “Sweetie Pie” is the name Babe (keep up, that’s Mary Beth) would like to name her pet bull (if she ever gets one). Sweetie Pie’s building was constructed in approximately 1884 and 1885. It burned sometime between 1925 and 1950 (nobody can narrow the time frame down?), reducing it from a 2-story rock building to a 1-story building with stucco. The stone walls are between 18” and 22” thick. On this day, I noticed the longhorn steer head on the wall had a placard stating this was “Sweetie Pie” but had a note attached stating it was actually Sweetie Pie’s cousin Grady. I asked my server about this who politely informed me it was because Sweetie Pie had been sent out for cleaning and Grady had been brought in as a stand-in. OK.

The menu is extensive and involves the Babe’s traditional family style of multiple courses laid out on your table with frequent refills to satisfy your cravings. I was a family of one and had their signature “Chicken Fried Chicken Sandwich” which came with any side but realizing I was about to exceed my entire caloric intake for the week, got a handsome house salad. When the sandwich  arrived, the table creaked under its weight. This thing stood about five inches tall and had a beautiful golden battered fried chicken breast at its center. I’m not lying when I report I had to cut it in half and could only eat one portion before boxing the rest and rolling myself out of that place. Thank God I didn’t get the fries.

Launched back into the blazing noonday sun, I was met by the Courthouse Square and face-to-face with the Wise County Courthouse at its center. Some of you may recall my time at the Ellis County Courthouse in Waxahachie, Texas. Well this is Ellis County’s older sister. Wise County suffered three courthouse burnings in the early 1850s and after the third fire in January of 1895, the County contracted with J. Riley Gordon for the fourth courthouse we see today. Two years later, Riley contracted and built the Waxahachie Courthouse.

Folks, they built this thing for a grand total of $110,000.00 using a windlass to hoist the beautiful pink Burnet County granite blocks using donkeys as the engine to pull the ropes and lift the loads. It must have been and still is a polished diamond in the rough of bucolic Decatur.

 

I headed north from downtown to locate  the most extensive War Memorial I have ever encountered in my travels thus far, the Wise County Veteran's Memorial Park.

On the lot of a former 1895 church parsonage and then a Hospital in 1935, Decatur built a block-long altar to all those who have fallen from every conflict American’s have ever sent combatants to. I’m talking from the earliest Indian conflicts during colonization to the Revolution, the Barbary Wars, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Panama and both Middle East conflicts on a series of stone monuments and placards, no stone is left unturned. Within this circle of honor is the center piece monument to the Lost Battalion and the USS Houston with the obligatory eternal flame flickering between the US and Texas flags.  It’s very moving that such a large exhibit exists in such a small town. It really encapsulates the reverence and patriotism the residents have ensconced in this place.

My path home was along US 380 which skirts North Texas east to west. I am a cronic Historic Marker reader and have been known to do a rapid deceleration (eliciting a sudden gasp from the wife), slam it into reverse and skitter backwards to the break in the trees or bend in the fence where the marker is displayed. Here was that opportunity and, to the shagrin of the unfortunate diesel pick up riding my bumper, my departure from the asphalt was heralded by a loud airhorn and a friendly wave-off from the driver (was that a #1 sign or something more sinister).

Yes, it was Texas Historic Marker gold and what I (and many historians) refer to as a "Washington Slept Here" moment. Here was a landmark sign at US 380 and County Road 2311 indicating that Jesse James and the boys had utilized a patch of land south of the south road edge of what is now US 380 as a hideout camp in our beautiful North Texas. OK...the camp was 1 MILE further south of the signs location but an historic coup if there ever was.

Now I am a closet Jesse James fan but Holy Cow! An historic marker for a spot that I couldn't even see and was obscured by a stand of trees. My imagination ran wild as I contemplated Jesse and the boys rustling up some grub from a hard day holding up trains and banks and visualizing the smoke from their fire wafting up above the tree line I was holding in my gaze. It was almost like I was there. NOT!

Having sampled much of what Decatur is and has to offer, I again put the 4 Runner into drive and made my way back to Frisco to face my next challenge, lawn maintenance with an outside temperature of 104. Can’t wait.