watching a radio show
We had a pleasant time last night at the taping of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. To the extent that I ever thought about it I had assumed shows like this really were done "live", and maybe taped for rebroadcast. But it's really more like the way a TV show is taped before a live audience.
So it's not live, unless you are in the studio audience. Later they do a little "cutting and pasting" to polish up the show for broadcast. We stayed while they redid several parts. For instance while interviewing Larry Hagman, Peter Sagal made the statement that the actor was not a real Texan. I guess he objected to that since he really is from Texas. Anyway they had Peter Sagal read that part of the script again with the statement taken out.
It was warm enough to stroll around the SMU campus without a jacket last night. Today iit was sunny and clear. The irises are starting to bloom now and redbud trees are putting on a good show.
flying
Usually there is nothing that makes my troubles disappear faster than to get in the car and head down the highway on a beautiful afternoon. Sunday afternoon I got an even better offer from my friend M to go flying in his little two-seat airplane. Actually I had been wanting to do this again anyway because I wanted to check out things from the air around our property on Lake Palo Pinto.
Riding in a small plane is exciting because it feels dangerous. Roller coasters are the same way. Actually it is probably safer than crossing the busy highway to go to church on Sunday morning. But when you realize that you are a half-mile in the air in a space the size of an old VW Beetle it is hard not to feel a little anxiety.
At 140 mph we made it to our destination like it was nothing. No traffic either. There was one airliner crossing our space way above and another small plane in the distance. Actually except for the engine noise and the sudden bumps when it seemed like the plane fell out from below me it was more relaxing than being on the freeway. I could probably get used to this.
The big fun is seeing things from the air and realizing how much you miss by living in the two-dimensional world on the surface. The relationships between places seem entirely different. Things that seemed far apart are revealed as being very close. And there are all those things that you never knew existed. Now exploring the roads will take on a different meaning to me.
breakfast
It is hard to beat the breakfasts that Tricia can whip up in our own kitchen, but sometimes we just like to get out of the house early and go somewhere else. We have a short list of three or four places that we usually pick from.
Tops on our list is Angela’s. We “discovered” Angela’s about six years ago when it was a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a half dozen tables. Evidently, lots of others discovered it about the same time because within a few months there was a line down the sidewalk to get in. The main attraction for me has always been the migas or the huevos rancheros, although the café has generally trended toward traditional instead of trading on it’s Mexican heritage. It was started by a couple of young latinas and named for a grade-school-age daughter, who used to sit behind the cash register on a stool Saturday mornings coloring or reading her school books. They have moved into bigger quarters now and kind of established themselves as the neighborhood café. There are prosperous-looking locals, some with children in tow, who greet one another, and men who sit together doing business deals of some kind, with looseleaf notebooks and papers on the table between them. There is a dapper little man who is always sitting by himself at the same table by the window every Saturday morning.
Another favorite is La Madeleine. It is a small chain with “upscale fast food,” the name I give to places where you go through a line to order instead of having a waitress come to your table, but with food a little more complex than a fast food joint. You can get quiche here or an “american breakfast” with scrambled eggs and hash browns, except with a croissant instead of toast. The decor is frenchified and has a crackling gas log fire in a stone fireplace. Actually it is misleading to call it fast food since the pace always seems rather leisurely. The customers at the one near our house are what I call the “NPR crowd” - older couples with European accents and young ladies dressed in black sitting alone with a novel and a cup of French-roast coffee.
There is also a pancake house nearby which we never go to, and a Jewish deli, which I like but Tricia doesn’t, and some kind of snooty, upscale place that just opened in the shopping center, the appeal of which so far has eluded us.
But today we felt really traditional, so it was off to the Mecca, an old-fashioned diner with a counter and booths and wise-cracking waitresses who can carry four plates at once.
The name of the place is ironic, being that many of the nearby businesses are discount fabric stores run by men with middle-eastern names, but I happen to know that the cafe was here long before they were. It is in a slightly seedy commercial area on what was once a major traffic artery before the interstate was built about fifty years ago. The road is called a highway and it runs parallel to the railroad and has no sidewalks or even curbs. It and many of the buildings were here long before the suburbs came and swallowed up the area.
This is the sort of place that only serves breakfast and a lunch special that is either chicken-fried steak or meatloaf with a choice of vegetables. I can remember when there used to be lots of places like this around town. Now they are an endangered species and people come from all over the city just for the experience of eating here. The walls are covered with memorabilia signed by local celebrities and sports heroes. It is always bustling with busy people who seem to be on their way to sports events and shopping and all kinds of activities. Today our waitress is singing Christmas songs while rushing around keeping everyone’s coffee cup filled, but no one is paying the slightest attention.
The special is huge, with three sausages instead of two to go with my scrambled eggs. By the time I finish them and the third coffee refill, I am ready for the day. There is not a cloud in the sky.
lefty
A side effect of our trips to see mom and dad in their nursing home is that we are getting to know Corsicana a little better. Almost every trip we explore something new, even it is just another greasy spoon restaurant.
Weeks ago I had noticed a small sign on our route pointing to the Lefty Frizzell Museum. His song "If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time" is one of the earliest pop songs I remember from my childhood. I have never really been a C&W fan, but in the car I sometimes listen to a compilation CD, which contains a number of his songs, including that one. I already knew that he was from Corsicana. Today we diverted ourselves a couple blocks south to take in the museum.
Actually his museum turned out to be a part of a whole complex of small historical buildings, many of them reconstructed log cabins, containing historical exhibits. We made a cursory round through them all. The cabins were interesting to me because I have lately stayed in some recently built log cabins and have become interested in how they were constructed. I was impressed by a nice collection of Indian arrowheads - and even more by a note on the exhibit that there was a bigger collection of 45,000 arrowheads at the local junior college. I had never really thought of this as Indican territory, but of course it was.
Another exhibit told the story of John Wesley Hardin. I had heard mention of him in old western movies and there is that Bob Dylan song, but I had no idea that his stomping grounds had been around the old town of Pisgah southwest of Corsicana. In fact I had never even heard of Pisgah or been anywhere near it, but it is now on my list of places to visit.
interlude
We took a break from the stresses of work and family and spent a day at the lake. We sat on the deck at a cabin in the woods, watching the hummingbirds and being calmed by the water down below.
For lunch we drove to Strawn where we found a old-fashioned bar and grill. Tricia ate a plate of chicken livers and I chose tacos. Most of the locals were drinking beer but it was too early for me. I made a note to come back at night sometime. Down the street we found a really neat soap factory. Isn't it great that someone can make a living selling soap in a tiny west Texas town? I picked out the "manly man" scent.
Along the way we passed Loving Valley. Oliver Loving was the man whose life was the basis for the character that Robert Duvall played in Lonesome Dove. This was his ranch. It is hard to tell in this photo but those tiny black dots in the field are cattle.
I love this countryside. It was hard to leave it.
lone oak
I missed my turn off the main highway in Lone Oak, circled around the block and found this Methodist church. Built in 1889 and still in use. I love old wooden church buildings. This one is symmetrical - there is a second identical tower on the other side. The towers are not as high as the central peak and there is no cross on the roof. Another interesting detail is that the dove in the round window in front is flying upwards. I am used to seeing it flying down.
Texas is not all freeways, strip malls and McMansions. One of the benefits of our weekend excursions is discovering a little history off the beaten path.
the salt palace
One mile south of Grand Saline is one of the world's largest salt mines, with enough salt to satisfy the world's needs for 20,000 years. Too bad it is not an oil well.
There have been several Salt Palaces in Grand Saline. The most famous was a replica of the Alamo built in 1936 to celebrate the Texas Centennial. It was built entirely of salt rock and has long since dissolved. The modern version in the background is a steel building with a salt veneer, which can be replaced when it wears out. The latest resurfacing was finished just a month ago. I tasted it. It really is salt.
the shed
Front porch of the The Shed in Edom, a dinner spot popular with antiquers from the Canton flea markets and visitors coming to pick their own blueberries at nearby farms.
pictures from an expedition
I've posted a few of our pictures from last weekend.
day trip
Lately we have been exploring some of the smaller nearby towns. Today we resumed the series of weekend journeys that had been interupted by the family picnic and then house guests last weekend.
This time we headed northeast to a little college town called Commerce where Tricia wanted to revisit a quilt shop on the square. There is probably less traffic heading east than in in any other direction out of Dallas. We took the Interstate to get it over with fast and then turned north on a two-lane to Commerce.
As in most old towns businesses have moved out to strip centers along the highways. Much of the old town square was boarded up. It was the lunch hour and the only activity seemed to be in the three restaraunts. We picked a sandwich shop and then headed next door to the quilt store where Tricia conducted the business that was our excuse for the trip. The proprietor mentioned that she had had fifty women there that morning for a class.
When we stepped back out on the square though we didn't see another soul. There was nothing else open except for a police station. Nevertheless it was a workable town square with a post office and a library.
I've always longed to live in an old-fashioned small town like the ones in the books and movies. Of course it is a fantasy to imagine that such a thing could have survived.
We got back in the car and drove on east to the next town, Cooper. It had some of the old-fashioned houses with big porches that Tricia likes and it's own town square. We stopped in at a building called Millers Drugs to see about getting something to drink. Inside was a well-preserved drug store from early in the last century. Along one wall merchandise was displayed in dark wood cabinets with glass fronts. At the back was a pharmacy and along the other wall was an honest to goodness soda fountain made of marble. In the middle were a row of black leather booths. Behind the soda fountain were a couple of teenage girls.
I went up to the counter and ordered chocolate sodas for us both and we sat in one of the booths and drank them. Meanwhile we eavedropped on conversations. At the counter the girls gossipped about high school stuff with another girl who had come in with her little brother. In the booth behind us an old-timer remininsced about cruising for chicks on the town square and sitting in the very same seat in this same drugstore drinking sodas back in the 1940s. His companion said she had been raised on a nearby farm and came to Cooper for the first time when she took her driver's test. She recalls her father telling her that "if she could drive in the traffic in Cooper she could drive anywhere." They both laughed at that and the man said he remembered the traffic being worse here than it was in Dallas.
In case you are wondering this is a town with a current population of about 2000 and not a single traffic light. But I remember my own father saying much the same thing about traffic in the little town he grew up in. His town is practically dead now but the way my Dad tells it on Saturdays back in his youth there were so many people he couldn't get down the sidewalk.
I wonder if it is possible to buy a little house in a town like this and go back in time? Could we plant flowers in a little garden in the front yard behind a picket fence and could we sit in a porch swing in the evenings watching the neighbors pass?
