Road Trip of a Lifetime

Southern Living, Apr 2004 by Thomas, Les

Boundless fields of bluebonnets, meringue pies as big as cowboy hats, and classic small towns make this drive across Texas unforgettable.

I cross the Red River from Oklahoma and drive into Texas on a road most travelers never take. Less than 100 miles east of here, 1-35 makes a beeline across the state. U.S. 281 waltzes to a different beat. It's a back road, ambling through small towns and ranch country. It's a road for cattle trucks and pickups and the lonesome sound of "Faded Love" playing on your radio on a starry night. It's my favorite highway in Texas.

In the glow of morning light beyond the river's edge, it rolls on for more than 650 miles to the Rio Grande. I love it for the panoramas of hills, the wildflowers, and the small towns. I love it because it's a road that hasn't changed much. Elvis cruised it, with a fresh haircut and a soldier's uniform, headed for Fort Hood. L.B.J. traveled it. So did Bob Wills. Drive it, and you get the feeling you could almost catch up with them, somewhere over the next horizon.

On a good long day, you might even cover the whole distance across Texas from sunup to sunset. But I'm taking the time to linger. I want to rest my eyes on boundless fields of bluebonnets, listen for the ring of church bells inside the weathered stone walls of a Spanish mission, and fill my lungs with air scented by orange blossoms at the semitropical tip of Texas. I want to take a long look at my home state and remember why I love it. For me, it's the road trip of a lifetime. Hop in, and come along.

Oil, Boots, and the World's Biggest Rocking Chair

Time moves to the lazy rhythm of oil well pump jacks that dot the prairie around the town of Burkburnett, tucked up against the river near the Oklahoma line. It's quiet now. Burkburnett can use the rest. At the end of World War I, derricks covered downtown and poked up on churchyards and school grounds.

Steven Felty, a third-generation oilman, keeps a collection of cable tool rigs and other early equipment his grandfather used at the oil company he and his family run. "Those were shallow wells-the or if a cowboy gets out of work, first thing they do is call us."

The highway ducks beneath an iron-topped bridge over the gravel banks of the Brazos River and slips beneath I-20 not far away. Just past the interstate, I am stopped in my tracks by an odd sight. Sitting beside the road, there's a rocking chair the size of a semitruck. Its wooden frame looms as tall as telephone poles and the arm-rests are as big as fireplace mantels.

"It stands 25 feet, 9 inches tall," storekeeper Darlene Herron says, reading the dimensions off a souvenir coffee cup at the Texas Hill Country Furniture Store and Mercantile where the chair sits outside. Owner Larry Dennis, who crafts beautiful ranch-style furniture, built the rocker as a tourist attraction. Tired of the traffic on 1-35, some travelers are starting to detour this way, and Larry is ready.

"We've had people from as far away as Canada," Darlene says. "U.S. 281 just goes on forever. I-35 is a mess. Everybody is wanting to go around."

Billy the Kid, Elvis, and L.B.J.

Pickup trucks fill the parking lot of the Koffee Kup cafe in Hico when I stop for lunch. I order the coconut cream pie, topped with meringue as tall as a cowboy hat. It's as airy as cotton candy. On the wall are photos of Billy the Kid and a lean Hico hombre named "Brushy Bill" Roberts. If you believe local lore, they're one and the same. Downtown, I visit the intriguing Billy the Kid Museum and drop in at John Frederick's blacksmith shop. When he isn't teaching city folks the art of smithing, John fashions the kind of cooking tools cowboys and mountain men once used. A squirrel cooker, perfect to hang over a campfire, costs $24.95.

After Hico, the countryside opens to broader vistas. It's more open and less wooded. You can see 20 or 30 miles at a stretch. Drive this highway on a Friday night in the fall, and you'll see stadium lights glowing like beacons from town to town. Football championships are proudly posted on courthouse squares. "I graduated from Hamilton High School," says a local radio broadcaster. "We had 25 boys and 20 of us played football."

You can hear "Faded Love," "Waltz Across Texas," and other classic tunes spilling out of the humble tin-sided Luke Jones Music Hall on a Saturday evening in tiny Adamsville. Luther Jones was an auto mechanic-turned-fiddle maker. he made more than 40 before he died at the age of 87. Now his sons carry on the tradition at the music hall.

"It's just the pure stuff," says a neighbor. "They don't dance. They don't drink. They don't smoke."

At Storm's drive-in in Lampasas, IraDell Storm remembers another singer whose music left them all shook up at the restaurant she and her husband opened in the 1950s. "Elvis got out of his car, walked up to the front window, and ordered," she recalls. "He was wearing his Army uniform. Then he walked back to his car, stretched out, and started singing what was on the radio."

At 93, IraDell works every day, except for the time she takes off to climb the steep granite dome of Enchanted Rock every January 26 on her birthday. Storm's, which serves a generous three-patty hamburger called the Storm Special, is holding its own against two big chain rivals. "The new Sonic is closer to the high school," says a young assistant manager. "Kids can walk there, but if they're old enough to drive, they come here."