I supose it’s a form of intimidation.  I drive a minivan.  The perpetrators I’ve managed to glimpse are young men suffering, it would seem, from a surfeit of testosterone, who may think I am, in their opinion, a mere female.  But, in fact I am just a middle aged man who does not want to own the road, just use it to get from point A to point B, without having to run the gauntlet, especially in the right hand lane.

You see these young buffoons in traffic more often around nine o’clock on Friday and Saturday evenings when daddy lets them borrow the car.   They travel in packs of four and five, way too fast, weaving all over the road in a form of one-up-manship that will lead, quite likely, to disaster.  What is of concern to me is that they are spreading their lunacy around the clock.

Hey, all I want is to get to work on time.  I drive for maximum MPG not MPH.  There are plenty of other lanes for these chumps to display their machismo, about which I care little except for its potential hazards for me.  Thinning the herd is quite acceptable to me providing innocent bystanders don’t have to go along for the ride.  The biggest source of automobile traffic deaths is one car accidents by cars driven by young males.  I’m OK with this providing they keep to the tradition of being stupid on their own time.  But not on mine.

Polikarpov I-16 at the CAF museum, Midland, Texas

Rolling forward on my 2010 resolution to get out of San Antonio more, I took a three day trip to Midland and Odessa, two cities, indeed a region of Texas, I had not visited before in the nineteen years I have called the Lone State home.  I set out on the last Thursday in July, which proved to be a very good time to go.

For whatever reason, HWY 87, the route I decided to take on the outward bound leg, was essentially empty north of Fredericksburg.  Even when I drove into San Angelo just after 5:00 PM, traffic on the road was very light.  It just seemed odd to traverse handsome county seats like Mason and only see one or two other moving vehicles.

Following a stroll around Fort Concho which closed just before I got there, I continued on towards Big Spring before getting onto I 20 heading west to Midland.  Traveling by myself, with just an ipod for company, the landscape became flatter and the wind grew stronger.  A veritable forest of massive electricity generating wind turbines dotted the landscape, harvesting the enormous amount of free energy that just about knocked me over when got out of the car for a moment.

The hotel I chose was inexpensive in every way, but you get what you pay for, so I have no complaints.  I spent the whole of Friday, which happened to be my birthday, driving around the sights of Midland and Odessa.  My first port of call was the Commemorative Air Force museum.  To my surprise and delight I pretty much the whole place to myself during my 2 ½ hour visit.  As most CAF aircraft are dispersed around the country in different locations, like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain I hoped to fly in yesterday, which is based in Burnet, Texas, or the North American B-25 Mitchell located here in San Antonio, there were not all that many aircraft to actually see in Midland.  But I was thrilled to the core to find one of them was a Russian Polikarpov I 16.  As a youth, I used to make model airplanes – none to well, I must admit – and I loved the diminutive little plane, which, to my eyes, looks remarkably like the Brewster Buffalo.  Both were cutting edge designs when introduced in the early 1930s but were significantly obsolete by the time World War Two started.  With little else available, young men bravely continued to fight the good fight in these machines, sometimes achieving remarkable success despite the odds stacked against them.

I never dreamed I’d ever actually see one up close and personal.  It was absolutely the peak moment of my 800 mile journey and would have made the entire trip worthwhile in and of itself.  I also visited the oil industry museum, which was not laid out so well for those who know nothing about the industry, in my opinion.  I’d have done better with a guide, I think.  It’ an impressive place for sure but a little overwhelming and incomprehensible.  Rich in detail but somehow lacking in drama, of what odds and difficulties the individuals involved had to face.

Also a little disappointing was the crater site west of Odessa, mainly because the original vast hole dug by a meteorite the size of a Suburban yet weighing a thousand tons is all but filled 50,000 years later.  I enjoyed rolling around Odessa, and got to visit a remarkably well restored railroad depot, originally located in a tiny town called Texon, now located about seven miles from the city, in someone’s backyard.  Acquired in an almost disintegrated state, the owner has poured money, time and effort into bringing it back to its former glory.

Midland is the more impressive of the two cities which are maybe fifteen miles apart by interstate.  The smell of hydrocarbons, or money, is quite pervasive wherever you go.  I’m certainly glad I finally took the time to go there but, a bit like Big Bend, I’m not itching to go back any time soon.  Bleak landscapes don’t work for me.  I couldn’t stand to live in a place where if I traveled fifty miles I’d still essentially be in the same place.

I came back via lesser roads, again wonderfully empty of other vehicles, aiming first for Ozona and then the Caverns of Sonora Located off of IH 10 some two hundred miles west of San Antonio, this natural wonder is most definitely worth a visit.  The tour lasts just under two hours.  It was a nice finish to a trip that seemed, to quote Joni Mitchell, to be all about the land and the sky.

 The aircraft is flown to a lot of air shows.  I saw it and met the crew in Hondo earlier this year.  Since then the shiny silver plane has been to any number of events, including the annual air extravaganza in Oshkosh.  I’m really looking forward to making the flight, which costs $125.00 per person, a heck of a deal if you ask me.  The C-47 is the military version of the Douglas DC3, the twin radial engined aircraft that finally enabled airlines to fly profitably.  Its role as a military transport was so impressive that General Dwight Eisenhower said it was one of the four tools that ensured the allied victory.

UPDATE: The “Bluebonnet Belle” developed an engine problem during the return flight from Oshkosh.  It has yet to be determined how long it will take to make the needed repairs.  Then we will have to find a mutually acceptable date for all the people involved, including the aircrew and the original group of five.  If seats remain available I will post an invite on this blog.

 If you are interested in flying with us, post a reply right here on the blog and I’ll get in contact with you.  In the mean time, here is a link to the Highland Lakes Squadron web site, where you can find out more about the “Bluebonnet Belle” plus get the details of where they are located.

 http://www.highlandlakessquadron.com/HLS1/AircraftC47.html

Larry Walsh and the Austin MetroRail

My friend, Larry Walsh, and I finally found the time last Tuesday, July 27, to make a visit to Austin’s new commuter rail line, Capital MetroRail.  This is what is hoped to be the first thirty miles of a city wide system.  This first section runs from the city center at 4th and Trinity to Leander, a commuter colony way to the north of Austin itself.

Larry is, to put it mildly, an avid passenger rail enthusiast.  Now in his eighties, this has been his passion for every bit as long.  He served on boards pushing for the extension of passenger service across the north east of the country.  He can expound, at length, on the unlikely success of commuter rail in Los Angeles.  He sees a myriad of opportunities for it here in San Antonio, if only nay-sayers like me would only look beyond our road bound perspective and see the entire picture.  In fact he and I once traded barbs in the op-ed and letter pages on the San Antonio Express News regarding the proposed passenger service between San Antonio and Austin.

While we continue to disagree on that propoal, I actually have a fondness for the type of service which is now in its infancy in Austin.  Anyone who has used urban light rail in other cities will have a good sense of how successful they can be from any number of points of view.  My personal favorite is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit System in Ireland which runs on elevated track.

In Austin, the system mainly runs on track acquired by the City of Austin from the Southern Pacific when it was announced the line as far as Llano was to be abandoned.  While it continues to move a considerable amount of freight, it has been best known by the public, up till now, as the line used by the Hill Country Flyer, between Cedar Park and Burnet.  Ironically, Cedar Park has yet to acquire a MetroRail Stop so its residents can only watch the new service pass through on its way to Leander but may decide to opt in if the rail commuter service becomes popular.

As things stand, there are only six stops along the thirty mile stretch.  From the newly laid tracks on 4^th Street the train head due east under IH 35 until it makes contact with the pre-existing Southern Pacific built line.  It then heads north a while before crossing under the interstate again on its way to Leander.  Rather than give you a blow by blow account of every stop, I think it would be better  to simply give you a link to the MetroRail web site, which is:

 http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml

 What I can more profitably do however, is provide a consumer’s point of view of what riding the train is like.  First of all, because they are only getting started, the number of trains available is limited only to weekday mornings and evenings.  Because Larry and I were essentially tourists out for a joy ride, we found there was only one train in the evening that would allow us to both ride form downtown and return.  For most commuters this would not be an issue as, presumably, most are coming in from the suburbs in the morning and returning in the evening.  Larry tells me the train ticket is good also for the buses which feed people to and from the rail service.

The train we caught, the 3:45 PM, the first one out, was not at all busy.  Presumably the following five trains would be, assuming most folks don’t get out from work so early.  The last one leaves at 6:40 PM.  Built in Switzerland, the “train” consists of two back to back cars with each having all its seats facing either forward or backwards.  The seats are not really very comfortable.  The padding is thin.  Also the leg space, at least in the seats we chose for an optimal view, was cramped.  The other 52 seats did not look a whole lot better.  But the view was good,  the engine noise level superb, especially for diesel powered rail cars, and the ride very smooth, including station stops and starts.

One of the unexpected benefits of ipods and other MP3 devices is that, unlike boomboxes of the previous generation which used to plague rail cars, the new devices do not cause much, if any, noise pollution.  Smoking is banned on the train and, just to make you feel even more comfortable, a uniformed police officer rides each train.  These also perform crossing guard duties in the event of signal failures but, fortunately, this did not happen on our ride.

A couple of people brought their bicycles on board and utilized some clever hooks to vertically stow them out of the way.  There were only two available with an obvious opportunity for two more to be installed later on if needed.  I don’t know if dogs are allowed.  I forgot to ask and it isn’t mentioned on the official web site.  The trains appear to be ADA compliant, with good ramp access from outside and almost no gap between the platform and the cars, plus set aside space within them.

My most serious complaint about the service is not about the trains at all.  It is about the lack of seating while waiting for the train down town and, far worse, no public restrooms at the large park & ride facilities.  It so happened we encountered a MetroRail board member on our way back, who seemed phased when I asked him why.  While most people will not be riding there and back in one go, as we did, the outbound trip to Leander lasts an hour and who wants to get into a car with a full bladder or worse?

All in all, I impressed with the service.  It was done with an eye to containing costs, by using existing rail lines which may not run through the most heavily populated areas of the city.  Expansion will most likely occur along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas right of way which is fully abandoned.  Even so, bringing this into service will be cheap in comparison with establishing and building new rights of way if the system is to fully cover the entire city.

The same situation would apply in San Antonio except there are no city owned or abandoned lines available.  The Union Pacific is running profitable freight service to the quarry just outside Loop 1604 near Camp Bullis and delivering millions of tons of coal to the electrical power stations at Elmendorf.  These are the only two remotely possible stub lines.  All the other trackage is Union Pacific owned and operated mainline which carries well in excess of seventy fully loaded, highly profitable, unsubsidized freight trains all day every day.  It is not legal to operate light and heavy trains on the same track at the same time and “bumping” freight service to night hours only is not even remotely possible.  The cost to upgrade existing tracks to passenger standards, complete with signaling and other amenities would be enormous, not to mention the cost of constructing stations and massive parking lots.

The difference between theory and practice is often where Larry and I diverge on this issue.  Wishful thinking is one thing, but as the old army saying goes, amateurs argue about tactics while professionals discuss logistics.  When all is said and down, we could flood the ciy with buses and subsidize the service almost to the point of providing it free for what it would cost to create passenger rail in San Antonio.  There are other “social benefits” that rail brings with it that bus service does not.  However while it’s important to consider more than immediate economics in regards to commuter rail, it’s equally important that we don’t just ignore the numbers in the belief that social engineering, which is what passenger rail proponents principally rely on to make their case, is worth all the money we can throw at it.

            Recently I became involved in an upcoming PBS documentary on the perhaps unlikely subject of the resurgence of olive cultivation in the old “winter garden” areas between Carrizo Springs and Del Rio.  The story is, however, ripe with fascinating perspectives, including the “eat locally produced food” movement, and the original need for a means to transport the crops being grown in the area, which is where I come in, as the only person around who has spent time researching the history of railroads in the area, which has resulted in voluminous amounts of information on the Texas Transportation Museum web site and two locally published books.

            Over the last five years I have made numerous trips to Uvalde which has, over the past 127 years had the services of no less than four different railroads – the Southern Pacific, the Crystal City & Uvalde which was renamed the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf, the Asphalt Belt and the Uvalde & Northern..  Each time I visit the town I learn something new.  When I was there on Friday, the day after the trip by train to Del Rio, I found out exactly how the old SAU&G connected with the SP mainline, plus the exact location of both the SP and SAU&G depots.

            My delight in being invited to be an on camera participant in the documentary should have motivated me to at least try to find out about the railroad in Del Rio as well.  You might be able to understand my discomfort when I could not say for sure exactly when the current masonry depot,  now with a well made, compatible, bus station attached to it, was built.  I certainly knew it was not the original structure, which would have been of wooden construction.  I was in good company.  Representatives of the Del Rio city council, who supplied a bus for our group of eighteen to visit a local olive orchard and grape vinyard, did not know either.  A PBS executive from KLRU in Austin used her iphone to look it up on the web, only to find an absurd site that said not only was the depot the original structure, it was also built in 1876, seven years before the first train arrived.  A city transportation employee, who used to come down to the depot as a girl, and who was able to tell me about the original interior layout of the depot, was able to find a couple of old pictures.  One showed the original depot and the other showed the current structure when it just been completed.  Using the automobiles as a reference, it would appear to have been built in the mid to late 1920s, which is about the same time the entire downtown area was rebuilt, replacing frontier structures with pleasant looking “modern” buildings, to reflect the city’s growing wealth and importance.

            Not wanting to make the same mistake when I go with the film crew to Crystal City, Carrizo Springs and Asherton, I decided to visit these places the following day.  Accompanied by my good friend and avid railroad enthusiast, Fred Bock, the trip was most successful.  Having spent some time in Uvalde itself, we headed south on Highway 83.  Regrettably there did not seem to be anywhere worth stopping to seek information in La Pryor, the first community created by the Crystal City & Uvalde in 1909, but, contrary to the “warnings” given to me in Uvalde, Crystal City was another story.  Following a pleasant tour of the city, where the railroad once ran bold as brass right down the main street, we went to the city library, followed by the immediately adjacent town hall and county court house.  Every community, I have found, has a keeper of the flame, an individual noted for his or her knowledge of local history.  On this occasion, on a late Friday afternoon, the owner of an abstract company was unavailable.  His mother had passed on an unparallelled collection of early local photographs.  Many are on his office walls and even more are on the walls of the local bank.

            By the time we arrived in Carrizo Springs it was raining cats and dogs.  It was also after 5:00 PM and the library was closed.  Nonetheless, we were able to get the measure of the place for a future visit.  In my experience you hardly ever get much on a first visit, but you do get to sow seeds that usually bear handsome fruit on subsequent trips.  The rain let up while we took a break and a snack in the local Dairy Queen, but the sky looked so ominous we decided to forgo a visit to Asherton and, instead, follow the route of the “Sausage,” the nickname given to the SAU&G, eastward towards Pleasanton.  Because the tracks from the main Missouri Pacific line that still run alongside IH 35 were only pulled up in the 1990s, their evidence is still fairly obvious.  The same cannot be said for some of the communities that sprouted briefly along the line.  Some, like Los Angles, were nothing but a motley collection of dilapidated houses and farm buildings.  Others, such as Hindes, were reduced to a mere sign post.  On the other side of the freeway, towards Charlotte and Pleasanton, finding even a trace of the tracks is all but impossible.  They were removed in the early 1950s, some sixty years ago.  Railroads in general are very benign to the environment and the impact of the right of way is easily erased from the landscape.

            I now feel as though I am in better shape to speak knowledgably about this line.  However, several more expeditions to the area, including one to follow the line of the Asherton & Gulf, which connected with the MOPAC mainline a little further south.  I’m keen to see not only Asherton but Caterina, which was developed by Charles Taft, the brother of then President William Taft.  The local hotel which I believe still exists, supposedly has oversize baths to accommodate the chief executive and, later, Supreme Court judge’s well known girth.

            While a lot of filming for the documentary, which will also include a lot of music, some of it played on instruments originally owned by the Richardson family and kept at their grand mansion in Asherton, has been completed, there is still a good amount still to be done.  Some will occur at the Texas Transportation Museum, where a recreation of thousands of people arriving by train during the heyday of land sales will be filmed in late August.  These land rushes were, in fact, one of the last and largest population migrations in US history, attracting would be farmers from all over America and even Europe to sub-divided ranches.  A group of 160 Mennonites came from Ohio in 1910, to settle in a community called Beachy.  Located near Brundage, itself now not much more than an empty crossroads, the land where the community, which was abndoned in 1914, once stood is now part of an oil field.  It is hard to even begin to put yourselves in their shoes, when both the artesian wells and then the rain dried up and their high hopes turned to dust.

            But hope springs eternal and the humble olive, originally cultivated a hundred years ago, is making a major comeback, bringing with it the possibility of a resurgence of sustainable cash crops that are climate and soil appropriate.  It may just turn out that Asher Richardson and other developers, such as Charles Simmons, who built the Artesian Belt RR which put Poteet, Jourdanton and Christine on the map, were just a century ahead of their time.

Augusta Street bridge, San Antonio

My wife and I spent some five hours out and about on our bikes yesterday, heading downtown from our house near Red McCombs Ford outside Loop 410 to the King William district.  Altogether it came to a trip of 22.35 miles, mostly along San Antonio’s old main thoroughfares, San Pedro Avenue and Fredericksburg Road.  We set of around 8:00 AM, when it was only 80 degrees and got back just before 1:00 PM, when it was well over 90.

 The reality is I have all but given up cycling again.  It was not my idea in the first place.  And since, for my wife, cycling is so 2009, our nearly new expensive machines have become, more or less, garage junk.  During the first twelve months I rode just over 20 miles a week.  Most of these were round trips of 24 miles to and from my two jobs.  This year, for several reasons, I am not doing that any more.  Essentially I don’t have the time to extend my commutes from twenty minutes each way to an hour.  Who has two hours to give up just to get to work?  Plus my hours changed at Camp Bullis.  I now quit at 9:00 PM.  Riding at night in any major city is not particularly smart.

 It’s also even more boring than riding during the day.  That is my major issue, truth to tell.  Cycling is just dull hard work.  I’m not the kind of person who marvels at the changing scenery and architecture.  I’m not interested in “raising my performance” as all the bicycle literature is forever exhorting us to do.  Learning how to endure pain in order to go nowhere in particular fractionally faster is a fool’s errand if ever I heard one.

 I did enjoy owning a bike in Aberdeen Scotland.  In fact I did not learn to drive until I was around 26 years old.  But, once I got behind the wheel of an automobile, I found my ability to explore the Grampian countryside an eye opening experience and, before I knew it, my biking days were over.  It was almost a relief when my rather nice touring bike was stolen.

 So, why the trip yesterday?  I am working on adding several additional local transportation history “chapters” on the Texas Transportation Museum web site.  I wanted to take a whole bunch of snaps of roads and bridges to go with the voluminous amount of material I have amassed.  While I could have driven downtown, it occurred to me that going by bicycle would be a lot more convenient plus probably afford a far greater number of photo opportunities.

 I was right, for once.  I was delighted when my wife said she wanted to come along.  Between us we must have taken over four hundred snaps of things like the Augusta Street bridge near the main library and the Arsenal Street bridge in King William, where we encountered tourists on Segways and three wheel bicycles.  The major benefit to digital cameras is that it allows a person to adopt Stalin’s dictum that quantity has a quality all its own.  In other words if you take enough shots one or two are bound to be OK, if only by the law of averages.

 Despite the fact we were pretty wiped out by the time we got back to the house, I am beginning to think there might be a future in using or bicycles in this way in the future.  I can see us taking our bikes and cameras to other towns and just slowly roaming around, making frequent stops and taking a boat load of snaps.

 In conclusion, this was the first time I ever used a bicycle to perform work, as opposed to just getting there.  As an adjunct to spending time in libraries and going through musty records in obscure archives, it has a lot to be said for it.  You can be aware that at the intersection of Fredericksburg Road, and IH10 you have the old railroad to the Hill Country crossing the old main road to the same destination in the shadow of the interstate that has rendered both obsolete, but I don’t think you get to truly appreciate the labor involved any better than when you yourself are providing your own motivation.

UP at TTM

I am delighted to be able to be able to share a positive story about the Union Pacific railroad, an organization which rarely gets much in the way of good press in these parts.  Today the UP came to the rescue at the Texas Transportation Museum here in San Antonio like knights in shining armor.

 Our 1954 Baldwin diesel electric locomotive was suffering from an intractable electrical problem.  The diesel engine was running just fine but somehow the electrical power it was generating was not reaching the electric motors on each of its four axles.  (You could say that the railroads have been using hybrid technology for over seventy years and the automobile industry is only just now catching up if you didn’t know that there actually were hybrids at the very first car show held in New York in 1900.)  Anyhoo, like many electrical system gremlins, this one needed a professional to both find and then fix it.  Our guys, all volunteers, as good as they are, just couldn’t trace the exact point of dysfunction.

 The Texas Transportation Museum is lucky to enjoy a very good relationship with the Union Pacific.  Following the arrival of Brian Gorton in 2005, the UP has been supportive of the museum’s endeavors in a number of significant ways, including the donation of almost half a mile’s worth of “gently” used railroad ties a few years ago.  When our almost sixty year old locomotive needs professional help, when the problem is beyond our amateur skills and facilities, the UP has been kind enough to send over a staff member or two who have yet to fail to get the “4035, an ex-army switcher, back in business.

 What made today a little unusual was that the folks we normally call were unavailable for one reason or another.  So museum curator Jared Davis decided to call the main UP HQ in Omaha, Nebraska.  After a little bit of explaining he was forwarded to staff here in San Antonio.  Before long Robert arrived and began doing his thing.  If you think finding a discontinuity in an automobile is tough, just try doing it on a make and model of a locomotive with which you are totally unfamiliar, one that came out in your grandfather’s time.  So it took a while, over an hour, but, by golly, the job got done.  The problem was in the electrical cabinet within the cab.  It looked just fine, but that’s the thing with electrical connections: the problem can be right before your eyes but totally invisible at the same time.

 So, even though it was midday on a hot Saturday, the Union Pacific came though for us, once again, in spades, just in time for an influx of afternoon visitors.  It was a good day, all in all.  Work to restore the exterior of our burnt out party caboose is almost complete.  Much needed yard work at the garden railroad was done.  A little bit of road maintenance too, to take out a bad bump experienced during the first fire truck ride of the day.  There were around fourteen volunteers all told, and every part of the museum was up and running.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

The main road to Corpus Christi, circa 1910

A wee trip to the coast, a fine way to spend a hot and hazy Sunday.  While I’m still stuck in bachelor mode – decide to go, jump in the car and away – my wife needs, shall, we say, a little more, um, preparation.  Providing my ipod is loaded and charged, I am sorted.  She, on the other hand, loaded our vehicle like the old days when we were carrying a baby.  Blankets, pillows, books, a lap top for heaven’s sake, towels, changes of clothes, the works.

 I chose our route.  Down Highway 181 on the way there and IH 37 on the way back.  The distance is just about the same but I prefer to meander on the way there and haul boogie on the way back.  You get to see more of the small towns and countryside on 181.  It follows the long gone tracks of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, from Elmendorf through Floresville, Poth, Falls City, Karnes City, Kenedy, Beeville, Skidmore, Sinton, Gregory and Portland before crossing the causeway to Corpus Christi.  Each of these communities was created by the railroad back in the 1880s.

 IH 37 follows, more or less, the route of the old San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf.  Finished in 1914, the last railroad built in our area, this railroad, too, helped found a few towns and move a few county seats, but they lack the charm of the earlier era.  No more squares and handsome civic buildings, unless you count George West.  Just utilitarian structures strung along the old main drag, now rendered obsolete by the interstate.  From experience, many of these places look better at 3 AM than they do at 3 PM.  Here you set cruise control and barrel through nondescript landscape.  These are miles to be endured, not savored.

 Some years ago a friend and I did the same route far more thoroughly, doing our best to find every remaining trace of the old SA & AP.  Like most local railroad enthusiasts, to him the SAU&G, often refereed to as the “Sausage,” is just chopped liver, a Johnny Come Latelyupstart.  The fact that the “SAP” was a failure in every measurable way somehow adds, apparently, to its romantic allure.  I was obliged to go solo through Three Rivers, Campbelton and Pleasanton on another day.  And it isn’t chasing ghosts either.  The “Sausage” is alive and well and was part of the reason the Toyota factory is where it is.

 Click this link for the web pages referring to these ventures

 http://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/RAMBLE2.htm

 Going to the coast a hundred years ago would have be a fine trip indeed, requiring an overnight stay if you wanted to get the most benefit out of it.  Arriving at the station early in the morning to ride in cars without air-conditioning for seven hours would make a person appreciate the shore all the more.  Of course Corpus Christi was a different place then.  No deep water port and vulgarly intrusive freeway slashing its way through the heart of the old town, of which most traces have gone, perhaps as a result of storms, who knows.  Now you can leave the parking lot at the Lexington and be home in less than two and a half hours without breaking any laws, carrying enough baggage to fill the old aircraft carrier, in comfortable A/C, and listening to your own personal play list.  It’s a good trade.

Here is a link to a set of snaps taken at the recent fourth annual Ford Model T Show here in San Antonio.  It is a joint project with the local Model T club, the “T Fords of Texas,“ and sponsored by the Red McCombs Automotive group.

http://www.txtransportationmuseum.org/WE.htm

 It was during this event that I arrived at the surprisingly conclusion that all  Ts are divas.  That’s why they are still here.  Someone was just too crazy about each one to let it go.  So far this year I have had the pleasure of touring both Medina and Caldwell Counties in this persnickety old machines and I fully understand the devotion.  Now all I have to do is get the one I am looking after for future generations to run right!  Having said that she did come through in spades during the Flambeau Parade, so she makes all the effort worthwhile!

            Even in the desert, I was spoiled rotten.  Not only did Anton magnanimously drive most of the time during our explorations of the vast wilderness, so I could take in all the glories of the area’s varied terrains and peaks, he is also, of all things, an avid outdoor cook, so much so he is a busy member of the Lone Star Dutch Oven Society.  Suffice it to say, we ate well!

            Exactly what I brought to the party is a pertinant question.  A good knowledge of the transportation history of the area, such as the first, failed, attempt by the Texas Rangers, under the leadership of Jack Hayes, to reach El Paso from San Antonio in 1847.  They got as far as, you might possibly guess, Big Bend.  Seeing the area up close for the first time you could certainly understand their decision, forced upon them by lack of provisions and water, to turn around.  A smaller army expedition finally made it in 1849 which led, inexorably to the establishment of a ten fort network to safeguard future travelers and settlers and, in 1850, the largest wagon train in US history, which set out to populate El Paso.

            One of the many, many wonderful stops we made along the way was to Fort Davis, named after, surprisingly, Jefferson Davis, of some repute, but who was then Secretary of War at the Federal level.  Though I have read much about such establishments, it was an eye opener indeed to actually visit one.  The visitor center and gift shop is in one of the old enlisted men’s barracks, a building which was in severely dilapidated condition in 1961 when the National Park Service was given responsibility for the old fort, which never actually had a barricade wall of any kind around it, even of wood.

            I had only been west of Kerville on IH 10 once before, twenty years ago in October, on a road trip from San Antonio to San Francisco via Los Angeles with the wonderful person to whom I have the good fortune to be still married.  When I worked for the Union Pacific in 2003 as a crew driver, I don’t think I even went as far as Del Rio on HWY 90 more than twice.  There is a midway point – I forget the name of the town – where I would meet a van based in Del Rio to swap east and west bound crews but even then it was rare to go that far.

               Actually, and I don’t know why I almost forgot, both Anton and I went to a ranch south of Ozona in Val Verde County just one week earlier, to retrieve a 1929 Dodge Victory Six four door sedan that had been sitting in a barn since 1957.  With its flat tires, it took almst two hours to load the remains on a trailer, and the rubber roof blew away during its first time ever on a freeway – IH 10 was not complted in this area until the mid 1970s.  Maybe heading west could be becoming a habit.

            The park itself lives up to its dramatic billing.  Though this is not the peak visitor season, which is the spring, there were a good number of visitors, though never to the point of feeling in any way crowded.  The mountain ranges and the Rio Grande are something that every Texan should see up close and personal at least once in his or her lifetime.  And, of course, you cannot do it all in one visit, so a repeat visit at a cooler time is something I contemplate with enthusiasm.  To sit in the Hot Springs immediately beside the river on a cool evening would just about make the entire 1,350 mile round trip worthwhile in and of itself.

            A better vehicle for going off road  than a Dodge Caravan would be wonderful as well, providing it could match the 24.8 MPG we achieved over the four days.  There are Jeep Tours to be had from an outfit in Study Butte but these were fully booked when we were there, so booking in advance would be a good idea.

            I can neither confirm nor deny if either of us happened to wade a little too far over the Rio Not So Grande and end up in Mexico.  However I can say, as a twenty year resident, that the USA, and Texas, in all its multi-faceted glory, still look wonderful to this furr’ner.