Texas is the Rail Thing
by Jesse Mullins

There's nothing like starting off a big road trip with a ginormously large meal. You'll remember from the last tour we made of Texas (Jan./Feb. '06) how we started by consuming more barbecue than anyone should ever have thought of attempting. So let's get eating. We're in our starting point, Houston, and this place is called The Taste of Texas. A good place for doing a really big, fine steak. I'm with Holly, editorial daughter and relief driver, who is doing duty as traveling companion, but for now we're doing supper, and in the grand manner. The walls proudly display the six flags of Texas. In the butcher case in the back, you can brand your own steak. Don't think of making reservations-they don't take 'em. Just take the opportunity to get neighborly with your fellow diners-in-waiting.

So as we size up these huge cuts of certified Angus Beef-big enough that they lop over the edges of the plate-let's uncork the game plan for this tour of the Lone Star State.

The idea-as always in our travel forays-is to experience not just the general appeal of a region or route but also its heritage, and in particular its cowboy and Old West distinctiveness. We've traversed Texas a number of ways, exploring varied themes, but never have we given prominence to a region's railroad character. And if railroads- particularly railroads with great Old West legacies-are the ticket, then for Texas there's one that stands supreme. That would be the old MKT-Missouri, Kansas, and Texas-better known by its nickname, the Katy

Coastal Complications

It's morning and we've got the F-150 pointed west as we soon roll into the town of Katy, monikered after the M-K-T's nickname. There's a Katy depot here, and the pride that is reflected in its spiffy appearance is a motif we will see at other stops along our route.

This is a road trip and as such it affords an editor a perfect occasion for catching up on the newest country-Western music-making. I had grabbed some still-wrapped CDs before leaving home. There was one that Bobby Newton at Rope Burns had told me was "must" listening. In fact, he had introduced me to the artist himself at the AWA Awards in September. Todd Fritsch. At that busy event we talked for all of two minutes, and as Todd was headed out onto stage, he remarked that just that morning he'd been out feeding cows.

Okay, what kind of an album will I be listening to if the guy is still doing stints feeding cows? But we need some Texas music to have a proper Texas feel to this trip, and at least Todd's a Texan. Holly pops it in the CD player and up comes "I've Got Mexico," Eddie Raven's great old hit, so at least the guy's got taste. We'll see. We'll see. Sealy has signs saying "Welcome to Sealy, Home of Eric Dickerson." The Sealy Tigers must've been hard on the competition with a future NFL Hall-of-Famer in the backfield.

It's flat, flat, flat on this road that goes to Flatonia. Let's be honest. Slicing through this rice country, we're marking some time. Mr. Fritsch and his band are warming to their task. Not so bad, really.

Thus far it's been interstate and interstates are, oh, okay. But soon things get interesting again. We've hit our jumping off point. Our pre-trip advisor said to lose I-10 when we strike Columbus, and there head northwest on Hwy. 71, which we're doing.

Columbus was fun. The courthouse square is lined on all four sides by magnolia trees. To get a shot of the "second largest live oak tree in Texas," one has to stand half a block away from it. Where else but in Texas, where bigness is, well, big, would second-biggest-ness be big too?

Turning Upland

From here we follow the valley of the Colorado River, and one particular branch of the Katy (which was merged into the Union Pacific in 1989-and remains that). This region, known for its undulating valleys, is some of the prettiest country in south-central Texas.

There is someone in the truck who would happily eat at McDonald's, but there'll be none of that-not just because this is a cowboy trip but because we're well beyond McDonald's reach in these parts. We were told to try the kolaches at Hruska's grocery store in Ellinger. They're great. After Ellinger we see pine trees. The road is more serpentine now, paralleling the Colorado, dipping and ducking around.

The Alamo

So next we're in the back yard and there's a patio get-together going on and Jeff Kubizek, who lives here, tells me that the caboose- which has been landscaped into the yard, with shrubbery all around it-is to be turned into a bed-and-breakfast, with a Katy theme, of course. Jeff is the grandson of a Katy lifer. Lonnie Yanzey worked for the line for 50 years. "He took the last passenger train out of Smithville-it was the Bluebonnet," Jeff remarks as we step into the caboose and inspect its interior. There's a woodburning stove. Katy memorabilia on the walls. They (Jeff and his fiancée Nancy and his family) have completely gutted the interior and restored it. Replaced all the siding outside. It's a beauty. And it's not even the only backyard caboose in this small town. "You should see Bruce Blaylock's," he says.

A Burlington Northern locomotive idles blusteringly at the head of a freight train aimed north, sitting on tracks between LaGrange and Smithville.

North of Elgin, on the way to Taylor, the trees yield more to grassland. We're on what the road signs call "The Texas Brazos Trail." (See our box at the end for websites.) We've been on sections of the Texas Independence Trail, and before we're done we'll see part of the Texas Forts Trail and the Texas Lakes Trail. Past Taylor we cross the San Gabriel River.

Georgetown is a worthwhile stop, off to the west, but we're pressing north. This is farmland, post-harvest-time. Loads of cotton out in the fields await transport, shaped in semitrailer- sized piles and covered with yellow tarps. Little tufts of cotton are strewn up and down the highway, like rice on the sidewalk after a wedding.

These towns out here have a pace all their own. And a culture and voice of their own. As Todd tells us,
It's a place there on your dial that's just a little hard to find It'll always entertain for free if you ain't got a dime It's more than just a tower in that old field up the road Oh Lord I hope we never lose that small town radio.

At Holland, we take 2268 west to Salado. Antiques are big in this historic community, rich in nostalgia and local culture. Quarried limestone walkways line the street.

We're upstairs in the Stagecoach Inn, established 1861, and an employee is having a late lunch as we nose around the place. She jerks her thumb behind her, in the direction of the balcony. "Sam Houston." she began, as she took a bite, and the name got my attention, "gave a famous anti-secessionist speech out there." Pointing to the corner to her left, she adds that "a 99-year-old woman came in here once and said she had had tuberculosis when she was three and she was kept in that corner, quarantined in a small space, for three months."

Custer was here. So was Shanghai Pierce and Charles Goodnight. The building, expanded from its original configuration, wraps around a giant burr oak tree that now rises up through a little patio enclosed on all four sides but open to the sky. Miss Sherman, a well known person hereabouts, tells us that the tree is more than 600 years old.

Temple has the Historic Railroad and Pioneer Museum, where you can see actual steam engine trains. In Waco we find the Official Texas Rangers Museum. Housed in a long-time regional office of the Rangers, it is well worth seeing. We also visited the fine Dr. Pepper Museum, housed in the facility where the beverage was made in its earliest days. The Waco Suspension Bridge (see our opening photo) is a point of local interest and in fact there are seven museums of some import in this college town (Baylor University), so Waco has more than its share of culture.

More railroad cars here, and a lot of that nostalgic old-time beauty to the place. The town is also home to "the oldest Czech bakery in West Texas." Now, does that mean West, Texas, or West Texas?

Hillsboro brings the only traffic jam of the whole trip. This town has the look of a place that has really grown.

On the CD we're jamming now. It's gone honky tonk on us. Where did this guy find these pickers and sidemen? They rock. Sing it, Todd!

Memory, do your thing Paint me a picture in a lovin' color of how it used to be And bring her back to me Come on memory, do your thing

Riding on this vibe we truck on towards the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Best bet for Western culture is bearing west, taking I-35 West, where the interstate splits, and routing yourself through Fort Worth, the most Western-culture-saturated city in these parts and maybe in all the West. For train culture, see the National Stockyards, where the Tarantula steam locomotive still makes daily runs, going to Grapevine, Texas, another fine stop.

From here it's "lake country" on to the top of the state. Going up Hwy. 377 I'm reminded of the time I took this road past Lake Ray Roberts and I saw a mink whipsaw across the road.

Our final stop comes in Denison. There, at the Red River Railroad Museum, which is housed in the former headquarters of the Katy Line, a retired Katy employee named Delbert Taylor gives us the grand tour. It's one of the better Katy collections we'll see.

Railroad Barbecue in Kyle.

Part II

This log cabin stands at the Confederate Memorial Museum and Cemetery near Atoka, OK.

If performer Todd Fritsch makes the proper soundtrack material for a waltz across Texas (see foregoing article), then surely a CD by Carrie Underwood, a proud Oklahoman and the 2005 American Idol, makes fitting traveling music for a foray through the Sooner State.

So as we roll right across the Red River, leaving Texas for Okie country, we stay right on the path of the historic Katy Railroad, seeing what lies in the lands once served and even settled by that line with roots reaching into the Old West. In Oklahoma, the route is an easy one to trace. That Highway 69 that Carrie Underwood mentions in song happens quite conveniently to follow the route of the Katy Line, a trail that we have followed from Houston north.

It'll take us on an interesting swath. The eastern half of Oklahoma has more trees, more variety to the terrain, and every bit as much history as the grassier, more windswept western half. In Old West days, this land was more embattled, whether by Civil War strife or the banditry that caused it to be scorned as someplace "West of Hell's Fringe," a reference to the lawlessness that existed west of the Arkansas border.

Anyone taking this trip needs to make Denison, Texas, their first stop, because the Red River Railroad Museum is there, and it's a scant five miles from Oklahoma.

From there, going north, you'll be startled by the sprawling complex that is the Choctaw Casino Resort, perched just beyond the Texas line, like other casinos in Oklahoma and Louisiana. It's like a town unto itself, being an island of glimmering new structures plunked down in rural isolation. In passing, we spotted a steakhouse and a Choctaw Western Wear Store.

We've passed just east of Lake Texoma, the best striped bass lake in the nation-I've boated some of those myself, there. Durant, the first town we encounter of any size, is the Magnolia Capital of Oklahoma.

Between Durant and Atoka, the farmland yields to woods, and this being November we're seeing more colors here than we saw in Texas, though Oklahoma's post oak and blackjack forests are more uniformly hued than the Eastern states' punchier scarlets, yellows, and oranges. Here foliage runs more to dusky tones-umbers, siennas, and sepias, punctuated only rarely with a splash of red sumac or yellow cottonwood. But it has a beauty all its own, a mutedness that seems made for the softer sunlight of winter. We pass an old salvage yard full of junkers, each so rusted that they almost disappear against the russet tones of the surrounding boughs.

We tour Atoka's Confederate Memorial Museum and Cemetery, a serene but somehow haunting patch of ground on the banks of the Middle Boggy River. Some 90 Rebs fell here, ambushed by a much larger Union force. The grounds showcase some period structures.

Near Stringtown we catch the western edge of the Ouachita Mountains, looking pretty in their fall foliage, with limestone outcrops showing.

At McAlester, be sure to take the Business Route 69 through town, to see the historic district. McAlester is known for its state prison and its Prison Rodeo. As a boy I heard about it often. One event had the inmates trying to grab a dollar bill from the horns of an ornery bull. They still do it-for $100 now-along with other rodeo events here every August.

Further north is Lake Eufaula, a huge impoundment. On a sandspit in the lake, a flock of gulls blanket the ground, turning it nearly white. We're closer to Checotah, Carrie Underwood country, and a place.

No, but we are. Just arrived. And as we head for the town's restored 1890 Katy Depot, the radio tips us off that Carrie is in the neighborhood. She's to sing that night just up the road at "T-Town" (they mean Tulsa), where Underwood has sold out the massive Expo Center.

At Muskogee, the Five Civilized Tribes Museum is one of the best bets. I can't think of Muskogee without thinking of the great lawman Bud Ledbetter, one of those marshals who cleaned up Hell's Fringe. My grandmother Clem, who lived in these parts as early as 1905, remarked that "Bud Ledbetter was the law in Muskogee."

From this town a branch of the Katy ran up to Tulsa and on past to Sand Springs. Several of my relatives are buried in that shady hillside cemetery in Sand Springs. With Wagoner comes Fort Gibson Reservoir, a great recreational lake.

Choteau, the next main town, has an Amish influence. Then we're at Pryor, and looking for something to eat. The fellow at the gas pump at the Kum-and-Go said the place to hit is the barbecue joint called J.L.'s Restaurant, which we'd seen coming in, so we backtracked to that.

The aroma hits you as soon as you enter. I ask my traveling companion, "What will you have?"

I'm going to get down with some of those ribs," says the editorial daughter. An employee tells us that the place has a national reputation. The barbecue tastes national enough to us. This is a place where John Wayne's portrait adorns the wall not once but twice. I'd say that's a good sign. In his travel book Blue Highways, author William Least Heat Moon had his own system for predicting café food quality.

Noticing that some eateries rely on wall calendars as their primary décor, he surmised that this tracked right along with food quality, and he devised this rating system:

No Calendar: Same as an interstate truck stop One Calendar: Pre-processed food assembled in New Jersey Two Calendars: Only if fish trophies are present Three Calendars: Can't miss on the farmboy breakfasts Four Calendars: Try the ho-made pie, too Five Calendars: Keep it under your hat or they'll franchise.

I'm going to stick my neck out, and I think my daughter is with me here, in saying that two John Waynes trump five calendars. We'll not stop researching, though.

Onward. Big Cabin is "the Hay Capital of the World." (Does hay have a reputation that goes beyond a nation's shores? Even the Magnolia Capital did not presume as much.) But the sign explains the heavy traffic of hay trucks we've seen.

From Vinita one can follow the signs to the Cabin Creek Battlefield, where Confederate General Stand Watie, the highest- ranking Indian in the Civil War, defeated and captured a mammoth mule train of supplies bound for Union positions. There were 130 wagons and some 700 mules.

We had to drive some 15 miles out of our way, but this was for me the most interesting spot on the trip. There was no big reception, to be sure. No visitor's center, no building, no parking lot-nothing but a place in a country grove where polished marble markers showed where the positions were. No people-we were alone there.

I learned long ago from my dad that the way to appreciate a historical site is to imagine the scene before you as it must have looked at the time of the incident, and to picture the incident unfolding there before your eyes. Here it is especially easy to do. The Union defensive positions are all at the edge of a precipice. Behind them the land fell away sharply to Big Cabin Creek. The markers of the attack positions suggest that the train was driven to that point and that there, not daring to retreat any further, the defenders died-and/or scattered?-as the onslaught came on. The site was not much larger than a football field.

Backtracking to Vinita, we find ourselves on one of the best-preserved stretches of historic Route 66, aka The Mother Road. It squires us through town, right past the famed Clanton Café (does it have 5 calendars?), with its enormous EAT sign.

We've not given up Hwy. 69. The two roads simply merged a ways. I've realized that Hwy. 69 is, like 66, and like the Katy Railroad, a road with a personality. Maybe not so famous a personality, but a personality nonetheless. It is a road that does the job the Katy once did. It services this part of America. Maybe not quite the same way, or as colorfully, but still it does. It is sad to think that so many rail systems have been torn up in America. In Denison, museum manager Delbert Taylor told me that the irony is that the rail business now is booming. or it would be, if rail systems had the carrying capacity to handle what industry wants to throw at them. But so many railroads are gone, and so many trains are gone.

Miami, Oklahoma, is our last stop. We're nearly at the Kansas and Missouri state lines. After a night here, we say good-bye to our jaunt with a last flourish-breakfast on Main Street, at a place called Buttered Bunn's' (why the two apostrophes?) Café.

This is the only place I have seen that has chicken fried steak (with eggs) on the breakfast menu. There's a big screen television, but you can hardly hear it above the clatter and chatter. On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol is discussing the day's events with Chris Wallace and Juan Williams. Can't hear 'em but it has to be about the midterm election results.

We learn from a greeter that this familyrun place is less than a week old. "The town needed a place like this," he said. I'd say they need some calendars. As we're rising to leave, the show cuts to a station break, but first gives us an "on this day in history" moment. The on-this-day is Nov. 19.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

It was, of course, a speech written on a train.

Things change-yes they do. Sometimes one wonders if they always change for the best.

See eastern Oklahoma. You'll get a taste of new and old. If you pick your spots well enough, maybe even some tastes in the upper-calendar range.

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