Postcard From Goodnight, Texas

The road to Goodnight Cemetery

Sometimes you come across something on a road trip that is so unexpected, just so "right," that you have to stop and be grateful you are there at that particular moment in time. Goodnight, Texas, a near ghost town on Highway 287 on the edge of the Llano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle presented just such a welcome encounter.

The town was founded by Charles Goodnight who began a ranch here in 1887. The very next year, the railroad laid tracks and opened a station and soon, enough folks were around that a post office was established. A school was opened in 1889 and Charles and his wife, Mary Ann, established the Goodnight College in 1898.

By the time of his death at age 93 in late 1929, Charles had grown his ranch into a successful business, established a herd of buffalo (now the official Texas State Bison Herd) which preserved the animal from extinction, and was the dominant force behind the town which had grown to 300 residents and 9 business establishments. In 1940 though, Claude, another town down the road a bit, began to emerge as the county's business center and Goodnight began to fade. In 1963, the population had dropped to 50 when the movie "Hud," starring Paul Newman, was filmed there. Despite the popularity of the film, Goodnight continued to decline until the closing of the post office in 1969 when there were only 25 residents left. At the time of our visit, the town was virtually deserted and the population in the surrounding area was estimated to be less than 15.  

Entrance to Goodnight Cemetery

The reason for a visit to Goodnight wasn't to see where the town had been though, it was to visit the Goodnight Cemetery where Charles Goodnight is buried. Mr. Goodnight is one of those guys I've read a lot about, a sort of hero to me if you will, and I wanted to pay my respects. A true cowboy with few equals, he was actually born in Illinois, but came to Texas at the age of 10 and always claimed that Texas made him the man he was. A noted plainsman, Indian and Mexican bandit fighter, Texas Ranger, and cattleman, he and his partner Oliver Loving established the Goodnight - Loving trail over which thousands of longhorn cattle were driven to markets in the west. The true life exploits of Goodnight and Loving were so remarkable that Larry McMurtry based his award winning book, Lonesome Dove, on them. It has been proclaimed by some as the best western ever written and the TV mini-series made from the book starring Robert Duval (his character Gus McCrea was based on Loving) and Tommy Lee Jones (his character Woodrow Call was based on Goodnight) won 2 Golden Globes as well as 16 other awards.

Fenced in only by barbed wire, you can see for miles around.

The site of Goodnight and especially the cemetery are located in the middle of nowhere. You won't get there unless you are going there. I was glad I had found the coordinates to put into my GPS before trying to find it. Nestled among the low, gently undulating plains in the emptiness of the Texas Panhandle, it was somewhat surprising to find the cemetery to be fenced and well-kept. Even though it was small, it contained more graves than there are people living in the area. With just a soft blowing breeze, there were no sounds and no people as far as the eyes could see to disturb our cemetery exploring. It was very peaceful and very serene. Here you just naturally talk very little and when you do, you speak in whispers. Spending over an hour walking around, only one pickup truck was barely heard and barely seen driving down the road hundreds of yards away. In my travels over the years and with my interest in cemeteries, I've seen and explored a good number of them. Without question, this was one of the most tranquil I've ever come across. When it's my time to be laid in the ground, this would certainly fit the bill for my peaceful slumber.

Dozens of bandana's left in respect for Charles Goodnight.

The grave of Charles Goodnight and his family are very prominent. Right next to the single dirt road in the cemetery, the large plot is fenced and the headstones are larger than any others. What makes it stand out though are the dozens of bandana's tied on the fence that visiting cowboys have respectively left. There are a few other personal items left, some attached to the fence, some left on the ground, but the bandana's fluttering in the breeze is very touching and somehow humbling. These were symbols of respect from individual cowboys to one of the kings of cowboys.

I didn't grow up on a ranch, I've never rode a horse from sunup to sundown, I've never roped anything, I've never branded a steer or driven a herd of cattle, but I'm convinced I did in a former life. And I am a native-born Texan with a bandana and a love of wide-open spaces and freedom. I didn't have my one pitiful little-old bandana with me because I didn't know and didn't think about it. But I'll go back to the Goodnight cemetery one of these days, God willing and the creek don't rise, and I'll tie my bandana to the fence around Charles Goodnight's grave. A symbol of respect from a wistful wanna-be cowboy to a true cowboy. RIP, sir.

Plenty of room for those who want to rest away
from any others.

The quiet resting place of a military veteran.

A cowboy's grave

Lonely windmill in Goodnight, Texas

Mistletoe

In Norse mythology, Mistletoe was the sacred plant of Frigga, the goddess of love and the mother of the sun god, Balder. One night Balder had a dream, a terrible nightmare of his own death. Of course this greatly alarmed his mother since she loved him as any normal mother loves a son, but also because if he should die, the sun would go dark and all life on earth would end.

In an attempt to keep this from happening, Frigga went to air, fire, water, earth, and every animal and plant seeking a promise that no harm would come to her son. All agreed so now she knew Balder could not be hurt by anything on the earth or under the earth. But Balder had one powerful enemy, Loki, god of evil and he knew of the only plant Frigga had overlooked in her quest to keep her son safe. It did not grow on top of the earth nor under the earth, but on apple and oak tree limbs. It was the lowly mistletoe. So Loki made an arrow tip of the mistletoe and shot it, striking Balder dead.

The sky paled and all things in earth and heaven wept for the sun god. For three days each element tried to bring Balder back to life. Frigga, the goddess, his mother, finally restored him. The tears of joy she shed when he awoke turned into the pearly white berries on the mistletoe plant. In her happiness, Frigga kissed everyone who passed beneath the tree on which the mistletoe grew. And so it was that a decree was made throughout the land that whoever should stand under the mistletoe, no harm should befall them, only a kiss, a token of love.



Click for another Christmas Tale.

 

How Do You Move Grandma's House?

You never know what you might see on a road trip. While passing through Edgewood, a small, rural East Texas town, my road trip partner and I found our road temporarily closed. The police officer whose car had the road blocked told us it would only last a few minutes. Being an early Saturday morning, there was nobody else around and we were the only ones inconvenienced so we decided to just pull over, park, grab a Dr. Pepper from the ice chest in the back seat & see what was going on.

A couple of minutes later we found out why the road was closed as a big old house came rolling into view from a small side street. "Hey," I said to my buddy, "you see that? Is that a house coming down the road?" Then we noticed a couple of guys riding on the top of the house's roof! What the heck?

As they very slowly came to the intersection, we saw why. The peak of the roof was taller than the utility lines slung across the road. No problem for some good-old country boys though.

And this is how you move Grandma's house through small-town U.S.A.

 

 

Well done, guys!

 

The Death of President John F. Kennedy

Dealey Plaza Historical Marker

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It happened in Dallas, Texas, a fact that has haunted, saddened, and unfairly shamed Dallas as the media began repeatedly calling it "the city of hate" and "the place where Camelot died."

In the immediate aftermath of that horrible Friday, it was easy to forget that thousands of Dallas residents snuck out from work and skipped school to line the motorcade route to see and cheer the president and the First Lady. One national magazine called it "the most enthusiastic reception accorded President Kennedy in his three years in office." Nearing the end of the route, Nellie, the wife of Texas Governor John Connally who was riding in the front seat of the limo turned to the president and said the last words ever spoken to him, "Mr. President, you certainly can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.” Those words still haunt Dallas because all of the southern hospitality, all of the welcome shown on that day, was forever destroyed in the next 3 seconds, the time it took for a disturbed madman to fire 3 shots from his $19.95 rifle.

The view of the end of the motorcade route
where President Kennedy was shot

It's been over 50 years, and many younger Americans don't know Kennedy was shot in Dallas. Many have no idea who Oswald was. It may not be ancient history yet, but it is finally just another historical fact to most. Of course, to those of us who were born and raised in Dallas, to those of us who looked upon President Kennedy as our hero and the leader of our generation, to those of us who were there that day, it's not really history yet. It still saddens us. We haven't forgotten.

Looking back on the route toward the School Book
Depository building where Oswald fired the
fatal shots.

The "X" in the street marks the place where the
limousine was when the president was shot.

View from the "grassy knoll" with the School Book
building in the background on the left

School Book Depository Building. Oswald shot
from the 6th floor, 2nd window from the right.

    

Historical marker on the School
Book Depository Building. A
museum is now on the 6th floor.

The Dealey Plaza overlook parking lot. On the left
behind this fence is where the rumored "
2nd gunman" also fired shots.

 

Postcard from the Cowboy Cemetery

The two men worked for W. G. S. Hughes and his wife, Sarah. They were riding to fix a broken section of fence on the remote central Texas ranch when they found him. When they found his body anyway. Nobody knew his name or where he came from. He had no wallet, no papers, nothing to tell who he was. He had been shot once in the chest and now he lay dead under a large oak tree, his un-branded horse quietly grazing just a few feet away. The men buried him where he lay, a flat rock placed at the head of the shallow grave. It would be the only mark of his passing. If he had friends or family they would never know what happened to him, but this lonesome, wandering cowboy would have a cemetery named in his remembrance.

Later, in 1882, W.G.S. and Sarah's 4-year-old son, William, died and they donated 2 acres of their ranch at the cowboy's burial spot, 1 acre for a cemetery and 1 acre for a school. They named the burial ground Cowboy Cemetery after the unknown cowboy buried there, and the school became  the Cowboy School. Within a few years the population on the surrounding ranches had grown enough that dances were being held in the school building and a post office was opened. The building and cemetery became the focal point of the area and unofficially became known as Cowboy Town.

In 1930, with the need for a larger building and more teachers, the Cowboy School merged with the Rochelle school and the post office was eliminated. In 1932, Sarah took back the 1 acre where the school building had been and in turn donated another 33.5 acres around the cemetery which had run out of space for additional burials. A committee, called the Cowboy Cemetery Association, was formed to oversee the maintenance and operation of the cemetery.

Today, Cowboy Cemetery contains the graves of Mr. & Mrs. Hughes, their four children and numerous family members as well as many of the original settlers of the area and their descendants. The large number of graves for babies and young children indicate just how hard life was on this Texas prairie in the 1800's. Also buried here is Texas Border Patrol Agent Jefferson Barr who was killed by drug smugglers on the Texas border in 1996.

Cowboy Cemetery is one of the most pleasant, well-maintained cemeteries in all of rural Texas. Inside the rock fence enclosure is a small chapel and a working windmill which furnishes water for the many lantana bushes and trees. Of the 375 graves, 347 are identified. One of the unidentified is that lonesome cowboy whose name was never known and whose grave is now lost as well.
 

Postcard From Dead Horse Point

Yes, that is droppings from an obviously live horse at the
entrance to Dead Horse Point Park. Sometimes you find
the picture and sometimes the picture finds you.

32 miles outside of Moab, Utah is Dead Horse Point State Park. The park is 5,362 acres of isolated high desert with breathtaking views overlooking Canyonlands National Park and the Colorado River. The view from Dead Horse Point is one of the most photographed in the world and was used in the movie Thelma and Louis as the spot where they drove over the edge of the Grand Canyon instead of filming the actual Grand Canyon as the view was more spectacular.

From the lookout point at the end of a narrow neck of land, you can see layers of ground representing 300 million years of earth's history. Look down the vertical walls of rock to the valley floor over 2,000 feet down. From the same spot you can look out and see the snow topped La Sal Mountains rising 12,000 feet.

In the 1800's, cowboys used this narrow finger of land sticking out over the valley for capturing wild horses. Fanning out in a u-shape, they would chase the animals onto the point and then block off any escape by piling up brush & dead tree's across the narrow neck of the plateau which is only 30 yards wide. This formed a 40-acre natural corral and the cowboys could then cull out the best horses for breaking and eventual ranch use. The old, young and small-in-stature mustangs (called "broomtails") would be left behind to find their way back into the wild.

The Colorado River 2,000 feet below the point

In the late 1800's, a large herd of wild horses were driven to the point and the "gate" of brush and dead tree's was put in place. For some unknown reason, several hundred horses were trapped on the point and kept circling and circling until they died of thirst. They could see the Colorado River with its life-sustaining water, but it was 2,000 feet straight down. Nobody seems to know the reason the horses were trapped - some say a sudden storm came up causing the cowboys to leave with the intention of coming back but for some reason never did; some say the cowboys got lazy, left only a narrow path through the "gate" when they departed and the remaining horses became confused and couldn't find the small opening. Whatever the reason, the name "Dead Horse Point" came about when several riders found hundreds of horse skeletons on the waterless point of the plateau, scattered in and about a large circle of hardened ground where they kept on the move looking for a way to get to the water until, one by one, they fell exhausted and died.

   

Postcard From Utah

One of my favorite roads in Utah

Having traveled in every state in the U.S. except Alaska (on my bucket list), other than my native Texas, one of my favorite places is Utah. The 10th least densely populated state, it is home to only about 3 million folks and the vast majority of those reside in and around Salt Lake City. That leaves the rest of the state to small towns, open spaces and long stretches of road winding through some of the most wild an beautiful landscape you will ever see.

While Utah has the wooded mountains of the Wasatch Range and the Unita Mountains with their snow-capped peaks rising over 13,500', the region I prefer is the scenic southern and southeastern area's with its rugged, stark landscapes of weathered sandstone. Here is where National Parks such as Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef and Zion can be found. There are also numerous state parks such as Dead Horse Point and Monument Valley.

Best of all are the seemingly hundreds of remote hiking trails where you can go for hours without seeing another person; where you can be awed and totally transfixed by the power of nature and its beauty; where you can be standing in a shallow, gurgling stream of crystal clear water in between two sheer canyon walls rising hundreds of feet and feel  as if you are nothing more than a little ant lucky to live on this amazing planet. You don't need to go to a huge, beautiful but impersonal cathedral with stained-glass windows and it doesn't have to be on a Sunday morning, stop and look, stop and listen, this is where you meet God.



Hoodoos (also called Fairy Chimneys) in
Bryce Canyon National Park

The start of another great day...

...and the end of one.

 

Big Bo Head

On one of my little road trips, I found myself rather aimlessly driving south out of Mount Pleasant, Texas on Highway 271. It was a good day for aimless driving on backroads - late spring before the heat becomes uncomfortable for even us native Texans, just me in the pickup singing along to music I grew up with (songs the middle-age adults call "Oldies, but goodies" and the teenagers call "old timey stuff") and raising an index finger in greeting to the few oncoming cars I encountered. You never know what you might find when you drive off the interstate, but I was still a bit surprised when I starting seeing numerous poultry processing buildings, but no chickens to go with them. Just a few more miles down the road and before hitting the town limit signs for Pittsburg, I came upon a large, white-columned pavilion topped off with the bust of a man wearing a big, black Pilgrim hat complete with a buckle. I knew right away what I had stumbled upon - the headquarters for Pilgrim's Pride, the largest producer of chickens in America.
 
Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim and his brother Aubrey, started Pilgrim's Pride in 1946 as a feed store right there in little Pittsburg, Texas, population just a bit over 4,400. One of the brother's successful gimmicks was to give a live baby chick with every order of feed. The local farmers and children loved the free chickens, which were very cheap to provide, and to raise them required feed. In effect, the more cheap baby chickens they gave away, the more higher-profit feed they sold.

Bo capitalized on his last name by wearing his signature Pilgrim's hat wherever he made an appearance. As he became more famous through personal appearances and TV advertising, Pilgrim's Pride became larger and larger. Eventually they became the supplier of chickens and chicken parts to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy's, Wal-Mart, and Publix among many other large sellers to the public. There are now about 38,000 employees selling 36 million chickens each and every week. In a year's time, Pilgrim's Pride provides 9.5 billion pounds of live chickens which earns the company over $8.1 billion per year. Not bad for a little small-town feed store!
 
In the pavilion under the 37-foot tall Bo head is another sculpture depicting a younger Bo Pilgrim seated on a bench reading his Bible. Scattered around on one end of the bench are "Good News For Modern Man" pamphlets which the devoutly religious Bo has had printed in many different languages and distributed around the world. The Bo statue holds his Bible and is reading the five loaves and the two fishes story from the Book of Luke. On the other end of the bench is a statue of Bo's pet chicken, Henrietta, who was a regular feature in Pilgrim's Pride advertising."

Strangely, there were very few workers around the plant and the beautiful mansion-looking building across the street was for sale. And what about those missing chickens? Well, after getting back home that evening, I did a little research and found that controlling interest in Pilgrim's Pride had been purchased by a Brazilian multi-national company and the headquarters moved to Greeley, Colorado. A good number of the local folks lost their jobs and evidently the missing chickens were all being raised somewhere else. It wasn't bad news for old Bo though. At last report, he is still with us and very comfortably retired. Living in a large mansion on the outskirts of Pittsburg which the locals call "Cluckingham Palace," he is occasionally spotted around town - always without the hat.
 

World's Littlest Skyscraper

In 1912 with the discovery of oil in tiny Burkburnett, Texas, many land owners in Wichita County became almost instant millionaires. Million dollar deals for mineral rights were being negotiated on street corners and under open-air tents in the nearby town of Wichita Falls because there were not enough office buildings to meet the demands of the bankers and oil companies. Seeing an opportunity, promoter J.D. McMahon arrived in Wichita Falls in 1918 from Philadelphia with blueprints in hand for a multi-story office building he promised to build on a vacant lot he had purchased just across the street from the thriving St. James hotel. He quickly sold $200,000 (equivalent to $2,720,000 in 2015) in stock to investors caught up in the frenzy of making a quick financial killing.

What J.D. conveniently forgot to point out to his investors however was that his blueprint was in inches rather than feet. Evidently too busy making other deals to keep an eye on construction while McMahon was building his skyscraper, the investors eventually found themselves owners of a building that was much closer to being an elevator shaft than the skyscraper office building they had envisioned. The building's outside dimensions were only 11 feet by 19 feet and only 4 stories tall. There was no elevator and the interior stairs leading to the upper floors took up 25% of the floor space.

When the duped investors sought out J.D. to get their money back, they discovered he was nowhere to be found. He was finally located back in Philadelphia, but when legal recourse was attempted, investors found they did not have a case - J.D. had built exactly what the blueprints called for and they had signed off on them.

With office space in such short supply, several of the oil companies crammed in a few desks and a handful of workers had to be content that at least they were working out of the hot sun and off the dusty streets. Eventually, the boom ceased and shortly afterwards came the Great Depression. The offices were closed, the desks removed, the windows boarded up and the little building was abandoned. In 1931, a fire broke out and made the interior unusable. For the next 55 years the structure remained an empty, burned-out forgotten shell.

By 1986, the city had assumed ownership due to non-payment of back taxes, but they didn't know what to do with it and didn't want it so they simply gave it to the Wichita County Heritage Society. The Society raised funds and attempted to restore the long-neglected and crumbling structure, but it proved too much and several years later it was once again abandoned and returned to the city.

The city was on the verge of having the crumbling building demolished when a few powerful citizens intervened to save it. The city hired the architectural firm of Bundy, Young, Sims & Potter to stabilize the structure until they figured out what to do with it. While working on the building, the firm became interested in the history and legacy of it and in 2000, they formed a partnership with Groves Electric, another local business, to purchase it. The city was only too happy to have it off their hands and sold it to them for $3,748. The partnership began restoration work and were close to completion when in 2003 a tornado tore through downtown Wichita Falls and a 15-foot section of a brick wall was knocked down and severe damage done to the interior. In 2005 after more than $250,000 in repairs had been completed, the little skyscraper was good as new.

Now, almost 100 years after it was erected, the building has withstood fire, tornado and years of neglect to be a symbol of the greed, graft and gullibility of the oil boom days in Texas. It is listed on the Texas Historic Landmark Building rolls and the Guinness Book of World Records has certified it as the World's Littlest Skyscraper. And yes, it does have tenants. In addition to being a tourist attraction, an antique dealer and an artist call the little skyscraper at 701 LaSalle Street their business home.

A lot of things in Texas really are bigger, but there's at least one thing that is the littlest.
 

Postcard from The Indian Marker Tree

History is all around us. Sometimes, history can be staring you right in the face and you don't know it. Take this live oak tree for instance. Located along the banks of Hamilton Creek in the small town of Burnet in Central Texas, it overlooks the Highlander Inn's parking lot on Highway 29. Other than having an unusual shape, it is unremarkable and hundreds of people park next to and under its limbs with not a second thought or glance. Actually though, it is a living memorial to the Comanche Indians, the fierce tribe of Native Americans who caused the early settlers much pain, anxiety and death.

The Comanche traveled with the seasons, spending their summers on the high plains of the Panhandle and their winters in Mexico. Each fall, they passed through Central Texas and one of their favorite camping spots was along Hamilton Creek. According to written reports from early settlers, the Indians would come in the night and set up their tepees along the banks of the creek. After a few weeks, they would pack up and leave as silently as they had come. 

The Comanche liked Hamilton Creek for its flow of cool, clear water as well as for the native pecan trees which lined its banks. Flint and other hard rocks were also available in large quantities for the making of weapons and tools. While camped along the creek, the women gathered and shelled pecans. The meats were ground into a meal and made into cakes. The warriors spent the time chipping arrowheads and hunting game.

The Comanche had several trails they traveled from the Panhandle to Mexico and back. At the better camping spots along a trail, a sapling-size tree was bent to the ground and tied down to serve as a marker. As the tree grew, the limbs would grow upwards, but the trunk maintained this horizontal position. Such is the configuration of this live oak now known as "The Indian Marker Tree" by those in the know. An estimated 300 years old, it is a living monument to the presence of these early Native Americans in Central Texas.