10 Commandments for Road Trips

When is the best time to take a road trip? Anytime as far as I'm concerned! I love road trips. I've always wanted to see what's on the other side of the hill; what's just down the road a piece; around the other side of the bend. It doesn't take long for me to feel bored if I just stick around the house. Road therapy I call it. Time to drive, head for parts unknown. I'll send a post card.

I've taken a lot of road trips. Especially since I retired several years ago. Over those dozens of trips far and wide, mostly on 2-lane back roads, I've come to realize there are rules to be followed if you want to have a good road trip. Feel free to add your own, but break any of the following at your own risk!

1. Choose your companions carefully - Sometimes it's wonderful to travel alone. Taking a solo road trip allows you to clear your head, think through things, go where you want and see what you want without interference. But it usually is more enjoyable if you have a traveling companion, someone to talk to while driving and share the trip experiences and sites you will see. Plus, it's always helpful to have a navigator, preferably someone who will give directions in a clear and timely manner, providing the driver with more than 10 seconds to move three lanes to the right. Make sure it is someone you are comfortable with and who shares the same interests. It's not a good situation when you want to visit a museum and they want to find the nearest bar. Sooner than you expect, 24-hour-per-day togetherness while sharing the close confines of a car and sleeping in the same hotel room has a tendency to expose and even exaggerate personality differences.
2. Have a destination in mind, but no rigid timelines. Be willing to stop for unexpected road nuggets - a quirky roadside site, the world's largest pecan, a fruit stand on the side of the road, that perfect spot for a picnic or nap. Some of them won't really be worth your time, but that's OK because others will turn out to be the most fun and memorable activities of the trip.
3. Have a comfortable and reliable auto. Remember, you might well be spending 8 or more hours in your auto so a comfortable seat is much preferred. And being in the middle of nowhere with a broken down vehicle can be miserable so get your car checked by a mechanic and do all the preventive maintenance called for before you leave. 
4. Snacks. There MUST be snacks. Apples, trail mix, nuts, peanut butter and a loaf of french bread makes the days on the road better. Healthy is good, but a road trip is NOT the time to deprive yourself. Be sure to add goodies to your snack sack - M&M's, Snickers, cookies and chips are perfectly acceptable. And feel free to add to or replenish your snack sack with goodies you find along the way - a fried pie or two from that little bakery you stopped at or a sleeve of peanut butter crackers from the convenience store where you got gas for the car. The path to a great road trip goes through the belly.
5. Pack light. Make sure you have what you need, but remember, the lighter the better. You will not be seeing the same stranger two days in a row so the people you meet will not know you wore the same outfit yesterday. Unless you do something strenuous, like taking a hike, neither you nor your clothes will be grubby or stinky within a day. The exception to this is underwear. Pack enough to start each day wearing a fresh pair. The same pair of jeans on the other hand, can be worn for a number of days. Dress presentable, but for comfort. No need to dress to impress strangers you will most probably never see again.
6. Bring plenty of tunes. A great road trip playlist is the soundtrack to a good adventure. Memorable songs and driving down little country roads just go together and makes your trip even more enjoyable. Don't be afraid to sing along with your favorites. Even if you can't carry a note in a hand-basket, sing along. Enjoy the moment!
7. Get off the boring, mind-numbing interstate. Back roads are where you truly discover America. Bring along some good old-fashion paper maps and don't forget your GPS, but be willing to slow down and spend quality time on little 2-lane roads that go from small town to small town. Road trips are not for getting from Point A to Point B as fast as possible. Enjoy the journey.  
8. Eat local, stay local. Be adventurous. It may be reassuring to stay in one of the nation-wide hotel chains like Marriott or Hilton, but it rarely is as interesting as a local mom-and-pop motel or a historical bed-and-breakfast. You must also eat, as often as possible, in a locally owned restaurant. Very often, the best food will be served up in an establishment only the locals know about. The number of cars and pickups in the parking lot will tell you whether you should eat there or not.
9. Trust your instincts. Be safe. If you happen to find yourself in what feels like a sketchy area, it probably is. If there are bars on the windows and doors of buildings and houses, pass on through. The goal is to have an enjoyable and fun adventure, not to tempt fate.
10. Take lots and lots of pictures. Bring your camera and maybe a journal to record the adventures and sites you encounter and the stories you'll hear. You'll be sharing your trip with friends/family and reminiscing weeks, months and even decades later. Banish any thoughts that you are taking too many pictures - you're not. Remember, it's easier to delete than to regret.

Feel free to add your own rules. Let me know in the comments section if you think I should add something. Here's to future road trips!

Fading Photographs

When my mother passed a few years ago, I inherited two large boxes full of photographs – family photos, old pictures of old houses and cars and places, old pictures of old people. A few were identified with a name written on the back, but most were not. Some were correct, some not. In my mother’s halting hand-writing, with failing eye-sight and a faulty memory, she had identified childhood photographs of me as my brother and my brother as me so who knows if the others are correct or not.

The other day, with nothing pressing to do, I broke out one of those boxes again to try and correctly identify people and put some kind of order to them. It's a futile effort as I didn't know most of the older individuals who have long since passed on and the ones who knew them have passed as well. It always makes me sad. These individuals had lives they lived, laughs they shared, stories they told, love and fear they felt and life choices they had to make. Some of those choices they made affected my life - where I was born, what religion I was taught, how I was raised by the people they raised. Now, they are dead and buried and forgotten underground with nothing to mark their resting place but maybe a broken headstone and weeds. I couldn't help but think, when an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.

Why am I sitting on a mule in the snow getting 

my picture taken with this man identified as 

 Pa Kerly? There is no 'Kerly' in my family.

While sitting on my home-office floor surrounded by all these photographs, somehow a smell I remember from my childhood came to me. It was a very distinctive, sickly sweet smell. At one time when I was quiet young, we lived next to a horse processing plant. That was back when they killed and processed old and broken-down horses to be used for glue-making and other processes. I would wonder over to the corrals and look at all those horses and dream of being a cowboy. Occasionally, one of the workers would lift me up and put me on the sway-back of one of those poor creatures. The horses never seemed to mind and rarely moved with me on their back as their spirit had long ago been broken and used up. Sometimes the man would lift me up from one horse and place me on another, then slowly lead the first horse into one end of the big shed and I never saw them come out of the other end even though I always watched closely.

That smell of death that came drifting to me through the years to where I sat in my modern office with all the modern electronic machines I feel I need to keep me informed, warm, cool, dry and comfortable caused me to reflect on why I felt a need to identify the people in these long-forgotten photographs. Maybe it's me I'm actually thinking about. I don't want to end up like them, just a little footnote that nobody pays attention to or actually cares about.

I have a lot of digital photos I've taken and I have them all cataloged in several different ways on different mediums all backed up in triplicate. And I now realize, as I'm edging closer and closer to my own end-of-days, I'm probably unconsciously using these photographs as a barrier, individual bricks in a fence against my own mortality. After all, no one is dead, truly dead, until no one remembers them and no one speaks their name. But that's life though. It's the way it's supposed to be. And so I took those stacks of old photographs and put them all back in their cardboard box, still unidentified, still forgotten. I printed out a few of me and put those in there too, unidentified. Maybe someday someone else will pull them out and think, "I wonder who these people were? What were their stories?" 

First Train Robbery in Texas

Sam Bass (historical picture)

There are many historical places right under our noses that we pay no attention to. Places some come from miles away to see, yet hundreds or even thousands of people living nearby never give the place a second's thought as they pass by. One of these places is in Dallas, Texas, or more specifically, Allen, which is a suburb of Dallas, but these two along with numerous other formerly little towns have grown so much over the years you can't tell where one stops and the other begins. No, we're not talking about where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated or where the TV show "Dallas" was filmed. We're talking about the notorious outlaw Sam Bass and the site of the first train robbery in Texas.

Sam was born in Mitchell, Indiana on July 21, 1851. Not much is known about his early life as it seems to have been a very normal, uneventful childhood. In early adulthood, he worked as a teamster, farmer and saloon owner, but failed in each of these endeavors.

Site of robbery in Allen, Texas

In desperate financial straights, he joined a gang of outlaws which planned to rob a train in Nebraska. After getting the train stopped, the small, rather inept gang had found about $450 and turned to ride away when one of the men accidentally fell over a wooden box and heard a tinkling sound which came from within. Upon investigation, the tinkling sound turned out to be $20 gold pieces. The gang rode away with over $60,000 (about $1.5 million today). They had just pulled off the largest train robbery in American history! Taking his share of the loot, Sam left the gang and made his way south to Texas.

Finding such success on his first illegal endeavor, Sam soon put together his own gang in Texas. On February 22, 1878, the gang held up the Galveston and Red River Railroad while it was stopped at the watering station in Allen. It was the first train robbery in Texas and netted the outlaws about $1,500. Over the next few months, Sam and his friends successfully pulled off four stage coach robberies and two more train robberies, all within 25 miles of Dallas.

Fearing the law and bounty hunters were on to them, the gang headed south out of Dallas with the intention of hiding out in Mexico. Needing funds to get there, they decided to rob a bank in Round Rock, Texas. Unfortunately for Sam, one of his trusted gang members had turned traitor and managed to get word to the Texas Rangers that the gang would soon be in Round Rock to rob the bank. Eight or nine Rangers were quickly dispatched to await the Bass gang's arrival.

Just several blocks off a busy intersection, 

but you wouldn't know it.

A day before robbing the bank, the gang was out of feed for the horses so Sam and two of his men went to the feed store for oats and corn. As they entered the store, two sheriff's deputy's named Moore and Grimes, happened to be standing on the wooden sidewalk across the street. Moore saw that Bass had a pistol into his waistband. The two deputies who had not yet recognized the men, went to investigate. Grimes walked up to Bass and asked him if he had a gun. Sam looked at him, said, "Yes, I do have a gun" and immediately pulled his pistol and shot Grimes dead. One of the other gang members shot Moore in the chest and all three ran out into the street toward their horses.

Texas Ranger Dick Ware was in the barber shop a few doors down getting a shave. At the first shot, he jumped out of the barber's chair and ran toward the commotion. He recognized Sam and got off a shot. With the help of Frank Jackson, one of the three gang members, the severely wounded Sam managed to get on his horse and ride away. It was only later that Ranger Ware realized he had shot the notorious Sam Bass while his face was still covered in shaving cream.

Early the next day, a posse was formed and began hunting the outlaws. In some woods not that far out of town, they had ridden past a tree when they heard a man they had not seen call out to them, "Here I am. I'm the man you are looking for." Sam was sitting down, propped up by the tree and barely alive. The posse loaded him on a horse and got him back to town where a doctor began treating him. It was too late though and Sam Bass, notorious outlaw and the man responsible for the first train robbery in Texas, died the next day, his 27th birthday.

The robbery occurred on the same tracks that run through Allen at the intersection of W. Main St. & S. Austin Dr. Today, the site is just a quiet little crossing near a neighborhood of nice, middle-class homes with no historical marker to memorialize it. The neighborhood's residents walk their dogs past, most not knowing and probably not caring that right where they stopped to let Rover do his business, history was made.

Lady walking her dog on the quiet spot where the first

train robbery in Texas took place.