It would be a short but fruitful stay. Traffic stayed light all the way through Arkansas and East Texas. The distances have become ingrained in our inner travel clocks – three hours to Memphis, five hours to Little Rock, seven hours to Texarkana and the Texas border. On my last drive into Texas, I immediately turned south at Texarkana to take the long road to Houston, then Brownsville (a solid 10 hours).
Two exits into the Texas portion of Texarkana, I drove on unfamiliar pavement. The flatness of the landscape stands out, but so do the dense thatches of trees (we were at the edge of the Piney Woods region), as well as the small rivers and creeks cutting green streaks across the tan and khaki of farms in winter.
At Sulphur Springs, we broke for Braum’s, an institution in Oklahoma and Texas. How does one describe Braum’s to the uninitiated? They run their own dairy, raise their own cattle, process their own meat and mill their own grain. They don’t operate restaurants further than 300 miles from their Oklahoma headquarters. The quality shows. I can’t remember the last time I ate a bacon cheeseburger anywhere. The one I had at Braum’s won’t be soon forgotten.
Within their small footprint, Braum’s covers a lot of ground. Want to make your own burger at home? Braum’s also features a market selling its meats, its ice cream and plenty of other things. In one store, Braum’s has fast food and a convenience store unlike any other.
The last miles rolled away. Soon Interstate 30 crossed Lake Ray Hubbard, a large reservoir in Dallas’ eastern neighborhoods. From the lake the Dallas skyline came into view. We left the highway for Nancy’s old haunts.
We drove past a number of personal landmarks, from restaurants to schools to the abandoned library. On this bright January day, White Rock Lake drew huge crowds and the sun glittered on the lake’s deep blue surface. On San Lorenzo Drive, we stopped at the curve to admire the old homestead, where the trees her dad planted decades ago still grew strong and tall.
It’s always nice to be welcomed in a new place. I have visited many places, but the ones that stand out the most are those when someone opens their home. We spent much of the evening with her friend Thomas, talking talk about all sorts of things in the early hours of Sunday. Tired as we were, we had skipped dinner, so after returning to the north end of Dallas, we grabbed a late-night meal before crashing peacefully.
We picked the worst day possible to experience Fort Worth. The Kimbell Art Museum hosted a traveling exhibit of French Impressionist works, and we planned to see it. At 12:30 the line already snaked around the art museum. Across the street from the art museum complex, the Will Rogers Memorial Center swelled with visitors. Compounding the crows was the opening weekend of the Fort Worth Stock Show, the Southwest’s oldest livestock show and rodeo.
We decided on a quick drive through the Stockyard area, but an ill-timed pass through a Hispanic market and the sight of congested traffic building up led to a U-turn toward the interstate. The Tarrant County Courthouse has an interesting design, but construction barriers ringed the building at that point, we were ready for more time in Dallas. The combination of attractions crammed close together and incredibly long traffic lights led us to return to Dallas without really even setting foot in Fort Worth. I’m sure we will some other time.
We met Nancy’s friend Jerome and his wife at a Flying Saucer in Rockwall, which sat on the shores of Lake Hubbard. While the Flying Saucer is a chain, they had a nice selection of Texas beers, with Texas draughts on special for $3. Then it was onto Nancy’s last visit to Szechuan Pavilion in Casa Linda, a Chinese buffet closing in February. During her Dallas days, Nancy and her family went to the buffet every Friday. Although that ritual had ended more than a decade ago, one of the servers even recognized her.
With the daylight gone after our Chinese, we took a detour to the flagship Half-Price Books. None of the stores in Columbus remotely resembled this palace. I barely got beyond the music department with a$5 Screaming Trees CD. The vinyl rarities on the wall, from first pressings of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings to live albums from The 13th Floor Elevators, already remained beyond our reach.
We met her friend Tony for a nightcap. He had us in stitches with any number of stories, none of which belong here (I'm not going to reprint conversations without permission). As we returned to the hotel, the need for late-night grub grew. It became essential when passing the In N Out Burger that shared a parking lot with our hotel. Nancy had never eaten there before, and I appreciated one of those delightful burgers and vanilla shakes just 10 hours from Nashville. The closest location to anywhere I lived was Phoenix, a mere 1,000 miles further west.
A small insect that looked like a mash-up of a dragonfly and a mantis hovered above the steering wheel and dashboard. I have sympathy for winter insects. Unexpected warm temperatures brought them out of winter dormancy. When winter inevitably cools, their lives are forfeit thanks to instincts. Many times I felt like simply cracking the window and letting the sudden vacuum suck it out. The bug showed remarkable patience, just bouncing around the front of our car. It never seemed more excited than when we passed a green trailer. Or at least it seemed excited. When we stopped at Texarkana, the bug exited the vehicle. That felt better than leaving it at the mercy of all those 18-wheelers’ wakes.
The same names of Arkansas rattled off quietly, and soon Hot Springs and Little Rock blew past. After another sizable wait at a construction zone in the middle of farm fields, a brief treatment emerged from the sky. Above the highway, a yellow crop-duster put on an aerial display, twisting above the barren fields east of Little Rock. The small plane wound around, slowing releasing its cargo that would not bear fruit for months.
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