Two-day trip from San Marcos to Blanco up 281 to Johnson
City to Burnett to Lampasas to Hamilton to Hico to Stephenville (overnight) continue
up 281 to I20 to Weatherford to Decatur to Gainesville to 82 to Sherman to Denison.
Again, we chose
the backroads rather than the interstates.
You will see two more courthouses.
I am not sure why I like them, but I find them interesting, and likely
as not, there will be a business district surrounding each one. In this day and time, those courthouse
squares generally have gone through a period of degradation, and are now slowly
rebuilding, unlike some of the smaller country towns, many of which continue to
deteriorate. Which brings me to the
similarities of Texas and South Carolina.
Both were built on a rural lifestyle.
Both have country towns which are dying because young people are going
to cities to work. The country towns
that are thriving generally have a university or some other economic engine
that is not agricultural that supports the town. Which makes me apprehensive because I believe
the basic values of our country are agrarian based, and which I do not have the
time or energy to write about as the flight is about to end. Are we going to eventually be like China,
with huge cities set among vast agricultural wastelands populated only by
corporate farms? Where will our values
come from then?
We noticed that in traveling the back-roads from Corpus up
to a point about level with Dallas/Fort Worth, there was almost no roadside
trash. It was incredibly
litter-free. We wondered if it had to do
with the signs that said, “Littering – Don’t Do It $2,000 Fine”. Are South Texans more proud and considerate
than North Texans? I think I may be
hypersensitive due to the embarrassment of our trashy South Carolina roadsides.
2/19/19 Reflection: Mary Jane and I are on the plane from
Dallas to Tampa. We spent our last night
at Eisenhower State Park just outside Denison.
None of the full hookup sites were working and available, so everyone
had to wait in line to dump their tanks before leaving. The analogy of getting rid of the “crap” hit
me again. What if we were forced to deal
with our stuff/juink/things every week, and get rid of what we did not
need? What if we had the self-discipline
to do that? I had so few cloths, they would
all fit in a 1’ x 2’ x 2’ closet. I
could deal with and make all decisions on cloths in five minutes or less by
piling them on the bed, refolding, and putting back in the closet. Is that a luxury, or is 25 pairs of shoes a
luxury? Am I my stuff? Who am I without my stuff? Are you really naked if you don’t own
cloths? Remember the Bible story of Adam
and Eve? They did not know they were
naked until they disobeyed God. Or was
their sin collecting stuff?
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| Final Comment: Received from friend after he read reflections on accumulating "stuff" |
In wrapping up, I realize this trip has been something of
a sabbatical. I have a lawyer friend
whose firm allows a six-month sabbatical every seven years. Is that a luxury, or a necessity? This trip has been a sabbatical, in that I
was separated from my daily duties, and forced to focus on a very specific goal
of gathering and analyzing information.
That separation gave me the opportunity to think about not only what I
was doing, but what I was not doing. It
allowed me to observe a totally different lifestyle, or a multitude of
lifestyles that most of us classify as “camping” or “RVing”. The only real commonality among these
lifestyles is limited space, limited stuff, and possible mobility. It also gave
me the opportunity to spend two months, 7x24 with Mary Jane, which was a lot of
fun. All of you reading this know that
we have spent the last twenty years living more apart than together.
We again stored the travel trailer and Suburban in the
warehouse. We enjoyed another meal with
Oren, Tony and Jordan in the warehouse office and Oren took us to Dallas to the
airport hotel. We will spend the rest of
the week at a business conference in Clearwater, FL, and then ride to Beaufort
with Jarrett and Sophie. We plan to go
back to Texas after Mama’s memorial service in early May, and “take a
vacation”. We will travel north through
Oklahoma, to Kansas City, over to Indiana, and visit her brothers in Indiana
and Tennessee. We are talking about a
smaller trailer and a trip to Alaska in 2020.
2/22/19 8:30 PM We are back home
in Beaufort!
I blogged my own experiment with building and living in a different space almost ten years ago at https://www.containercondo.blogspot.com You may or may not be interested.
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| We made it to FUMC 9:00 AM Service |
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| John Wesley (for the Methodists). Why is he getting equal billing with Jesus (on the other window)? |
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| Wise County Courthouse, Decatur TX |
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| Cooke County Courthouse, Gainesville, TX |
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| Last leg of the trip, Clearwater Beach. Finally seeing the sunshine in Florida |
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| Grouper Sandwich at Badfins |
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| Fishing with business friends |
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| Success |
