Blue Jay

During my past five years here in Texas I've been trying to get a shot at a blue jay.  We didn't have them in Arizona (or at least I never saw one and range maps do not show them in the southwestern states) but here they were elusive, albeit very plentiful.  A few weeks ago I finally got my wish.

I'm thinking this one may be a juvenile since its crest doesn't seem to be fully developed.  TexWis can fill us in on that fact if I'm wrong!

Standing on Tiptoes

The season's last butterfly came to visit in late September

Caddo Lake

 In mid-October one of my best friends and I traveled about 80 miles north to Caddo Lake to celebrate her birthday.  I had booked a pontoon boat ride and we were both anxious to see the beauty of the world's largest bald cypress forest right here in our own East Texas.

As we boarded the boat and headed out into the lake we were astounded to see the number of homes that have been built along the shores of Big Cypress Bayou.  Many are quite magnificent ...

... while others are quite simple.

But most have plenty of lake toys.

Many sources say Caddo Lake is the only naturally formed lake in the state of Texas and is the largest lake in the South.  It is undisputed that it is the largest water forest in the world.

When I was a child my parents would come here fishing.  We would stay overnight at a campsite.  I was never a good camper, extremely sensitive to insect bites, and the mosquitoes here are huge and vicious.  There are also alligators and water moccasins.  They pulled the Spanish moss from the cypress trees and piled it over the campfire as an insect repellent.  The moss really doesn't burn; it just smokes all night long.  I was very happy once I reached an age where I was allowed to stay at home rather than accompanying them on these camping trips.  This was my first visit to Caddo since those days in the early 1950s.

The lake straddles the Texas/Louisiana border and was created by the New Madrid earthquakes in Missouri in the early 1800s.  It is estimated that the younger stands of cypress are 100 years old while others range in age from 150 to 400 years old.  In the scheme of things even the older trees are young since cypress tress can live over 1,000 years.

Today the lake is being threatened by Giant Salvinia, an aquatic fern accidentally introduced by boaters.  This noxious weed doubles in size every two to four days and rapidly kills off life below the surface of the water.  Most of the affected area is on the Louisiana side and eradication efforts have between thwarted since most funds from that state have been focused on the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

The green fern looks pretty but is devastating.  It can actually stall a boat's propellers and our tour boat at one time had to reverse its engines to free itself from this living, growing danger.

Recreation on the lake is quickly coming to a halt due to this menace.  Wildlife will ultimately be affected.  As of 2013,  approximately 216 bird, 47 mammal, and 90 reptile and amphibian species have been documented in the ecological environment of the lake.

We were at Caddo just as the leaves were turning golden.  This was my favorite shot of the trip.  Dinner was a wonderful catfish fry at a lodge on the lakeshore and we visited the small towns of Karnack, where Lady Bird Johnson spent her childhood years and Uncertain which features a lighted houseboat parade complete with Santa Claus on Christmas Eve each year.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 10.2 - Farmersville

This was definitely a trip which concentrated on Post Office murals and the last day included a stop in Farmersville to see the mural entitled "Soil Conservation in Collin County" painted by Jerry Bywaters in 1941.  The mural reinforced the federal government's urging at the time for farmers to practice soil conservation by strip cropping, terracing, and contour plowing.

Although he was a native Texan having grown up not too far from Collin County, I'm surprised at Bywaters' depiction of a farmer stacking hay in this manner.  I've never seen hay stacks like these anywhere in Texas, most farmers having preferred at that time rectangular bales.

Even though this trip was in early November I found zinnias still in bloom in pots near the front door of the post office.  Farmersville is 40 miles northeast of Dallas and 45 miles south of the Oklahoma border.

A blue eagle resides above the door of the Farmersville post office.  I remember photographing it on a previous road trip about three years ago but that was before I got the bug about post office murals!  I didn't mind the return trip.  It was not far out of my way on the return from Arizona.

My next and last Texas road trip will come in the next two to three weeks when I will be relocating to Arizona.  The close on the sale of my mom's farm is simply waiting on a land survey to be completed but the sureyors have been hampered by rain and a flooded river over the past three weeks.  We're expecting more rain later this weekend.  Rain, rain, go away!

Happy Thanksgiving

Gainesville, Texas

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip - 10.1 - Cook County Courthouse (Texas No. 80)

The tenth and last day of this road trip took me through Gainesville, county seat of Cooke County, a city of 16,000 70 miles north of Dallas and only 10 miles south of the Oklahoma border.  Gainesville has an historic town square with many buildings from the 1800s and beautiful red brick streets.

The big courthouse was built in 1910 of brick and limestone in the Beaux Arts style popular in that time period.  It has an octagonal rotunda topped by a stunning stained glass window under the copper-clad dome of the tower.  Unfortunately, it was Saturday and the courthouse was closed so I did not see it.  The interior is designed in black and white marble.

Detail of the clock tower

This unique building on one of the corners of the courthouse square was particularly intriguing.

Perhaps this building reflects Gainesville's motto, "The Star of North Texas."  The upper floor appears to be boarded up and vacant, although there is retail activity on the ground level.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 9.3 - Seymour

The third stop on the ninth day of this 3,000 mile journey took me to Seymour, Texas, to see another Post Office Mural on my bucket list.  "Comanches" painted by noted artist Tom Lea hangs there and is one of the most significant murals in the state.  Seymour is 70 miles south of the Oklahoma border in the heart of Comanche territory.  Known as the greatest horsemen in the world, the Comanches, a Plains tribe, followed the great herds of buffalo over a huge portion of the state, as far south as below San Antonio, and through much of Southern Oklahoma and western New Mexico.

Lea has been quoted as saying, "The town [of Seymour] is in the heart of the former marches of the wild Comanches; and any old timer's eye will light up with a Comanche story at the mere mention of the name ...  Among all the wild and daring and skillful  riders North America has seen, authorities place the Comanches at the top of the list.  So it is natural to paint them horseback - wild and free on the boundless plains in the early morning light."

Lea also wrote novels about the Southwest and he frequently expounded on how the Indians' spirit of freedom and individualism were as much a part of our nation's character as the spirit of the pioneers.

I had a nice long chat about the mural with a young woman in her 20s who was working at the window of the post office.  It was so refreshing to find a young person who was knowledgeable about the mural.  She was quick to point out that at some time in the past someone in authority had actually poked a hole in the bottom edge of the mural (as seen above in the last photograph) to install a light fixture!

Due to the close quarters of the post office lobby I was not able to get far enough away from the mural to get an even horizontal shot of the 13'7" long painting.  It appears to have been well cared for.  Painted in 1942, Lea was an established artist and later served as an artist/war correspondent for Life Magazine during World War II, although throughout his life he was largely unknown outside of Texas.  He was paid $950 for this commission.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 9.2 - Anson - Jones County Courthouse (Texas No. 79)

From the first moment I saw a photograph of this Post Office mural I fell in love with it and declared it my favorite.  However, I am somewhat fickle and I actually have several favorites but this one is definitely in the running.  "Cowboy Dance" by Jenne Magafan depicts a once-a-year activity which has occurred in Anson since 1885, an annual  Christmas Cowboy Ball where townsfolk dress like cowboys from yesteryear, much like their ancestors did in those early days of the town.

But even this lovely mural provided a certain amount of controversy.  The artist placed a brown jug, the traditional container of moonshine whiskey,  in the lower right-hand corner of the mural and many citizens took great offense because Anson traditionally had been a dry county (to this day Texas still has county option on whether or not alcohol may be legally sold) and even back in its frontier days had never had an open saloon.  Some felt that this oversight signified a careless disregard for the community and was an insult to its upright, moral character.  Others, however, felt the mural was delightful, as do I!

(Reprinted from the Internet)

And now I've uncovered a bit of a mystery.  While looking up the artist Jenne Magafan on the Internet I find this painting from the Smithsonian Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery website which is stated to be the Anson Post Office Mural.  That website indicates it was a transfer from the Internal Revenue Service through the General Services Administration.  All the particulars are the same, the name, the year painted (1941), the artist, although it does not have the cut-out for the postmaster's door and, while although similar, there are significant changes in the details.  First of all, there is no jug and the guitar player is wearing a hat.  The woman in the green dress has a partner who looks nothing like the partner in the mural I photographed.  The blond woman on the left has her back to the audience and her partner has a full head of hair.  The woman spectator on the left is far thinner than in the mural on display.  A side note on the Smithsonian site states that the mural is currently not on view!  My speculation (and it's total speculation, with no credibility whatsoever) is that the painting that the Smithsonian has was a preliminary painting drawn by the artist.  Every single image, other than this one, that I find on the web matches exactly to the mural that was at the Anson Post Office when I visited there on November 6.

One block from the post office is the Jones County Courthouse.  My perfect town:  a Post Office Mural and an historic courthouse!

Constructed:  1910
Architectural Style:  Beaux Arts
Materials:  Brick and Pecos red sandstone

Jones County and its county seat, Anson, is named for one Anson Jones.  That makes it simple!  Anson Jones, a physician, was born in Massachusetts, practiced medicine in New York, came to Texas prior to the battle for independence from Mexico, settled and practiced medicine in the town of Brazoria south of Houston where he was one of the founders of the first Masonic Lodge in Texas, fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, served as Texas' Ambassador to the United States and as the last president of the Republic of Texas.  Ironically enough, there is no record that he ever traveled anywhere near the city and county which bear his name!  I do love the patina on this statue.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 9.1 - Brownfield

My first stop on this ninth day of my road trip was Brownfield, Texas, only 27 miles east of the New Mexico border.  Stopping in Brownfield with the hope that since I had missed the other famous mural in Odessa that my luck would hold out in Brownfield.  Boy, were my hopes dashed when I pulled up to the old post office building.  I had known that at some point in the past the City of Brownfield had purchased the former post office when the town got a new building but that they had also purchased the mural which was intact in its original place in the new location for the police department.  Imagine my dashed hopes when I discovered the building was now vacant and the sign on the door stated the police department had moved to a new location.  I continued to have hope that the mural had moved also so I went to the new police station where I was informed that the mural still hung in the now vacant building.  I presumed it could take days to make arrangements to see the mural, if at all, so as I prepared to leave, a young woman at a nearby window motioned for me to wait a moment.  She was behind a glass window and I couldn't hear her but she made a phone call but apparently got no answer on the other end.  She arose from her desk, pulled her purse out of a drawer, picked a sweater off the back of her chair, opened the window, and said "If you want to see it, come on."  I'm sure my smile was as wide as the plains surrounding Brownfield.  I was getting a private showing of this beautiful but highly controversial painting.

Many of you I'm sure may be disturbed at the subject matter of "Ranchers of the Panhandle Fighting Prairie Fire with Skinned Steer" by Frank Mechau.  The subject matter bothered many people as well back in 1940 when the mural was painted but Mechau convinced the powers that be that back in early ranching days one authentic way of fighting prairie fires was to actually drag a dead steer through the flames.  It was perhaps the most controversial mural to be included among the Post Office murals in Texas, but the citizens fell in love with Mechau when he visited the town prior to the installation of the mural and the controversy soon died out.  I suppose the beauty of the scene exceeded the gruesome details of the reality of the history.  I do love all the colors and the way Mechau has captured the swirling smoke, the winds and flames that fed these fires which could easily devastate a hundred square miles a day on the grassy lands of the plains.

The mural is in excellent condition today having been restored in the 1980s through citizen fund-raising efforts.  It measures 12 feet in length and is 5 feet 6 inches tall.  Mechau was a nationally recognized artist from Colorado who taught at Columbia University and other art schools.  He received a total of 11 commissions from various New Deal programs during the Roosevelt administration and his work is still highly acclaimed today.  He died prematurely at the age of 42 from a heart attack.  He was paid $750 for this mural.

Driving through Brownfield I also found these murals - or perhaps it is one mural with four different panels - above the marquee at the old Rialto Theater.

The paintings appear to be quite faded but a little enhancement in the exposure and saturation departments actually brings out more of the details.

The Rialto started operations in 1928, was closed in the '70s, refurbished in the '90s with the hope of it becoming a cultural venue but today it doesn't look very prosperous.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 8.1

There was still a lot of fall  color in Flagstaff even after the year's first snowfall.

Truck was a tad cranky at the weather conditions the morning after the snowfall.  Her doors were frozen shut due to the 20 degree overnight low and the windshield wipers were frozen to the windshield.  I could get the doors open but it took over a half-hour of warm-up to unlock the wipers and there was still ice underneath.  I had not traveled with snow in mind so I just had a light jacket, loafers and lightweight socks on my feet, and no gloves.  I found my mom's handicap plaque in a pocket in the door of the truck and I was able to use that as a makeshift ice scraper and to help me get the snow off the windows and outside mirrors.  The roads were clear although the city streets, especially where my friend lives, were quite icy.  I lived in Flagstaff for seven years back in the 1970s but I had had little experience in driving under icy conditions since then.  So I got a late start leaving and it took me a while to slip and slide my way the few miles to the Interstate but the snowplows had been at work since long before dawn and the heavy truck traffic along I-40 had the roads cleared.  Within 30 miles the roads were clear and dry although I ran into more snow around the Gallup, New Mexico, area.  There were no other picture-taking stops on this leg of my return trip.

A Texas Arizona Road Trip 7.1 Off to Flagstaff

Day 6 of my road trip was spent unpacking and unloading the household goods I brought into my storage unit in Phoenix.  Naturally I had to rearrange the whole space to make everything fit and it was backbreaking, grueling work and day 7 was spent recovering from that.  On the morning of day 8 I headed north to Flagstaff to spend the day and evening with my longest and dearest friend.  We met in Texas in 1968.  In 1971 I moved to Flagstaff and she came in 1972.  As the years passed we were both in Phoenix at the same time and she eventually went to Boston for graduate studies but landed back in Flagstaff where she still is to this day, still working as a professor at Northern Arizona University.  The weather forecast the previous evening warned of an early snowstorm for Flagstaff but the temperatures weren't supposed to drop too much so I felt safe in continuing north the next morning.

After reaching nearly 7,000 feet elevation a few miles from Flagstaff this is the scene that greeted me. Flagstaff is located at the base of Mt. Humphreys in the middle of the largest stand of Ponderosa pines in the world and a quick snowfall turns the landscape into a winter wonderland.

She was in between meetings at lunchtime so we agreed to meet at a restaurant in downtown right on old Route 66.  Flagstaff has grown tremendously in the past half century but yet downtown hasn't gotten any larger and I had to park almost five blocks away across the street from the historic 1893 Coconino County Courthouse.  I actually worked in this building for a little over a year in 1972/73.  I loved how this shot turned out as it suddenly appeared that the snow might be clearing.  Boy, was I wrong.  One of the interesting things about this early snow was that the deciduous trees were still showing fall color but yet had snow in their branches.

By midafternoon the snow had accumulated to about three inches and the branches of this almost perfectly shaped blue spruce were weighted down with the snow after a couple hours.

The snow caught everyone off guard and few had time to bring in the summertime deck furniture. The snow continued through the afternoon and we decided it best to stay home for the evening rather than going out to dinner.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 4.1 - My Guy

May I introduce you to my guy, my 12-year-old grandson, Emerson.  He was 7 years old when I left Phoenix to come to Texas to care for his great-grandmother and when I return he will be almost 13!  He has grown and changed tremendously in those five years.  Last week he started his first class at an organization called Junior Assembly, an etiquette and dance class for sixth graders that has been in existence in Phoenix the past 40 years.  When his mom approached him, he actually wanted to attend this class, much to everyone's surprise.  The boys must wear a sports coat and a necktie, the girls must wear white gloves!  So in addition to learning how to do the waltz, the foxtrot, and the latest modern dance craze, they actually learn how to be young ladies and gentlemen, how to act at the dinner table and other social graces.  I was happy to learn that there are actually places that teach those attributes these days.  What's even better is the fact that parents are not allowed to attend any of the classes, only being invited to be guests at the Valentine's Dance at the conclusion of the program.  His new clothes had come in the mail a couple days before my arrival so he surprised me by getting dressed up to show me his new look.  His parents actually had one cuff of his new white shirt monogrammed with his initials.  He had asked his mom if she knew how to tie a necktie (his other neckties are the clip-on variety) and when she told him he would have to ask his dad for help in that category he just went to YouTube and learned to do it himself!  He's a pretty smart young man.  I think he realizes that girls are much more interested in fellows that actually know how to dance as opposed to those goofballs who look like wild chickens or simply act like clowns out on the dance floor.

Emerson has been active in sports since he was three years old and currently plays baseball practically year-round.  He is learning the keyboard and has taken piano lessons, makes nearly all As in school and next year will be attending a special junior high school for students with exceptional skills in math and science.  And of course, he will know how to dance!

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 2.2 - New Mexico

Beautiful skies greeted me as I crossed from Texas into New Mexico.  Had I been traveling the opposite direction, I would have been stopped by a very busy ICE station.  I noticed they were actually searching vehicles such as mine - a pickup truck with the entire bed covered by a tarp.  My innocent pieces of furniture would have been subject to a search.  I could just see me on the side of the road unpacking the big cedar chest I was transporting and all my books being searched for secret compartments hiding drugs!

Within a few miles the spectacular clouds were replaced by fog rising from the desert floor and obliterating the beauty of the Organ Mountains.  I drove quite a few miles in limited visibility.  Day 2 ended in Lordsburg.  One day to go to reach my destination.

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 2.1 - Odessa, Texas

Day 2 of this trip found me leaving Midland, Texas, on a very chilly late October morning and traveling a short 20 miles to Odessa where I had imagined I would view Texas' most famous Post Office Mural, a depiction of a longhorn stampede painted by Tom Lea, a well-known West Texas artist.  The latest reference I had found about it indicated it was still located at the Odessa Post Office but when I arrived, the post office was still closed and it was not in the lobby so I surmised it must have been moved to the counter area.  I thought I may have arrived on a holiday because that area of the post office was still locked up but people were bustling about retrieving mail from post office boxes.  I asked a woman why the post office was closed and she looked at me like I was from an alien planet and replied, "It doesn't open until 9!"  All the post offices I had ever visited in my entire life always opened at 8 a.m. so I was beginning to think I had slept through another time zone or perhaps been transported into the future.

I took a short drive around downtown Odessa, found little of interest (it's just a typical West Texas oil town in the heart of the Permian Basin) and returned to the post office where a line was forming of people waiting for the clerk area to be unlocked.  As I made my way inside - you guessed it.  No mural.  And my morning had already been sufficiently delayed and I had many, many miles ahead of me so I didn't waste any more time standing in line to find out what had happened to the mural.  

But on my way out of town I saw a glimpse of this beauty painted on the long wall of a building.  It is 100 feet long so I took photos of it section by section to be able to show some detail.

After returning from Arizona and looking for information about this piece I learned that this mural was painted just this year by Janet Pontious, a noted muralist in the Midland/Odessa area.

The mural is a replica of a July 4, 1912, photograph of a photographer taking a photograph of Odessa residents in the main portion of the city.

It appears that the townsfolk turned out in their best duds for the event and I think it's a great representation of America during that time before the First World War.

And yes, cowboys still found ways to earn a living in 1912.  I was particularly fascinated by the fact that every single person in the photograph and painting had on a hat!  The mural is indeed 100 feet long and 17 feet high.

While searching the Internet for some information on this mural I ran across one article in an Odessa newspaper that mentioned the Tom Lea mural had been removed for restoration in January of this year and had been returned to Odessa just a week before I arrived where it will be on loan to a local art museum for the next 25 years.  I'm glad it's back in Odessa but I'm still disappointed that I missed it!  Darn it!

A Texas/Arizona Road Trip 1.2

Just 10 miles down the road from Ranger, the sad little town featured in yesterday's post, is Eastland, which is a complete turnaround from Ranger.  It's amazing that two towns so close together were both chosen for murals by the Fine Arts section of the U.S. Treasury Department for post office murals commissioned under the WPA after the Great Depression.  Both towns are about the same size but Eastland seems to be bustling with activity, and unlike Ranger, the local people know and care about their historic mural.  The post office even has postcards printed which they readily hand out to anyone who asks about the mural.  The gentleman at the window, while helping a customer, handed me two, along with another card which I'll mention later.

Suzanne Scheuer, the artist, titled this work "Buffalo Hunt."  A native of San Francisco, she was an outspoken critic of the unjust way Native Americans were treated historically.  She chose the Comanche Indians, the noted horsemen of the Great Plains and the first residents of Texas, as her subjects for this mural.  She also shows us that she had a great sense of humor because if you will notice in the very lower right corner of the painting she has included a horny toad signifying Old Rip, the famous lizard who was buried in a time capsule in 1896 in the courthouse cornerstone along with a Bible and a bottle of whiskey.  When the capsule was opened 31 years later in 1927 when the building was torn down, Rip was discovered to still be alive and became the talk of the nation, even making a trip to Washington to visit President Calvin Coolidge.  But alas, in 1929 Old Rip died, and an autopsy (on a lizard???) showed he had been suffering from pneumonia.  He remains on permanent display in a glass, velvet-lined box at the courthouse (but I didn't go take a picture of him) to this day.  He has been kidnapped and returned, picked up by John Connally when he was running as a candidate for the governorship and one of his legs fell off, and has a rich history as Eastland's most famous resident.  If you want to read his biography, a short one can be found here, or you can call the Eastland Visitor Center at 1-800-2-OLD-RIP.

Scheuer, who also painted a post office mural in Caldwell, Texas, produced her mural on a canvas, transported it to Texas in 1938 where it was hung by a local paperhanger under her supervision.  It measures 5 by 12 feet and she was paid $650.

The second postcard handed out by the Eastland Post Office is of a stamp window created by Marene Johnson Johnson (that is NOT a typo) who was postmaster at Eastland from August 6, 1957, through July 11, 1968.  At her own expense and working on her own time away from her postal duties, over a seven-year period Mrs. Johnson used 11,217 stamps to create the window as her gift to those interested in history and geography through philately.

I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs but the glass frame caused reflection problems and the window is in a small area which made it very difficult to photograph the complete design in one photo.

The window consists of six separate panels and I find the design simply amazing.  It appears that some of the stamps have cancellation marks so I suppose she didn't have to actually purchase a few of the stamps but I'm sure the cost was still staggering on the wages of a small town postmistress.

The window was dedicated on Flag Day, June 14, 1963, about two weeks after I graduated from high school!