TALES...LONE STAR ROAD REPORT
Commerce and found their marching band right in the middle of practice. We then wound our way through numerous small towns that seemed to all be connected together into one long town. You're probably asking, "Coy, what's so interesting about that?" I say that here in Texas, geography alone separates East Texas from West Texas in a distance the equivalent of the Grand Canyon. In West Texas, you can actually SEE the streets and have a clear idea where each town starts and ends. In East Texas, though, the scene is totally different. It reminds me a lot of western Maryland in which almost ALL of each town is usually very close to the main highway with very few streets in each town and in which each town winds up looking a whole lot bigger and longer than it actually is.
One thing that you probably notice around this type of year is that there might not be as much of a need to go to Vermont or in other places up in the Northeast than you might think. You might accomplish just as much and in as little time spending some time just taking a drive through the Big Thicket and meandering through these small East Texas towns that remind you of a past that seems to spell out familiarity and a sense of home. You can see the leaves falling along the roadside and the changing colors that tell you that summer is gone and winter will soon be here. But it also seems to tell you that nature does at least desire to give you one more final show of autumn's glory before the snows and cold weather hits. And what a show you definitely get to see...
The bus stops for a rest break near a sort of a small country store offering meats, deli items, snacks, and drinks of all kinds. Much to my chagrin, they don't take Lone Star or ATM cards--so I find it hard to purchase anything from their establishment. But as we left that town, I did see a few people gathered at a another place reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell scene, with people talking, sharing jokes, and seeming to have fun about a life that might be a little slower-paced than what the rest of us might normally live and would usually envy to have--a representation of a way of life that some people might not otherwise see unless they took the effort to try to find that lifestyle for themselves.
As one highway branches off the other for good, we continue on towards Paris and other smaller towns that make up
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