EDITOR’S CORNER
One of the candidates in the recent election—did you know we had an election?—made it a point to mention he had visited all 254 Texas counties in the course of one campaign.
I used to want to do that.
No, not run for office, visit every county in our fantastic state.
Somewhere in an upstairs closet in my house, probably under a 1993 road atlas, is one of those fold-out maps of Texas.
Back when I seriously thought I was going to make it, actually go to all 254 counties, I would take a yellow highlighter and color in a “new” county as I would be in it.
The map did get pretty yellow. I think I may have approached 200 counties at one point.
Then something happened. It wasn’t one thing, it was a whole bunch. Family, work, health, the whole enchilada.
In other words, life.
I hadn’t thought about my map until this spring when I got to meet the great Chet Garner, host of the indispensable Daytripper television series on PBS.
I wanted to take his photo and I had a Texas map with me, not my county-keeping-score one.
When I handed it to him he proved what a veteran Texas traveler he is. Chet identified the map’s age by looking at the photo of the governor on the back.
(I have a Texas highway map that’s so old, the governor on the back is Sam Houston).
That got me to thinking about my 254 goal and I told Chet about it. He just may have already accomplished it. If not, he’s close.
And that made me wonder if I should think about resuming my quest and about why I abandoned it in the first place.
And I have the reason. Texas is a big state. No, Texas is a BIG state.
I know about Alaska but let me tell you a little secret about our 49th state. They don’t have counties. They don’t have counties because nobody lives there. Well, not in most of it.
In our state we travel in established paths and patterns that fit our lives.
Example: I’ve been to Milano a kajillion times. I’ve been to Cameron a kajillion times. But I’ve hardly ever been from Milano to Cameron, or vice versa.
And the counties I’ve “captured” have been almost entirely a result of passing through them on the way to somewhere else. And that’s also why I have never been to some.
Example: Heading for the glories of southwest Colorado through the Texas Panhandle, I don’t ever recall thinking: “Hey, let’s go to Pampa or Spearman instead!”
But I do know of a place on US 84 just out of Roscoe where it appears one lane of the highway is in Fisher County and one lane in Mitchell.
Bagged em both just driving to and from Lubbock.
But the biggest hole in my map is northeast of Dallas, say between Big D and Texarkana. I’ve just never had any reason to go to any of those counties.
That’s not to say I’ve never visited a Texas County just so I could add it to my list. Did that one dreary Sunday afternoon a long time ago. Figured the nearest county to Rockdale I’d never visited was Limestone. So I drove there.
And, of course, it wasn’t a year before Rockdale played a football game in Groesbeck (Limestone County).
Now, if I can just find an excuse to visit Loving County.
Population 143. On the road to exactly nowhere.
Loving County isn’t the end of the world.
But you can see it from there.
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