Now, he’s 12, and he discovered a hobby that combines my love of road tripping with a purpose: to find insulators. Glass (also ceramic and plastic) insulators were used to hold up and protect telegraph and telephone wires that were strung next to railroad lines. David likes to discover old right-of-ways that still have telegraph poles next to them and hunt for these utilitarian pieces of art. Currently, he has over 100 glass insulators in a variety of colors. He usually finds simple Hemingray 45s that are clear or aqua,  but sometimes he’s lucky enough to find blue and green ones, too.

A sandblasted Hemingray

While I’ve never been much of a collector, I must say these insulators are growing on me. They’re just so pretty, and some of them have interesting stories to tell. For example, I especially like the ones that still have a ring of soot on them – remnants of the days of steam locomotives.

If your curiosity has been piqued, here are a few websites that can tell you a lot more about this rather interesting hobby: http://www.insulators.info/ , http://www.nia.org/, and http://insulatorstore.com/

Odell, Texas

But what is a ghost town, exactly? Is it a settlement that’s been completely abandoned? Or is it a place that used to be bigger than it is now? Should towns that have lost their post offices be considered ghost towns, or does the loss of a school signify a dying town as well? Are ghost towns only legitimate if they have remains, or can an old cemetery be considered a town’s remnant?

I’ve learned that the definition of “ghost town” reflects the person who’s documenting them. Some people are very precise in their criteria, while others, like me, just rely on the idea that we know one when we see one.

Goodlett, Texas

While I have always prided myself on my fortune to live in a state littered with failed cities, I’ve learned through the years that ghost towns are EVERYWHERE. You can find them in Japan, in India, in Germany, in Massachusetts, in the Dakotas, in Brazil, and in Australia. Heck, even the Antarctic has an abandoned station. I guess that’s just the nature of the human beast, to pick up the stakes and wander to the next place where one supposes the grass may be greener.

Banty, Oklahoma

What’s neat about our “new world” ghost towns is that, well, they’re relatively new. That means we know much more of their history, and can even track why the towns were founded and how they met their demise. The towns I’ve encountered are almost like living history books. They tell of opportunities met and lost, like Thurber, Texas, a coal mining town that was shuttered by the Texas & Pacific Railroad when they started using oil in their locomotives. You can “read” about neglect, like what happened in Picher, Oklahoma, where the prairie winds let lead-laden chat piles blow dust blow into children’s lungs. And you can trace changing economies, like Doan’s Crossing, Texas, which faded away when the cattle drives stopped coming through town.

I’m going back on the road this weekend to find some more ghost towns. Every time I discover something a new site, I feel like a secret has just been revealed to me. To me, ghost towns really make the past come alive.

Bonita, Texas

You can infer a lot by reading maps. And I’m not talking just road maps, but topographical and historical maps, too. That’s why I spend hours perusing maps and atlases, just like others spend reading novels. Place names, the flow of rivers, and little towns in the middle of nothing all provide clues to the mysteries of human settlement, and how people react to their environment.

One of my favorite maps belongs to the SPV’s Comprehensive Railroad Atlas of North America series. There are several editions of these atlases that cover geographic zones, and I own the southern Plains and the Texas versions. Inside the atlas are maps of railroad routes that traveled throughout the region, whether in use or in disuse. I try to take “my SPV” along for all of my road trips, as it helps me to figure out what I’m looking at if I happen to come across an old siding, depot, or overgrown right-of-way.

A map of Shreveport's railroad lines offer glimpses into Shreveport's past.

Another “must” are the state atlases published by Mapsco and DeLorme. Each atlas includes county roads, major highways, old towns, and rail lines. Texas A&M publishes an atlas solely for Texas, which also provides information on elevations, cemeteries, and historic sites.

I sometimes bring WPA guides on my road trips, too. While they are definitely not up-to-date, it’s still interesting to see the cities from the experiences of writers who traveled 70 plus years ago. Landscape descriptions have changed, too, which make for interesting reading.

When I get home, Google Earth becomes one of my first stops. It’s fascinating to see from the air the places I had seen earlier on the ground. Often, Google Earth (and Google Maps) help me understand the context of what I saw.

My favorite maps are from the pre-Interstate era, like these two. The Ashburn Map is from the 1950s, and the Conoco Map dates from the late 1930s.

Maps are excellent historic sources and also serve as primary sources, too. I love that geography has become so much a part of my daily life now!

Well, stupor ain’t my middle name, so I’ll make this short… I just wanted to point out what great things can happen when an appreciation of history, a knowledge of native flora, and a historian who likes to play in the dirt collide.

Methinks that tiller's not going anywhere.

A looong time ago, I picked up several pieces of Thurber brick and made a walkway out of them. Alas, I dismantled the walkway because we moved. At the new-ish house (still an antique, but new to me), I made three garden beds with them instead. In the garden beds, I placed several native species of grasses, many culled from the sides of a dirt road in Montague County (psst, don’t tell!). I surrounded the plants with rock to create a southwestern feel. Then, I took a good look at my antique collection, which really consists of a bunch of rusty items that we’ve found at flea markets, along railroad tracks, or at Goodwill Stores over the years. I set them around the garden and, Bob’s your uncle, I created a pretty decent-looking garden!

A stop sign, old coca-cola ad, and broken insulators bring some ambience

But I’m no green thumb, so who knows how good this garden will hold up a year from now. I do know that I won’t need to water it much, so there’s that. Also, I wanted to “embrace the ranch” – we bought a ranch-style house, which is long but not wide, with a small front porch and large patio. I’ve always been partial to cottage and prairie houses, but this house was just a much better fit for the family. So, what better way to appreciate a housing style than to dress it up like I think it should be?

Old shovels lend themselves to garden relics.

Let me know what you think! As long as you’re kind.

But I’m also very environmentally conscious. I like my world green and clean. I recycle, plant only native shrubs, grasses, and trees, eat hand-gathered eggs, insulate my house properly, ride my bike to shopping, never litter, and pick up after my dogs.

Thus, many of my travels always come with twangs of guilt. Just last week, I once again took a road trip. This time, I retraced the old route of US Highway 77. Having been bypassed in many places by Interstate 35, it often proved a hard road to follow, but I lucked out and found both official and forgotten remnants along the way. I also discovered right-of-ways of long-abandoned railroad lines (mainly the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad). That, of course, made me think about the environmental impact of all the ways I could travel – by plane, train, or the automobile.

The Southern Pacific Sunbeam and the Sam Houston Zephyr at Dallas Union Station.

The oldest kind of major traveling option are trains, but here in Texas, they are also the most neglected. It used to be that daily trains from Dallas to Houston to Austin to San Antonio to Oklahoma City to Shreveport, et. al., were common sights. Now, those routes have been torn up, to either be used as bike paths or to simply exist as forgotten berms on the side of the road. Today, only three long-distance trains serve Texas (the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, and Heartland Flyer), and only one is in Oklahoma (Heartland Flyer). Hopefully, that will change soon, as talks are giving way to action in installing a high-speed rail line.

High-speed railroads are supposed to be THE answer to transportation problems like pollution and congestion. I’m all for them, because locomotives (whether at 60 mph or at 160 mph) use hybrid technology that use less diesel the faster they go, and carry more people per gallon than any other passenger carrier. So, yea for trains.

Planes offer a different experience, of course. They are far from efficient in their carbon footprint, but their speed makes up for their lack of environmental friendliness. I hate flying, though.

Remains of a gas station along US 77

Then, there’s the scourge of the earth – the personal car. When taking into account the gas used per miles driven, and the number of each needed to equal the capacity of one airplane or one train, then environmentally speaking, the car is a MAJOR loser. And I hear about it all the time, too: automobiles are major polluters, co-commuting and less driving will save the earth, etc.

And that’s all true. But I tell you what, cars have also been VERY beneficial in many ways. While I can’t dispute their negative environmental impact, I can say that of all the long-distance traveling options, cars are by far the most democratic. When I was driving along and around US 77, I saw many small mom & pop store, cafes, gas stations, and auto part stores (many still in operation) that crowd the sides of the roads. Airplanes don’t allow for that kind of infrastructure at all, of course, and train stations have limited space to accommodate small businesses. Cars are also quite affordable. Yes, I know they cost money (insurance, payments, taxes, repairs) but these costs can be stretched out over a period of time, whereas plane and train ticket costs cannot. Further, their affordability comes from their accessibility – cars can take you practically anywhere, whereas trains and planes bring you only to certain pre-designated spots. Besides, cars can be used (or not) as needs arise, meaning one can have a “beater car” and still get by.

Taking bikes rock, but driving rocks, too.

It’s not that I don’t favor alternate modes of transport… I definitely do! I take the train as much as I can. I voted for a commuter rail line that by June of this year will come through my town. I also walk to the grocery store and ride my bike to run errands. But, I have to admit – I LOVE my car, too. I love that I can drive around the Red River Valley and discover places I’ve never been to; that I can pick a place on a map and be able to visit it; that I can eat, read, and even sleep inside my car (which I’ve done on occasion, after visiting a ghost town in the middle of nowhere).  The car has provided me with more freedom than any other mode of transportation. I think everyone should feel this kind of freedom, too. Cars should become more affordable, more efficient, smaller, and more reliable. It may not be the “in” thing to say among my fellow tree-hugging friends, but I’ll say it, anyway: cars are cool.

I wouldn't mind road tripping in this.

I’ve been to Chicago many times before. I’ve flown and driven, but nothing beats entering this grand city on the train. While it’s not the most scenic route – I saw plenty of hobo camps and abandoned car parts (and a whole car or two!) – I got a real sense of the city just by looking at its industrial and residential landscapes roll by. Chicago’s a compact city, with high urban density and a fantastic public infrastructure. It’s what a city SHOULD be like.

Fabulous downtown Chicago

And then, sigh, the Eagle and I glided back down through the Dallas. Dallas is the very opposite of Chicago in terms of its architecture and infrastructure – it’s a sprawling, meandering urban conglomeration with housing that looks like warehouses and vast stretches of empty, abused, and misused land. Watching the weed-strewn lots and urban blight roll by, I became almost obsessed with the questions that have bogged my mind for a long time: why does Dallas planning not seem to have any rhyme or reason? Why are the suburbs competing with, rather than enhancing, the city?

In terms of development, Dallas is about 50 years younger than Chicago – not so far apart at all. But they’re worlds apart when you look at how their growth has been managed. Chicago built up – Dallas built out. Chicago made room for trains and cars. Dallas forgot trains and relied too much on cars. Chicago didn’t allow its sports stadiums to leave the city. Dallas lets sports owners move to suburbs where public transportation is nonexistent. Chicago built around its river, which meanders through the heart of the city. Dallas turned its back on the Trinity River, and straightened it out so much that it has now become a lonely creek. Chicago has culture with world-class museums, art exhibits, and sculptures on public squares. Dallas neglects its cultural gem, Fair Park, in favor of shiny new developments that are devoid of life – like Victory Park.

Oh, and Chicago allows visitors to go up the Sears/Willis Tower. Dallas’ number one tourist attraction, Reunion Tower, has been closed for three years now, and no one has been able to go up to enjoy the view except customers of a restaurant now owned by celebrity chef, Wolfgang Puck.

Fabulous downtown Dallas (why's the tower still closed, Wolfgang Puck?)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I think Dallas is awesome. Maybe that’s why I get so worked up over what I think Dallas COULD be.

But it never even occurred to me to take the camera as I made my way through the Old Town area. As I passed by the old Huffines building, which was Lewisville’s first auto dealership, and stepped back in time as I entered the feed mill, which is the oldest, continuously-run business in Denton County, I wanted to kick myself for wasting a golden opportunity. Shoot,  I ride my bike around town quite a bit, and have not EVER taken photos to document my excursions.

I wonder if we all do that – we are so familiar with our every-day surroundings that we neglect them completely. We just tend to think that the old buildings will be there next year, too. And those people who remember what the neighborhood used to be like? They’ll be around next month, right?

Uh, no. People and buildings and history all crumble if we don’t take care of them. I don’t know if I’d call it an obligation to remind us to remember, but I will call it a necessity. And I’ve been very neglectful of these necessities.

So, while I get my camera out and ready to take a much-needed look at what’s right in front of me, I’ll post at least one photo of Lewisville that I found in my collection:

Inside this building which now houses a restaurant, Raymond Hamilton, who was once a member of the Barrow Gang, staged his last bank robbery.

All in all, though, it was a good list. I give it a lot of points for mentioning Jack Kilby (the inventor of the microchip), and for paying tribute to the Longhorn Ballroom. There is one GLARING omission, however – it said nothing of Dallas’ history, architecture, events, etc. So, I thought I’d write a little something on reasons I love Dallas, with photos, of course.

#1 – The Old Pioneer’s Cemetery in Downtown Dallas.

A wire-wrapped crib for the deceased Annie at the Pioneer Cemetery in downtown Dallas.

You can get an eerie feeling upon seeing this neglected cemetery. Sitting in the middle of some of Dallas’ most prominent structures, the cemetery seems to call out from a more peaceful, simpler time. But with planes droning overhead and trucks thundering across the freeway in the distance, “restful” doesn’t readily come readily to mind here. But I’m not sure the current residents of the cemetery would mind the noise much. After all, they constitute Dallas’ early civic leaders, business people, and benefactors, such as  Sarah Cockrell, James Latimer, and many members of the Stemmons family, for whom Interstate 35 E is named after. Because the Convention Center, City Hall, and other businesses threatened to encroach on the cemetery – the Santa Fe railroad had cleared several graves in the early 20th century to make way for railroad tracks – Frances James of the Dallas Historical Society worked very hard to make this cemetery a city landmark. Mrs. James is the reason for the next entry, actually.

#2 – Dallas Historical Society Tours

Mrs. James conducts the cemetery tours for the Dallas Historical Society. When I went on the tour, we visited the Freedman’s Cemetery in the State Thomas Neighborhood, and we also found the graves of the Millermoore family and their slaves in a backyard in South Dallas. John Neal Phillips, author of Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults, conducts the Bonnie and Clyde Tour every May. Ken Holmes offers tours on fun Dallas history and the Kennedy Assassination.  The incomparable Rosemary Rumbly weds hilarity and history in her tours of Oak Cliff. The tours are very cheap – roughly $45 per person, and includes transportation and a meal – you can’t beat that! By the way, the Millermoore plantation house, built in the Greek revival style and supposedly haunted, now sits at the wonderful Dallas Heritage Village, which is reason #3 why I love Dallas.

#3 – Dallas Heritage Village, especially “Candle Light” in December

The Millermoore mansion at Dallas Heritage Village.

An outdoor museum built on the site of Dallas’ first city park, entering the Dallas Heritage Village is like taking a step back in time. The buildings show not only a time line of Dallas’ historical occupation, but also demonstrate the diversity of the city. The most lovely event of the year, however, is reserved for December. The park is lit up with candles, carolers make their rounds, hot Dr. Pepper and popcorn are served. Each house is open to demonstrate different traditions – a pioneer Christmas in the 1850′s dog-trot farm; Chanuka preperations in the colorful Queen Anne house; and cooking tamales and sweets inside the Mexican-occupied railroad house. For five years now, I start out my Christmas season with a trip to Candle Light at Dallas Heritage Village.

Though there are plenty more reasons to love Dallas, these three are on the top of my list. But I could go on – Keller’s Hamburgers on Harry Hines Boulevard, served on poppy seed buns! El Centro College, with its campus in the middle of downtown! The 7th Floor of the Dallas Public Library! The HUGE aligator snapping turtle that swims in the lagoon at Fair Park and likes to eat donuts!

You can watch a lot of fun things from the parking lot at Keller's Drive In, including hookers and "exotic" dancers getting off work.

Hmm… contemplating these entries was so much fun, I think I’m going to give a “top 3″ for Fort Worth, next!

That’s why I decided that I’d give a presentation on the history of schools for an adult extension class. I’ve been driving all around the area – particularly through Oklahoma – to catch some old schools with my camera. So many of the schools sit as ruined hulks on the side of the road, or stand abandoned in the middle of towns… which tells a lot about how shabbily we treat history.

The remains of a school on an Oklahoma prairie.

Unlike the Old World, where cathedrals and mosques sit prominently in the hearts of their cities and villages, schools were the centers of communities in the United States.  Contrary to popular opinion today, the U.S. has always valued education, and towns had real stakes in the achievements of their young. One might be Baptist, or Methodist, or Jewish, an atheist or a Quaker, but most people had a child or a niece or a nephew or a favorite neighborhood kid that they wanted to see succeed, and so schools became the great equalizers.

Of course, that’s a rosy view (pun intended, which you’ll understand here in a minute). African Americans, particularly in the South, didn’t enjoy the equalizing effects that education was supposed to provide. At one point, Texas even had a segregated taxing system for schools! Black children were helped through efforts of local citizens as well as by progressive reformers like the Julius Rosenwald Foundation (get the pun?), which distributed funds to help black communities build better school houses and hire qualified teachers.

What used to be a Rosenwald school in Tatums, Carter County, Oklahoma, a freedman's town established after the Civil War.

Education was important for Native Americans as well. While Plains Indians were forced into boarding schools (sometimes far removed from their homes), other tribes, like the Choctaws and Chickasaws, decided on pre-emptive strikes and opened up their own schools, or academies. By the late 1840s, several of these academies served both boys and girls – and even adults, during Saturday classes – all around southeastern Oklahoma.

Wheelock Academy, the first school established by the Choctaws after their removal to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), is now a National Historic Landmark. The old administration building, built in the 1880s, still stands.

Until the 1940s, many students attended schools inside one room school houses. During bad weather – or after the harvest or planting periods – teachers could have up to 50 students in their classrooms, all squeezed together in a drafty, clap-board covered room. Teachers would have to arrive at least an hour before their students in order to get the stove going,  and would leave only after the school house was clean (naughty kids would help with that chore if need be). Especially for women, teaching could be hard going. Prior to the Second World War, female teachers were expected to be unmarried, and they made about a third of what a male teacher earned.  The efforts of the teacher’s unions helped to bring pay equity throughout the country.

The progressive era (turn of the 20th century) helped to foster the idea of high schools. Until that time, high school diplomas were quite rare – most schooling stopped at the 8th grade. However, reform movements, the push towards standardization of education, the proliferation of colleges and universities, and child labor laws created demand for further education. By the 1940s, attending high school had become the norm, which in turn made them true community centers. An entire youth culture developed around them… homecoming dances, proms, yearbooks, football games, “cruising,” and teen movies and novels created memories and lasting impressions.

The beautiful Denison high school, which anchored the western end of Main Street, was razed in 2007. And now a CVS Pharmacy will occupy the spot! Yea, progress!

Today, our high schools tend to be built outside of the city center. I may not be a sociologist, but I have to wonder…

**** soap box alert ****

… if the reason kids aren’t doing too well in school, including having discipline problems, high pregnancy rates, and lacking in higher learning, may have to do with the removal of schools from the middle of town. New schools tend to be built on cheap land away from business and neighborhoods. Most lack windows, and instead of students seeing their communities when they leave the building, they see the vast gray of parking lots. Some schools – like my high school in Paris, Texas - look almost like warehouses. When kids feel marginalized, might they tend to act out?

Then again, the high school in Lewisville (where I live) sits smack-dab in the center of town, even though it was initially built away from town in the 1960s. Suburban growth will do that to a building. The school is a part of life in this city now, and it’s quite nice, seeing students walk to the drug store, Burger King, library, the grocery store, Sonic – it’s as if my town is anchored to the school. In the Fall, I can hear the football games from my bedroom window, and that’s kid of neat (although I have never watched an entire football game in my life).

While I never did care much for compulsory education, I sure do like its history.

While the team on Ghost Adventurescan be annoying, they have inspired us to partake in our own ghost hunting. Not overnight and not in very scary places, mind you – I am way too chicken for that. I once visited the House of Torture at Scarborough Faire and was so freaked out, I clung to this strange woman, who in turn clung to me, and we both made it through only because we kept our eyes shut and our mouths screaming. Due to that terror-ific incident, I keep myself FAR away from anything too spooky, including slasher movies and unlit hallways.

No, our ghost hunting is much more mundane. Over New Year’s, David, Raymond and I visited the Fort Worth Stockyards and stayed at the Stockyards Hotel (I give this hotel 5 stars, by the way). We explored around the stockyards station, which consists of old hog and sheep pens that have been converted, for the most part, into restaurants and shops. Towards the now-defunct slaughter houses, however, the original ramps and halls remain pretty much intact. We poked around and caught these “orbs” on camera:

"Orbs" (either disembodied spirits or dust balls) at the animal loading ramp in the Fort Worth Stockyards.

David was pretty excited to have captured what may be evidence from the other side… or evidence of bad air quality.

The next weekend or thereabouts, I took David to Boggy Depot State Park just west of Tushka, Oklahoma, and to Fort Washita, west of Durant, Oklahoma, to do some more ghost hunting. Boggy Depot is now a ghost town, but used to be the seat of the Choctaw Nation, then for a while, the Chickasaw Nation, until the town was abandoned when the railroad bypassed it and the Chickasaw Nation seat moved to Tishomingo. Fort Washita, founded in 1842, served as a supply stop,military depot, was an important camp during the Mexican American War in 1848.  

I had told David about a strange encounter I once had at the Boggy Depot cemetery, where I had smelled perfume around a headstone, and my camera had gone berserk on me. David wanted to see if he could replicate the experience, or at least find some other kind of unexplainable phenomena. I tacked on a visit to Fort Washita simply because I’ve heard a number of ghost stories about Fort Washita from different people over the years.

Nothing happened at all that day, except that it was bitterly cold, and my sunglasses broke when I played on the teeter totter (don’t ask). David did record some strange sounds on his Digital Voice Recorder, but that was it. We took some pretty interesting pictures, though. One gravesite was especially intriguing:

This child's grave at Boggy Depot is strange... the sandstone tombstone is worn down, so a new stone was placed in front of it. That in itself is not strange. Notice the broken lamp, however. Why's that there?

Just below the headstone lie shards of a fairly old, white plate. I could make out the name "Langdon" on it. The name was stenciled on the plate in blue, and then was glazed and fired, so the plate may have been a family heirloom. The deceased boy's last name was Langdon.

I don’t quite understand the artifacts.  I do respect that each family has their own unique way of mourning, and this may be remnants of their personal grief. The items are interesting and quite mysterious.

So, we didn’t find any ghosts, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop looking. There are a few more places to seek out wandering spirits around here. ..