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Yesterday I went to the annual Arts Festival in downtown Fort Worth. It was much too crowded for me, and I was glad I’d only spent $5 on parking – although I did stay long enough to buy a wonderfully comfortable pair of handmade (by a father and son team from San Antonio) leather sandals.

Today I headed out on Interstate 30 towards Texarkana, into northeast Texas in search of wildflowers. They were plentiful, but you’ve seen enough pictures already. In northeast Texas, once you get off the beaten track, you’re in redneck country (especially as you get closer to Arkansas). How do you know when you’re in redneck country? Every town has a Dairy Queen, and it seems to be where the whole town gets lunch, so that the parking lot is always full of beat-up farm trucks; it’s often difficult to tell whether some of the houses are actually occupied, or gradually disintegrating around their owners; and most families cling doggedly to every truck or car they’ve ever owned, perhaps in the forlorn hope that the rusting hulks will one day be resurrected.

Once again, the weekend bikers are out. You can usually tell the weekend variety from the serious ones because no self-respecting hardcore biker would ever wear a T-shirt that said on the back: “If you can read this, the bitch fell off”.

Pawn shop

I went into a pawn shop for the first time, just out of curiosity. They’re everywhere here, and don’t seem to carry the same stigma as elsewhere. For me, it’s saddening to see the remnants of people’s lives up for grabs, knowing that they have probably been taken advantage of at a most vulnerable point in their lives. Pawnbrokers seem to occupy the same social strata as prostitutes, flop-house owners and fast food outlet proprietors: we’re glad they’re there to mop up the human detritus so we don’t have to, but we look down on them anyway. I’m sure they’re all very nice people. Society would certainly have trouble functioning without them.

I stopped for lunch at Sonic (how hypocritical is that!) and picked up a cheese Coney with onions and a vanilla shake (it’s ok because I had fresh fruit for breakfast). Shortly afterwards, as I was jotting down some notes, another car pulled up alongside me, and the driver wound down his window and asked: “Do you know how to get to the State Hospital from here?” As you know, I usually travel without a map, and so I replied, laughing: “I don’t know how to get to anywhere from here.” Fortunately, he detected my accent and saw the humorous side. A bit further down the road, I saw a sign to the hospital, and saw him making the turn in my rear-view mirror, so he must have made it.

Fate City Hall

I took a slight detour following the lure of a sign to the “city” of Fate. Where they get these names from I don’t know, but it was a tiny “city”, with one of the tiniest City Halls I’ve ever seen. I turned round in the parking lot of the “Fate Gas & Grocery Store” and got back on the highway, satisfied that I had seen all that Fate had to offer.

Finally, I had had to stop for a picture of a large model bull on a trailer, even though I have mostly become inured to such sights. I don’t know where he was bound for, but it’s the kind of thing you only see in America. I think subtlety must have fallen overboard during the Mayflower’s long journey to the New World.