Signs

Wally Wash

Wet Willie's

Limp Willies

PeeWee Cray

Psycho Clown

“Go West, young man!” Works just as well today as it ever did. Once again, at a loose end, and with nowhere particular in mind, I decided that it was a while since I’d been west of Dallas. To the west lies Fort Worth (about 15 miles) and Abilene (about 300 miles). Interstate 30 takes you all the way to Abilene – I had no intention of actually going that far, but just in that general direction.

After several double-takes and back-tracks (to confirm what I had just seen), it became apparent that my mission for the day was to collect signs – not the signs themselves, you understand, but just photographs to prove that they exist.

So here I present just some of the ones that I saw. Would you wash your clothes at “Wally Wash”? Or go for a beer to “Wet Willie’s”? Or buy a SnoCone at “Limp Willie’s SnoBall Palace”? Or get yourself tattooed by the “Psycho Clown”? Or buy a car from PeeWee Cray? I think not (although, for PeeWee at least, there may be some reverse psychology involved – as I’ve noted before, Texans are not renowned for their subtlety, so I suspect that it’s just a gimmick).

Thankfully, once off the beaten track, Texas is not all like this. I stopped for lunch at the Sunday Creek BBQ in Santo – a BBQ beef sandwich, with onions and pickles, and lemonade. Their slogan, which all the waitresses sported on the backs of their t-shirts, is “Nobody beats our meat!” Remember, I’m only reporting what I see.

Then I headed north towards Palo Pinto on a minor road, and diverted again towards the signposted Palo Pinto Lake. The countryside you see here probably doesn’t coincide with the average (non-Texan) image of Texas. But, apart from the clump of cactus that is just visible at the bottom right, this could almost be an English country lane. It was difficult to get a picture of the lake itself, since, like everywhere else in the world, a small percentage of the population have effectively barricaded it off with their expensive lakeside second homes. What I did manage to see was very pretty.

I also collected a variety of wildflowers, still in bloom, that are at the moment sitting in the bottom of my hotel wardrobe, carefully arranged between sheets of absorbent kitchen towel, underneath several telephone books and my almost empty, but still remarkably heavy, suitcase. At my age, pressing wildflowers is merely eccentric. I think eccentricity is greatly under-rated.