Day two of Mrs. Ulcer’s and my road trip. Today was supposed to be kind of an easy discovery day but turned out we saw a TON of stuff!
The first stop was a place right near the ranch we are staying at that we passed on the way in, The Glenn Goode Sandblasting and Rental Statues. I have no idea how long these things have been there but they are down a small Farm to Market road that doesn’t get much traffic. I suppose rather than blending into the background, Glenn decided to make a splash and ensure that anyone passing by KNEW he was there!
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From there we headed down to the Booker T Washington School. This was a place I REALLY wanted to get into after a certain individual who shall remain nameless turned me onto it. There was a chain link fence up in the middle of a neighborhood and some pretty old wood over all the entrances. Nothing too tough to get past but Mrs. Ulcer refused to allow me to “break and enter” (never mind that there’s no such thing in Texas). With that one a dud we headed to a local park that was once the site of the largest lynching in US history! There’s a great article here on the event, well worth the read:
https://tshaonline...ine/articles/jig01 3.
Just down the road was the tallest building in town – a grain elevator with associated offices. As we drove around the place looking for a POE we saw 3 other “kids” (probably high school or college age but I’m old so they’re all kids to me!) with cameras taking pictures. We stopped and I asked if they had a POE. They said no that it would be trespassing to go in and there are tall metal walls all around the place. I laughed and told them that there is ALWAYS a way in. They played it cool and the entire time we were around the area they stayed outside (as did the local po po who kept circling the block keeping his eye on them). Ok bust number 2 – not off to a great start.
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Mrs Ulcer thought that the old train depot across the street was “pretty” so she made me get some shots of it:
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The next stop was a place I had discovered with the caption on my map of “WTF is this?!?!? We headed north and stopped in front of a gate with a weird horse head made out of bricks and some sort of Medieval wall. In the distance I could see a small pavilion and another area of wooden planks erected in a circle. Honestly it didn’t look very interesting inside, was RIGHT on the interstate and not worth hopping a fence for so we moved on.
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We then proceeded to Camp Howze, a WWII US infantry training facility and one of the largest German POW camps in the country. From Google Earth I could see that most of the 49,000 acres were devoid of structures, but I did find one little corner where there was still some stuff. When we got to the place I didn’t see a thing! There was a pickup truck slowly approaching us on this gravel road and I got out and flagged him down. He said that he didn’t know of anything still standing other than a couple of water towers like the one we were in front of us and a part of the old hospital. He then gave me directions to the hospital and called a buddy of his to ask if he knew of anything. Turns out even the hospital is now gone. In 2015 all of the old structures were razed – another important piece of US history gone…
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So far its been a pretty shitty exploration day…
Mrs. Ulcer is tired of looking at things we cant get into or see so she decided we’re going to a winery about 45 minutes away. At this point, I’m thrilled she’s let me do as much as I have! With that I instruct her on what exit to take and start checking my Google Earth map. I then here, “What the hell did I do? Where are we?” and she pulls over. I look up and right in front of me is what looks like an old bank vault on the side of the road! I tell her, “You know what that is? Its an old bank vault!” as I grab my camera and leap out of the car to snap a couple of shots. Her wrong turn resulted in something pretty cool.
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Once we got our bearings we were back on the road, went around a few small towns just for the hell of it
On the little road to the winery Mrs. Ulcer pulls over at a small graveyard with a historical marker and directs me on where and how to take a photo….
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Finally we make it to her snooty vineyard. BeauBeau the Dog and I walked around and I made sure he took a nice big shit in between the grape rows. When Mrs. Ulcer emerged, she tells me that I would have hated it in there. Everybody was snooty and very condescending – good boy BeauBeau!
As we head back to the ranch something catches my eye:
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A keep out sign is an open invitation saying instead, “Come in! There’s some REALLY cool shit inside!” I ran in thinking that this place was just going to be another crappy country barn. As I entered and stepped on the floor I fell straight through and caught my nutsack on a crossbeam. What a fucking day! When I could finally breathe again, I managed to get into the main room and the place is completely trashed. Several cars are inside and there is junk heaped everywhere! “Another crappy barn” I say to myself. I turn and then I see what turned this place from dud to stud for an explore – its an old roller skating rink!
I begin to snap some pics and look through the junk. I could have spent hours here but I had the wife and dog waiting for me so this is what I came up with:
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Again we’re on our way back but its mid-afternoon and we’re getting hungry. We had prepared for such an eventually and had sandwiches so we pulled down a FM road to a small town to have a picnic. Luckily there was a place here that was on my list (coincidence? Maybe….). I really wasn’t all that hot about it as it looked small from GE and not very interesting. Turns out it was a GORGEOUS Masonic Lodge from 1903!
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We had lunch at a park next to the building and once again….headed back. When we arrived, the horses were close to the road so we all piled out and BeauBeau the City Dog got to see a horse for the first time! I think the horses liked him more the he liked the horses…
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Thanks for reading! Hopefully more adventures tomorrow!
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