The beater watch has been called for for a couple of days now.
Mrs. noelekal's office was closed yesterday so we were busy with yard work. By late morning we had loaded pickup truck with a pile trimmings from trees and shrubs we'd accumulated this spring, so we decided to haul it off for disposal out at our old family place on the lake. Deliberately overshot our exit off of Interstate 20 and went on down the interstate to Thurber, Texas for lunch.
We have a ravine on the place which is slowly washing out and may someday encroach on one of our interior roads. We put the brush and limbs in there to help stop the wash. Then we went hiking, bird watched, and plinked cans and prickly pear cactus with vintage pre-World War II single-shot bolt-action Remington .22 rifles while sitting on the old lake cabin porch while resting before returning home at dusk.
Thurber is a ghost town with an odd history. It was a company town serving coal mining interests. In terms of longevity, it was a sort of "flash-in-the-pan."
http://www.redriverhistorian.com/thurber.html
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnt21
http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/Thurber-Brick.htm
I thought to take some photographs of the smokestack. It's a landmark in the region and I've been past it a jillion times, also having poked around in Thurber before, but never have bothered to take a photo of the thing. Lightning, a tornado, a blithering nitwit's mischief, or simple deterioration due to age might take it down one day. Perhaps the events at Notre Dame this week was on my mind.
Interstate 20 in front of the smokestack.
We've had a real Thurber brick for years. Ours is an older pre-union-marked brick. Decades ago reclaimed Thurber bricks from the Fort Worth Stock Yards were available for next to nothing. An uncle had used them to built a nice patio off the back door to his home. I remarked that I'd like to have a Thurber brick, just because I remembered passing the Thurber smoke stack on our way to weekends out at our old place on the lake. My uncle fetched me a spare from a supply remaining from his patio project.
There's even a vintage Thurber brick on Ebay at present. It's a later union-marked example. What a hoot! Many small towns in Texas (including ours) as well as some remaining major thoroughfares in a few of the large ones may be found paved with Thurber bricks.
https://www.google.com/search?clien....784.5j3......0....1..gws-wiz-img.YDmyRjaGu4I At $14.56 each people are bound to wise up and then there will be some great honkin' pot holes on our city streets where bricks were pilfered.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-AN...147230?hash=item3408fdc15e:g:G14AAOSwH6lcu1if
Better snap it up before it's too late!
So there ya' are. Now knowing more about Thurber, Texas than you ever wanted to know.
