Revisiting My Roots Part 2

 After visiting by Grandma Love's house in Pine Mills, I wanted to see if we could find the park in Quitman where we used to have family reunions in the 1970s and 1980s. We found it, Governor Jim Hogg City Park. They were having a festival with crowds of people, no place to park, food trucks, and other food stands. A round of bingo was happening in the pavilion. 

We left after a couple of minutes and went to the grocery store before heading back to the Sassy Sasquatch Airbnb. Daphne and I played card games until we were so tired we had to get some sleep. The next morning we had planned on having biscuits with breakfast. Neither one of us had noticed that there was not an oven/stove. So we improvised with a waffle iron. It worked. The biscuits tasted delicious with the jam and fresh peaches we had bought at Graham's Market the day before.

We were ready to get up to some shenanigans in our Thelma and Louise shirts so we headed to the Armed Texans Training Facility and gun range.

We were having fun from the moment we walked in the door. One of the guys working, Alan, started laughing the minute he saw our shirts. He asked if he could take a picture to show his wife. He was super friendly and jokey. Daphne and I were being EXTRA that day. We told them we wanted to shoot handguns and moving steel targets. (The day before, Daphne had told me about a call her husband had with a customer. Her husband is a city inspector and often writes citations. The customer called to say he wanted the city to stop giving him citations. It was his wife who was breaking the watering rules and he wanted her to have the citations. D's husband said they would have to change the water bill into her name for the wife to get the citations. When he hollered this to his wife, she yelled, "F#@* your citations and f#@* your water bill. Daphne was saying that about everything. It really made us laugh.) Daphne told Alan the citations story when we were waiting for the training/safety video to start. He was a little shocked but laughed. After the video, Daphne bought a hat and shirt. We were chatting with Alan and the range manager quite a bit. They gave us a bucket and said we'd need to pick up our casings. Daphne asked Alan if she could keep her casing for a craft project. He shook his head and said he had never heard that before. Then he went and got us a paper Dixie bowl so Daphne could keep her casings. We were causing a little bit of a stir in the building by cutting up and laughing so much.

Then Alan told us to follow him to drive down to bay 5. We did. We got out and Alan told us the rules about where to stand and where to load. Then he started to leave. We asked where the "pew pews" were. He laughed because he thought we were joking. He could not believe that we did not have our own equipment. We followed him back to the building. When we were getting out of our cars, Daphne smiled and yelled, "F your assumptions." Alan looked like he was going to fall over laughing. We went back inside and got the guns and ammo we needed then the range manager had us follow him back to bay 5.  He said he would come back for a safety check in about 15 minutes. 

My husband always loads my clip because I have arthritis in my thumbs. Daphne's husband usually loads her gun. We started loading and realized that neither one of us had the thumb strength to get it done. We were laughing so hard. We did not want to still be standing their trying to load when the range manager came back for the safety check. We eventually loaded about 11 bullets each and decided that was good enough. Of course we had to take a selfie before shooting.

We each hit some of the targets. Daphne knocked down one of the targets and then the whole target started swinging.

About 30 minutes later, Alan came by for a safety check. We talked him into doing a mini photo shoot. 😁

After he left, we finished the rest of our ammo and picked up our casings. Daphne wanted to have all those shells loose in my car with just a Dixie bowl to hold them? Nope! I got a pair of rubber gloves out of my car's first aid kit and we put them in there so we could tie the end to keep them contained. Daphne arranged both gloves to be shooting the bird and took a picture of them. When we got back to the building, Daphne showed Alan the picture and said, "F your paper Dixie bowl!" It was hilarious. We had so much fun that morning.

We spent part of the afternoon in Quitman so I could take pictures at Governor Jim Hogg Park in the daylight. We would get to the park early to grab a few picnic tables under the pavillion for our family reunion on Labor Day weekend. 

Sign in the bathroom

Hogg House, it used to be open for tours, now it is closed.

The water out of the old water fountains always tasted a little bit off.

The playground has all new "safe" plastic equipment.

Off to one side there were a few old metal burn your backside slides. None of them are as tall as I remember the deathtrap one we used to slide on when I was a kid. They now have these slides in the shade.

Old and new picnic tables.

We always set up the volleyball net on the side of the pavilion and played Nuke 'Em. I was like volleyball but you could catch the ball before you hit it back over the net. It made it easier for all ages to join in and play.

We left Quitman and went to Tyler for Daphne to walk down memory lane. She lived there for a few years when she was young. We went by her grandmother's house, her uncle's house, other relative's houses, her old elementary school and the parking lot where she broke a couple of ribs when she was 4. Her great aunt was living in one of the places we visited so we stopped and talked for about 30 minutes with her. 

Daphne's oldest son is in the army. We saw this tank sitting outside of a VFW and had to stop and take a pic.

Then we started driving back to the Sassy Sasquatch in Mineola. We stopped at Richie's Grill and Cafe in Hawkins for dinner. We happened to be their on the night "The C" was entertaining the old folks. Apparently he has a big following and some of the people were wearing "The C" t-shirts. 

We played a few rounds of card games before going to sleep. The next morning we cleaned and packed up. On the way home, we stopped for lunch in Corsicana. We had lunch at a place we'd never noticed before, Corsicana Steakhouse at the Opry. It was in an old warehouse built in 1905. We started talking to the owner, Carolyn, and she ended up giving us a tour of the building and telling us the history of the place. The building has at least three ghosts that she (and others) have seen.

The dining area is off to the side.

There were several old cars on display. Carolyn said they were loaned to her for a year but she has had them for eight years.

Carolyn told us it took her hours and hours to glue 7000 tiny mirrors onto the saddle to make the disco "ball" above the dance floor.

Carolyn used some of the old loading dock doors, from when this was a warehouse in the early 1900s, to make the barn on the back of the stage.

Carolyn told her builder she wanted an oil derrick in the design.

Carolyn took us to the old vault/safe room and showed us how creaky the door sounds. She said there has been lots of paranormal activity near this door. I love the sound of the creak!

The safe inside the vault had seven steel plates.

Many of the doors had their original hardware.

One of the old elevators is still in use with the original hardware. Carolyn asked if we wanted to go on the elevator and we both declined When she was talking, she accidentally dropped her reading classes down the edge of the elevator side to the basement below. Carolyn said she would send one of her staff down to get it because the basement has too much paranormal activity for her to want to go down there.

Pulley system on the elevator.

The other old elevator does not work so Carolyn used it as a showcase for art.

View of the dance floor from the balcony.

I am glad we stopped there. It was really neat to hear about the history of this old building and see how it is now being used. I can't imagine having the vision to turn it into a dance hall. She bought the building in 2013.

We headed back to Waco and stopped at Daphne's mom's house to visit. Then I went home to get ready for my first teacher workday for this school year. It was a fantastic trip! we laughed so much. It was amazing to revisit some of the places where I grew up. I did get a few comments from my mom, sister, and cousins about being jealous they did not go. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision that took almost 30 years to make.