Blue Highways: Nacogdoches, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWho knew that passing through Nacogdoches, we'd be passing through some of the most intense history in Texas?  Rebellions, rebellions, rebellions.  Here's where Texas gets its reputation for fierce independence.  Click on the map thumbnail to see where Nacogdoches is located.

Book Quote

"...old Nacogdoches (not to be confused with old Natchitoches, Louisiana; Nacogdoches sounds as it looks, but Natchitoches comes out NACK-uh-tesh)."

Blue Highways: Chapter 4, Part 1

Street scene in Nacogdoches. From the SkyscraperPage forum. Photo part of "photolitherland's" photo gallery. Click on photo to go to host site.

Nacogdoches, Texas

In my last post, I wrote about Texas exceptionalism.  Exceptionalism isn't uncommon - we all feel at times that the place we live or the country we inhabit is the best place on earth, for reasons that are obvious to us.  In the case of Texas, part of that feeling comes from the fact that Texans are known for having a rebellious and independent spirit.

The Alamo in San Antonio is often singled out as being the ultimate symbol of Texan independence.  In 1836, some 200-250 Texians fought Mexican General Santa Anna's army of 4000-5000 men for 13 days before succumbing, and through their act of sacrifice manage to inflame the rest of Texas which led to the defeat of the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto a few weeks later.

I would argue, if the Alamo is Exhibit 1, then Nacogdoches might be Exhibit 2.  Nacogdoches might not stir any recognition to the casual reader.  However, you've heard of the Six Flags over Texas (no, not the theme park!).  Texas as a territory has been subject to six different governments:  Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America.  But Nacogdoches claims nine different flags, and some of these flags were short-lived independent republics set up to challenge Spanish and Mexican sovereignty in the Texas before the Alamo became the ultimate Texan rebellion success story.

In 1812, a joint Mexican and American filibustering expedition of 130 men assembled in Nachitoches, Louisiana invaded Spanish Texas.  In this context, filibusters are men engaged in unauthorized military expeditions against a foreign government.  After the filibusters entered Texas, their number swelled to 300 and the expedition raised its flag over Nacogdoches and the rest of Northeast Texas, proclaiming what is now known as the Gutierrez-Magee Republic.  The small force fought winning battles twice, at Goliad and at Rosilla, and executed the Spanish governor.  However, despite a request for help to the United States government, the U.S. chose to not interfere, and the execution of the Spanish governor caused 100 Americans to quit the cause.  The rebels were defeated in a final decisive battle at Medina.

Seven years later, James Long led another rebellion of about 300 men against the Spanish and established the first Republic of Texas (also known as the Long Republic) at Nacogdoches.  Though Long established trading posts and the rebels began the first English language newspaper printed in Texas, the tiny republic lasted only one month.  Long tried to get assistance from the pirate Jean Lafitte, not realizing that Lafitte was a double agent for the Spanish.  The Spanish responded with a force of 500 men, forcing Long to withdraw back to Nachitoches, Louisiana.  He attempted to raise another expedition from Galveston, but faced difficulties when a group of 50 Americans were arrested by U.S. authorities as they tried to cross into Texas.  With a force of only 52 men, Long captured Presidio La Bahia at Goliad, but had to surrender four days later to Spanish troops.  He was taken back to Mexico City, where six months later he was killed by a guard reportedly bribed by his onetime comrade and future governor of Texas for the Mexican government, Jose Felix Trespalacios.

The first attempt by Anglo settlers to secede from Mexico was centered around the creation of the Fredonia Republic near Nacogdoches in December of 1826, led by Haden Edwards.  Edwards was an empresario, or a person granted the right to settle on Texas land in exchange for recruiting and taking responsibility for subsequent settlers.  Mexico's policy in Texas was to grant rights to settlers from the United States so that it could better control its sparsely populated regions.  Edwards was granted these rights, but appears to have misunderstood the extent of the powers granted to him.  He assumed that he could evaluate already existing land grants, demand proof of ownership, and expel those that couldn't prove their ownership so that he could then parcel the land out to people from the southern U.S.  The tension caused the Mexican government to revoke his land grant, which led to the rebellion.  Edwards gained the alliance of the Cherokee nation.  However, rather than rally other Texas settlers to his side, Edwards' actions alarmed other respected empresarios such as Stephen F. Austin (later to play a pivotal role in the Texas rebellion that gave Texas its independence).  Austin actually sent men to assist the Mexican forces in putting down the rebellion.  In January, 1827 as the Mexican forces approached Nacogdoches, Edwards fled back into the United States.  However, while short lived, the Fredonia Rebellion had lasting implications.  It fanned fears in the Mexican government that the United States was plotting to take over Texas, and thereafterward the Mexican government looked toward its Texas settlers with distrust.  Mexico began to restrict immigration from the United States into Texas, leading to settler anger.  It also made Nacogdoches instrumental in other Texian rebellions against Mexican authority right up to the Battle of the Alamo.

Overall, this spirit of independence and willingness to rebel against authority on the part of Texans, particularly Anglo settlers in Texas, has influenced a Texas worldview that seems to be part pride and part us-against-them.  I experienced it in academia in Texas, where American politics courses are required to teach Texas government courses.  Texas public schools must teach their students out of Texas government-approved textbooks - which means that textbook companies often make a general edition of their textbooks and a "Texas edition" of their textbooks. 

It can be heard in the occasional less than serious talk of secession by Texas public officials such as Governor Rick Perry.  In effect, these blusterings are merely what they are.  My liberal friends in other places respond with "let them go."  As a person who has lived in Texas, however, I know the real story.  Texas needs the United States.  It would not be able to afford the costs of being independent.  However, what my friends don't realize is the other thing I know...the United States needs Texas.  It needs Texas' natural resources, it needs its agriculture and it even needs its politicians, who for better AND worse have had significant impacts on the United States.  It is a fascinating place with a fascinating history, and is part of the fabric of our country and our story.  Texas history, since 1836, is United States history and as such, as complex and compelling as any we have to offer.

Sources:  Wikipedia, History.com, Texas State Library and Archives Commission Online, Texas A&M online

If you want to know more about Nacogdoches

Nacogdoches Convention & Visitors Bureau
Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel (newspaper)
Stephen F. Austin State University
Texas Blueberry Festival
Wikipedia: Nacogdoches

Next up: Alto, Texas

Blue Highways: Carthage and Mount Enterprise, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapNow in the Lone Star State, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) drives Ghost Dancing into a state that has many interesting facets, not the least of which is a pride as big as all of Texas.  Mount Enterprise and Carthage are right at the beginning.  Click the thumbnail of the map at right, and you'll see where they line up along the trip.

Book Quote

"The true West differs from the East in one great, pervasive, influential and awesome way: space. The vast openness changes the roads, towns, houses, farms, crops, machinery, politics, economics, and, naturally, ways of thinking. How could it do otherwise?....

"....The long horizon gave a sense of flatness, but in truth, it was only a compression through distance of broad-topped hills....

"The towns: Carthage, Mount Enterprise..."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 1

See, everything is big in Texas! Photo taken by Amy Evans Streeter somewhere near Carthage, Texas. Click on photo to go to her site.

Carthage and Mount Enterprise, Texas

The magnificence of the sky over Texas is truly startling if you've never experienced it.  It may seem that Texans overblow things when one listens to how "the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas."  In fact, if one listens, it might seem that everything in Texas is overblown.  How can people think so much of a particular place?

The sky itself is the first indication that there may be something more to Texas.  It is not that the sky isn't brilliant and encompassing in other places.  I imagine that if you are standing in the flat farmland of North Dakota, the effect might be similar.  In these areas of Texas, the sky bends up and over one like a huge dome.  In the day, it seems to stretch on forever.  One can feel extremely lonely if one is in the middle of nowhere in Texas, or one can feel extremely connected to the universe.  It is not difficult to feel both things at the same time.  There are endless possibilities over the horizon, where more emptiness is just waiting for someone to come along and make something of it.

At night, the stars do burn bright.  How could they not in a state that has so many people, and yet so many open spaces that one can easily find places where ground light from the state's major cities does not interfere with one's enjoyment of the cosmos in its vast infiniteness?

If one takes LHM's contention that there is a boundary between the West and East in the United States, and that Texas stands on the West side of that boundary, then one will notice a change crossing into Texas.  The towns are more spread out, because they are not bound by geography or landscape.  Roads travel straight to the horizon, because they are not limited to the confining contours of an overabundance of hills.  People have the mindset that the land is a limitless resource to be exploited, not a limiting feature.  I'm not saying that all of Texas is like this - certainly the western side of Texas becomes desert and mountainous.   But for better or worse, if one sees Texas from this angle, it is easy to see, in part, why Texas has become what it is.

For better or worse, Texas exceptionalism grows out of these very features.  Many Texans are convinced that their state is different, and better.  It was built on the backs of independent and enterprising pioneers who came to the state to ranch, to grow, and later to drill and prospect.  Those who do well in Texas are those who do well for themselves.  Having lived in California and in the Midwest by the time I got to Texas, I could relate to both those who lived and breathed this ideal and those who criticized it.  After all, I grew up in a town made up of the same types of people, who felt that where they lived was exeptional.  But, also being a person who identified with those who had neither the means nor the resources to do well for themselves, I could relate to those who lamented the lack of social services and good public transportation.  Despite my misgivings (and I will admit that I moved to Texas with the conviction that I would hate it) I came to be fascinated by the state and literally shed tears when I moved away from San Antonio. 

Having lived all over the country now, I'm not sure that I can bring myself to say that Texas is better.  But I'm not a native Texan.  I still get angry especially when I hear some of the things that come out of Texas politics.  Those are feelings and beliefs, but not the essence of the state.  I gently chide my fellow liberal friends who think that Texas (along with the rest of the South) should be allowed to leave the United States. 

When I think of Texas, I think of people who in many ways are generous and kind, who have created some of the most moving music I have ever heard (see the link to the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame below), and who do live in a great state full of surprising cultural and geographical diversity.  I think of a state that encompasses one of the most wonderful places I have ever been, Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park.  I think of swimming with friends in the beautiful downtown retreat of Barton Springs, whose waters are maintained at a constant temperature that cools you down on a hot Texas day, or swimming with my wife in Balmorhea in a hole that draws recreational swimmers and people learning how to scuba dive.  I think of drinking a Shiner Bock made by Czech immigrants between San Antonio and Houston, in the German town of Fredericksburg and watching an African-American couple shop next to a Hispanic family not too far geographically from where the architect of the Great Society, Lyndon B. Johnson, was born and raised.

Lyle Lovett sang an anthem that manages to encompass both Texas exceptionalism and its welcoming attitude in the same breath.  The song says "that's right, you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway."  When I lived there, I felt that there was a space for me.

If you want to know more about Carthage and Mount Enterprise

Carthage, Texas Official Home Page
Panola College
Panola Watchman (newspaper)
Texas Country Music Hall of Fame
Texas Escapes: Carthage
Texas Escapes: Mount Enterprise
Texas State Historical Association: Carthage
Texas State Historical Association: Mount Enterprise
Wikipedia: Carthage
Wikipedia: Mount Enterprise
Wikipedia: Texas Country Music Hall of Fame

Next up: Nacogdoches, Texas

Blue Highways: Shreveport, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapThe last stop in Louisiana is also a moment for William Least Heat-Moon to pause for a few extra days and ponder why he is traveling.  But the wide open spaces of Texas beckon, and are coming up next, so he won't give up and neither will we.  Click on the map thumbnail to locate Shreveport on our journey, and thanks for traveling with us!

Book Quote

"I called my cousin again, got directions, and drove to her house. The sun was gone when the family sat down to dinner. A pair of heavy moths bumped the screen, and we took barbecued chicken from the platter. It had been a long time since I'd eaten among faces I'd seen before, and I knew it would be hard leaving.

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 14

"....The wanderer's danger is to find comfort. A weekend in Shreveport around friends, and security had started to pull me into a warm thrall, to enfold me, to make the wish for the road a craziness. So it was only memory of times in strange places where the scent of the unknown is sharp that drew me on to the highway again."

Blue Highways: Chapter 4, Part 1

Downtown Shreveport. Photo on Destination360.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Shreveport, Louisiana

Have you ever gone to a place and find that you just don't want to leave?  Have you ever had the temptation, once you're there, to just chuck everything you're doing and pursue a different life?  Does it happen more often when you're with friends and supportive relatives than if you are in a place alone?  Or, have you had it happen when, upon staying a few days, you just know that the place you are in is a place that you could stay for a while?

LHM touches upon those feelings in his passages above.  Those passages touch me.  I have never been to Shreveport, but the feelings of wanting to stay someplace resonate with me.  He stayed long enough (a weekend) that I actually marked his stop with a red marker.  As I sit down with good friends or family, sometimes I never want the feeling to end.

This happens to me every time I go home to Northern California.  Once or twice a year, I arrive at my childhood home, step out of the car, and the low rumbling roar of the ocean assimilates itself into my ears.  The air is crisp, sometimes foggy.  If it is night and there are no clouds, the stars of the Milky Way are so bright I can almost touch them.  The redwood trees stand silent, watchful, brooding.  They were standing there long before I was born, they will still stand there long after I'm gone.  I walk the bluffs by the ocean, I walk the forests.  The place is in my blood and bones, and I'm connected with it.  To leave means wrenching myself away, and I am forever wistful about it.

It's hard to explain, this feeling.  My wife doesn't quite understand it because she was not as connected to any particular place when I met her.  She saw me go home, deal with the dysfunctions in my family (I think that it is rare when there isn't some kind of dysfunction in a family), get angry and frustrated, or sometimes even just go into a shell.  This doesn't happen all the time, and I truly love my family, but it happens enough for her to notice.  But my connection to place overrides all that.

She began to understand when we lived in New Orleans.  We both developed a shared connection to that place, and we go back at least once a year.  When we are there, we never want to leave it.  We are both just weird enough to be able to live there among the rest of the weirdness that can be found.  We love the people we know there.  We love the cultural vibrancy, the music in every day, the differentness, the festivals and the general attitude.  It is a place made for people who are time-challenged, and we are definitely time-challenged.  But hey, when place believes that life should be worth LIVING, not worrying today about petty concerns and things that will be gone tomorrow, then how does time really matter?  It is a blow to the gut to get to Louis Armstrong International and step on that plane and go back to our ordinary, by-the-clock and busy lives.

I have felt that connection with Germany also, particularly the Rhine area.  I have many friends in Germany - though I've been terrible about keeping in touch with them.  I've been there three times, and each time, I feel a connection with place.  I don't know if it's the German people, who have a stereotype of efficiency and practicality, but who are very giving and generous.  If you become friends with a German, you are friends for life and they will help you with anything at a moment's notice.  I don't know if it's the landscape - that unique European feel that is so ancient and reminiscent of the tribal past of the German people, yet modern, shiny and gleaming at the same time.  I don't know what it is or why, but I know that I feel comfortable there.

When LHM pulls into Shreveport, and sits down with some family and their friends, and shares a dinner, and realizes that it will be hard to pull away, it is as if I am sitting there with him.  We all need touchstones, we all need connection with others.  If we are alone on the road, whether it is a physical road and an actual trip, or if we are alone or feel alone on our road of life, that connection to others becomes more important and we treasure it when it occurs.  Whether it's a joyous connection, or even a painful one, we still need to touch others and have them touch us once in a while.  When that connection is attached to a physical place, we become intricately entwined with it.  It will remain with us on the map of our life and the map of our experience.

If you want to know more about Shreveport

Louisiana State University at Shreveport
R.W. Norton Art Gallery
Shreveport.com
Shreveport/Bossier Page
Shreveport-Bossier City Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Shreveport Blog
Shreveport Scene (blog post about Shreveport restaurants)
Shreveport Times (newspaper)
Southern University at Shreveport
The Strand Theater (Official State Theater of Louisiana)
Wikipedia: Shreveport

Next up:  Carthage and Mount Enterprise, Texas

Blue Highways: Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck and Zwolle, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapYou get four for the price of one in this post, as long as you're willing to let me ramble a little bit on my love for maps of all kinds.  You can't get everything for free!  Click on the thumbnail of the map at right to see the physical representation of all the reflections we are getting from William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) trip around the U.S.

Book Quote

"U.S. 171 was traffic, fumes, heat, grim faces.  I became a grim face and drove.  Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck, and Zwolle - alphabetically, the last town in the Rand-McNally Road Atlas (Abbeville, just south, is the first)."

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 14

Clouds gather over Zwolle, Louisiana. From Bill Johnson's Steam Trip Journal. Click on photo to go to host site.

Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck and Zwolle, Louisiana

Since we're hitting a number of Louisiana places in LHM's Blue Highways in this post, and since I know nothing about these places, and since he mentions the Rand-McNally Road Atlas, I am going to write about my lifelong love of maps.  I guess you would have never thought that I love maps, since this site is at least 50 percent about maps, but yes, it is true, I do.

I'm not sure where I got this fascination with maps, but I know that if I look at a map of, let's say Louisiana, and see a name like Anacoco or Zwolle I really start to wonder about that place.  Why is the name so different or interesting?  That might make me look something up to find out more about the place.  So, for example, I look up Zwolle and find out that it was named after the Dutch hometown of a rich coffee merchant who gave money to help the completion of a railroad between Port Arthur, Texas and Kansas City.  Unfortunately, I can't find anything on Anacoco...yet.

But just answering, or attempting to answer, those questions and looking at Zwolle's and Anacoco's locations on the map really does something for me.  Once I've looked into them, I start wondering what is around them that's interesting.  What does the map tell me?  Both are very near the Toledo Bend Reservoir, which sits astride the border of Louisiana and Texas.  I wonder about the natural scenery along the reservoir, especially since the Sabine National Forest nestles along the reservoir on the Texas side.   The name "Sabine" is interesting.  Does it refer to the mythological Rape of the Sabine Women, who in Roman legend were taken forcibly by early Romans looking for wives in the neighboring town? What does the country look like?  Knowing a little bit about that part of Texas, I assume that it's flat.  But, I've also traveled enough to know that looks can be deceiving.  In New Mexico, where I now live, up north near Taos is high, relatively flat desert between mountain ranges.  But in the middle of that desert, sneaking up on you before you even know it, is the magnificent Rio Grande Gorge with the fifth highest bridge in the United States spanning it.  Here, imagination can't even begin to describe the reality.

When I was in junior high school, about seventh and eighth grade, I was very much into science fiction and fantasy, and like many of those authors I could imagine whole worlds in my head.  Some of that fantasy coming out involved making maps of my own.  I built my own kind of Risk games with lands that I created.  Sometimes they were modeled on the four acres that I grew up on, or the thirteen acres of property we owned along a river.  Our driveway became a river, and I set up old parts of mechanical things I found in the barn to be the rudiments of capital cities or factories.  I imagined kingdoms either in the far past or in a post-apocalyptic future, even before I knew what post-apocalyptic meant.  I kept them in my head, but occasionally, to give them life, I would draw a map and flesh out those aspects of the countries and cities I had created, giving them new life.

To me, like a book, a map tells stories.  It doesn't necessarily matter whether the stories are true or not.  The map is a representation of physical features, but as a representation it can be populated with whatever I desire.  It may guide how I look at the world, but it cannot truly represent everything in the world, especially those things I don't have direct experience with.  In fact, sometimes, actually visiting a place can take the fun and wonder out of imagining it on a map.  When the world wasn't just a mouseclick away, a map fuzzily defined the borders between the real and the fantastical.  Look at how many maps were drawn in eras past by cartographers who, only based on what they heard or imagined, blurred the lines between what was real and what wasn't!  "Here be dragons!"  Ultima Thule.  Prester John's mythic kingdom in the Far East.  Atlantis.  The fact that none of these were truly known to exist in those times didn't stop the cartographers from imagining them and representing them on a map based on speculation and hearsay.

To this day, and I'm 47 years old, if I come upon a map I will often stop and study it in detail.  Maps capture and captivate me, much as a good book will lure me in, except that with a map, I use the map's represented space to fill in my own fantasies about the real place.  Sometimes, my musings are better than the reality, but sometimes the reality represented on the map puts my fantasies to shame.  That's the beauty, and the mystery, of the map.

If you want to know more about Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck and Zwolle

Leesville Daily Leader (newspaper serving Rosepine, Anacoco and Hornbeck)
The Sabine Index (countywide newspaper serving Zwolle)
Town of Hornbeck
Town of Zwolle
Wikipedia: Anacoco
Wikipedia: Hornbeck
Wikipedia: Rosepine
Wikipedia: Zwolle

Next up: Shreveport, Louisiana

Blue Highways: Lake Charles, Louisiana

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapUp over the bridge, the lake curving under us with smoky refineries and a gleaming casino at the water's edge.  We'll pass right by Lake Charles, and head north with William Least Heat-Moon toward Shreveport.  Click on the map thumbnail to see where we are located now.

Book Quote

"At Lake Charles, another sinuous parabola of bridgeway, an aerial thing curving about so I could see its underside as I went up.

"The city stretched below in a swelter of petrochemical plants and wharves. I got through only with effort and pressed north to state 27."

Blue Highways: Chapter 3, Part 14

Lake Charles, Louisiana. Photo hosted at Derenda.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Lake Charles, Louisiana

Lake Charles was always a little bit of a mystery to me when I passed by it a couple of times on the way to and from New Orleans from Texas.  The freeway, I-10, would suddenly rise on a bridge over the lake.  On the shore to the south, petrochemical plants smoked away and there, in the midst of the plants was a large casino.

It seemed to me to encapsulate the major addictions of the American psyche.  One addiction, our constant need for petroleum and petroleum-based products, is pretty apparent.  Where would America be economically if we didn't use the 25% of the world's oil that we use?  (That percentage puts U.S. use first among all nations by a wide margin.  The country next on the usage list, China, uses only nine percent of the world's oil.)  Most of our usage goes to automobiles, so our oil addiction feeds our addiction to auto travel.  I'm not saying this is bad - I certainly wouldn't be where I am today without access to a vehicle.  However, I'm saying that one day the gravy train will end as oil is such a finite resource, and coming off of our addictions will be a hard withdrawal.

Our addiction to oil makes it possible for Americans to travel to places like Lake Charles, or Gulf Coast Mississippi, or to various Indian reservations, to feed another addiction, gambling.  It makes it possible even for us to visit the grandaddy of all places devoted to cashing in on addictions, Las Vegas.  As a country, we love to gamble!  In 2004, it was estimated that 54.1 million Americans visited casinos (http://www.overcominggambling.com/facts.html).  Of course, the recent economic troubles in the United States have cut deeply into our ability to both travel, because fuel costs more and even addicts will cut back a little on their habit if money is tight.  The casinos, and really, everything associated with leisure and entertainment, has been hit very hard in the recession.  So, I can't imagine that times are really good in places like Lake Charles right now.  Places that depend on these industries will do well when the times are good, but really take a hit when times are tough.

I didn't ever stop in Lake Charles, but know a person who grew up there.  She is the wife of a graduate school colleague of mine, and they would make many trips from New Orleans to Lake Charles to visit her family.  They now live in Houston, a little closer to Lake Charles, and I'm assuming they get to see family a little more often now.

Nellie Lutcher, a pioneer R&B and jazz pianist who was well known especially in Los Angeles where she often played in joints on Central Avenue, recorded a song about her hometown.  The song is called the Lake Charles Boogie.  I give it to you here, from YouTube, for your listening pleasure.  It's not every place that can inspire some fine rhythm and blues!

If you want to know more about Lake Charles

City of Lake Charles
Lake Charles American Press (newspaper)
Lake Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau
Wikipedia: Lake Charles

Next up: Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck and Zwolle, Louisiana