Wheeeeere's Johnny Day 5

Day five started as I departed my friend Paul’s house for Howe, Texas to spend the weekend with my daughters and grandkids, but first I was going to make a stop at a namesake town, Purves, Texas. I headed up U.S. 281 through the Texas Hill Country, which is rather scenic with rolling hills and large ranches. Fortunately, this route precluded me from dealing with San Antonio morning rush-hour traffic. One rather quaint town I came across was Marble Falls. Unlike the usual gritty Texas backcountry towns it was a quaint mixture of old and new, well laid out and rather inviting. They even had a Starbucks.

Getting to Purves wasn’t difficult, but being somewhere west of East Jesus, there isn’t any regular cell phone coverage, meaning data was not available thus rendering Waze and Google Maps unavailable. Therefore, I went old school and broke out a map. Any man worth his salt can still navigate using a map, so it was none too difficult and I found Purves exactly where I needed it to be. My first stop was Pecan Cemetery where James and his brother and their wives are interned, James in 1900 and his wife Mary Ann some 16 years later. It took awhile to actually find the graves, but it was worth the effort. Job done I headed into town, as it were. Purves was founded by my third great-grandfather, James and his brother William in 1890. John established the church and like other Purves’ was likely the preacher as well as the village blacksmith and Postmaster. As I pulled off the road next to a couple of derelict buildings I happened upon a woman out retrieving her mail. I asked if she knew anything about the history of Purves, now just a collection of crumbling old buildings and a few mobile homes and she pointed to the structure I was parked in front of and told me that it was once the post office. Bingo! It looked like the typical general store of the times, which the Purves brothers ran as well and next to it was undoubtedly ye old blacksmith shop. Tour complete.

From there, map in hand, I navigated to civilization and then Wazed myself through Dallas/Fort Worth rush-hour traffic to Howe for a very nice weekend with family. Johnny performed admirably, not missing a beat along the way, although as usual, about 15 minutes out the SRS light stared flashing again telling me it was time to call it a day. Uncanny. I won’t bore you with a full report of the weekend other than to say Johnny got a much needed bath on Saturday and Greg, my son-in-law, helped me retract the permanently extended radio antenna and re-affix the front license plate, which by this time was only hanging by one screw. The road trip continues on Monday.