driving | mareymercy.

On Saturday, I made an unplanned trip to Hallettsville to visit a cousin who has fallen upon some hard times. Hallettsville is only about 1.5 hours away from my house, almost all but a mile of it traveled on the same highway. I-90 is road I travel quite often to get from point A to point B in my neighborhood, and I never gave any consideration to how far it might stretch across the state and what all I might find if I ever took it out of town. Not being the adventurous sort, it’s probably not something I ever would have done without a reason, but I noticed pretty early into the trip that there were a lot of little interesting stops that could be made along the way – only I hadn’t brought my camera as I didn’t think it appropriate at the time (turned out my aunt and cousin both asked me why I didn’t bring it, so I guess I could have and it would have been fine).

Anyway, I did have my iPhone with me of course, but I didn’t want to slow the trip down by taking pictures, so I decided to film video of the journey instead, both to remind me of places I’d like to get back to later with a camera in hand, as well as entertain myself while driving. I ended up with about 20 minutes of footage, but knowing I could never subject people to that much shaky iPhone video taken through a bug-splattered windshield, I narrowed it down to four minutes and added a pretty song to make it more entertaining. I worked on this video for hours Sunday when I got home, so please – ENJOY, dammit! It’s only four minutes! And if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to drive across Texas, here you go (even though really this is only 1.5 hours of driving across it. Still).

I also took photos with my phone once I got to Hallettsville; here’s a few I’ve had time to process.

Hallettsville courthouse – also taken with the iPhone through a car window and edited with Snapseed on my phone. Not bad huh?

One of my cousin’s dogs had puppies, and this is the only one they have left to give away. He’s adorable, but already spoken for, and he’s going to get big so I couldn’t have taken him anyway.

This is the back entrance to my neighborhood. I’ve always loved this old twisty road. Years ago some local politician ran on a platform that involved re-constructing all these old roads with their hairpin curves to make them straighter and therefore safer for school buses and people on bikes. It was an utter failure. Hell, I think even school bus drivers and bicyclers were against it. To this day, when the weekend weather is nice, this road is swarming with bikers from all the neighborhoods nearby.

Two summers ago, when the drought here was at its worst, a woman’s head and one leg were found in the creek that runs through this area. A couple had killed the woman in North Carolina and driven to this neighborhood with her body in a cooler. They stayed with some relatives along this road, and during that time they cut her body up and dumped it in the creek. For about a year after that, anytime you drove by the area that she was found it would be covered in flowers, signs, and other memorials for the dead woman.

If this little video doesn’t make you motion sick, then nothing will. I am not good at filming with my iPhone while driving, but I did my best. And the fabulous song is from a children’s album recorded in the late 1950’s called “Space Songs” by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans, and it is awesome. They Might Be Giants recorded one of the songs, “Why Does the Sun Shine?” in the 90’s. I am fairly certain, however, that conservative Republicans banned this album at some point in the past 20 years due to its pro-science, anti-Jesus bias (and yes, the song skips).