Friday, June 17, 2011

Hitting The Texas Streets Paved With Bricks At 103 Degrees

We've hit a new high for the year at my location in the Texas oven, as measured by my computer temperature monitoring device.

103.

Meanwhile, up in Washington, in the town I grew up in, Burlington, it is 63 degrees.

Changing the subject from the all important temperature to streets paved with brick.

I get a lot of email feedback from my Eyes on Texas website. There are 100s of pages on that website, some made as long as 10 years ago.

So, sometimes I'll get an email from Eyes on Texas and have no clue why someone is saying what they are saying.

Like this morning. Donald W. Williams sent two emails saying the same thing...

Viewing your page a few minutes ago, I read your note about streets paved with brick. Such streets are the pride and joy of residents of Merkel, Texas (between Abilene & Sweetwater).

I think I was in the pool when the light bulb came on. Fort Worth has a road called Camp Bowie Boulevard. Camp Bowie Boulevard, for the most part, is paved in bricks.

When I first drove on Camp Bowie Boulevard it was in really bad shape, a really rough ride. I could not imagine why a big city would have such a road.

I think Mr. Williams must have been on my webpage about the Ennis National Polka Festival.

Apparently I saw a street paved in brick, in Ennis, and wrote the following...


Above note the brick paved street the boy and his dog are walking on. In Fort Worth there is a brick paved street called Camp Bowie Boulevard. It is rather rough in places, although it is gradually being renovated, block by block. In articles in Fort Worth's Star-Telegram about the ailing Camp Bowie bricks reporters have actually written that it is so hard to fix because brick paved streets just don't exist anymore and so the skills to repair them are hard to come by. When asked why such a rundown street is allowed to exist, the ears of Eyes on Texas have actually heard native Fort Worthers say that Camp Bowie Boulevard is unique and such things don't exist elsewhere. A stunned look occurs when the native is told by the non-native Texan that many small towns in Texas have brick paved squares and streets. Pike Place and Pioneer Square in Seattle have brick paved streets, albeit always in good condition, so in that way they are different than Fort Worth's Camp Bowie Boulevard. Maybe all the skilled paved brick workers moved to the west coast. Or to Ennis.

I've told people, who have commented on my alleged snarkiness on my blog, that it used to be worse and that I've toned it way down. The above paragraph is sort of proof of that. And the fact that I've learned to make use of commas. And much shorter sentences.

5 comments:

  1. I don't care for the brick road, but I bet local car repair businesses love it. It's bumpy and loud to drive on and wears out car struts.

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  2. I can not remember the last time I drove on that bumpy road. It's likely been years.

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  3. OMG.I have to send my Dad your link to the Ennis Polka Fest. He's 100% Czech and my grandparents, who settled in a little town near LaGrange, even spoke Czech to each other. He loves this oom pah pah stuff.

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  4. The old brick part of Camp Bowie in 76107 isn't so bad at all. Some of the street may actually be concrete pavers and nowadays they could replace the bricks with stamped concrete that looks like brick.

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  5. Actually, the bricks on Camp Bowie are better than the brick roads in Lubbock. Those were so bad, I had to get off my bike and walk...

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