Saturday, September 28, 2019

In Archer City Thinking About Skinny Dipping With Cybill Shepherd

This last Saturday morning of the 2019 version of September I decided to get out of town and head southwest from Wichita Falls, on Texas Highway 79 to the sprawling metropolis of Archer City.

Earlier this century, when I was in the midst of building my formerly massive Eyes on Texas website, I was lured to Archer City to check out Larry McMurtry's Booked Up bookstores.

That and to see if I could see a movie in Archer City's Royal Theater, which way back in 1969 was made famous in a movie called The Last Picture Show.

Well, the Royal Theater was no where closer to showing a new movie than when I was last at that location and webpaged what I saw in Archer City way back then. I did not bother taking new photos of that which I had photographed the first time I was in Archer City.

I did take a couple photos of a couple new things I had not seen on that previous visit. Such as that mural you see above, which is located on the west side of Highway 79, at that highway's intersection with Highway 25, also known as Main Street.

Adjacent to that mural is that which you see below.


An historical information installation the likes of which I had not seen before. The text was cut through steel. What sort of complicated piece of machinery creates such a thing?


Above is the section of the informational signage which is about the filming of The Last Picture Show, telling those who where not aware of it that Archer City's native son, Larry McMurtry wrote the novel upon which the movie is based.

There is a scene in that movie where the Jacy Farrow character played by Cybill Shepherd is lured to a pool party at a home in Wichita Falls where one of the most famous skinny dipping scenes in movie history takes place. I think I roll by that house every time my bike takes me through the area I refer to as the Wichita Falls Beverly Hills.

That was a nice drive in the country today. I must do this more often.

I sort of have a back log of blogging fodder which I seem to avoid bothering with. The main instance of this is an expose in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about that town's shocking sidewalk shortage.

I'm sure I will get to those notorious Fort Worth sidewalks sometime soon...

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