On the Way Out West: East Texas (B&W film)

Introduction

Road trip! In August/September of 2019, I drove to Flagstaff, Arizona. This is serious mileage from Vicksburg, and I wanted to take my time, explore rural America on the way, and take photographs. I packed a Hasselblad medium format kit as well as my little Yashica Electro 35CC 35mm camera.

I headed west across Louisiana and then northwest across east Texas. My goal was to bypass the Dallas/Fort Worth urban area. The traffic there is so bad anytime of day and night, I wanted to totally avoid that mess. My first destination was Denison.

This is the first of many heading-out-west articles. In this article, I will show a few frames from east Texas. In future updates, I will continue to Denison, then west to Wichita Falls, and then northwest on US 287 towards Amarillo. This will form a "Texas Panhandle" series. Once you reach Amarillo, you are back on the Mother Road, Route 66. I will add some more articles to my 2016 and 2017 series on Route 66. To see these older articles, type "Route 66" in the search box.

Many people try to cross Texas as quickly as possible, but really there is a lot of rewarding photographic subject matter; just take your time and stop when you see something interesting.

OK, so I packed a lot of junk, including a tripod, hiking equipment, Polartec, tools, and more. Cameras, day pack, and munchies stayed in the body of the car. I put film in an insulated cooler bag.

Mineola

On the first day, I drove west quickly across Louisiana and crossed into Texas. I stopped in Mineola, a small town just off I-20.

Mineola looked busy with a lot of traffic. I saw only a few interesting sights, and after a few photographs, pushed on.

Emory

In Emory, I stopped at Pott's Feed Store for a snack and restroom. I met a cow. The proprietors said they would be glad to put some foam on the top of my car and tie the cow up there. Then she could make the trip to Flagstaff and keep me company. Maybe next time. In case I made a big mistake in not picking up a friendly chicken, I saw some similar ones further west in Quanah, Texas.

Sherman

Finally, some real Texas BBQ at the Cackle & Oink in Sherman, just south of Denison. It's nice to get into BBQ country again. I usually look for the locally-owned places and avoid the chains.

These photographs are from Fuji Acros 100 film exposed in my Yashica Electro 35CC camera with a 35mm ƒ/1.8 Color Yashinon-DX lens. I scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600i film scanner, controlled with Silverfast Ai software.