Locate the Fruitcake and You Get a Lone Star

What I’ve come to call the “Great Texas Fruitcake Run” began with a simple request from my wife: “Don’t forget the fruitcake.”

She’s a fruitcake devotee and the Deluxe brand fruitcake from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Tex., is one of her favorites.

It’s a favorite with gift-givers the world over, although nobody has done a poll to find out if anyone actually eats a fruitcake.

The fruitcake run began in Austin, Tex., where I was visiting friends and lending moral support to a friend from Los Angeles seeking a job in Austin. On the last full day of our visit to Austin, we decided to make a run for the fruitcake.

Corsicana is about 180 miles northeast of Austin, but everyone assured me that Texas highways are much less crowded than roads back home in California. Because my job-seeking friend had lived and worked in Houston for five years, I deferred to his greater knowledge.

Austin has 500,000 residents, is the state capital and is the home of the University of Texas, but it has a livable feeling of a smaller town, like, say, Madison, Wis., or Eugene, Ore. It’s a delightful city.

Boasting a chain of lakes formed by damming the Colorado River, the city has so many trees that a drive through Austin on the elevated portions of Interstate 35 is like a trip through a forest preserve.

Popular Sixth Street

The state capitol, constructed of pink granite quarried in the Hill Country west of Austin, is the largest in the nation, second in size only to the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

A popular attraction for tourists and locals alike is Sixth Street in downtown Austin. It’s the Melrose Avenue of Austin, with trendy shops and restaurants and the restored Driskill Hotel, the oldest hotel in town.

My friend spread the map of Texas out on his bed in his motel room and sketched out a route that would take us away from the heavily traveled interstates to the “real” Texas of the state highways and the farm/market roads.

In addition to Corsicana, I wanted to see Waxahachie because of its historic homes and massive Ellis County courthouse.

I like a bite of fruitcake now and then, to be sure, but what I really love is to photograph the magnificent county courthouses of the Midwest and South. From the pictures in the Texas travel guide, the Ellis County courthouse was a must.

By the way, the 248-page book “Texas State Travel Guide” is available free from the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, Travel and Information Division, P.O. Box 5064, Austin 78763-5064. Ask for a free state map when you order the guide.

The route my friend sketched out deliberately omitted big cities. I’ve been to Dallas, Ft. Worth and Houston several times, but I wanted to see the countryside on this trip. I did have a moment’s pause when he eliminated Waco from the itinerary.

Lots of Dams

“I don’t like Waco because of its wacky name,” he said. I said that the airplane is pronounced Wacko and the city is pronounced Wayco . I added that Waco appeared to be a pretty city about the size of Burbank on a lake formed by damming the Brazos River (dams are big business in Texas, which has 5,000 or so square miles of artificial lakes).

“We’ll see the Brazos on the way back to Austin,” he said. “Trust me.”

I’m a “let’s get going” kind of guy and my friend is a world-class procrastinator, so I decided to stick with his route.

I slipped on my newly acquired Tony Lama Roper cowboy boots, grabbed my camera bag and hat and piled into our rental car, the Butter Beagle. I’m not making this up; that was the name of the car typed on the key ring from Rent-A-Wreck. Yes, this California institution has two franchises in Austin, renting cars for $19.95 a day.

A 1981 Buick Regal with more than 122,000 miles, the Butter Beagle never failed us on the trip, got reasonably good gas mileage and kept us fairly comfortable in 100-degree heat.

After missing the exit for unleaded gas at 82.9 cents a gallon in Austin, we gassed up at a convenience mart in Belton, south of Temple. Gas was 15 cents more a gallon, but we picked up containers of coffee and cans of pop and I used the cleanest restroom I’ve ever seen in a service station.

Californians might be surprised to see a restroom in a convenience store, but Texans are generally friendly, practical people who don’t expect tourists to deface toilets or use them for narcotic injections.

Trucks With Gun Racks

We left the interstate at Eddy, taking Texas 7 east through Mooresville, Chilton and Marlin, on to Kosse at the junction of 7 and 14.

The country reminded me of southern Wisconsin, with its rolling hills and uncrowded roads. A definitely un-Wisconsin touch was seeing pickup trucks with gun racks clearly visible in the rear windows. Often the racks contained rifles or shotguns.

This part of Texas gets as much moisture as the Midwest, so the green of the countryside was not surprising. West Texas--around Midland, El Paso and Del Rio--is as parched as much of California and has a distinctly desert appearance.

From Kosse it was a straight shot up Texas 14 to Richland and only a few miles more to Corsicana.

I kept expecting to see signs telling us of our progress to the town that fruitcake made famous, but all I saw were signs indicating the distance to something called the Bubba Barbecue Co.

Because we’d enjoyed the best barbecue in Austin at the Iron Works, First Street and Red River Avenue, we decided to give Bubba a pass. Texans take their barbecue seriously and the Iron Works attracts a varied crowd of students from the University of Texas, downtown office workers and tourists.

Once in Corsicana we had to ask a gas station attendant for directions to the bakery, which turned out to be crowded with tourists buying pecan pies, loaves of bread, rolls, lemon cake and even a few fruitcakes.

Mailed Post Cards

The bakery is a busy place, but not too busy for the saleswomen to say hello and give directions to the restrooms and telephones inside the bakery.

After taking pictures next to the plaque commemorating the bakery, mailing complimentary post cards (the bakery even provides the stamps), and with our fruitcake stowed in the car, we hit the road for Waxahachie.

The city of 20,000 is the headquarters of the planned superconductor collider, an underground, 53-mile-long, high-energy physics device that has just been funded.

Waxahachie is only 30 miles south of downtown Dallas. It boasts 20% of all the historically significant houses in Texas, a state of 16 million people. It’s no wonder that Waxahachie has attracted hordes of yuppies, savvy buyers seeking huge old houses at bargain (compared to Dallas, at least) prices.

Accustomed to paying $5 to $7 for a movie, the new residents were pleasantly surprised to see “Batman” playing at the Plaza Theater across from the courthouse at $2 a seat.

The red sandstone and granite courthouse, complete with a memorial to the Confederate soldiers who fought during 1861-65, was not a disappointment. It cost $150,000 to build in 1895, when a dollar was worth something. The clock still works and keeps excellent time.

If Waxahachie looks familiar, it’s because the town has been used for movies such as “Tender Mercies” and “A Trip to Bountiful.”

Public Launch Site

I’m afraid the Ellis County courthouse ruined the others for me. The Bosque County courthouse in Meridian was a gray blob compared to Waxahachie’s wonder, although it has its charms. The Travis County courthouse in Austin is not in the same league.

As my friend promised, I saw the Brazos River, just past Rio Vista on Texas 174. A sign indicated a turnoff to a public picnic area/boat launch site. About half a dozen cars, trucks and vans--many with boat trailers--were in the parking lot, and the river was a beautiful sight flowing through the gentle hill country.

We got gas at the friendly FINA station in Belton, and were soon back in Austin. The trip totaled about 400 miles and was an easy, relaxing run on highways that were nearly empty--except for the interstate stretches.

There’s an old saying about the immensity of Texas, a state with more highway miles than most large countries:

The sun has riz, the sun has set ,

And we still is in Texas yet .

That was probably meant to be a lament, but I found it a powerful incentive to plan another drive through the Texas countryside.

For more information on travel to Texas, contact the Texas Department of Commerce, P.O. Box 12008, Capitol Station, Austin, Tex. 78711, (512) 462-9191.