Haven’t wanted to blog about Gatesville in the last several months, since a recent trip to the aria numbed me to the subject. It’s a nice ride south on 35 out of Dallas then back roads from Lake Whitney through the prairies of North Texas into the hills of the northern part of the Edwards plateau. From Crawford Texas it’s a nice hilly swervy road, the Coryell road. This is the road that ran alongside Valley School and diapered into the hills up by the caliches pit. The state put in a Hwy 36 bypass to keep traffic from rolling through the facility on Hwy 36. There is a store at the corner of that road and the bypass. We parked at the store over looking Terrace and Sycamore schools, you could see boot hill down the road. It was creepy. It’s a big TDC complex now, lots of boss’s coming in and out of the store.
There appeared to be a heaviness that overcame me as we were parked at the store. I just shrugged it off as internal weirdness from seeing that place again after 35 years. Later that night the group I was traveling with spoke about how we all had that heavy feeling, from the time we rolled up to the store and especially at the museum to see the state school exhibit, until we left town. We chalked it up to a spiritual darkness that each person with me said they could feel in their very soul. The people with me had never been near this place and yet they could feel that this is a bad place where bad things were allowed to happen to orphans. This town of Gatesville whose people whose ancestors built their wealth on the blood of state boys continues to thrive on the misery of others. This central Texas town, whose claim to fame is the spur capital of Texas cries out with the blood of orphans and widows.
The real history of Gatesville Texas is its 120 year legacy dispensing misery and pain to orphans and widows.
