Musing About Lubbock

Hi Blog!

The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is now but a memory, but what a great memory. We're still trying to recovery from the early mornings and late nights. It took a few days, but we think we're finally getting back on track.

We are now heading south and east toward Houston, Texas where we will store the rig for our upcoming trip. Lubbock is our first stop in Texas.  The city is located in the northwestern part of of the state. Lubbock's nickname, "Hub City", derives from it being the economic, educational, and health care hub of the multi-county region.

On Thursday, October 19, 2017, we set out to get to know Lubbock a little better.

You may know Lubbock as the birth place of Buddy Holly.  So what better thing to do first in Lubbock, than to visit the Buddy Holly Center?

The collection is headlined by the Fender Stratocaster that Holly played during his final concert and the pair of glasses that he was wearing at the time of his death.

In 1996, the city obtained a large number of Buddy Holly-related artifacts from his estate. The next year the city then purchased the recently closed Depot Restaurant, and began restoring, renovating, and expanding it into a facility that could both replace the Fine Arts Center and serve as a home for its newly acquired Buddy Holly collection.

Kathy had a little trouble seeing the entrance to the Buddy Holly Center:

We started our tour by watching a documentary on Buddy Holly and then browsed the exhibit hall, which included numerous artifacts from his career as a professional musician, including a recording microphone, performing outfits, a guitar strap customized by Holly himself, and numerous albums. However, no trip to the Buddy Holly Center would be complete without a visit to the gift shop.  Here, Dave models a "genuine" pair of Buddy Holly sunglasses while holding his newly acquired CD of all Buddy's greatest hits (soon to be ripped to mp3):

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included Holly (his actual name was Charles Hardin Holley) among its first class in 1986. On its entry, the Hall of Fame remarked upon the large quantity of material he produced during his short musical career, and said it "made a major and lasting impact on popular music". It called him an "innovator" for writing his own material, his experimentation with double tracking and the use of orchestration; he is also said to have "pioneered and popularized the now-standard" use of two guitars, bass, and drums by rock bands. As we left the center, we wondered what Rock and Roll would have been like had Buddy been able to continue his career.  Kathy KNOWS he could have used her help:

We decided to continue our musing over lunch at the Triple J Chophouse & Brew Co. Dave went right for the Octoberfest, while Kathy sampled several of their beverage offerings. We plotted out our next Lubbock adventure while enjoying our beers.

After lunch, we stopped at the National Ranching Heritage Center, a museum of ranching history, located on the campus of Texas Tech University. The NRHC features almost fifty authentic ranch buildings dating from the late 18th to the mid-20th century. These structures include a railroad depot, homesteads, barn, schoolhouse, windmills and other historic structures. There are several rotating exhibits in the main hall including one on cattle rustling, another on the local native tribes and, Kathy's favorite, the history of bandanas!

With over 50 buildings it was hard to choose which made the blog and which didn't. We decided to just include a sampling to give you the basic idea. The Jowell House, a fortress style residence, was built in 1872 after Comanches burned down the Jowells' first house.

Here Kathy inspects the Waggoner Ranch Commissary. The Waggoner was notable for being the largest ranch bounded by one fence in the United States - 535,000 acres. The land was used primarily to raise crops, beef cattle and horses as well as for oil production. The commissary was needed to supply the huge labor force needed to run a ranch of this size.

Bairfield School House (1890) is a typical one room school house:

Barton House (1909), an example of Queen Anne Style architecture, was relocated to the Heritage Center from Hale County. It is named for Joseph J. Barton. Barton secured 50 sections of land in the southwest corner of Hale County and founded the T. L. Ranch. Plans in 1906 for a railroad line to connect Hereford with the Texas and Pacific RR at Colorado City through his property prompted Barton to found a town which he called Bartonsite. By 1909 Bartonsite had 250 people and was supporting a hotel, lumberyard, community church and school, and a post office. Then in 1909, Barton erected the two and a half story home which is now at the Ranching Heritage Center. 

The house was built in the late Victorian style with carved wood mantels and staircases and elegant wallpaper. Later when the railroad went through Abernathy to the east, Bartonsite residents dispersed, mainly to Abernathy. The house in its elegance represents the prosperity of the rancher, which came after years of hard work in overcoming the adversities of weather, terrain and economic recession.

One of the most fascinating of all the buildings was the Picket and Sotol House.

Since wood was in short supply in West Texas, pioneers collected the stalks from the sotol plant. Hundreds of these stalks were nailed on two sides of wooden studs. The center between the two walls of sotol was then filled with mortar to insulate the building. What a tremendous amount of effort it must have took to nail each and every one of those little sticks to the wall! We finished our tour with a better understanding of what life was like out on the range back in the day.

After we got back to camp, we walked around the corner to Mi Taco Village for some good Mexican food and local cowboy music. In addition to country standards like "Paper Roses" and "Fine Time to Leave me Lucille," he regaled us with Prince's "Purple Rain," John Denver's "Country Roads" and several Jimmy Buffet tunes! A good time was had by all.

We are hoping to go for a hike on Friday and take in a local high school football game. Stay tuned!