Jasper, Haslam, and East Texas Proper

Taking advantage of having an extra paid day off for New Year's Day, we here at Blind Butcher went on another of our growing series of jaunts into the Texas wilderness to relax, escape, hide, and explore ghost towns and various elements of the dark Texas underbelly (something that is relatively easy to find, as one might expect). Camping is something that we find incredibly satisfying.

For this trip, our fourth such outing since October, we headed east to the Piney Woods region of Texas. Speaking for myself, I am a total bitch for pine forests. Fucking love 'em.

We chose Martin Dies State Park, which is east of Livingston, off 59 North, about forty miles from the Louisiana border. More importantly, Martin Dies lies just on the outskirts of Jasper, which, for those not in the know, was the home of James Byrd Jr., a local resident who was the victim of barbaric and idiotic modern-day lynching at the hands of a trio of white men who picked Byrd up off of a local Jasper street late on the night of June 7th, 1998, took him behind a convenient store, beat him with a baseball bat, and then brought him to a remote back road, stripped him, chained him to the back of their pickup truck, and dragged him three miles to his death. Once they were done with him, they disposed of his headless, one-armed corpse at the site of an all-black cemetery at the end of the same road. Supposedly, from there the three went to a barbecue and celebrated their brutal and inhuman crime.

According to the autopsy, Byrd was dragged for two and half miles, fully conscious and fighting to keep his head up right up until the truck rounded a corner and Byrd was thrust into a cement culvert at the end of a driveway. This impact with the culvert resulted in decapitating Byrd and also tearing off one of his arms. The murderers dragged his lifeless corpse another half of a mile before dropping him at the Huff Creek Memorial Church.

The next morning a local boy was walking the street with his stepfather when they happened across Byrd's corpse.

When the police arrived on the scene they found somewhere near 75 pieces of Byrd's body along the road. They also found a wrench inscribed with the name of one of the murderers as well as a lighter with the nickname "Possum" inscribed on it (also one of the murderers). After questioning the suspects, police quickly knew this was not an everyday murder and called in the FBI.

The case drew well-deserved national attention and showed that the scope of hate related violence in the US is just as ugly and stupid as it has ever been. And the outrage that followed took a small, racially integrated town and turned it into a caricature of America's infatuation with Southern racism and violence. It's unfortunate because in our short time in Jasper, we found people to be fairly friendly and open. We also found black and white people living together with little drama.

Then again, what the fuck do we know?

I think it's safe to say that both C and I are drawn to places at which humanity reveals itself to be as base, selfish, and hideously deplorable as we are always trying to convince you we are. We spoke about why we were drawn to places of such ugliness, and I think that for me it boils down to my need to face that which is a part of me. If any man can do these things, than any other can do them as well, and what does that say about us? How can we ever hope to rise above our station if we are forever as noble as our lowest member?

We can't. That is my point, and it is this fact which dominates the way I see the world and my place in it.

How can I ever claim to be above this behavior when another man relishes in expressing it so happily, so unrepentantly?

So on Friday we drove to Jasper. First off, we went to the Casa Ole which is more-or-less the location at which Byrd was picked up while trying to get a ride home. It turned out he knew one of his murderers. From there we located Huff Creek road, a small county road just east of town. The weather was overcast and it was a little chilly. As we drove we took in the houses that lined the winding, brushy road. Huff Creek Road is somewhat hilly, and honestly more than a little depressing even without its history. Once we reached the Huff Creek Memorial Church we stopped and went to take pictures in the cemetery.

The cemetery itself was interesting. Many of the graves were hand inscribed, names crudely scraped into the wet cement with sticks. Some graves had personal touches like flowers encased in the headstone or tea settings pressed into the cement. Many of the graves gave the date of birth as the "sunrise," while the date of death was labeled "sunset." For a guy who pretty much thinks cemeteries are a waste of space, this one left me with more than the impersonal sterility of most others.

In fact, the cemetery Byrd himself was buried in was of the impersonal sort. In the middle of town, and just off the downtown center, Byrd was buried in a fairly modest black casket, partially above ground, with a silver plate covering the top. The grave itself was surrounded by a small iron fence to deter the vandalism that always seems to follow famous grave sites. There were some flowers, some poinsettias, and a Christmas wreath, and that was about it.

Byrd's murderers languish away in a Texas prison, the two main motivators awaiting their execution on death row, and the third, the getaway driver, the apparent dupe of the bunch, serving his life sentence without parole.

As we walked the cemetery, a man came out of the church and walked over to see what we were doing. I knew that seeing white people in the all-black cemetery would arouse interest in anyone who happened to come across us, and so I felt it best to talk to the man. It turned out he was the vice president of the Church. His name is Billy Adams. C thought he was saying Billy Idol, which is priceless. I found Billy to be gracious and patient with us as we were obviously there for one reason as far as he was concerned. I did my best to put him at ease, and we spoke about the cemetery, Byrd, and the attention the town received around the crime. Billy told me that the house at which Byrd was decapitated was Billy's cousin's place. I was amazed to see the dignity with which he told me, a total stranger, such an utterly horrible piece of information.

I realize that Billy is the embodiment of why I refuse to give up in the face of such senseless, and frankly, easy violence. I realize that it takes both the horrors of Byrd's death and the immovable strength of Adams to define who we are as a race, and that it is this tightrope that we all have to walk every day.

I will always look on people with distrust, I think it's just in my DNA, for better or for worse, and then I'll just leave it at that.

As for the park itself, the place was well-maintained, but it suffers from what I call the swamp syndrome. Basically, you can't go into the wilderness in eastern to southeastern Texas without finding yourself in some sort of a damn swamp, and Martin Dies is no exception.

Our campsite was directly at the foot of a swamp. They call it a lake, but it's full of murk, cypress knees, bugs, turtles, gators, and earthy stink. That, my friends, is a swamp.

Another issue I had was that we are smack dab in the middle of hunting season, and our site, as luck would have it, is just on the outer edge of a nature preserve, which apparently in Texas means hunting ground. This meant that we were wakened each morning with the sun and sounds of shotgun fire carrying across the water. Choice. I guess the traffic on the road directly on the other side of the lake wasn't loud enough.

Now, as for the lady who ran the nature center, that woman was awesome. She knew her stuff. When we walked in, I immediately noticed the tail on the counter. It was a freshly removed tail from the looks of the meat peeking out of it.

When the woman came out of her office she noticed the tail and while grabbing it said, "Oh yeah, one of my guys brought this in from the road. It's a coyote! I cut off the head too! I'll clean it and use the skull in an exhibit!"

Notice a theme?

Next up was a quick, several-hour jaunt west to the Caddo Mounds site out near Crockett. The Mound People built these huge burial mounds around 900 AD as a way of honoring their elders. Then they would sacrifice entire families to accompany the elders to the burial mounds.

The history is fascinating. The site itself, not so much. It's basically a giant field with three hills on it. Have a nice trip!

We took photos, cursed the angry bitch at the counter counting the seconds before we left so she could close up and, I'm assuming, go meet up with others of her kind (whatever her kind is). In case she ever reads this (which she won't), "Hey lady, fuck you!"

Sunday was wide open. We debated going home, but then our wanderlust got the best of us and off we went in search of a ghost town. Haslam was one of those places in the world where hubris led man to the end of a plank and then somehow got behind him and pushed. The town was built as an apparatus to the Pickering Lumber Company at the turn of the 20th century. To support the logging operation, Pickering built several cement structures, a hotel, housing for its employees, log ponds, and other facilities. Eventually, by the 40s, the wood was all gone, and with the wood went the business. On the site today there are only two visible structures, a water tower (severely rusted over and long overdue to be pulled down before it falls on its own), and a number of massive cement foundations easily four feet thick.

The structures themselves are absolutely fascinating. For some reason the developers of Haslam thought it would be best to build the structures to pretty much outlast the apocalypse. The damn things are a foot-and-a-half thick, reinforced with twisted steel rebar, and buttressed on both sides. The first thing that comes to mind when you see these buildings, roofless, overgrown with brush and winding trees, is that they are like churches to the gods of decay. The site, for me, was breathtaking, and I couldn't shake the feeling of being in a sacred place. It's stupid, I know, because the whole sit is now owned by an oil and gas company, and they have obviously just built their work-site around the ruins as if to ignore them. Not that they would have any say in the matter since it would take a nuclear bomb to tear them down.

I can't say enough for the power of these massive structures. Pure cinematic beauty. I was in awe. I hope the photos do it some justice.

I will be returning to East Texas as much as I can in the coming years. I get the topography, and I seriously get the tall pines. Until I can relocate to the Pacific Northwest and its more desirable climate (to me anyway), the Piney Woods region of Texas just may hold me over.

Yay, another workmanlike and ultimately dull account of my life! Do wonders never cease?

Here are some photos.

East Texas

Enjoy.