Is This a Legal Kolache?

We were passing through Belton, Texas, this morning when we spotted the Shipley Do-Nuts sign advertising Kalaches. Kolaches are a delightful Czech pastry. They are usually sweet and filled a poppyseed mixture or prunes.


We stopped in and asked what flavors they had available. "Just sausage, ham and cheese and jalapeno," replied the lady.

I tried one of the Jalepeno. It was, admittedly, very tasty. But is this a legal Kolache? Or perhaps a totally illicit blending of two cultures?

The George Bush Presidential Library

The Bush(41) Presidential Library on the Texas A&M campus is worth at least two or three hours to visit. The museum has major exhibits on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War and a great deal of personal family history. As with all the Presidential Libraries that we have seen, there is a replica of the Oval Office. This one allows you to walk in and sit in the president's chair. As you might suspect, there is a lot more replica here than original. The president's desk does contain his authentic baseball glove in one drawer, though.

I found this exhibit of the Studebaker that George Bush bought in 1947 and used to move his family to Texas from Connecticut after finishing college to be quite interesting. I don't recall ever seeing a president's personal car in one of these museums before, much less one with the original bill of sale.




Automobile aficionados will recognize this Raymond Lowey design as the first all-new post World War II car.

Calvert, Texas

If we hadn't had the big Texas Visitor's Guide, we could have missed Calvert. We had to go a couple of miles beyond the junction of Texas 6 and 485 to get here. Calvert has a population of only 1426 but boasts of 37 full blocks in its historic district.

The main street through town is well preserved.




A drive through many of the streets in the historic destrict on the East side of the city provides a view of numerous massive Victorian homes.

Hempstead and Navasota, Texas

After spending the night just East of Houston, we headed out for central Texas. Our destination was actually Temple Texas where we lived for a few months in 1971 while I was stationed at Fort Hood. We planned an intermediate stop for the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, on the Texas A&M campus.

Of course, we found a couple of interesting places to see along the way.

The first was Frazier's concrete yard art in Hempstead. Yard art appears to be a pretty big deal here. There are several places with large displays and we encountered one today near Hempstead. It turns out that Frzaier's also serves as the Hempstead Visitor Center. It was our bad luck to arrive on Wednesday, the one day of the week that Frazier's is closed.

Peering over the fence, I could only imagine how much fun it would be to paint a large bull rider or chicken for our front yard at home. Linda seemed not so enthusiastic about my plan.


A few miles farther up the road, we found Navasota with what it claimed to be the World's Largest Teapot.


The teapot is found at Martha's Bloomers, a garden store with a tea room in the back.


Don't be put off by the "tearoom" title. There are some very hearty sandwiches served.


It would be easy to miss Martha's place. Keep your eyes open on the right side just after passing the town if you are coming from the South.

Birding on the Louisiana Gulf Coast

On my state map, I had noticed a road highlighted in green along the Southwest Louisiana Gulf Coast during our previous week's trip across the state. An uncle of mine once told me that after he retired, he "just followed the green lines" whenever he traveled. It was good advice.

We headed south from Lafayette after just missing the queen's parade on Monday night and the king's parade on Tuesday morning. Just about every city on the Gulf Coast has Mardi Gras parades. Some have a few, some have a lot. They are mostly quite family-friendly affairs, too. But they do tie up a lot of traffic.

We soon picked up the scenic byway that promised swamps, birds and alligators.


I can't say it was one of the best scenic byways we have ever traveled but it was very interesting.

We saw lots of rice growing and a little bit being harvested.


And several very small towns with interesting names.


The town of Abbeville was very interesting, but very deserted because of the Mardi Gras celebration. The entire downtown area is on the National Register of Historic Places.


When we finally reached the Rockerfeller Wildlife Refuge, we stopped and ate sandwiches that we had brought along and looked for birds and 'gators.


We didn't see any alligators but the birds were plentiful. They ranged from the common to the unusual.


Some were just standing around.


And others were in flight.


We also saw two pretty pink flamingos in the area but weren't quick enough to catch them with the camera.

This is the sanctuary headquarters. You can see that it is not fully recovered from the effects of Hurricane Ike (2008). Much of this coastal area still suffers in the same way.


We had moderate rain through most of the day. The forecast calls for two to four inches of rain and possible severe weather in the area tonight. So far, things have not been too bad and we are watching from a hotel room near Houston.

Back to Baton Rouge. The State Library.

We returned to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Monday. I finally had the chance to do my research at the Louisiana State Library where I went through the Baton Rouge newspapers for February of 1955.


Louisiana has a unique resource in its State Library dating from 1920. It is a bit of a combination of Genealogical resource, state document archive and large research library with open stacks. Besides the newspapers that I wanted, I found an IBM 407 accounting machine wiring manual and several other 1950s and 60s era computer books.

After copying some microfilm pages we headed out to lunch. We had trouble finding restaurants open. (It was the day before Mardi Gras, remember!) We finally found a spot at Mason's Grill.


Bobby Flay highlighted Mason's in his article, "50 States, 50 Burgers" in Food Network Magazine. We skipped the "Cajun Shrimp Burger" and went right for the Crawfish etouffee and the grilled shrimp. Highly recommended.

And, o yes, on my third try, I finally did get a picture of the Louisiana state capitol with sunshine on it and at least some blue sky.

Fame Is Fleeting - Louis Prima Version

On Sunday evening, we returned to Louisiana after our excursion to Gulfport, Mississippi. We decided to stop in Covington, due north of New Orleans. We programmed a hotel name into the Garmin for guidance and Miss Garmin took us off the interstate and up U.S. 190 and then announced, "Turn right on "LEWIS PRIMA drive."

LEWIS? She obviously meant LOUIE. But, why is there a Louis Prima Drive in Covington? After registering at the Comfort Inn, I asked the desk clerk, "Why is the street called Louis Prima Drive?"


"Because that's the address," she said. I could see I would be doing my own research.

But perhaps if you are under the age of 60, you also wonder who Louis Prima was. One of Las Vegas' biggest names, a marvelous musician/showman and a man who still can be heard singing "I, aint got no body" on many exercise videos. Wikipedia does a decent job with a brief biography, noting that Prima and his first wife, Keeley Smith "were at least partly responsible for making the lounge at The Sahara a hotspot."

But, the article doesn't mention Pretty Acres, Prima's golf course and restaurant in Covington. For that story, you can read this article.

According to the Prima biography, "Louis Prima," by Garry Boulard, after Prima's death in 1978 the Pretty Acres estate was valued at $5 million and was involved in a ten-year legal battle before it was finally settled.

Another local author recalls the old golf course in this article.

A simpler time meant taking the then-long trip from Mandeville to Covington past jazz-great Louis Prima’s Pretty Acres Golf Course & Country Club, where Harvey Marsolan recalls ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the beauty of its stately oaks and white clubhouse mansion that looked just like Tara. He recalls, that, to a kid riding with the windows down in the family car on the two-lane gravel road, it was a magnificent site on the way to nearby Hurstel’s Restaurant, a famous old haunt of Governor “Uncle” Earl K. Long and his paramour, Blaze Starr. Harvey says he never saw them there, and would have certainly remembered—’specially Blaze. The area today is Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, etc. Progress. Gotta love it.

If you walk out of the Comfort Inn, and take a look past the street sign, you can almost see the Wal-Mart Super Center just beyond the PetSmart. I wonder if those trees on the right side of the area in the second picture are survivors from the golf course?



I later confirmed that the hotel desk clerk had never heard of Louis Prima. Fame is indeed fleeting.

UPDATE (3/29/2011).
See the comment below from Steve. The link he gives to the article in Inside Northside magazine for March-April 2010 is well worth following. The article has some great photos and this information, "...the row of oak trees on the neutral ground in front of Home Depot; the trees once lined the driveway to the Prima's home."

The article notes a previous issue of Inside Northside from 1989 with the course on the cover and depicts a scorecard from the course.

Return to Beauvoir

When I first retired in January of 2003, we drove south and discovered the charm of the Gulf coast in Mississippi and Alabama. We though about buying a place in the area but opted instead for a purchase in Egypt. Two hurricanes and an oil spill versus one revolution. Well, every area has its pluses and minuses.

We returned to some of our favorite areas on the Gulf, Sunday to see what they look like now. One of the most beautiful areas in 2003 was a ten or twenty mile stretch of historic homes between Pass Christian and Gulfport, Mississippi. This status report from 2008 describes the situation in Pass Christian following Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005:

A Federal Emergency Management Agency accounting later found that of 2,300 homes, only 200 survived, including most of the old homes on East Scenic Drive.

"We lost 100 percent of our businesses, " Mayor Chipper McDermott said. "Every public building was damaged or destroyed. Every church. Every school. We were damn near annihilated."

...Teacher Ella DeDeaux, who recently moved back into her home, said her insurance premium is about $5,000 per year. She used to pay about $1,500.

Town librarian Sally James' total jumped from $1,500 to $6,000.

For obvious reasons, there are many "Lot For Sale" signs along the scenic drive. We were surprised at how many of the sturdy oak trees had survived. Brick houses on high ground had survived or been restored, otherwise the homesites are mostly vacant.

We stopped by Beauvoir, site of Jefferson Davis' home and Presidential Library that we had visited back in 2004.

Here are a couple of photos from 2004. First, this was the home, named Beauvoir.


This is the writing pavilion where Davis wrote his memoirs.


And finally, here is the presidential library.


This FEMA photograph shows the extent of the damage to the home.


This screen capture from the Beauvoir Website shows the extent of damage to the Writing Pavilion. It was completely destroyed except for the brick stairs.


The library lost almost all of the exhibits located on the first floor.

When we visited the site this week, the home and writing pavilion had been restored.


A few things to note. The large tree in front of the home that survived. The stairs on the writing pavilion are no longer made of brick. The writing pavilion now has a chimney matching the home.

The Presidential Library has a long way to go before being finished.


In many ways, the area actually looks more attractive than before the hurricane. The white sandy beaches are very inviting. People were enjoying them as they finished watching an afternoon Mardi Gras parade in Gulfport. The removal of numerous casinos and businesses from the Gulf side of the highway makes the whole waterfront much more inviting. The economy must still be devastated, however.

Jackson, Mississippi

If you looked at the previous post, you might have noticed rain clouds building in the sky. It started to rain as we left Baton Rouge and headed toward Jackson, Mississippi. We had been watching the forecasts and expected that the next day, Saturday, would be a rain day. Friday night turned out to be a very rainy night, too. We got as far as McComb, Mississippi, mostly via smaller roads in Louisiana to avoid more of that New Orleans bound traffic.

During a break in the weather on Saturday, we backtracked to the border and visited the Welcome Center for Mississippi. There we encountered the first person at one of these centers who was not helpful. She told us "There really isn't anything worthwhile to see between here and Jackson." As experienced travelers, we knew that had to be wrong. Fortunately, the Welcome Center had plenty of literature.

We were traveling Interstate 55 and got off at Magnolia, just a few miles north of the Welcome Center. There are a set of 1930's WPA murals in the post office there.


And there are a large number of well preserved, old Southern homes. They are nicely marked to fit with a driving tour brochure. A few even qualify as antebellum. (For those of you in the North, the "bellum" in question was "The War Between the States, 1861-65.")


McComb, by the way, played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It also has an historic railway museum and was home to Bo Diddly.

We waited until late in the afternoon when the rain was forecast to stop before heading up to Jackson. Jackson has two capitols, the old and the new.

The old capitol was our first stop. I took this picture while standing in the middle of the street.


Let's just say that Jackson, Mississippi is a quiet town on Saturday afternoon. Here is a picture of Congress Street facing away from the current capitol.


We did, of course get a picture of the current capitol, too. Linda is in this one.


With that accomplished, we looked for a restaurant for dinner. The restaurant scene is about as dead as the traffic on Saturday. While driving around, we found this museum exhibit that surprised us.


Here is an article about Jackson's Muslim Museum in Saudi Aramco Magazine. Who knew?

Finally, we drove past this cafe.


It turns out that the Mayflower Cafe has been serving great seafood since 1935 and is considered a Jackson institution. Yahoo Travel reviewers mostly give it 4 or 5 stars. We were among the first to arrive for dinner. We had a great meal starting out with this crabmeat and eggplant appetizer.


The whole dinner was very good.

Just one bit of advice. The route to the restrooms takes you outside, down the block and up a long steep stairway. And, O yes, this is a BYOB place.