November 2018: Imagine an evening in the wilderness, gathered around a campfire with friends and a few bottles of wine. An airy tent with an inflatable mattress and fresh sheets is only stumbling distance. A vacation is not about distance traveled or money spent but rather about moments shared. And my recent escape in a tent near the water at Martin Dies State Park in Jasper, Texas, was just that.
My recent escape in a tent near the water at Martin Dies State Park in Jasper, Texas. Photo by John Sherman.
In March I penned one of my signature TroysArt travelogues about a camping trip to Guadalupe River State Park (TroysArt – Camping is just code for drinking under the stars). Four of us, Michael, John, and Skip, with Delta Dawn, met at Guadalupe in the Texas hill country for a weekend of outdoors and monkeyshines. The excursion was so successful that we projected a date for the fall.
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With a high of 70o and low near 50o, the weather could not be more beautiful. With a trunk full of gear and food, Delta Dawn in the backseat, and sunroof open I drive east to meet Michael, first to arrive in order to select a premium campsite.
But I observe as I drive that my hair looks shabby—seems the grey grows faster than the brown, accentuated by the sun beaming down through the open roof. So, Googling “barber shop near me”, I land at Pop’s Barber Shop in downtown Livingston. Right on the main street through the center of town, Pop’s is an old-school two-chair chop shop festooned with Marine Corps flags and military memorabilia. I am fifth in queue when a young tweaker buzzes in, wondering if there is a wait.
“Boy,” the barber, the third Pop, answers, “what you think—there’s five guys sitting here.”
“Oh, how do I know if they’re waiting for haircuts,” he answers as he twizzles out to tell his ride that he would have to wait.
As the door closes behind him, Pop mutters with a country drawl, “That’s a waste of white.”
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By the time my new haircut and I arrive, Michael has already checked-in and selected the park’s premier camping sites, with #505 of the Walnut Bend Unit at its core, a wide shoreline curve on the Steinhagen Reservoir. The lake is also known by the locals as Dam B—and I encourage any dam questions or any dam comments at the end of this dam story.
Martin Dies Jr. State Park is a 705-acre area on the northern edge of the Big Thicket, on the bank of the B.A. Steinhagen Reservoir. Photo by John Sherman.
Martin Dies Jr. State Park is a 705-acre area on the northern edge of the Big Thicket, on the bank of the B.A. Steinhagen Reservoir, where the Angelina and Neches rivers meet. Established in 1965, the heavily forested park is home to loblolly, longleaf, and shortleaf pines, along with an abundance of water oak, red oak, sweet gum, and magnolias plus bald cypress trees in wetland areas.
The park is named in honor of Marin Dies, Jr. (1900-1972) a member of Congress, who in 1938 started as the chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate un-American Activities, initially called the Dies Committee—a panel tasked with finding German-American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity.
A predecessor of the McCarthy Era, Dies Committee hearings aroused public scrutiny for including popular celebrities on a watch list for subversive behavior—including Shirley Temple, America’s little darling and only 10 years old at the time.
The park is named in honor of Marin Dies, Jr. (Martin Dies, Jr., by Harris & Ewing, official White House photographers, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
For this excursion into the great outdoors the Guadalupe group is joined by David and Bobby, a couple from Houston. As mentioned in March, I became friends with Michael and Skip through the Bayou City Boys Club of which David was also a BCBC member. So we have been friends for 20 years.
Skip, John, and Bobby and David arrive in rapid succession and get their cars unloaded. Following a seemingly continuous electric whir of mattress inflation, by mid-afternoon all tents are in place and a protective tarpaulin stretches above the picnic table like a giant bat.
And it is time for the fun; time to ease ourselves off city time; time to catch up. In fact, Bobby has never met Skip and John but they take to each other like ducks in a tub. Food preparation begins and wine is in hand.
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A rather unexpected member of the party joins us in the afternoon. I went to high school with Gentry and somewhere along the timeline he became friends with Skip who invited him to join us along with his dog Sarge.
Gentry was pretty much a prick growing up, in my opinion, so I am surprised that I have traveled all this way to sit around a fire with him. Though at some point during dinner, without much said, Gentry loads Sarge into his car and disappears.
The frenzied enthusiasm of the day wanes after dinner as we relax around the fire. David comes up with a term Fire Ring Confessions for conversation, sharing details of our lives, though discussions of things like hexavalent chromium pops up from time to time—thank you, Skip.
And what could be more traditional after dinner than s’mores and ghost stories? But s’mores are usually disappointing, more appealing in idea than actuality; the marshmallows are too melty to get off the stick and never hot enough to melt the Hershey’s. And scary stories can also be disappointing for grown men. And while I have aspired to compose several horror stories, no tale can be more unnerving than the true story of what occurred near the very earth beneath us.
Originally part of Mexican Texas, the community of Snow River was renamed in 1835 in honor of William Jasper, a Revolutionary War hero who was killed during the Siege of Savannah in 1779. There are incidentally 8 counties in the USA named for William Jasper and 10 cities. Now the Butterfly Capital of Texas, Jasper is home to the annual Butterfly Festival in October which celebrates the migration of monarch butterflies.
The lush and isolated piney roads set the scene for one of the most heinous crimes in Texas history.
But in June of 1998, Jasper became notorious for something other than patriotism and butterflies. The lush and isolated piney roads set the scene for one of the most heinous crimes in Texas history. Three white guys, Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John William King offered a ride home to a black guy named James Byrd, Jr. But instead of taking Byrd home, the trio beat him, pissed and shit on him, then chaining him by his ankles to the back of a pickup truck, drug him for three miles.
Autopsies revealed that Byrd was alive for most of the ordeal and was killed when his body hit a culvert, severing an arm and his head. The murderers dumped his mangled torso at the gates of Jasper’s black cemetery.
Called a modern day lynching-by-dragging, the brutal homicide was impetus for the Texas hate crimes law.
No clear motive for the crime ever came to light, though King claimed to have been routinely gang-raped by black men while in prison for drugs. King and Brewer were also, while previously incarcerated, members of a white-supremacist gang and bore racist tattoos.
Photo by John Sherman.
Brewer was executed in Huntsville by lethal injection in 2011 while King remains on death row. (How long does it take to execute a cold-blooded killer like King in Texas anyway?) Berry is serving life in prison (in protective custody) and is eligible for parole in 2038.
True human debris, Brewer was a dick as he lived and a dick as he died. For his last meal he requested two chicken-fried steaks, a triple cheese burger, a ground beef omelet, fried okra, barbeque with white bread, fajitas, a meat-lover’s pizza, peanut butter fudge, Blue Bell ice cream, and root beer, all with specific garnishes and condiments. When it was served he told officials that he was not hungry. The meal was discarded, prompting Senator John Whitmire of Houston to call the prison agency’s executive director resulting in termination of the practice of last meals for those condemned in Texas.
The day before his execution, Brewer made a statement to KHOU, “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”
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Delta Dawn and I sleep so comfortably. The gauzy window openings allows the breeze off the reservoir to wash over us while keeping bugs off.
Photo by John Sherman.
I bought my Sundome tent fifteen years ago. It is easy to assemble and has held up in extreme conditions. A classic design, Coleman still makes the Sundome which is what David and Bobby bought for the trip, theirs is red-orange with neon accents. Though technically called the Willow Pass Dome it is the same thing.
Hangover aside, I rise before anyone else so I can rent canoes before the three dozen Cub Scouts to the north of our campsite manages to get them all.
Of course, the combination of camping and canoes inevitably brings to mind Deliverance—the 1970 novel by James Dickey and subsequent 1972 cinematic thriller. Starring Jon Voight as Ed Gentry, Burt Reynolds as Lewis Medlock, Ned Beatty as Bobby Trippe, and Ronny Cox as Drew Ballinger, four men from Atlanta take a camping trip down the Cahulawassee River to witness its unspoiled beauty before it is flooded to create a reservoir. Not only does the movie contain one of the most recognizable instrumental themes, Dueling Banjos, but is recognized as having one of the most notorious scenes in filmmaking history—including the spoken word during a graphic male rape scene, “Squeal like a pig!” Both the movie and the book were superb.
Anyway, the park rangers decline renting the canoes to me for more than three hours because of a windy afternoon forecast. One would think that forest rangers would be a chill bunch, but after years of experience in Texas State Parks, I find that too many are dry, humorless, and robotic whose limited vocabularies are used to cite policies. It must be disappointing to become a forest ranger—you aspire to hug trees and protect Bambi, while in actuality you wind up selling marshmallow sticks to Brownies or telling septuagenarians where to dump the RV dookie.
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Getting this group of guys up and powdered and dressed and fed is like herding kittens. And by the time the group is ready, time expires on the canoes. There would be no banjo duets with inbred locals, no cracker rape, no squealing like a pig. So after returning life preservers and paddles (“As stated upon time of rental and per your rental agreement,” the monochromatic ranger drones, “there are no refunds on unused canoes.”), an attempt is made to wrangle the cats for a hike.
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At some point in the afternoon, Gentry and Sarge reappear. Photo by John Sherman.
At some point in the afternoon, Gentry and Sarge reappear with no explanation of where they had been for almost 24 hours.
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Skip and Delta Dawn and I cannot wait for the rest of the crowd to get it together—the mosquitoes are brutal for immobile bodies. So we forge ahead on Slough Trail. Slough Trail is considered to be a “challenging” hike and is noteworthy for sixteen bridges.
A slough (pronounced slew) is a low area filled with backwater from a larger body of water. I cannot forget the 1966 Beverly Hillbillies episode “The Badgers Return” which spoofs My Fair Lady when Emaline Fetty says, “The goo in the slough stays mainly in your shoe.”
And while the mosquitos wreak havoc when we stop, the weather is cool enough to put most of the alligators and snakes to sleep—though we see two snakes including one on the trail that makes Skip jump and scream like a girl.
Halfway through the hike Skip asks, “So where are all these bridges?”
Halfway through the hike Skip asks, “So where are all these bridges?”
“You’re standing on one,” I answered, pointing downward.
“How is this a bridge?”
And Fire Ring Confession, I agree with Skip. While technically bridges but more like boardwalks, the description connotes something entirely more exotic.
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As wind whips off the reservoir, Delta Dawn and I lay on my comfy bed attempting to rest as Skip and Gentry carry on a most inane conversation just outside my tent, the topic of which is a local yokel on a dating app with the handle Glitter Stain. So as I give up on the nap I find Michael sitting between our tents at the water’s edge, sketching a cypress tree. And quelle chance, it is just what I need to occupy my time and rest my weary legs. I pour some wine and join him.
The trunk of the tree is straight and tall with dozens of moss laden limbs bowing toward the surface of the reservoir. Duck weed ripples in soft waves around the cypress knees as a flotilla of hyacinths sluggishly traverse the background.
Two Guys Painting becomes Two Guys Sketching. (Troy Broussard, 2019, Cypress at Martin Dies State Park.)
Two Guys Painting becomes Two Guys Sketching.
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Michael and I are not the only artists on the campout. John is an accomplished photographer and his keen eye has commemorated many campouts over the years, including his often difficult to orchestrate group photo.
Fiddling with aperture, he conceives a photo session of manipulated exposures while Michael and I make shapes with light—I swing my lantern around on a lanyard and Michael twirls a flaming fire stick. It looks like we are performing some type of pagan ritual; the bible thumpers in the next campsite probably fall to their knees to pray for our heathen souls.
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A campfire is a great equalizer and can be mesmerizing. Gentry and I catch up—we have both had family losses since the last time we spoke, my mother and his sister Georgia. And we enjoy filling each other in on some of our high school shenanigans that the other did not know.
There is room for everyone around a campfire.
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The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. Photo by John Sherman.
They say that the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. And my God, is it so true! The sky over the reservoir is immense and every star in the sky is wholly visible.
A lot has changed for me personally since my last camping trip. In the beginning of the summer I had my first book published, Drank Myself Straight, which is a huge accomplishment for me. John did my author’s photo for the back cover and the first book I got to sign was David and Bobby’s.
The novel, of course, is available in both paperback and e-book on Amazon.
And, Fire Ring Confession, during my last campout I was grappling with a damaged heart. Over the summer, the relationship with my gypsy grew more amiable and there was, what I construed to be, hope. But I can say with certainty that I gave it my best with honorable intentions. And though my friends insisted I could do better, I cannot say I could have done better nor did I want to do better—I just deserved better treatment than I was given.
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…including his often difficult to orchestrate group photo. John, Skip, Troy, Bobby, David, and Michael. Photo by John Sherman.
I pass out with my tent flaps open and the 2:00 AM rain storm soaks my air mattress and sheets. Michael’s rainfly malfunctions so he wakes in a tent with an indoor pool. Bobby gets up with an abrasion on his face and he claims I punched him and tried to throw him in the fire for voting for Beto.
Everything I own either smells like smoke or is wet, or both, including the dog, so I just throw everything in my trunk to contend with back at home. Waking wet and hung over is a great motivator when breaking camp. Delta Dawn recognizes that it is time to go so she sits by the car and whines.
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Rumor has it that David and Bobby, instead of driving home and unpacking, drove to Goodwill and donated everything but the clothes on their backs. Photo by John Sherman.
John, Skip, a few other guys, and I, along with Katie Scarlett, camped at Martin Dies State Park ten years ago. It was a nice enough trip but it was February and bone chilling cold. Somewhere there is my sad attempt at a plein air painting to prove it. Unfortunately, I did not see the same beauty that I see this visit. The park is magnificent and verdant and it has big tent sites.
It is proven that being in nature, even viewing nature scenes, reduces stress. Exposure to nature not only makes one feel better, but contributes to overall well-being, reduces blood pressure, slows the heart rate, and eases muscle tensions. I am no doctor, of course, but the aforementioned benefits are hard to argue against.
Delta Dawn would agree. Back in Houston she sleeps for three days.
I would be up for a campout this spring. But rumor has it that David and Bobby, instead of driving home and unpacking, drive to Goodwill and donate everything but the clothes on their backs.