Second Annual Drive Around the County Showcases Fayette Beauty

Last Thursday was the first day of spring.

And we went out to find it.

For the second consecutive year Record reporter Andy Behlen, Record retiree Pancho Howze and I went for a day-long drive circling Fayette County.

It’s not an original idea, but our sort of homage to something the late columnist Leon Hale did every year, driving south to find spring.

He called his trip ‘Primavera.’

We don’t have a name, or a plan, really – just a old county map taken down from the wall of the newspaper office.

But we do have an extra seat in my truck, so come along for the ride ...

As we were heading out the door of the newspaper Roland Zoch popped in to tell us they were putting up a new scoreboard over at the baseball field at the fairgrounds, if we wanted to take a picture, and suddenly we had our first destination.

As Andy snapped some pictures of the action there, Pancho and I walked around the old buildings and barns at the Czech Heritage and Cultural Center beyond the outfield wall. The nicest bluebonnets of the entire trip were blooming right there.

As we headed north on Highway 77 we turned into the St. Mark’s Medical Center lot, parked and looked through the windows of the hospital that has now been shuttered for a year-and-a-half.

In a charming reminder that there’s no anonymity in a small town, as we were there someone texted Andy, saying they saw him looking in the hospital and wondering if there was news of a sale/reopening.

Sadly, no.

We then headed east towards Round Top, taking back roads like McCormick Road, Walhalla Road, and finally Hartfield Road, where fancy new housing developments are taking shape.

In Round Top we parked on the town square, site of so much controversy lately because of the ownership dispute between the city and county, and uncertain plans for the future renovation of the 100-year-old courthouse.

The courthouse was locked up, but we went into the new sparkling bathrooms adjacent.

There may be no bathrooms in Fayette County that are such an ode to history. Historic pictures of Round Top’s past have been somehow reprinted on the Spanish tile inside.

It’s well worth a stop next time you are there – even if you don’t have to ‘go.’

On the courthouse grounds vendors were setting up for the final square fair. The surrounding pastures outside town were also filling with vendors for the spring antiques shows.

But we avoided all that, driving instead on Jaster Road, north past the beautiful Festival Hill complex, and saw the ongoing expansion project on the concert building.

Then it was a zig-zag westward, much of it on gravel roads like Lange, Greens Creek, briefly into Lee County (where they boringly have county roads that are numbered, not named) and then back into Fayette County on Teinert Road.

We went to the dead end of Catfish Lane, but didn’t spy any place to fish.

Then we went through Warda and into Winchester, where it was nearly lunchtime, so Murphy’s Steakhouse was an easy choice.

Murphy’s is in the beautiful, sprawling 1913 C.H. Schmidt building (which also used to double as the Winchester Post Office) on Thomas Street. It was just 11:15 a.m. so the big lunchtime crowds hadn’t arrived yet. We sat down and ordered the lunch special (just $10.50, including tea, with a free trip to get a bowl of tasty beans from the bar). Pancho got chicken fried steak and Andy and I got the bacon-wrapped stuffed hamburger steak. My sides were squash casserole and broccoli. It was great, and portions so big we couldn’t finish it all.

Then it was on the road again. We poked around the old Goebel Store, the nowclosed general store just inside the county line. It looked good, like it could re-open tomorrow, if somebody wanted to do so.

Because of the Colorado River in this part of county, our only choice to proceed without going back was to head into Smithville to get across the river. Coming back towards La Grange on Highway 71, we took Old Lake Road to Old Smithville Road and we were heading south back in Fayette County again. We saw some wild turkeys, and Andy jumped out, camera in hand, but they took off before we could get any photos.

We all got out and strolled through an unmarked, overgrown cemetery. Hogs had dug up much of the land nearby, but they had stopped short of the graves.

We passed the headwaters of Buckner’s Creek, and there was just a little stagnant water under the bridge, but the waterway sometimes carries a large amount of water as it flows into the Colorado River by the time it reaches La Grange.

In quiet Muldoon we admired the towering stone water tank that supplied gravityflow water to the adjacent stone 1890 Kerr Store. That building has been lovingly restored into a rental hall. Beyond a locked gate nearby was the stone quarry where the stone used to build the Fayette County Courthouse, and some of the Galveston jetties, was mined.

We headed south on Bittner Road past the massive 7V Solar Farm, with panels as far as the eye could see.

Now we were heading southeast towards Freyburg.

We got out at Freyburg Methodist Church, which dates back to the 1860s, and admired its towering steeple.

A modest wood sign beneath a cross on the front door said, “Dear God, I wanna take a minute, not to ask for anything from you, but simply to say thank you, for all I have.”

Just down the road we stopped by Freyburg Hall, which has experienced a rebirth in recent years after some locals purchased the 1912 wooden dancehall, and put a lot of effort into making it vibrant again, inside and out.

Down Krischke Road we made our way to High Hill, where we stopped for some meat snacks at Willie Joe’s Processing, a full service butcher shop “where the locals meat.”

Then it was into Schulenburg for dessert. It was the first day of Spring, which means free ice cream cones at Dairy Queens across the state.

The place was busy, but the ice cream was wonderful.

We drove over the bumpy Piano Bridge into Dubina and decided to stop by, unannounced, at the home of former county judge Ed Janecka.

Just inside the county line on the far southwest corner of Fayette, Judge Ed’s got a beautiful country place, with a big garden and lot of birds.

But no one was there.

We called him. “I’m picking up my grandson from school. I’ll be there in three minutes,” he said.

When he arrived, we stood in the driveway solving the problems of Fayette County and the world, interrupted only by the sounds of Janecka’s peacocks and one of his turkeys that wanted a treat.

There’s mature trees all over his place and he said he planted every one.

Keeping up with all the work around the place is hard, he said, but keeps him busy.

It seems like a nice, quiet retirement, after he served as county judge for so long – from 1990 to 2018.

After the visit we realized it was time to get home (Pancho’s steak that he bought at Willie Joe’s wasn’t going to cook itself, after all) and we headed back towards La Grange through Ammannsville, past the rolling hills on Radhost School Road and through the community of Cozy Corner.

The final tally was 141 miles traveled in our big oval around the county – and one great reintroduction to why this is such a beautiful place to live.