flyin solo, post: 413972, member: 8089 wrote: just saw the edwards county courthouse for the first time a couple months ago. that has to be the sleepiest town square i've ever seen (which includes a good bit of the midwest).
The Edwards County Clerk's office is where I had to explain to a deputy how to make a certified copy of a public record. It was also the county where the index to the Minutes of Commissioners Court has gone AWOL.
Monte, post: 413974, member: 11913 wrote: The ranch was in the process of changing owners when I was there, and as for what it was called, I was not told, but yes, it is just west of Elephant Mountain.
Somewhere I have a photo that I took of Elephant Mountain as seen from one of J.B. Ammerman's rock mounds (the SW of Sec. 79) on the South line of G.H.& S.A. Block 13 near the rim of Crossen Mesa. I was interested in A B & M Block A to the East of Block 13 and was tying corners in Block 13 just because those were the only connections given by the locator of Block A.
Ammerman, of course, resurveyed Block 13 as State Surveyor in 1889 (I think it was), marking corners that the original locator, L.E. Edwards, had not seen fit to do in 1875. While Edwards' field notes nearly uniformly called for marks that were obviously products of his pen, there were some mounds that predated Ammerman's resurvey that raised the question of whether Edwards's party had actually run some traverses through Block A.
J.B. Ammerman did generally excellent work, but I was able to locate a copy of Ammerman's field book and figured out on nearly the last day of his resurvey of Block 13 he had made a 100 vara bust that ended up placing the South line of the block 100 varas South of where he really should have marked it.
Here's what once upon at time was the main street of Ballinger in Runnels County, Texas:
That theatre in Ballinger was so striking that it ended up as the subject of this painting of mine (with various utility poles and overhead wires edited out).
the first time i ever recall seeing your name was on a pencil drawing (of a gazebo, iirc) hanging up behind the copier in the hays county clerk's office.
(i vaguely remember assuming you were the miller calendar guy.)
Ballinger was a holding place for us for a few months while completing an electric transmission line project in the area. Good times! Thanks for sharing the pictures.
flyin solo, post: 414064, member: 8089 wrote: the first time i ever recall seeing your name was on a pencil drawing (of a gazebo, iirc) hanging up behind the copier in the hays county clerk's office.
That was a copy of a (pen and ink) drawing that I made for the Friends of the Buda Public Library. They put out a calendar which they sold to raise money and I donated drawings of various buildings in and around Buda for three or four different years. The gazebo drawing was a two-fer since it included both the gazebo and the Carrington house in the background.
Kent do your field books get the beautiful embellishments? They would be real works of art and surveying.
I digress....
In the good old days of hard covered well bound field books our detail surveys were (for me) rather well covered with sketches as well as the measurements.
When I moved to private practice I asked my previous department if they ever dispose of the books to pass them on to me.
Learnt years later some new bloke decided they weren't worth keeping and tossed all in the skip.
Richard, post: 414080, member: 833 wrote: Kent do your field books get the beautiful embellishments?.
Yes, absolutely, Richard. A quill pen and India ink is all that I've ever used and I've preferred to draw reasonably accurate representations of all objects tied. For example, some of the slackers may just settle for coding "12IN.LO" for a 12 in. dbh Live Oak they may locate, but I always thought it was best practice to take at least half an hour to draw a good likeness of the tree in the field book. Or ... maybe not. :>
Thanks Kent
I'm with you 100%. In my early days I was critised for packing too much detail into my notes.
Now 40+ years later with eyes needing glasses to see those finer details I can understand why.
If your natural talents stand out then who's to stand against them?
Can someone post a photo of "an old barn, or another old truck". I seem to have digressed!
Well, how about some Prickly Pear Cactus?
And one from a Hill Country Ranch in Hays County:
Prickley pear cactus looks so much nicer in photos than it does up against your leg. Kent, the picture from Ballinger, was that of the sign for the Texas Grill? It looks to me like for the Texas Theater, I was thinking the grill was on the corner of the block. Anyways, just wondering if you had ever heard the story of the ghost that is supposed to haunt the second floor of the Texas Grill. They say his name is Norman.
Monte, post: 414178, member: 11913 wrote: Kent, the picture from Ballinger, was that of the sign for the Texas Grill? It looks to me like for the Texas Theater, I was thinking the grill was on the corner of the block. Anyways, just wondering if you had ever heard the story of the ghost that is supposed to haunt the second floor of the Texas Grill. They say his name is Norman.
Yes, that's the Texas Theatre sign just down the street from the Santa Fe RR Depot. My guess would be that there are a whole bunch of haunted eateries in Ballinger. Here's one, for example:
Old Man Jack's farm truck. He is buried in the cemetery adjoining the farm. I'm pretty sure he was watching as we surveyed it.
Another old building, this one is on a stretch of old Texas highway, also known as the Bankhead Highway, that is in use and open to traffic, but since it runs beside the interstate, nobody drives on it anymore. 
Monte, post: 414269, member: 11913 wrote: Another old building, this one is on a stretch of old Texas highway, also known as the Bankhead Highway, that is in use and open to traffic, but since it runs beside the interstate, nobody drives on it anymore.
For those interested in the earliest highways in Texas, here's a link that gives the routes of not only the Bankhead Highway, but the Meridian Highay, Old Spanish Trail, and a few others. In those early days, each one had its own distinctive route markers, too, I believe.
Here are a couple from Paint Rock in Concho County:
Kent McMillan, post: 414313, member: 3 wrote: Here are a couple from Paint Rock in Concho County:
Have you ever had one of those hambugers?
Probably can't be any worse than what the waitress in Milwaukee called a "tore-till-uh"....;)
Sorry, couldn't help asking.
Do you have hamburgers and burritos with lead over your neck of the woods?
