Greetings from Small-Town America: Round Top, Texas
From the time I tagged along with Daddy to flea markets, I’ve adored antiques. Yesterday’s treasures ground us in what’s lasting and true.
Then I heard about a fabulous antiques venue: the tiny Texas town of Round Top. Antiques dealer and show promoter Emma Lee Turney invited the best dealers to show off their American Country antiques for one week in October 1968. Some 6,000 vintage devotees flocked there.
In 1995, I went to see what all the fuss was about. The B&Bs were booked, but I found a little cottage on a ranch. The rancher’s wife insisted I check out Royers Round Top Café. Bud “The Pieman” Royer led me to a crowded table. “Hold on to your forks after dinner,” one lady said. “The best is yet to come—the pie!”
Bud’s son Jonathan and daughter-in-law, Jamie-Len, run the café now. His daughter, Tara, opened Royers Pie Haven in a tin-roof house adorned with quirky art and pie tins. “Folks show up in Round Top with a wrestling in their soul,” Tara says. “They lean in and listen to the whispers of God’s gifts on their lives.”
Highway 237, a two-lane country road, was packed with vendor tents. I hadn’t gone four yards when I spotted a brown-and-yellow terrier teapot. Majolica! I’d only seen the European china in magazines.
Two tents down, a seen-better-days farm table called to me. I felt a kinship with its battered top and carved initials. “Chips and dents are where the story is,” the vendor said.
I rubbed shoulders with shoppers who snagged folk art, salt-glazed stoneware, turquoise and silver rings. I loved it all so much, I returned five years ago.
Emma Lee Turney died this year, but she lived to see her idea become a global attraction, with thousands of antiques vendors. And to witness Round Top elect a 40-year-old mayor, Mark Massey, whose campaign slogan was Keep Round Top, Round Top. “People come here to reboot and leave with a second chance,” he says. The sign welcoming visitors says Round Top’s population is 90, but attendance during Antiques Week in April and October swells to 90,000.
“The whole world comes here twice a year,” says Jolie Sikes, who with her sister, Amie, owns the Junk Gypsy vintage store. Their eclectic array of old advertising memorabilia, cowboy boots and vintage jewelry took my breath away.
“This here’s a sanctuary of the world’s finest junk,” Amie told me with a Texas-size grin. I’d come for vintage finds. But something swelled in my spirit that couldn’t be stowed in a suitcase: the assurance that there’s nothing that can’t be repurposed for greater glory.
The magic of Round Top includes me. Ninety-one people can’t be wrong!
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Greetings From Small-Town America: Poteau, Oklahoma
I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood, growing up in Poteau, Oklahoma, a town of 8,000 near the Arkansas border. Dad was a state representative; Mom was a high school teacher; my maternal grandfather, Sherman Floyd, was the high school principal, football coach and a city councilman; and my maternal grandmother, Linda Floyd, taught first grade. Most everyone in town knew my family.
In a state filled with Native American place names (Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw words for “red people”), Poteau is French for “post.” French explorers established trading posts in the area in the early eighteenth century.
Poteau’s topography differs from typical Oklahoma plains. I spent my boyhood exploring Cavanal, dubbed the world’s tallest hill (elevation: 1,999 feet). I’m a country boy at heart, and nothing brings me closer to God than being in nature. The view from the hill of valley-nestled Poteau is breathtaking!
Another great way to get close to God is at Green Country Cowboy Church. Its motto? “Come as you are.” Jeans, boots and cowboy hats are welcome. The rustic sanctuary features beamed ceilings, and a steel horse trough was once a baptismal font. Pastor and founder Victor Sweet says, “We want people to know they don’t have to clean up or change their clothes, literally and metaphorically, in order to come to God.”
One of my favorite places to eat is Warehouse Willy’s. The steak house owner, Terry Williamson, a former highway patrol officer, couldn’t shake his love for restaurants after working at the Chicken Hut in high school.
“Some people thought I was crazy for giving up a state job,” he says. “When I said I wanted to open a restaurant in an abandoned building in a dying downtown district 25 years ago, they really thought I was crazy.” Warehouse Willy’s sparked the revitalization of historic Poteau. Now colorful shops are housed in buildings erected by early pioneers.
You’ll find more ancient history 25 miles away, at Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center, on 150 acres along the Arkansas River. Grade-school field trips taught me about the Spiro people, who lived there from about 800 to 1450 A.D. They led the Mississippians, a Native American culture that flourished in the Midwest and Southeast.
Agricultural communities featured large earthen mounds, and extensive trade networks crossed much of what became the United States. “The Mississippian leaders presided over a confederation of more than 60 tribes, 30 language groups and over three million people,” says the center’s executive director Dennis Peterson, who has studied the Spiro for decades.
Our family moved to the state capital for Dad’s job after I graduated high school, but I’ll always consider myself a son of Poteau. Come see what a wonderful place it is!
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Greetings from Small-Town America: Monroeville, Alabama
I’ve lived in Alabama and loved books my entire life. As an English teacher, I showed my students the joys of literature, including To Kill a Mockingbird, by Alabama’s own Harper Lee. Somehow, though, I’d never visited Lee’s hometown of Monroeville (population: 5,900), known as the state’s literary capital.
Lee modeled the book’s setting on Monroeville. A reproduction of its courtroom appears in the 1962 film. Today the old courthouse is a museum. Standing inside, I could imagine Gregory Peck, as lawyer Atticus Finch, the father of protagonist Scout, trying to clear the name of an innocent Black man before an all-white jury. Local historian Rabun Williams pointed out the courtroom’s unusual feature: The person testifying sat in front of the judicial bench, with their back to the judge.
Outside is Scout’s neighborhood: Sets for the annual spring production of To Kill a Mockingbird, starring the townspeople, stay up year-round. Director Carly Jo Martens played Scout at the age of 10. “I love seeing what my neighbors bring to the roles,” she says. “They really get to know and understand these characters on a deep level.”
I met World War II veteran George Thomas Jones, who still writes a column for The Monroe Journal. The 99-year-old was a contemporary of both Lee and writer Truman Capote, her friend and neighbor. We talked about Nelle (Lee’s first name) and her father, for whom Jones used to caddy as a teen.
Back then, the town churches had weeklong summer revivals. Each day, his church, First Baptist, would hold one service at night and one at 10 a.m. “Every store on the town square closed from ten to eleven to show reverence,” he says.
Monroeville still has faith at its core. Charles Andrews, the first Black mayor, is a deacon at Antioch Baptist Church #3. “My father passed when I was five,” he says. “The men in the church mentored me.” Andrews returned to town after years as a state trooper and ran for office. “I prayed, ‘Lord, if this is for me, please give me the knowledge and wisdom to make the right decisions to benefit this community,’” he recalls.
There’s much more about Monroeville to love. The library was once the LaSalle Hotel, where Gregory Peck stayed while researching his role. Outdoor sculptures and murals by area artists beckon. After a stroll, why not refuel with Southern catfish or barbecue? David’s Catfish House and Big D’s Butts ’N Stuff are just a short hop from downtown.
At Cole’s, a coffee and ice cream shop, I chatted with resident Stephanie Rogers. “In To Kill a Mockingbird, Miss Nelle says that ‘neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between,’” she told me. “I love that line because it is still so very much a part of our lives today.”
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Greetings from Small-Town America: Madison, Indiana
I recently visited Madison, Indiana, to see the 1880s Eagle Cotton Mill that my brother, Ron, had restored into a gorgeous hotel overlooking the Ohio River. I admired the painted brick row houses nearby. This neighborhood, Georgetown, had been a major stop on the Underground Railroad. An online search revealed Georgetown was home to a thriving Black community before the Civil War, even though the city of Madison had pro-slavery residents.
I talked to Jefferson County Public Library’s local history and genealogy coordinator, Camille Fife. The energetic 81-year-old told me about one of our nation’s most famous free Black freedom fighters, George DeBaptiste. The onetime White House steward and Madison barber would “borrow” horses from the sheriff’s stable to transport more than 180 enslaved people to freedom.
Camille sent me to John Staicer, executive director and president of Historic Madison, Inc. John met me at a plain redbrick structure, one of the oldest AME church buildings still standing in the United States. As a preacher’s daughter, I am intrigued by churches, but I’d never experienced this: I had stepped into history.
“It was the early free African-American community members who, through their hard work and faith, persevered to establish a neighborhood with enough sympathetic people, both African-American and white, to support the dangerous mission of the Underground Railroad,” John says. His favorite Underground Railroad conductor? Brickmason William J. Anderson. Born free in Virginia, he was sold into slavery as a child but learned to read and write.
He escaped and settled in Georgetown, building and pastoring the AME church. “My freed spirit could now sing a new song,” he wrote.
Next, I met Sue Livers, a distant relative of teamster and minister Chapman Harris, another conductor. In 1999, Sue began performing historical reenactments as Chapman’s wife, Patsy, wearing a floor-length, tailored dress and white gloves. “I become Patsy Harris,” she says. “I actually feel I can hook up a team of mules and drive a wagon to the next city. Slaves are often depicted as uneducated, poor and content to work at menial jobs on someone else’s property. I want people to see and understand how African-Americans helped shape America, especially Indiana.”
I ended the day with a walking tour of Georgetown, part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. I saw the stable where George DeBaptiste borrowed horses. How many stories are hidden in these buildings? I will listen for them as my journey into Georgetown’s past continues.
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Greetings from Small-Town America: Casey, Illinois
Casey, Illinois, is a small town—population: 2,700—but we’re home to some really big things. Literally. We’ve got 12 attractions that are the world’s largest, according to Guinness World Records.
How did that come about? It goes back to my wife and daughter wanting to open a tea shop. I wanted to draw more people to Casey to support our local businesses. One night, the sound of wind chimes gave me the crazy idea to build some that were tall enough to break the world record. My family owns Bolin Enterprises Inc., a pipeline and tank maintenance company. Between jobs, our employees and I recycled old pipeline and built a 54-foot-tall wind chime in the middle of town.
There’s a cross at the top. I’m a man of faith, and I wanted the wind chime to point people to God. The welder who worked on it used religious symbols—the ichthus and the Star of David—for the braces that stabilize it. My wife wanted to include a piece of Scripture, and we chose Romans 1:16.
We assembled the wind chime in November 2011. In order to qualify for a Guinness World Record, the object has to be able to perform its intended function, so the chimes had to, well, chime. It takes wind of six miles per hour or greater to move them, but they work. And that’s how tiny Casey, Illinois, set the record for the World’s Largest Wind Chime. I put signs along I–70, advertising the record-setting chime. It wasn’t long before traffic in town got busier, especially with out-of-state cars.
I thought the wind chime would be a onetime project. Little did I know. In 2012, to publicize the town’s golf course, my crew and I built a 30-foot-tall, 6,659-pound golf tee. In 2013, Guinness representatives verified it as the World’s Largest Golf Tee.
When you walk up Main Street, you’ll come across 12 record-setting objects. You can mail a letter from the World’s Largest Mailbox. It takes 10 men to rock the World’s Largest Rocking Chair! We’ve got the World’s Largest Wooden Shoes, the World’s Largest Barbershop Pole and the World’s Largest Teeter Totter.
You’ll also see about 20 items that don’t set a record but are still big. Really big. You and your family can pile into our giant hanging birdcage and take pictures in front of our enormous mousetrap or super-size pizza slicer. There’s a behemoth bookworm by our library and a huge toy glider plane at our airport. I used a lot of recycled materials, including telephone poles, to construct the attractions and kept putting Scripture on each. And I plan to build more.
Come to Casey and see these big things for yourself! You’ll find that folks in our small town have big hearts too. We love visitors!
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Greetings from Leavenworth, Washington
Rob: Hi Guideposts. I’m Rob.
Nancy: And I’m Nancy.
Rob: We’re the Johnsons in Leavenworth, Washington at the Enzian Inn.
Arlene: Hello, Guideposts. My name is Arlene Wagner and I’m here at the Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum.
Rob: So the town became a Christmas theme town partly because it looks like a Norman Rockwell town inside of a snow globe. People just love to come here and enjoy the snow. And we usually do have snow on Christmas Lighting.
Nancy: We’re not too far from Seattle or Spokane. It’s a quick beautiful drive, but you feel like your worlds away.
Arlene: The Nutcracker Museum opened its doors in 1995. And I have been in charge of it ever since then. It started with a collection that my husband and I had, and it was so popular with the visitors that we thought we would like to have it as a museum so that everyone could enjoy it.
Nancy: My faith has had a part in building the Christmas theme in Leavenworth in that the church that we go to has had a living Nativity going on for at least 20 years. People dressed up like Joseph and Mary, shepherds, animals. We had a baby Jesus, and actually we use a real live baby every year. So each Christmas lighting then we have a living Nativity downtown. And so tens of thousands of people get to see that during the Christmas season.
Arlene: We have over 7,000 nutcrackers in the museum. People are always asking me which is my favorite. There is no way I could pick out just one.
Rob: So the Alphorn which we see behind me here, actually it started as a way of communication in the Alps. And because the mountains are so echoe-y and this was centuries ago, if they were being attacked, a small village was attacked or there was a fire. They had certain tones and little rhythms that they would play, given what was happening. We have people that are part of the Enzian family here, and they blow a horn every morning. It will vary, but usually 8:15 to 9:15 every day. And you can hear it throughout the whole town.
Arlene: Let me introduce you to Karl. This is the museum mascot that was carved by Karl Rappl of Oberammergau, Germany. This nutcracker was carved in Norway about 1700. It has a delightful crown that came unbroken. However, he lost his feet a long time ago.
Nancy: It’s kind of funny when you walk downtown and you see people in town that are visiting, probably 70% of them are holding hands. So I think it kind of brings families together and people together. And I kind of think that’s the atmosphere that we have here in town.
Green Velvet Cake
Grandmamma Lucille is allergic to red food dye, so when we make a red velvet cake, we make a green to go alongside it! But the best part is how festive the cakes look side by side!
Ingredients
Cake
2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1½ cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1½ cups vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1-ounce bottle green food coloring
Icing
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature
½ cup (one stick) margarine, at room temperature
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
Preparation
Cake
1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.
2. In medium bowl stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. In large bowl mix together sugar, buttermilk, oil, eggs and vinegar. Add dry mixture to wet. Beat on medium speed until well blended. Add vanilla and food coloring and beat on low speed till blended.
3. Pour into cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 25-30 minutes.Allow to cool 10 minutes in pan before turning out to cool completely.
Icing
Cream together cream cheese and margarine. Add confectioner’s sugar, vanilla and nuts. Mix till spreading consistency. A few drops of milk can be added if needed. Frost the cake.
Serves 12
Read how green velvet cake became a family tradition across generations!
Green Bean and Edamame Stir Fry
The soybeans (edamame) and green beans give a protein and fiber one-two punch with 16 and 11 grams each!
Read more about soybeans and other nutrient-packed ingredients in Rebecca Katz’s Quick Bites from the Healthy Cook.
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