'Pastoral Scenery Makes Travel on FM Roads Worth The Trip' by Clay Coppedge.Temple Daily Telegram

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Pastoral Scenery Makes Travel on FM Roads Worth The Trip

by Clay Coppedge

Temple Daily Telegram - February 26, 2007

There's something about a favorable change in the weather that makes a certain type of

person want to 'get out' and do something. Some times just taking a nice drive is enough.

Chuck Berry wrote about the feeling in his song with the self-explaining title 'With No

Particular Place To Go.' Texas singer and songwriter Terry Allen is on record as saying,

'No one with access to a convertible, an empty highway and a good radio station should

ever need a psychiatrist.'

So, in the interest of providing sort of a Rand McNally approach to therapy, here are

some of the nice drives you can take when simply being a motorist is enough. You don't

even need a convertible, and not everybody needs the radio either.

As far as the empty highway, there aren't many of those around. Some people may prefer to

drive Inter-state 35, but I have to believe that most freeway travel is functional rather

than recreational.

In my experience, the Farm to Market Roads - the signs say FM roads - provide the most

satisfying drives, not just in Central Texas, but anywhere in the state or country.

Writer William Least Heat-Moon called them 'Blue Highways' in his best-selling book of

the same name.

The good news about FM roads is that more than half the roads in Texas are so designated.

We might take these roads for granted, but the first one, FM 1 - all three miles of it -

wasn't built until 1941. The push to build FM roads in Texas carried with it a slogan:

'Get the farmer out of the mud.'

In 1949, the Texas Legislature guaranteed permanent funding for the FM roads. (As a note,

the farther west you go in Texas the more likely you are to see RM roads - Ranch to

Market roads.)

The pace on a FM road is more leisurely. You actually get to look at the country you're

passing through.

With that it mind, here are some pleasant drives you can take the next time you have the

time and desire to 'get out' but with no particular place to go.

If you get some therapeutic benefits from the drive, all the better. FM 2843

: There may be more dramatic drives around here than this one, though the rocky, rolling

contours of land and road, dotted with cedar, wildflowers and cactus and spiced with the

likelihood of at least some modest wildlife sightings, is nice enough on its own merits.

What makes this drive special for me is that the late Jim Bowmer, a longtime Temple

attorney, pointed out that the old road to Austin can be seen from this road.

A couple of miles west of I-35, Kuykendall Branch Road dead-ends into FM 2843 from the

left. A mile or so down the main road, at the top of the next hill, is a double row of

trees, parallel to each in a southerly line toward Austin. A white metal gate and pick-up

ruts run between the old row of trees.

This is the old road to Austin.

'About where the driveway ends, the Austin Road made a right-angle turn known as 'Dead

Man's Turn' '' Bowmer said. 'It was not 'Dead Man's Curve' because it wasn't a curve. It

is interesting to compare that little road with the present I-35 which, eventually, in

the course of one lifetime, has replaced it.' FM 116

: You hit this road driving north out of Copperas Cove, along the boundary of Fort Hood.

This drive pays off a few miles down the road with a view of a green, bowl-shaped valley,

sliced this way and that by creeks bubbling out of the nearby hills.

Here is the community of Pidcoke, named for early English colonists who knew a good place

to settle when they saw one.

Back on 116, you catch some fine views of Bee House Creek, and a couple of panoramic

valley scenes as a bonus.

The community of Bee House was once the home of a communal house called Bee House Hall.

Residents wanted to name the community Beehive, but the post office decided, somewhat

arbitrarily we must assume, that Bee House would be a better name.

FM 487: You can access this road in Bartlett. Drive east and you get the rural, bucolic

scenery that could provide just the kind of therapy that Terry Allen was talking about. A

few miles of this and you come to the town of Davilla, which some accounts say missed

becoming the state capitol by two votes.

There was once an institution of higher learning here, the Davilla Institute. The

school's first principal was George W. Baines Sr. His daughter, Rebekah Baines Johnson,

is known to history as the mother of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Take 487 into Milam County and you come to a series of old communities, many with great

futures behind them. You might notice a reduction in the speed limit or a historical

marker; sometimes there is nothing at all to suggest the vigorous lives were once lived

here.

The old community of Lilac is marked by a cemetery and historical marker that describes

the town in happier times and notes that its decline during the Great Depression was

'rapid.'

In Sharp, named for a physician in Davilla who didn't mind making house calls in Sharp,

you can visit the building that once served as the town's general store.

Several other drives deserve a mention here, including FM 580 in Lampasas County, FM 437

in Bell County and FM 1113 out of Copperas Cove, but this story has hit the end of the

road. There are dozens of great drives not far from where you live, wherever that may be.

Still, the great thing about FM roads is that you don't really a need a guidebook. You

really don't even need a map. All you have to do is go.