Busy Geemaw: Paris, Texas Style

What do you do on a Saturday in February when it is 80 degrees? Go on a convertible ride to Paris, Texas! We had about an 80 mile drive and it was a bit windy out, but being from the Midwest, there was no way we were going to let this beautiful day go to waste. We decided to take a short detour on our way and stop by a "ghost town" that was kind of on the way, and I will blog about that part of the trip at another time. This blog is going to be completely dedicated to Paris.

First stop, the town square. Paris has a beautiful fountain in the middle of the town square. The fountain was donated by one of its wealthy and prominent citizens J.J. Culbertson. The fountain is circled by antique shops, small businesses and restaurants. We stopped at Jaxx Burgers and had a great hamburger that was made to perfection and served on a homemade rosemary bun.

The beautiful fountain in the Paris town square. You would never see a fountain running in February in the Midwest.

Great hamburgers at Jaxx Burgers. Mine is the one in back without the cheese and bacon.

March 21, 1916 is the day that Paris, Texas burned. It had been a dry month in Paris and the buildings and surrounding areas were all dried out. It was the day before the cities annual Spring Cleaning Day and at 5pm a trash pile was burning in the yard near the Long's Warehouse. Not only was the town dry, but there were 35 to 50 mph winds that took a hold of that trash fire and started burning the warehouse. From there the fire spread and ended up burning 264 acres, 1440 buildings and killing 3 people. The slogan for the town to rebuilt was one simple word "SMILE". They call it the slogan that rebuilt Paris, Texas in twelve months.

Paris before the 1916 fire.

This is the sign commemorating the 100th anniversary of the great fire.

Our next stop was to the Lamar County Historical Museum. County museums are so interesting because they always tell a great story of the county and the people that lived there. I will write a blog on the museum at a later date, but I have to tell you about this one item in particular. The gentleman that was working at the museum was a wealth of information and told us great stories, and I will share my favorite one with you. As you walk into the museum they have a display of their local historic businesses and their goods. My favorite item came with a great story. The Famous Shoe Store in Paris was where this gentleman went to buy shoes when he was a kid. When he moved back to Paris many years later he went back to the shoe store and asked if they still had the X-ray machine that they use on customers back in the late 1930s. The owner said yes, it was up in the attic. The owner ended up donating the machine to the museum. The museum gentleman said that when he was a kid his mother took him into the shoe store and with his prospective new shoes on his feet, he would step on the X-ray machine, put his feet in the slot on the bottom, put his chest up against the wood frame of the machine, and they would X-ray his feet. The salesman and his mother both had a view finder to look through to see the X-ray of his feet to see if the shoes fit properly. He said that once the reality of the amount of radiation that the machine was putting out came to light, the machines were banished and were then illegal to use. Heaven only knows how long it took then to figure that out. Thank goodness by the time I wore shoes they only used the thumb method where you push your sideways thumb at the toes of the shoe and if you had a thumbs length you were good to go, and no radiation was included!

This was the Adrian X-ray machine that was used at the Famous Shoe Store. It was encased in glass so it was hard to get a good picture with our glare and you can see my reflection in the back. I hope it was not in glass because it was still radioactive.

One of the main reasons to go to Paris, France as we all know is to see the Eiffel Tower. Well, that is also the main reason to go to Paris, Texas. OK, so it is only 65 feet high and it has a little embellishment at the top, it is just the Eiffel Tower, Texas style. It definitely does not get the number of visitors that the original tower gets, and it is not located in the City of Love, but is most definitely the tacky over the top tower we have grown to expect of Texas. What is not tacky, and when finished, will be a beautiful tribute, is the Red River Valley Veterans Memorial right next door to the tower.

Bonjour Y'all!

There is a lot of work yet to be done on the memorial, but they are off to a very good start.

I saved the best sight in Paris for last. In Paris there is the Evergreen Cemetery that has 40,000 permanent residents. One of these residents is named Willet Babcock. Willet was from Ithaca, New York. He was a Union lieutenant in the Civil War, and was a furniture and casket maker that opened a factory in Paris, Texas. Willet was a well liked citizen and from the looks of his final resting place he was a man with a sense of humor. Willet ordered his headstone from a local German master stone cutter named Gustave Klein. Willets's head stone is an elaborate piece of work that at first glance looks like Jesus carrying the cross. On a closer look you are not sure if maybe it is an angel leaning on a cross. What you can make no mistake about is that the figure is definitely wearing cowboy boots. The marker has been known as "Jesus in Cowboy boots" since Willets death in 1881.