Our initial intent was to go see Lake Fayette near La Grange today but we were almost completely foiled. According to our maps, many partially paved or dirt roads lead to the lake shore but our maps were plainly wrong. We tried many approaches from the east, south and west but ran into dead ends and locked gates in every case. We were starting to suspect that there really was no lake because we couldn’t even get a glance of a lake despite there being a nearby big blue patch on our phone and GPS devices. Finally we found a place with the redundant name of Park Prairie Park and we able to drive right down to the shore of what is a very warm but quite scenic lake with the exception of a giant coal-fired power plant on an adjacent stretch of land. The lake is warm because it is the power plant’s cooling reservoir.
Since the lake turned out to be sort of a dud, we decided to go check out some more Texas rural architecture. In China, the concept of feng shui is adhered to quite closely and one of the rules is not to build houses in such a way that a person in front of the house can see through it to the rear of the house. In Texas we have found few houses that allow vision through the house but there are millions where you can see the back yard from the front yard because hardly any structures have a foundation and one can look right through underneath the building. I imagine that generates considerable substandard feng shui. Almost every house is built either on wood sleepers set directly on the soil, stacked concrete blocks set directly on the soil or boulders set directly on the soil. There seem to be no continuous perimeter or wall footings here. Cast-in-place concrete foundations are right out. Many older houses have collapsed due to failed foundations. However, many beautiful houses still exist, perhaps because all the money they saved on the foundation can be used for wonderful gingerbread, great balconies and many cut glass windows.
We also found a delightful assortment of Americana along these country roads. We also found a way to Peters Barbecue in Ellinger where the barbecued brisket is fantastic. As usual, the Peters Barbecue original building and numerous additions of unregulated construction are without foundations.
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