Martha's Bloomers

I greatly enjoy photographing in small Texas towns. I would not say that I am partial to any particular town other than possibly Burkburnett, but some I seem to get back to more frequently than others. Navasota is one of those. I do not know if I was ever in Navasota prior to March 2011 when I went with the camera club to Washington on the Brazos for the independence celebration. Afterwards four of us drove into Navasota for lunch and I have been back several times since. There are things that I always seem to photograph in Navasota, many of which I did not do this time because it was raining. I can’t believe that I came away with no abstracts of the street crossing at the railroad tracks, the buildings on Railroad Street, shots of the Miller Theatre or of the store windows. However I did shoot two things that I always shoot—the door of the Mayfair Hotel and a juxtaposition of the YEILD sign with the door of God’s Profound Ministries. At the Mayfair I seem to be getting farther away from the door and I finally got the shot I have been wanting of the YIELD sign. Always before I had a lens that was much too short. We did drive out to the cemetery which was new and of course the purpose of the trip originally, visited Martha’s Bloomers. Bloomers in this case is a reference to flowers; get it? Clever, No?. I was shooting with Alcy as you might have guessed.

We stopped shortly before getting to Navasota to shoot some photographs of an old barn. Was going pretty good until Alcy scared a snake. She says turn about fair play. But it prevented me from getting a photograph. If she had just calmly said something like, “Gary, there is a snake here come and shoot it,” I would have appreciated it very much.

The highlight of every trip to Navasota is a visit to the restaurant where we ate back in 2011. Back then, the owner took our order and explained that his doctor had advised him not to write down the orders. Of four orders, four were wrong. We got such a kick out of it that we ate what we were served and never mentioned the error. We always go back to see if there has been any improvement. This time the owner wasn’t in and both orders were perfect.