Rebecca Henderson

cemetery, community center, and fire department -- that's pretty much all there is to see in Boonsville

The photos are matted, preliminary reading is underway, and now it’s time to head to Texas for the first research trip for my work-in-progress, West Texas Interlude. If you haven’t heard about it already, it is a nonfiction book, a collection of photos and stories from one family (my family)’s adventure living in the desert in 1950s West Texas.

The first stage of in-person research will take place in North Texas at my grandparents’ place. My voice recorder is primed and ready for the interviews. I plan to stay with my grandparents as much as I can during this 2 1/2 weeks in Texas, and I have pages of interview questions all set for them, along with maps and the set of 800+ photos to look through. There’s a ton of work to be done, needless to say. I hope to come away from this research trip with a detailed chronological timeline of the towns where the family lived in the 50s, as well as an idea of how to plan the itinerary for the West Texas road trip in early 2012 — and maybe even a general outline of the book itself. We’ll see. Maybe that’s a bit ambitious at this point, but I’d love it if I could at least get a better idea of how to organize the material I want to include (that is, how to interweave the elements of stories and photos from the 50s, background info on West Texas towns, and my present day experience on this upcoming road trip).

A few people have asked if I’ll be blogging while I’m in Texas this month, and I honestly don’t know how that will look at this point. I would love to post updates on the research, but I’m not sure how feasible it will be. Partly because I want to focus as much as I can on getting the most out of this trip, both with the research and with visiting family over Thanksgiving, and I don’t want blogging to take away from that. And partly because I don’t know what the internet situation will be for the majority of my trip.

Actually, I do know. My grandparents have dial-up internet on an old, old, old computer that I know would only frustrate me to try to use, so I’m not going to even consider that as an option. Their place, the No Money (0$) Ranch, is a few miles outside of Boonsville, Texas, population 52. The next closest towns of any size are Springtown (pop. 2062), Bridgeport (pop. 4309), Jacksboro (pop. 4533), or Decatur (pop. 5201) all about 15 to 25 miles away from the Boonsville Volunteer Fire Department — the only location in the vicinity of No Money that Google Maps recognizes, including the town of Boonsville itself. I’m guessing one of those towns might have a coffee shop with wi-fi, but that’s quite a ways to drive to check email and post blogs. Good thing gas is cheaper in Texas than in Washington.

I’ll check in as much as I can and am excited to see where this research takes me and my book.