Rebecca Henderson

On these past two research trips to Texas for West Texas Interlude, my grandparents and I have driven into town from their place two or three times a week. “Town” can mean a couple of different places, but the town I’ve come to enjoy the most is Jacksboro, about 25 miles from their house. The county seat of Jack County, it’s the town where my grandfather came to high school from his childhood home in nearby Joplin and my grandmother came from her home in Wizard Wells. In the first year after Conoco sent my grandfather back from West Texas to work out of Fort Worth, the family lived at Wizard Wells, and my dad went to seventh grade in town at Jacksboro — “the year John F. Kennedy was killed,” my grandmother remembers. 1963.

When I was 8 or 9 years old, I remember piling into my grandmother’s car with my cousins and sister to go to Fort Richardson State Park at Jacksboro. Almost as vivid is my memory of a hamburger eaten on a picnic table at a roadside burger joint on the way home from that trip. Burgers are better when eaten outdoors, juice dripping from the fresh tomato, accompanied by a milkshake.

I found out in November that my memory is of Herd’s Hamburgers, a Jacksboro fixture since 1916. The picnic tables are still there in the parking lot, and you have two choices for indoor seating: old Coke crates or old wooden school desks. My grandparents and I ordered burgers and ate them in the parking lot while they reminisced about the price of meals when they were younger — my grandmother says that in high school they would often go to Herd’s for lunch because you could get a burger, Coke, and candy bar for 25 cents, compared to 35 cents for a meal in the school cafeteria. Part of what makes the burgers taste so flavorful today is that they are still using the same griddle from when they opened 96 years ago. That is one well-seasoned griddle.

I’ve had several opportunities to go by the Rexall Pharmacy at City Drug to pick up prescriptions with my grandparents in recent weeks — I really like this photo because I managed to get both the drug store sign and the reflection of old buildings on the city square.

Last week was the first time I had a chance to sit at the counter with the old soda fountain — my mom and I stopped by for a malt when we drove into town to pick up some stuff at the hardware store.

My grandfather told me later in the afternoon, “If we got a malt when we went to town, we thought we were in high cotton.” I can just picture him there as a little kid, putting down 10 cents on the counter for a malt in a thin glass with a tall spoon. That mental picture is why I prefer heading to Jacksboro to pick up groceries or prescriptions, rather than into the bigger towns with WalMart and Starbucks.