On down the road from Hico is Evant. In the Texas dialect it is pronounced EEvant, the accent tending to move forward and lengthen the vowel. The story of Evant is the story of West-Central rural Texas in miniature. Settled in the 1850s, growing to its maximum population by the 1950s, then a steady decline since then. Before the Corps of Engineers "stabilized" them, rivers such as the Missouri and Mississippi wandered over their bottoms, changing course gradually by cutting sideways on the outer side of bends, and changing course suddenly during floods. The U.S. population and economy also have "wandered," cutting new channels slowly or suddenly. Centers become peripheries, and vice versa. I doubt that attempts to stabilize populations and economic networks will be as successful as river control. Bad news for West Texas, and Michigan, but security is rare in this world.

South of Evant the terrain begins to look like the Texas Hill Country: ridges and knolls of limestone, covered in mesquite and cedar. Hard to believe that when white settlers arrived in the Hill Country it was covered with grass, except along the creeks. But, overgrazing and ill-advised attempts to grow cotton, depleted the soil and grass cover. No longer contained by wildfires the brush claimed the land.

With Lampasas we are entering the region of Texas explored by the Spanish. Lampasas is the next town of any size (sorry Adamsville), its economy largely dependent upon nearby Ft. Hood, home of armor. Though I would not promote military spending as a jobs-creation program, or an economic stimulus, I think it is important to realize that much of the military budget is spent within the American economy.

Burnet had a role in the construction of the Texas State Capitol Building. A narrow-guage railroad was built from Granite Mountain to Burnet to haul (wait for it) granite to a finishing yard on the south edge of town, whence it was loaded onto railcars for the trip to Austin. A waste of money? I don't think so. There is a place for beauty in public life, and the Texas State Capitol is beautiful. Messages are conveyed with symbols, and the solid, imposing beauty of capitol buildings, and courthouses, preaches without a voice that life together is possible when law is solid and respected, and is the product of citizens meeting together in council.