Driving Under the Corsicana Daily Sun

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In the 18 months I lived in Austin, while my BMC and family lived in Longview, I made the trip back Behind the Pine Curtain about 75 times by my reckoning. Lately I have traveled this route a couple of times a week hauling stuff back in the trailer. At 260 miles per roundtrip, that tallies to 39,000 miles. Sheesh. No wonder I’m tired.

Roughly 90 percent of those trips involved the shortest, simplest route, which is Highway 31 from Longview to Waco, then I-35 to Austin. The exceptions were on holidays when I figured the interstate could turn into a parking lot, or if I was pulling the trailer and opted for the scenic Highway 79 route.

That means most of the time I had to drive through Corsicana, a city I’m certain is filled with fine, upstanding people. Corsicana is home to the famed Collin Street Bakery, with its wide selection of baked goodies and gourmet sandwiches — and pristine restrooms. The latter is as big an attraction as the food, on a route where making a pit stop at a convenience store can be a gag-inducing experience. Corsicana is the hometown of famed troubadour Billie Joe Shaver, writer of such classics as “Old Lump of Coal,” “Honky-Tonk Heroes” and a paean to this town, called “Corsicana Daily Sun.” That’s also the name of the newspaper.

Corsicana arguably also sports the most jacked-up thoroughfare through a small town that can be found in the great state of Texas. The city is roughly 10 miles long and about 200 yards wide. There is only one way to go from east to west, on a street (Highway 31, aka West Seventh aka Martin Luther King Boulevard) that has been under construction since Bill Clements was governor.

Every time I aver that driving through Corsicana can’t get more irritating, more destruction/construction ensues. Lately the primary east-west street (thoroughfare is too strong a term) has been reduced to two narrow lanes. So someone turning left can back up traffic for blocks. There are two train crossings as well, artfully designed to delay travelers.

To summarize, the trifecta of traveling through Corsicana is to arrive at what passes for rush hour, which is about 5 p.m., during a frog-floating, gulleywashing thunderstorm, while a slow-moving train meanders across the street. When that occurs, one may as well stop at Collin Street and grab a couple of cookies and a latte, perhaps use their free wifi service to check email or baseball box scores. Nobody gets out of Corsicana quickly if traveling the east-west route.

I went to the city’s website to see what in tarnation is up with this street and found a letter to citizens from Mayor Chuck McClanahan, addressing the issue. The mayor blames the Texas Blackland Prairie soil. That dirt is great for farming but shifts depending on moisture content, thus creating fresh crops of potholes and cracks in asphalt and concrete. Plus, street construction in the past has been shoddy (my word, not his).

I decided to email the mayor via the city’s website to find out when Highway 31/Seventh/MLK would be finished, but he never responded. He probably has enough to do responding to complaints from folks who actually pay taxes in Corsicana without dealing with an out-of-town griper. Either that, or the mayor has been stuck in traffic for a week and doesn’t have a smart phone with email capability. This is certainly possible in Corsicana.

But, the mayor writes (though not to me): “The city council is dedicated to the task of improving the streets of Corsicana. It will be a slow costly journey. We have a plan and a goal to make things better.”

It certainly is a slow, costly journey right now to travel through Corsicana. There is no telling how many dollars I’ve dropped at Collin Street Bakery in the past 18 months on oatmeal raisin cookies and lattes, taking a break from the snail-pace traffic to allow my blood pressure to return to normal.

At least now that I am again a citizen of The Pine Curtain, this won’t be a weekly experience. I hope the bakery isn’t hurt too badly by my decreased patronage.

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