Thin Blue Line: Calhoun County Jail

Monday 17 December 2012

Calhoun County Jail

There is a ghost town some 24 miles to the northwest of Cross Plains. Its stone ruins have been standing like lonely sentinels on the prairie for over a hundred years. Since this forgotten Texas city is not mentioned in Howard’s letters, we don’t know if he ever visited the ruins, or if he even knew of their existence. But Howard had visited many a ruined, lost city in his imagination, like the one in “Iron Shadows in the Moon:”Once out of the thicket, he took her hand and led her swiftly through the thinning trees, until they mounted a grassy slope, sparsely treed, and emerged upon a low plateau, where the grass grew taller and the trees were few and scattered. And in the midst of that plateau rose a long broad structure of crumbling greenish stone.They gazed in wonder. No legends named such a building on any island of Vilayet. They approached it warily, seeing that moss and lichen crawled over the stones, and the broken roof gaped to the sky. On all sides lay bits and shards of masonry, half hidden in the waving grass, giving the impression that once many buildings rose there, perhaps a whole town. But now only the long hall-like structure rose against the sky, and its walls leaned drunkenly among the crawling vines.