Heritage, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 1988 Page: 23

demonstrates the technique of tatting,
school children pose outside their classroom,
and typical Hill Country scenes that
include the Victorian home add to the
reality of Emma's story.
This book reiterates my long-held belief
that the best way to study history is to
thoroughly study the life of an individual
and to extrapolate from it what you may
about the whole society, for in great measure,
the life of the individual does reflect
the values of their people and environment.
And of what use is that to us?
These are difficult times, and we don't
often take the opportunity to examine our
own values and society's mores and their
impact on us. When we study and get a
good sense of another time or another
society, we have a foil against which to
examine, and re-examine, our own.

The Roads of Texas
The Roads of Texas. Shearer Publishing,
Frederickburg, Texas; $12.95 paperback.
I'm not sure how it fit in with her Victorian
standards, but my mother used to say
that no couple should marry until they had
navigated a long automobile trip together.
She had observed over a number of years
that such an endeavor brought out the very
worst in people. You don't really know a
person, she said, until you have seen them
half-crazed with frustration, trying to find a
place to which they are already late, and to
which they have repeatedly refused to ask
directions.
The editors of Heritage, although they
do not get into wrangles over the routes
they travel as they go about their business,
certainly have been known to arrive late at
their destinations, confused, embarrassed,
and still unclear about how they actually
got there. So we welcomed the arrival of
The Roads of Texas, the big 11x15 map
book with all the roads of Texas from the
interstates to backroads, prepared by the
Texas A&M University Cartographics
Laboratory, and published by Shearer
Press. Its 83 big, detailed, readable maps
can show you the fast direct route, or guide
you on the back roads where you are more
likely to see the poignant Texas scenes of
abandoned farms with their lonely windmills,
fields of wildflowers or cotton, and

I * r- y-tr
Books!

LIKE BOOKS ABOUT THE EARLY WEST?
We've got those hard-to-find books about the people and
places of the Western frontier. Write for a free catalog of
newly published books and those that are currently in
print.
Are you a collector of rare out-of-print books about
the good and bad guys, the soldiers, mountain men,
ranchers, and settlers of the West. Drop us a note and
we'll send copies of our out-of-print catalogs.
Occasionally we have photographs, documents, and
signatures of many of those who helped win the West.
RIDE INTO HISTORY WITH US!
THE EARLY WEST
Creative Publishing Company TBE
Box 9292, Ph. 409-775-6047 EARLY WEST
College Station, Texas 77842 EARLY W /

fallen buildings that once housed people
and stories. You may decide to visit some of
the out-of-the-way towns with the intriguing
names-Turkey, Matador, Floydada,
Looneyville or Dimebox. These maps really
make you want to go places.
The Roads of Texas has features that will
especially appeal to readers of Heritage, and
to traveling families. There are fascinating
pages explaining the origin of place names
in Texas, lists and descriptions of forts,
missions and ghost towns, and anecdotes
about towns, people, movies and roadside

attractions. There is a comprehensive list
of state and national parks and forests, and
services they provide. As you travel along
on the large maps of the atlas, when you
come to the edge of a page, you simply turn
it, and the road you're following continues.
I can't promise this book will save marriages,
but it will be a valuable auto accessory
to the growing crowd of people who
want to explore Texas, to enjoy the historic
sites and the many preserved and restored
buildings, often adapted for reuse as restaurants,
inns, museums and shopping places.
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