The Dirschell's are Traveling Again: Day 124 - Tuesday, April 1

We went to Mumford's BBQ for an early lunch. The ribs and brisket were good, but a little disappointing, they weren't as good as they were either of the other times we were there.

After lunch I dropped Kathy off at the coach and headed up to Cuero, about 30 miles north of Victoria. The last time we were in Victoria I drove up to the Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum and went through it. The lady there told me that there were several other museums in the town that I should check out but I didn't have the time to do it that day.

The first place I went was the Cuero Heritage Museum, there were several different exhibits in what had once been the Post Office. The first exhibit I looked at was about the Cuero Turkey Trot. In the early 1900’s some local small farmers raised turkey’s. Since there were only a few vehicles at the time farmers would “drive” herds of their turkeys to the local processing plant in Cuero. Someone got the idea to turn the Turkey Trot into an event. The first Turkey Trot was held November 25-27, 1912. 30,000 people flocked into Cuero to watch 18,000 turkeys herded down Main Street. There was a carnival, big band dances, a football game (the local team is the Gobblers), a parade, etc. The Governor crowned the first Turkey Queen. The last actual Turkey Trot was in 1972 but I think the festival, now called the Cuero Turkeyfest, still occurs. The festival took on a Turkish theme.

Another couple of rooms were dedicated to Coca Cola memorabilia. Several old Coke machines, lots of old style Coke bottles and this outfit that a local wore, CoCo the Clown, in local parades. When I was driving around town I noted a building was once a Coke building but is now the City Hall.

Upstairs there were several rooms full of juice squeezers. There was a 206 page catalog with photos of all 1,643 squeezers. Each photo had the price the collector had paid for the squeezer. The total cost was $134,983.

Another room was dedicated to the port town of Indianola which had been wiped out by hurricanes many years ago. Reading about the military activities during the Civil War's, and the North's disregard for private property rights, when they took over the town, was interesting. Thankfully it didn't seem to be one of the typical historical revisionist museums that frequent the nation, by claiming getting rid of slavery was the primary reason the righteous northern states refused to let the seceding states for their own nation. (Delaware, a Yankee slave state voted against the 13th Amendment, the abolition of slavery; the 14th Amendment, citizenship rights; & the 15th Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote. In 1901 it finally ratified the 13th Amendment. Slavery was a horrendous, but it wasn't the primary reason for the Civil War.)

Next was the Pharmacy & Medical Museum of Texas.