Casey's Patch Collection

Luckenbach, Texas

While on the NEH grant summer excursion with my dad and teachers in 2006, we stumbled upon Luckenbach, Texas.  Waylon, Willie, and the boys weren't there that day, but they did have a sign noting their population of 14, if I remember correctly.  They also had a nice old general store, in which I found this patch.  I'm sort of busy tonight packing to move to my new apartment, so I'll just leave y'all with the words of Waylon Jennings:

There only two things in life that make it worth livin'
Is guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquis lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love

Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us fueding 
Like the Hatfields and McCoys
Between Hank William's pain songs, and Newberry's train songs
And blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas 
There ain't nobody feelin' no pain

So baby let's sell your diamond ring
Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
This coat and tie is choking me
In your high socitey you cry all day
We've been so busy keepin' up with the Jones
Four car garage and we're still building on
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love

Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us fueding
Like the Hatfields and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs,and Newberry's train songs
And blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
There ain't nobody feelin' no pain

Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with willie and waylon and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us fueding
Like the Hatfields and McCoys
Between Hank Williams' pain songs,And Jerry Jeff's train songs
And blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
There ain't nobody feelin' no pain

LBJ State Park and Historic Site

During the summer after I graduated high school in 2006, I journeyed again with my dad and about 40 middle school and high school history teachers on an NEH Teaching American History Teachers grant summer bus tour. On this trip we visited a number of historic sites all across Texas. On our way to Lyndon Baines Johnson's Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, we made a stop at his boyhood home in the Texas Hill Country near Johnson City.  

In 1965, LBJ donated the land where he grew up to the State of Texas and is now part of the LBJ National Historic Park. The park includes several sites including a visitor's center, his boyhood home, the Johnson Settlement, LBJ's first school, the "Texas White House," the Johnson Family Cemetery, and a beautiful field of wildflowers commissioned by Lady Bird Johnson.  

LBJ's great-grandfather settled there in 1860, and LBJ lived in his home near the original settlement until he graduated high school in 1924. LBJ's first school is located on the ranch, which is also the site where he signed the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. After Johnson was elected president, he built his Texas White House so that he would have a place to come home to during his administration, and Lady Bird Johnson lived there until her death in 2007. It became open to the public in 2008. LBJ had a deep attachment to his home in the Texas Hill Country and was laid to rest there at the Johnson Family Cemetery in 1973.