CROSSROADS REPORT
By Kent Brunette
From The Pages Of The Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Robertson County News
October 1 – 3, a Hwy 6 Art Road Trip is planned for the stretch of TX6 between
Navasota & Calvert through Hearne. On this upcoming weekend, area artists will be
opening up their studios & joining forces with local art venues & museums to offer an
unprecedented cultural driving tour through our part of the Brazos Valley. Over twentyfive sites will be offered for art students, art lovers, & collectors to experience the quality
& diversity of art & culture in the Brazos Valley.
A flyer advertising the event says: “Imagine taking your family or friends to a real
potter’s workshop, & seeing a potter throw on the potter’s wheel, or a painter working in
his own studio, or a sculptor fashioning a life-sized equestrian monument. And, on the
same day, visiting our regional museums & art galleries that will be participating with
related exhibits.”
A work in progress itself, Hearne’s historic depot will be open & staffed by
volunteers throughout this first weekend in October. The six different Calvert entities that
will be participating in this road trip are: Mudcreek Pottery, Track Five Gallery, Nature’s
Own Gallery, Jill Stavenhagen - artist, Oscar’s Attic, & Cocoa Moda.
Grab a friend, round up the family, or organize a busload of art enthusiasts to get
out there & support the arts. For more info, go to www.hwy6art.com or call 979.822.0496.
The railroad tracks outside the depot are now in place & are being welded together.
Once this is complete, expect to see ballast rock spread down the approximate 300 feet of
track in front of & along the two main sides of the depot.
With most of the heavy lifting out of the way, the sprinkler system around the
depot will be installed. At the front of the depot between the railroad tracks & the TX6
wrought iron fence, some gravel will be dug-out & replaced with top soil. Bluebonnet
seeds will be planted in this area this fall. Some of these will hopefully be blooming
around the time of the depot’s Spring 2011 grand opening.
The replica barracks & auditorium out at Camp Hearne obviously attempt to
capture the WWII spirit. Robertson County residents & others are in for a big treat when
Camp Hearne’s on-site museum flings open its doors at its Saturday, October 23 grand
opening.
Since the Hearne Depot’s use as a passenger terminal spanned a much broader
period of time (from the early- to mid-Twentieth Century) than Camp Hearne, several
Norman Rockwell illustrations will be used to help establish the tenor of the times when
the depot saw its greatest passenger numbers.
Rockwell was a prolific artist who drew 321 covers for the Saturday Evening Post
over a span of 47 years beginning in 1916. Inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s
1943 wartime address to Congress, Rockwell painted the enormously popular “Four
Freedoms.” These included “Freedom of Speech”, “Freedom to Worship”, “Freedom from
Want”, & “Freedom from Fear” which appeared in consecutive issues of the Saturday
Evening Post. Rockwell’s many homespun & folkloric paintings featured people engaged
in their everyday lives.
Believe it or not, there is a double connection between our local area & Rockwell’s
long-time employer, the Saturday Evening Post magazine.
In the July 3, 1954 edition of this national publication, George Sessions Perry, a
Rockdale, Texas native who was one of the highest paid popular magazine contributors of
his time, wrote an article in which he proclaimed Cayce Moore of Hearne to be “the
nation’s most famous barber.” Not just a short article, the Cayce Moore coverage was a
four-page spread!
An original copy of this magazine will be on display at the Hearne Depot.
As luck would have it, Norman Rockwell did not do the illustration on the cover of
the Saturday Evening Post for the date on which the Cayce Moore article appeared.
Crossroads Reports appear weekly in the Hearne Democrat & are archived at
www.hearnetexas.info. The views expressed in this report are those of the author & do
not necessarily reflect the views of the City of Hearne, Hearne’s 4A & 4B Sales Tax Boards,
Hearne Chamber of Commerce, or Robertson County Newspapers.