104. Robert Lee, Coke County

Grab a cup of coffee. This one is going to take a while…

OK, let’s talk about this. I have no doubt you know what I’m talking about here. The namesake of this town was an officer who ran a post near here who was also a war hero. At least that’s the official statement. And, as strange as you might think it is, I’m inclined to believe them. Robert Lee did, in fact, command a post that hunted Indians (mostly unsuccessfully) and was very much a hero of the Mexican War. Yes, he would come to have a bad name for something else, but some such figures have done things of note despite crappy things they may have also done. Time and severity are often the deciding factors of these. Bill Cosby, despite being a rapist, was really funny. Pablo Picasso was a pretty terrible misogynist but still managed to paint Guernica. Benedict Arnold is damned in this country as a traitor, but he was still the Hero of Saratoga. Caravaggio used to walk the streets of Rome at night, looking for men to fight and kill. James Joyce used to pick fights with people in Paris and then run to Ernest Hemingway to defend him.

In a possibly apocryphal story, a former British soldier was sentenced to death and, as per tradition, he chose to wear his medals to the gallows, including the Victoria Cross. Many people were incensed that a soon to be executed criminal would be wearing the nation’s highest honor at his execution, but when the matter was brought up to King George V, he said that no matter where the man’s circumstances brought him, at some point he performed a service to the country so great that he earned the nation’s highest honor. So maybe crappy deeds don’t always erase the good. That said, in the definitely real case of James Collis, a man whose Victoria Cross was removed for the crime of bigamy, George got Secretary of War Winston Churchill to approve rule changes regarding future forfeitures, allowing it for more serious and specific crimes, and one of the crimes can allow the award to be rescinded is treason. Make of that what you will.

But here’s why it’s really going to be long. So my first attempt at a cache was at the nearby Coke County Jail. But no joy… The difficulty and terrain were such that if it was around, there’s no way it could be missed. As a minor side note, I found an awesome place to hide it that nobody would think of, but that’s between me and myself for now. Oh, well, crap happens. So I went to a nearby mini park to look for another easy cache (1.5/1.5). But after a cursory look around, I noticed that the place was really, really busy for that difficulty. So I started looking through the logs and a lot of them were talking about how this one was evil and impossible to spot unless you look from just the right angle. So I don’t know if you’re going to agree with me on this one, but I don’t think a 1.5 should be “evil.” Maybe a 2 or 2.5 might be clever, but I don’t think you should start getting into the “evil” classification until 3 or better. And a 5 that isn’t evil? Well, is that really a 5? More importantly, when I’m trying to grab whatever I can as quickly as I can, these misrated (in my opinion) caches make things so much more difficult. And the crazy thing is that when I checked the hider? That Guy! Grrrrr!!!!! That said, turns out that I had already had an encounter of sorts with That Guy. Apparently, my first cache of the trip is on her (yes, That Guy is a woman) front porch… Perhaps one day I’ll take her up on her offer to visit when I find myself in the San Angelo area next, but that might be a while. I did find a cache though…

I ended up finding a cache in a bush at a nearby restaurant. I was here too long and starting to feel a bit drained. Some water and a snack and I got back to moving. down the road I went and I eventually ended up in…