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281 is the Great Plains highway, from the International
Peace Garden, North Dakota, to Brownsville, Texas, on the Mexican border.
Designated by congress as the American Legion Highway, it’s also
known in Webster County, Nebraska, as the Willa Cather Roadway; between
Hastings and Grand Island, Nebraska, as the Tom Osborne Expressway; in
Texas as the Old Military Highway; and in San Antonio as the McAllister
Freeway.
281 is not necessarily a route for efficient travel. Like most north-south
highways of the plains, it jogs back and forth a lot. It is a great road,
however, for discovering the culture of the plains.
During a recent junket we were delighted to drive a stretch of 281 through
central Texas, and as usual, we found wonderful things along the road.
The Dairyland Drive-In of Jacksboro (the town celebrated in the old ballad,
“The Buffalo Skinners”) can’t be beat for the full array
of southern-plains café cuisine, from chicken fried steak to tamales
to ribs to cobbler. And Mineral Wells, once famed for its healing waters
(Crazy Water from Mineral Wells, they say, even allays psychiatric disorders)
is an amazing city gone to seed.
The most remarkable roadside delight we found, however, was the St. Mary’s
Catholic Church grotto in Windthorst. Windthorst is a Texas town with
a rich ethnic history and an even more amazing story to tell about its
part in the Second World War. Countless towns have memorials to their
soldiers lost in the war. Windthorst has a monument to its soldiers not
lost in the war.
Windthorst was a German Catholic settlement carved out of the holdings
of the Clark Plumb Pasture Company in 1891. Its promoters, from St. Louis,
named the town after a German Catholic statesman; provided land and money
for a church, rectory, and school; and recruited settlers from among their
fellow German immigrants. The settlement in time became known as the dairy
capital of Texas and also produced its share of high school athletic champions,
which is more important in Texas.
The first arriving settlers planted a white cross on the hill where St.
Mary’s church now stands. The present, impressive, red-brick church
building is the third, built in 1925.
Down the hill from the church is the grotto, constructed of red sandstone
and concrete with pieces of quartz embedded. From its ceiling hang faux-stalactites.
Inside is a shrine to the Blessed Virgin, or as she is sometimes known
locally, Our Lady of 281, which highway she overlooks serenely. And alongside
is the soldier memorial.
It reads: “In gratitude to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Who returned
us without a single fatality from World War Two.” Listed below are
the fifty-nine men from the parish who served in the war and returned
safely, every one.
What are the odds? Well, if you ask people from Windthorst, it’s
not a matter of odds, it’s a matter of faith, which they choose to
express in a concrete way for the edification and enjoyment of travelers
on 281.
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