During the past few years, whenever I have been traveling in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana or Oklahoma I always try to visit New Boston, Texas, located in the far northeast of the state, near the border with Arkansas, about 20 miles from the town of Texarkana. I go there to visit a friend, an 18 year-old young man who is incarcerated in a facility that belongs to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.  The fact that he may be in a Texas prison for the next 40 years is another story, one which I wrote about when he was first imprisoned, but every time I visit him I seem to have vivid experiences on the way there.  

I was  driving from Dallas and once I got off Rte. 30 I saw an exit sign to the town of Fate. How could I not check it out?  I never (hardly ever) pick up a hitchhiker, but I stopped for this pretty girl in a white cowboy hat.  Of course, she had a husband and kids, and a nice ranch about five miles from town.  I had lunch with her family, watched her daughter ride a horse, and learned that the town was founded in the late 1800’s, and its name came from an early settler whose American wife, in her heavy East Texas accent, called him “Fate” for short, somehow mangling his French surname of LaFayette.  

The summer day was warm and sweet smelling from the nearby farms, but the slow rural life will end quickly in Fate as Dallas spreads eastward with suburban housing developments, stop lights, and traffic.  I went on to visit my friend, returning to Dallas in the early evening, when the sky was a hazy and purple, the daytime heat lingering in the sultry air.  The whole ride back was depressing, it always is when I hear the sliding metal visitors door of the prison close with a great bang, but I did smile when I passed the big green exit sign for Fate.   

– Ron Bernthal, frequent contributor to Global Traveler