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The #1 store definitely has the most charisma, with big comfy chairs, and air-conditioning, a real plus in August.
But it's also the place you are most likely to run into Larry McMurtry himself, as I did this hot Saturday.
I wouldn't have been more excited to meet a movie star walking through the stacks. I was awestruck and uncharacteristically speechless. When I regained my composure, he gallantly agreed to having a picture taken with me, and generously signed my tattered copy of "In A Narrow Grave".

I recall blathering on about how his books influenced me, and my decision to move to Texas 15 years ago. He said he was sorry, and hoped I wouldn't hold it against him.

You have to plan a trip to Archer City, though. You won't accidentally stumble on i,t or make a wrong turn, and happen onto it.
It's 144 miles from where I live near Dallas. Up Highway 287, the northwest route that runs from Fort Worth to Amarillo. It's 100 miles up this former Goodnight-Love cattle trail to Bowie where to drive another 40 miles of two-lane highway, through wide open fields of short prairie grass, mostly populated by oilfield pump-jacks. As you get closer to Archer City, you start enter dairy cow country.
Not much else out there though, more cows than people.
So if you're thinking about making a pilgrimage to the hometown of an American literature giant, be sure to stop in Decatur (about the halfway mark), and get a drink and walk the dogs, before you hit the two-lane.
And if you pass the Dairy Queen, you went to far.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Dalton.
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