Uncertain, Texas

Continuing, as promised. It’s a long one.

So. Uncertain.

I wanted to stay somewhere quiet, but central to the places we wanted to visit, and things we wanted to do. Enter the city of Uncertain. A bit off the beaten path, the city of Uncertain has only two roads in it. Perfect!

During our historical shuttle tour in Jefferson, the driver asked where we were staying. Upon learning that detail from us, he mentioned “a local artist who repurposes Volkswagen Bugs into art, who lives in the city of Uncertain.” He suggested we try to find the Bugs, because he said they are worth seeing.

As I discovered during my enforced “do nothing time” on Monday afternoon, it turns out that the city of Uncertain and the “artist lady” are linked hand-in-hand. Allow me to explain.

The artist’s name is Dottie Smith Carter, and she is one of four daughters of the founder of the city of Uncertain, Beer Smith. Beer bought a bunch of the land in that area, had his own businesses, one of the most visible ones was an airfield called “Beer Field” and a resort called the “Fly N’ Fish.” By all accounts, it was quite the place in the 1950s. The airport and resort are shut down now, though. A random discovery we made when we left town happened when we drove out the other road (the road we hadn’t explored during our stay) in Uncertain, and discovered a private cemetery named Beer’s Field. It seems the family made a way for the name “Beer Field” to live on (even though, weirdly, Beer Smith is buried in a cemetery in Marshall).

Dottie’s home and her VW Bug Art, as well as several of her rental cottages, are all located on Taylor Island (located within Uncertain).

She is also married to the owner of Johnson’s Ranch Marina, who sells bait, rents canoes, offers lake tours, etc. Interestingly, Dottie’s father sold the property that Johnson’s Ranch Marina sits on to the Johnson Brothers a few decades back. Things come full circle and, see there? Uncertain and Dottie are all intertwined.

According to the locals, Dottie is a character and always seems to have “projects” she’s working on. She’s in her mid-80s now, is a retired schoolteacher, has written a few books, builds rental cottages, and apparently repurposing Volkswagen Bugs into art is one of her many projects. We had ourselves a fun treasure hunt, finding and admiring them, and I’m suspicious we didn’t actually find them all.

Reading about her and her family history was like reading a really interesting story, with many twists and turns while I was forced to “relax” in our cabin for an entire afternoon.

Our cabin sat on the banks of one of the waterways of Caddo Lake. It had its own pier and dock. One or all of us was always on that dock looking at the lake. The lake was ever-changing. Lilypads would drift in, moss would drift out, the light would change, the shadows would shift, the roots of the bald cypress trees looked like little people observing it all. It was stunningly beautiful and we loved it.

The last morning we were there, I went out to the dock and surprised a Great Blue Heron. It startled me as much as I startled it, so I didn’t get a great picture of it… but if you zoom in through the trees on the picture I took of the dock, you can see its giant wings spread as it flew away from me across the lake.

Yesterday, the Child said to me, “I miss the swamp.“ Same, Child. Same.