As the weather gets chilly, I think of trips I've taken in the past for Christmas and Thanksgiving, which usually involved going down south from Texas Avenue (starting at Wal-Mart) and jumping down toward Highway 6, then off to 105. A good part of Carbon-izer is built around those memories. I've covered Veronica's here and there's one more defunct gas station that I'm still trying to collect information on, alluded to in that post over a year ago but I have yet to get around to it.
But first, Barry Pool Company. The address, 3114 Texas Avenue South, has been operational since 1986. They sold out around 2008 to what is now known as Brazos Valley Pool & Spas, but one of what made Barry's memorable was its sign, featuring a backlit slightly stylized drawing of a woman in a bikini (you can barely see it here but you can't really see it all that well). Nothing obscene but it was still interesting and memorable enough, especially back in the time when I was rarely going down this stretch of road with my family. After all, what was beyond Wal-Mart? Not much. No grocery stores (not until Kroger opening in 2000), very few gas stations, and beyond Rock Prairie Road, no hotels or restaurants. As you can see on Carbon-izer that's not the case anymore and hasn't been for a while.
