FM Roads

When Vince and I were dating . . long ago, we were driving from southwest Louisiana to Houston on the back roads. There are lots of “FM” roads in Texas . . like FM 1175, or FM 82. As we were driving, Vince asked “What’s an FM?”  and I told him it’s a “farm to market” road. He didn’t believe me . . there were so many and some of them are pretty major roads. Now, we laugh because 20 something years later, we live on an FM. It’s a pretty big road and the speed limit is 75 mph but everyone in Texas knows what FM means.

There’s a pretty big fire burning . . not close enough for us to be worried (I hope) but close enough that we’re keeping an eye on it . . listening to the fire department’s command center radio and reading the Facebook posts by the county administrator. Vince was looking at a map online this morning and he wanted me to tell him the exact location. 

Vince: Where exactly is the fire?
Me:  1176 and 201
Vince:  Is 1176 an FM?
Me: Yes.
Vince: Is 201 an FM?
Me: No, it’s a CR.
Vince: Ok . . I see where it is.

I’m thinking . . we sound like real Texans talking about FM and CR and knowing what we’re talking about! CR is County Road for anyone who doesn’t know. Probably most rural locations have CRs.

We are in desperate need of rain. Since the big rain the first week in July, 3-1/2 months ago, we’ve had 1″ of rain and that is not enough to keep our fire risk down. All the weeds and native grasses grew like crazy with our wet spring so we have lots of dead vegetation and it’s a terrible fire risk right now. There are fires burning again in Bastrop County, down near Austin, that was so badly affected in 2011.

The fire near us burned 400 to 500 acres yesterday evening, is about 50% contained and they’re expecting it to flare up again today. Even though it isn’t likely that fire could reach us, our entire area is not in a good position right now. We usually grill on Friday night but we’re not even going to chance it tonight. There’s plenty we can eat that don’t involve a risk of an outside fire.