Bartlett looks like a pretty good place to do some serious antique shopping; and, in fact, I cut my visit short on this trip hoping to go back on a more serious shopping trip some other time. Bartlett is less than an hour from Austin, if you don't stop in every little town along the way.
But the first, and perhaps only, thing most people will notice upon arriving in Bartlett is LOONNIE TOONS, an elegant shop catering to those folk who want to fill their lawns with plywood cartoon characters, some of whom you'll recognize, and some whom seem to be original. They advertise "Good Stuff Cheap" on a sign outside, but, while it may be a travesty, I couldn't make myself go in. It was obvious I was going to be the only person in there, and if the proprietor approached me, I couldn't imagine what I was going to say.
When I go back to Bartlett on an antiquing trip, I'm going to eat at Lois and Jerry's Lunch Box. It looked cool. And, in fact, it was the only place to eat that I saw.
Another thing about Bartlett: It's one of those towns with an emergency siren that goes off anytime anything really bad happens. We had one in the town where I grew up, and everybody knew that if the siren blew once the ambulance crew was needed, if it blew twice there was a fire … up to six times for impending nuclear holocaust. Bartlett had one, and it blew, once, while I was headed back to my car to leave town. The emergency? Just outside the city limits, one-half of somebody's double-wide trailer had flipped off the back of an 18-wheeler and into a ditch. What a mess.
© 2000 E.V. Hobbs