Former Redneck Heaven (Arlington, Texas)

Redneck Heaven as it appeared in the late 2010s. (Photo by Silviu Gheorghe, source).
701 North Watson Road in Arlington, Texas started out as a Luby's Cafeteria, opening in 1982 but closing in March 2003 among other restaurants in the chain. After it's demise, it reopened as Palomino's Ranch Buffet in 2007, closing around 2012. Redneck Heaven followed soon after. It operated from about 2012 to 2020, and while it wasn't the first in the chain (it was the second), Redneck Heaven a bit over the top, even as far as "breastaurants" went with live minnow shots, scantily-clad waitresses, and more (at least when they expanded to San Antonio). Per these sorts of places, the food looked nothing to write home about, but I did find this shot buried among the photos on Google Maps.

She looks so uncomfortable. (Photo by Ryan Hitchcock, source).
Redneck Heaven and its other locations got washed out in 2020 and a few years later was renovated and reopened as a location of Bombshells Restaurant & Bar and despite technically more modest garb for waitresses, is owned and operated by a company that primarily deals with strip clubs.

Lockhart Chisholm Trail BBQ (Lockhart, Texas)

Google picture from Adrian Neubauer from 2016
One of the things that I wanted to do when I ported this over from Various Lockhart Businesses was to explain that since I last visited in the last 2010s (or even early 2020s) that Chisholm Trail has revamped the inside of its building, going from an old-fashioned local joint that felt from another era (since 1978), to a modern overhyped barbecue joint. And overhyped it might be, even in the "humble" era, when the Austin edition of Fearless Critics savagely ripped apart a bunch of restaurants, Chisholm Trail was not spared either, ranking quite poorly. While it wasn't entirely a hit piece (the sides are indeed weak), they didn't even mention the homemade bread Chisholm Trail often has available (not sure how "homemade" it is but it at least is different), as I ate here about once a year for about a decade (2009-2021, roughly). I know white bread is "classic" for barbecue but the bread they have is good too. I unfortunately don't have any Chisholm Trail pictures myself so I had to dig around in Google Maps for some of the older ones and some newer ones for comparison. The two following are about the same view from Danny Anderson (new style) and George Vandervort (old look until the early 2020s), respectively. I like the older one better.

UPDATE 07-02-2026: I neglected to mention the address...1323 South Colorado Street.

Convenient Stop & Grill (Milano, Texas)

Where does that wire lead down to?
One of my original intentions of this site was not just re-runs and reposts from Carbon-izer.com but new, original content. This is one of them, with Convenient Food Stop, a small grill/gas station/convenience store in Milano, Texas. Just west of the rebuilt CEFCO (future Casey's?) which in many ways fulfils what this station did, and a bit before the Dollar General down that way, was this gas station, which I photographed December 31, 2025. I was actually going to post this a few days ago but didn't want to do it so soon after another abandoned gas station.

I didn't want to get too close to the building, I approached it but those rafters are a favorite hangout for hornets.
Because of its rural status, information has been hard to find on this one. Based on some old tax filings it appears that this disappeared sometime in the late 1990s and has been abandoned since, and older records can't be found since it likely changed names. The gas canopy went up sometime by 1981 (possibly in the 1970s) but the building dates back to the 1950s (at least).

I can't find anything else on this one, including what gas brand, if any, it had, or previous pictures taken, so information is sparse. Please, write in anything if you have it.

Former Monterey House in Temple (Temple, Texas)

Picture from Loopnet showing a bit of 1704 as well.
Temple's current Casa Olé was originally built as famed Tex-Mex restaurant chain Monterey House back in 1977 (#57) with the address of 2108 Glendale Drive, one of the "pre-unification" addresses for SW H.K. Dodgen Loop (much like Saigon Cafe previously discussed.¹ Later on, this converted to Monterey's Tex-Mex Cafe around the late 1980s or early 1990s (discussed on this page, see "Free Star Plaza / 10515 Northwest Freeway") and ultimately, Monterey's Little Mexico. In 2024, parent company Mexican Restaurants, Inc. shut down Monterey's Little Mexico and soon reopened it as their other brand, Casa Olé, which moved from Temple Mall (see Carbon-izer).²

Even as of January 2026, the rebranding was clearly done on a budget, with only a Casa Olé banner to the side of the restaurant.

1. That article was also part of the dismantling of this page.
2. There is also a Numbered Exits post but I provided the direct link.
UPDATE 05-13-2026: Removed Taqueria Mexicano as part of bringing back Carbon-izer page. Also linked to Temple Mall.

Barton Creek Square (Austin, Texas)

The mall's parking lot feels very isolated from the world around it. (Author's photo, 2022)
Broadly speaking, one of the big ideas of the site is to do major changes to Carbon-izer.com and one of those is to separate out of the non-road directory posts and other stuff that got cut from them, and one of them is Barton Creek Square, one of Austin's only two remaining enclosed malls and by far the more successful of the two. I wrote about it on Carbon-izer, and you can see the page here.

The mall itself opened in 1981 at 2901 S. Capital of Texas Hwy. with six department stores—Sears, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, Foley's, Dillard's, and the locally-based Scarbrough's (though Dillard's and Foley's did not open until 1982). Today, the Sears is gone, Montgomery Ward is replaced with Nordstrom, Foley's with Macy's, and Scarbrough's as a second Dillard's. (Scarbrough's wasn't sold completely to Dillard's, from what I can tell the sale essentially split into two companies in the 1980s, one of which was business as usual until around the late 2000s, and one that was converted to Dillard's). The mall, of course, has gone through changes since I originally posted it in 2022. In an update post made in December 2022 update of Carbon-izer, I mentioned that "off the record that Soccer For You is gone, Starbucks is open again, the Toys R Us-knockoff looking store moved, and there's a locally-owned Pokémon store called Pokémaniacs" and as of this writing it's still open according to Google and the mall's own website.

Sears is still unused, of course, but last November, an attraction called The Sistine Chapel Experience opened. This article talks about it but I have no idea if they use all the space, or if it's a limited-run attraction.

Much like Lakehills Cinema 4 from the other day, this post is part of taking apart/revamping the Other Roads in South Austin page on Carbon-izer.

UPDATE 01-13-2026: The Abuelo's in the parking lot as discussed in the page has since been filled with Polvos.

Former Annie's Country Store in Conroe (Conroe, Texas)

Google Maps Street View from the 2010s. Another Chevron gas canopy is off to the right of the frame.
Another entry to split from Davis Street in Conroe. 3900 East Davis Street, from 1991 to 2006, was a Chevron (Annie's Country Store, possibly related to the Navasota Chevron of the same name)¹. It's interest to me is that around the time of its closure, the logo of Chevron was altered, switching up the colors from solid to gradient, the name from black to blue, and a different font for the name. (A large sign near US-290 and Beltway 8 was a hold-out for many years at least on its big highway sign, but it was eventually torn down).

I spotted this in 2011 on a road trip and observed it was that it was the Chevron that I remembered that had disappeared about five or so years prior, so it was nice nostalgia. It remained up until 2017 when it was finally demolished, and in 2020 was rebuilt as Speedy Stop #88 with Mobil gas (though Mobil gas was dropped in 2023 for the Speed Stop brand). While the station always had a Davis Street address, the new Speedy Stop faced 105, where as the Chevron was faced at an angle.

1. The reason I saw "possibly related" is its a different tax entry than the Navasota store but if you looked at the way the Navasota store was laid out like the awnings and the position of the gas relative to the store, they could've been related.

Florida Rock Industries (Orlando, Florida)

Ad for Florida Rock Industries from January 13, 1990. The logo is kind of interesting.
I have hundreds of pages of addresses from across the nation that I build this site from, and among them is 5109 Carder Road. 5109 Carder Road is owned by Argos RMX (formerly Florida Rock Industries until 2014) and was once located directly off of Carder Road, before a good chunk of Carder Road was turned into an extension of John Young Boulevard; rather than just going across the railroad and turning into Lee Road, the new extension added flyovers to connect to Forest City Road to the north.

The plant has been there since 1979, and Wikimapia, which I used to contribute to¹ mentioned that there was a new self-supporting communications tower built in 2004 after the old one collapsed as it was held up by guy wires and one of those guy wires got struck by a truck. Mostly what piqued my interest was despite the new six-lane boulevard, it had added a new, tightly-designed railroad crossing, despite the fact the old one never seemed to get much business. (Tightly-designed isn't a turn of phrase, they had close clearance signs). Unfortunately Argos seems to have abandoned the spur past the crossing but perhaps it could be reused in the future.

1. I finally got sick of it and decided to do things my own way, see the March 31 2022 update on Carbon-izer.