On To Texas

Our time in Memphis was over only too quickly. The rumble of the big Pratt and Whitney engine on the DGA was still vibrating in my back pockets and my ears when we departed the next day for Texas. There were hugs all around as we departed with full tummies and a full tank of fuel. Our greatest of thanks are to Steve and Paulette for their generous hospitality. They were awesome!

Rather than return on I-40 we blazed a trail south to Mississippi. We were thankful for the paved roads as we blazed along, though. There's an aweful lot of gorgeous territory to be seen in the US of A and Connie I were taking a lot of it in. We then cut across at Jackson to Shreveport, LA. I had been to Shreveport back in ’03 on my way to New Orleans but had not come in from the east. Like I said; there was a lot of nice scenery to be soaked in so we did a lot of soaking. After a nice overnight stop just a few miles east of Shreveport we boogied on in to Texas. Abilene was the next destination.

The trip though Dallas and Ft. Worth was uneventful aside from the traffic snarling truck vs auto wreck in the middle of the Interstate (the truck won). We had plenty of snacks on board so were prepared to wait out the massive traffic jam ("Be Prepared"; it's not just a Boy Scout thing). Thankfully, it didn't take all that long and we were back to cruise speeds.

I hadn’t seen my son, Jeff, his wife, Sandra, and their son, Randall, since the ’03 trip (but for about 2 hours when they were out here to see Disneyland in ‘04). When we got to Abilene I immediately knew something was wrong with my grandson, Randall. Some nasty unscrupulous modifier had been feeding him and he was growing up! *Sigh*. He is now 8 years old (that’s ocho to all y’all that live in Texas and California) and as sharp as the beak on a hungry Eagle.

According to one source based in California, Randall is probably the best and brightest grandson on the planet. That’s just an opinion, of course, but the source has reason to believe it to be factual. I mean…the boy plays soccer , football, baseball (and has sports cards to prove it!), does well in school, and even has participated in (I like to use the word “starred in”) a local tire commercial on TV. Not a bad start in life for a Texan, I should suppose. Oh…did I mention that he’s as handsome as his dad and at least one other older relative?

Now that we have that part straightened out……I like Abilene. I’m not sure why but I do. I like mustard and sugar sandwiches too. I even like sashimi, sushi, and a few other weird items that some people wouldn’t touch with their hands much less put in the face. Perhaps it’s the occasional plague of crickets or the smashing thunderstorms with their Texas twisters. It may be the "Frontier Texas" Museum with it's incredible holographic displays and dioramas about the early days on the frontier in that region.

Naw…I think maybe it’s the incredible eats there. Harold’s Pit BBQ and Harlow’s are a couple of places that come to mind. If Harold is up to the task (on any given day) he comes out and sings a hymn for the customers. He's quite good. Another couple of places include Johnny Carina’s and Grandy’s. If one is suffering the throes of a growling stomach in the morning, Grandy’s is good for a large order of biscuits and gravy. “Man does not live by bread alone…he has to have biscuits and gravy” (the book of "Third Randy" I believe is where that’s written in case you were wondering).

One unbeatable place is “The Texas Roadhouse”. Jeff is one of their managers so he made sure that my opinion was biased toward the place by treating Connie and I to a top-notch steak dinner. It worked so I am committed to as much word-of-mouth advertising that I can offer. Let me tell you…..any attempts by the Devil to starve us to death were entirely defeated that night. We ran out of places to stuff our meal. One more bite of juicy steak would have popped out of my mouth and ended up in my lap. We quit before things got ugly.

“The Texas Roadhouse” is one of those cool places where they serve you a bucket of peanuts to snack on while you wait. This wasn’t the first place that we encountered that had this neat idea. The first was in Memphis at Carlson’s when Connie’s brother, Steve, took us out for lunch (trust me….order their catfish). The nice waitress gave us a bucket of peanuts so Steve and I took to shucking shells into a pile on the table. Then, being the occasionally tidy guy that I am, I dragged the pile of shells onto the floor. Now, it had not occurred to me in the slightest that Connie had yet to be in such a place where peanut shells belong on the floor. As I raked the shells on to the floor with my best raking ability, she looked at me like I had a sudden noisy gaseous digestion issue in church. I found out later that her first thoughts were, “I ain’t cleaning this mess up. He can do it himself!”. Soooo…she wasn’t tossed overboard this time when she saw Jeff and I shoving shells onto the floor. She tossed one or two as well but I still think she had a guilty conscience about it. I guess she was thinking that normal people don’t throw their food on the floor. I sure hope she’s not correct about that.

After spending a couple of days in Abilene with the “fam” there, we had to get on down the road to San Antonio. Roger’s fly-in was beckoning us and we didn’t want to be late for the event. I left a chunk of my heart in Abilene; not a big chunk; just enough to make me want to return to retrieve it as soon as I could. Many many thanks to Jeff and Sandra for their generous hospitality and bending over backwards to accommodate us. It couldn't have been better.

After a nice full day of driving and seeing some incredibly beautiful and interesting countryside, we pulled up to the “Old Kingsbury Aerodrome” 30 min. east of San Antonio. We got their right at dark but immediately knew we were in for a huge treat. There were awesome aircraft everywhere! We were greeted by Connie’s brother, Roger, but….it was the 1941 Meyers OTW biplane that I hugged first. That’ll all be on the next post, don'tcha know.