Day two actually began back in
Arlington. We left the Winkle house and
stopped for gas. And I promptly lost my
credit card. After I paid for the gas at
the pump, mind you, so I knew it had to be right there somewhere. We tore apart the front seat of the car
looking for it. Chris was asking all the
right questions. You know, “Did you take
it with you to the bathroom?” “Is it
still in the gas pump?” “Did it fall
under the car?” She suggested I retrace
my steps. That wasn’t so hard since I
had taken more than two or three since I paid.
I knew I had put it in my pocket, but it just wasn’t there. Finally she asked, “What about your coat?” Oh, yeah.
I had been wearing a coat when we first got there. And sure enough, the card was in the coat
pocket. Hey, this one is not about
getting old. This one is all about you’re
not supposed to have to wear a coat in May.
We then developed a plan for the day. Figured we’d keep it simple: go west on I20.
Turn left on 281. See the biggest rocking chair in the world. Whatever comes
after that will be anticlimactic icing on the cake. And the big ol’ rocking chair did not
disappoint in the least. It was
massive. They wouldn’t let us crawl up
in it and try it out, so that was a disappointment, but then we also saw a ukulele
made from a bedpan and barbed wire. That
was a bonus.
The drive along that particular stretch of
US281 was really interesting. We passed
a horse hospital. The Texas National
Guard armory. A road runner or two, but
no coyote. Lots of hawks. Chris slammed on the brakes when she saw one
particular historical marker. She turned
around so we could take a picture of the Olin Baptist Church. Quaint little clapboard church out in the
middle of nowhere. I forgot the name of the
town we stopped in for lunch, but the place was called the Wenzel Meat
Market. Their ad campaign consisted of a
big pig glancing over his shoulder and encouraging everyone to “Bite my butt.” Now come on, how could we pass that up? We had a baked potato with some pig barbeque
on it. It was OK. Kind of sweet. Wouldn’t go back, though. Further down the road we saw a huge herd of
deer. That was impressive until we
realized they were living the good life on some kind of game preserve. Next stop was in Lampassas to check out an
antique store and go to Dairy Queen.
Gotta do the DQ stop at least once, you know. As we neared Marble Falls Chris was in the
process of yelling at me because I reached for my phone while driving, when we
saw what looked like three of the ugliest horses I had ever seen. They were all shaggy and had skinny legs and
really long necks. The long necks were
what made us realize they weren’t ugly horses after all. They were llamas. Just where were we anyway?
As we
entered the city and stopped at a red light, I got a phone call from another
old friend, David Anderson. Chris
actually let me answer this time, but when he started giving me directions to
his house in Marble Falls, she made me pull over. We did connect with David for a while at his
new home. Gorgeous place. Lots of land, well, rocks. His backyard is a big creek. Very quiet and very cool in the evening. We stayed at a local Holiday Inn Express for
the night. Supper at Chili’s overlooking
the river (I don’t know which river. One
of the ones in Texas). Chris watched the
sun set from our hotel window, also overlooking the river. Very pretty.
I guess the river and the sunset were pretty, too.
Psalms
23:1-3 says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I
shall not be in want. He makes me lie
down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”
Father,
thank you for those quiet waters you gave David in his back yard. May they calm his spirit every day. Amen.
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