Two nights in the Austin lights, from Lamar to Congress, grubbing good in between: En Fuego tacos, LoRo Asian BBQ (evidently, affiliated with Franklin's), Elizabeth Street Cafe, and Kerby Lane's. I was beat, I was full, music racked my brain, time to move west. Abandoned the Guadalupe Mountains idea, the magnetic pull wasn't enough to overcome the thought of an 8 hour drive, much of it at night. Based on a recommendation from my landlord Chris, it was to Mason, Texas, only a 3 hour drive, to the Lea Lou CoOp, a conglomerate of a restaurant, a night club, lodging, and a ball room barn located downtown on the square. The drive was delicious, through the heart of the hill country, Lea Lou's was indeed cool, the accomodations outstanding, but there was no one around, hardly anyone.
After checking in, I took a look around the town on my bike, usually the best way to look around a town--or a city. I saw an historical house that a preacher built in the 1880's. Another marker marked the spot where a sherrif was killed by hostile Indians in 1860, in a twist of fate his grandson later became sheriff and was killed by a bootlegger in 1929. Prohibition, what a scar on our nation. I ended up in a massive antique shop, wandering around for an hour, almost buying a Zane Grey biography, checking out an old Autoharp, and walking every aisle; all the junk looked the same after awhile, I was in some sort of junk hypnosis trance.
After a needed nap and refreshing hot shower, I was ready to check out the night scene of Mason. I walked into the restaurant and sat at the bar, only a few people were there, maybe 8 or 9 in the whole place. A guy named Gerald immediately introduced himself and started talking about how his family used to own this place and he grew up here and this and that, and it was a grocery store and he was thinking about having kids finally at 40 and he backed the blue, and he bugs the bartender. I played along, made small talk, mentioning backing the blue, too, declaring they should do traffic surveillance with drones and get off the roads with their $100k Suburbans and radar guns, they were a fucking distraction, I cried, and a menace, go solve some crimes, I wailed loudly. Soon after that, he quietly paid out and left, his chattiness was gone, the bartender indicated he wasn't all there, that he'd taken a bad road. Thinking back, he gave me the creeps, I was glad when he took off.