A Vegan in Texas

It's Wednesday night, prior to the gig at Dan's Silver Leaf in Denton. This place is charming in that sort of "I knew you were coming, so made you a delicious dinner of spam fried in bacon grease on a piece of white buttered toast" sort of way. Tommy likey. But we all recall, Tommy is a very large boy.

The boys just had a conversation outside with an adorably drunk 76 year old woman who, from what I could gather, was telling them about some hookup of hers 35 or so years ago on a houseboat. After the punchline, where she discovered the man was the best friend of her son, she said "Take care, children!", and then more than lovingly tousled the curly mane of lucky Mr. Semler, the (older) ladies man. "Ma's been drinkin' again," was the response from a man out the window of the bar. I hope she sticks around for the show and gets rowdy.

We left the cradle of Ausin, and of dearest cousin Shelley today at midday after one last lingering dip in the pool. That stay was sort of a reward for the first two days of our trip. Shelley was a most fabulous host, and we will miss her! And I will miss sleeping in a bed where I can practically make a snow angel, and I touch no one and nothing besides Egyptian cotton. Oh sweet King size.

We got in the car (not van, it's hard to adjust to the new terminology) around 2, and headed off to fix the trailer connection. We've discovered the night lighting on the trailer doesn't work, so we've been driving with our hazards on at night. It's a quick fix, but the all night drives with flashing lights are bringing me back to the days of DJ Dan and Green fuzzy pants, and it's a place I made myself promise I would never go again. We happened to stop right next to the store of Gram Parsons' daughter, Polly Parsons, and we went inside for a peek. It's a vintage clothing and more store, and we discovered the "and more" involves a back yard porch-like stage. The nicest lady in the world greeted us, and offered us a 20% discount on everything in the store. She even told Jesse if he didn't have the cash, he could mail it to her later. We were all pretty excited to be talking to THE daughter of Gram Parsons. We shortly discovered, however, that this was a new owner, a woman named Kelli. We still gave her a CD and said we'd like to play there the next time through Austin. She may not have been Polly Parsons, but she was still the kindest woman any of us have met in a long time.

The rest of the drive to Denton was fairly straight forward. A sign of homemade beef jerky lured us off the freeway to yet another BBQ meal, but the rain and traffic kept us on track for time reasons. This is our last show in Texas, sadly. Alex may be happier about it than some. There was literally ONE thing on the menu at our lunch time stop that he could eat, and that was a plain baked potato. The cream was corned, and the string beans were in something super tasty that had to be made from some sort of delicious animal fat.

We should be taking the stage soon. We'll be housed tonight by Alex's aunt, Nancy, and then tomorrow the training wheels are off, and we'll probably be sleeping in the gutters of Memphis. Just kidding, mom.

Julie and OTW