Damn. Texas. What can I say? My history with the Great State of Texas begins in 1989, when I was 13 years old. My family moved there from California, where we'd been for 4 years since we moved there from Massachusetts. My dad moved us down to Grapevine, TX, into a house just a mile from the D/FW airport. In the couple of short years that I was there, some major life events went down - family split, I got out of the church I was raised in, drank, smoked weed and dropped acid for the first times, lost my virginity, and found punk rock. And that was in less than 3 years. Those Texas kids don't mess around.
Later in my personal history, I have been married to 2 different Texas ladies. I have done time there. I found out I was going to be a dad there. Suffice it to say that while I love visiting Texas, it always brings up a wide range of emotions when I cross the state line. It had been a couple of years since my last visit, and I knew that we had several exceedingly good days ahead of us, so the prevailing sentiment was of wary optimism.
Travelling through Texas by car (or by Jeep, in this case) is a different experience from almost any other state in the Union. The reason for this is the sheer size of the place. You can drive day and night and still be in the same state - how many other states can boast that? Plus, it really does have the feel of being its own country, no matter how much one might like to dismiss the cliches. So, even though we had crossed the state line on Highway 10, we still had plenty of ground to cover before our show in San Antonio that night. We had already eaten for the morning and had bags of snacks with us (see previous post), so we worked on traversing the miles and stopping as little as possible. Most of the drive looked like this:
We were leaving the beautiful heat of Florida and the Gulf Coast, so had to bust back out our hoodies and jackets as the temperature started dropping back to seasonal levels for the end of January. The last stop we made before getting to San Antonio was at this crazy big truck stop/trading post called Buc-ee's, in the middle of farmland nowhere.
This place was some kind of tourist driven mecca with 30+ gas pumps, Buc-ee themed merchandise, and other crap for sale, plus plenty of food, etc. I didn't spend a single dollar there, but we gassed up and the rest of the band got some snacks and drinks. We trucked the last hour or so from there and arrived at the house of our host in Texas, Big Rob Pearce.
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| Me & Big Rob on one of his visits to Boston |
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| Big Rob's pirate flag |
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| Yes, those are my legs |
He has since been up to Boston to visit us several times, and when we told him we were finally touring down to Texas again, he ran with it and hooked us up. We showed up over at his house first thing when we arrived in San Antonio, had a couple of drinks and some ridiculously good homemade venison jerky from out of his garage deep freezer. Here's an awesome tip with great jerky: throw it on a paper towel and toss it in the microwave with a mug of water next to it for about 20 seconds. We did that with this jerky and it softened up just a little bit and was all warm. Too damn good
After our quick snack and a few shots of good Irish whiskey, we headed over to our show for the night and partied it up. San Antonio treated us well with a big club, some great other bands on the bill, tons of free drinks and folks all a'dancing! It was a great night and we all got to bed nice and late.
That's all for this day, but plenty to look forward to over our next couple of entries, including guns and Texas BBQ!
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Chestnut Growler plays drums for The Swaggerin' Growlers, a punk/folk band based in Boston, MA. He tours full time. This blog is about the food experienced on the road: the good, the bad, and homemade and the gas station sammiches. You can find the band here: The Swaggerin' Growlers
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