Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the month “May, 2021”

28 May 2021
2 Comments

Freeway Free in Texas: Take Me Home From the Ball Game

          It’s 6:30 am and we are off to Kyle (touted by Wikipedia as the fastest-growing town in Texas, which also makes it a strong candidate for the ugliest – lots of big box stores and pop-up housing.) My nephew’s team, the Texas Gunners, will be playing the Triple Play in the Battle of the Basement. (Winners get to sleep in. Losers play at 8:30, and the team meets for warm-ups an hour earlier) The Gunners have beaten Triple Play in two previous games but we must not be overconfident.

          We arrive at the ball park.  My nephew and brother stride off toward the dugout with the duffel bag full of gear.  My sister-in-law and I note the rain spangling against the windshield and decide to huddle in the SUV for a few minutes longer.

          Twenty minutes pass.  The rain is still spatting against the windows, but we unfurl ourselves from the SUV, add a couple of layers of warmth from the back seat stash, and make our way to the bleachers, happily sheltered under a tin roof. The other parents are cuddled in sleeping bags, or afghans, or double layers of fleece. One family has brought a tent, which is pitched under the tin room for added protection.

          First inning.  The wind picks up. And up. The sky grows darker. And darker.  My nephew distinguishes himself as pitcher during the first inning, and the second.  Rain continues. Wind increases.  25 mph, says the weather app on my smartphone.  It is now the third inning, and my nephew’s  pitches are getting wilder.

          “Will the game be called on account of rain?” I ask my brother through chattering teeth.

          “Nah.  Only if there’s lightning. If there’s lightning they have to stop and wait for a half hour since the last thunder clap.”

          As if on cue, there is a bright flash of lightning. A long roll of thunder.  The umpires blow their whistles.  The teams retreat to their respective dugouts. The parents shiver beneath their blankets.  The kids seem immune to cold, not even donning their team sweatshirts as they wait out the interval.

          A half hour passes.  No more thunder. The teams resume the field.

          Bad news:  My nephew’s team loses again. They are eliminated from the tournament

          Good news: They don’t have to play again.  We can go home and get warm.

Posted in climate, Memoir, Texas, Travel
11 May 2021
1 Comment

Dawn On the Freeway

Photo by Jason Freis

The gaudy neon carnival of a predawn freeway. Gas Stations pass like brutalist modern sculptures standing out in the blackness . I’m in Texas but could be anywhere, as the comfortably familiar logos flash by. Lowes, Motel 6. Panera bread. IKEA. Harley Davidson. Suddenly we are in a city. Skyscrapers dimly lit, offices weekend-empty. Then a tangle of concrete arches, and we are back in Logoland. Toyota, Acura, Jeep, it must be an AutoMall. Jack-in-the-box, the golden M. Apartment blocks huddled\ darkly together, Public Storage conveniently adjacent (why do people accumulate so much stuff that they have to rent auxiliary storage? They can’t all have inherited their parents’ dining room furniture!).

The sun is struggling to rise through thick clouds. The striped roof of a KFC emerges from the gloom, lit by Verizon, Chick-fil-a, T.G.I. Friday. No people visible anywhere except for other drivers staring fixedly forward as we pass them in the fast lane. More three and four story apartment blocks, more widely spaced. And then we are out of the suburbs and the space opens out to a horizon brought close by the clouds, and an expanse of scrub brush and winter-dried grasses. And just as suddenly into another suburb, Shell, Starbucks Burger King 7-eleven. More public Storage. Auto maintenance and repair. Huddled 2-story apartments. A parking lot full of cherry pickers and backhoes. Dawn is here. The neon lights are shutting off. Open space again briefly, then another suburb. We exit the freeway and stop at a red light. We have arrived at Somewhere. Walmart. Walgreens. Goodwill. Just like home.

Posted in Freeway Free, Texas, Travel
04 May 2021

Freeway Free in Texas: Quirky

We drove three hours through the Texas Hill country to my brother’s house in Georgetown.  Along the way there were plenty of testaments to the ongoing quirkiness of the Texas character.

We passed a ranch house style building with a sign saying “Deer Dressing.”  Not a fashion center for bucks and does, but a place where you could drop off your after-the-hunt booty and have it carved into steaks, chops, hides, and heads for display in your family room. The fence was decorated with skulls of deer, wild goats, and longhorn cattle.  Atop a tower at the entrance was a human skeleton (artificial, I hope), underneath a camouflage net, dressed in camo, riding a bicycle, and flourishing a rifle.  Not sure what the message to potential customers was meant to be.

Later we passed a pasture in which a life size (I suppose) replica of Bigfoot tromped through the grass in lieu of a scarecrow.

At lunchtime we followed a Yelp recommendation to Alfredo’s in Lampasas, not the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant we expected, but a large indoor-outdoor event venue nestled in a ben of Sulphur Creek.  The patio features thatched huts a la Baja sheltering each table, and a menagerie of life-size fiberglass or bronze  parrots, tigers, lions, and longhorn steers. In addition, a trio of larger-than-life-size mariachi bandsmen concocted from rusted metal machine parts.  The food was pretty good, too.

            To settle our lunch, we stopped off at the Hanna Springs Culture Garden, adjacent to the new but deserted Swim Center.  Here Texas quirky was fully on display.  My favorites were the basketball court painted as an homage to Mondrian, and the rusty pickup  with a giant sheet-metal catfish flopped on top.

            As we approached Austin, we began to see signs with the slogan  “Keep Austin Weird.” Looks like the surrounding environs give Austin something to draw on.

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