My Private Wobegon

stories from home

My sputtering old Harley coughed past the sign that read "Goat Creek Road." A few miles down the road, I pass the same sign again. Confound it, I'm hallucinating. Stop. Turn back. Mutter. Maybe I need to get new glasses-this sign isn't the same. It's "Goat Creek Cutoff Road." Damn sign painters. Turn again. Now it's on to Hunt. Turn south.

I think back over the last day and a half. I hated turning 50. So I canceled my plans for the standard birthday dinner with friends on Austin's Sixth Street and, instead, took off on a solo ride through the German Texas Hill Country. I needed a mind trip to sort it all out, this living and dying. Maybe I am crazy, as my second ex once informed me. Or maybe it's just the effect of the music coming in through the headphones in my helmet. Dark Side of the Moon is a mindtrip all itself.

That first night, I couldn't make a clean break to solitude. I headed, instead, to Gruene Hall in New Braunfels. Jimmie Dale Gilmore was playing, and I just had to hear him again. I got there early, parked my bike with the others that surrounded the century-old dance hall, walked into the outer bar area, and grabbed a table. The waitress was more Austin than Hill Country, and had probably drifted over from the nearby college for a night job. She wore the obligatory blue jeans and boots and had a ponytail. Her red bandana-style shirt was tied up just high enough to compel my eyes to her alluring belly button. I ordered a Shiner and chicken-fried steak and settled back to watch the crowd as it started to build. Jimmie Dale and his crew were setting up under the low-hanging ceiling when a thirty-something guy approached him and asked if he would play a George Strait song. Jimmie Dale chuckled and, with a sense of amusement rather than disdain, said, "I don't do the hat guys' songs." I smiled and was ready to hear some real music when she brought my frosted mug of Shiner. My eyes widened-not at the beer, but at her belly button. This time, it was pierced with a ring in it. My eyes dart up to her face and back to her belly button. I can't resist. I point to it and open my mouth to ask about it when another belly button, surrounded by blue jeans and the tail-tied red shirt, but sans ring, pops up next to it and sets down my steak. Now I know I've gone crazy. I look up into two identical faces, and they both laugh at my confused stare. "We're twins," they say, and head off with giggles.

Jimmie Dale was well worth the detour, and the next day as I took off into the hills, I was still singing "My mind's got a mind of its own." What a view, up and down the hills. This is truly God's Country, if he has one, not that he does. I marvel at the vistas and daydream, keeping just enough sense of realtime to work the curves, leaning with the bike and going with the thrill. It's been like this ever since I crossed 281 and entered the heart of the Hill Country. A guy could get seasick out here, if he didn't have his legs.

What were these guys thinking when they settled out here and named these places? I had passed under the stately cypress trees at Twin Sisters (chuckling to myself at last night's intrigue), only to go thirty minutes down the road and run through Sisterdale. They must have been lonely. Sure enough, the next town on RR 473 was Comfort. I don't know what the area was like a hundred fifty years ago, but now it's goat and sheep country. I'm hallucinating again. I would swear that I just saw a goat up in a tree. Maybe I am crazy. Can't be. So I ease off the throttle and slow down enough to drag my heel and make a u-turn. I top the hill and, lo and behold, there, in a gnarled, twisted, and bent live oak not more than 10 feet off the road, a goat had managed to climb up to the first set of limbs and was precariously but happily browsing. At the sound of my bike, he looked up as if to say, "Come join me?" and bent back to his task.

I head north on Texas 87 and veer off on the dirt roads. Bankersmith. Bankersmith? Well, as I was musing about the delusions of 19th century wealth that brought someone to that godforsaken place, my heart rate leapt as I spotted the sign at the top of the hill: Luckenbach, 5 miles.

Oh, man! Hondo Crouch, Waylon Jennings (God rest his soul), Willie Nelson, ice cold longneck beer bottles. As I got closer, I know, I just know I could hear honkytonk sounds over the groans of the Harley. I eased back on my grip, coasted through the potholes up to the old oaks, and parked the hog. Ah, nothing like sauntering into Luckenbach and hearing the sound of your boots tap on those rough wood plank floors to bring back deja vu all over again. Cerveza. Musica. Weed. 'Course, there was just one old guy and me in there. But at least it's not an Austin fern bar. I've got a long way to go, so I know better than to get too drunk before I get back on the bike. Just enough to wet my whistle. I swallowed some BBQ, waxed nostalgic with the bartend, plunked a quarter in the jukebox and listened to Steve Fromholz's deep truth, "I may not be normal, but nobody is," then back on the road again.

As I swing my leg over the bike, my back reminds me of just how old I am. Riding this thing at 50 just isn't what it was at 20. Not that I can remember back that far. I turn on the radio to listen to some tunes, but instead I get Garrison's Writer's Almanac. He tells me that today is Ambrose Bierce's birthday. Just up the road is Cain City. City? Not much. What were they thinking-Cain and Abel, God and Satan? Maybe this is where I can find Bierce's devil. Nah…there's just nothing here.

Before I know it, I'm in Fredericksburg. Too much civilization for me, so I turn northeast and head up to Willow City. A beautiful loop. I'm not alone out here-a few cars, and then those other bikers-the ones who prefer to move their legs and sweat while they're riding. I pull into a turnout and gaze-must be able to see 50 miles across the Lone Star landscape. This is true beauty. Yet, like all beauty, upon closer look, you begin to wonder about your definition of beauty. Scrub oak. Cedar. Rock. More rock. Hell, William Burroughs couldn't have grown his marijuana here. How could anything grow out here, except this cedar? I get out my map. Ye gods, the next place is Blowout. I take that as an unwelcome omen, so I turn my bike around. From Willow City, I head out west. I don't want to end up in the desert, I want to see these hills. So I turn back south, and that's what brought me past the Goat roads and here south of Hunt. The light is fading just as I top the hill and see the signs into Lost Maples Natural Area.

I may be crazy, but I'm not totally gone. I had called ahead, just in case I really did make it this far, so I'd know I had a place to unroll my sleeping bag without either getting stepped on by a bovine or shot at by a local. Now, Lost Maples in the summer isn't at all what it is in November. The breathtaking reds, yellows, and oranges are yet to come. But the place still makes you want to never go back to civilization again. Can't you just hike off into those canyons, build one of Bucky's domes, and live with the armadillos and rattlers forever?

The next morning, I'm no more than 30 minutes out of Lost Maples, heading south, before I come to Utopia. Always wondered what utopia would feel like. Feels like a lot of the same old same old. What were they thinking when they named this place? Hell, what were they smoking that would make them see this as utopia? Of course, everything's relative. In the 1830s, when the Bavarians, Badeners and Württembergers, favoring pacifism, freedom, and beer, fled the oppression of the Prussians, the Texas Hill Country probably did seem like utopia.

Well, much as I'd like to ride this bike on to Mejico, escape Bushland, and see what the rest of the world really is like, I'm more Kerouac than Cassidy, so I head the bike back east. The sun is in my eyes, and I can only hope that while I've been gone, civilizationasweknowit over those hills, to San Antonio, Austin, Houston, has finally come to its senses. Hope springs eternal, though that next pothole sends a bolt up my back to remind me that hope and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. I take my dollar into the Circle K in Bandera and get my cupajoe. Bandera. Flag. Yeah, but all those flags flying here aren't out of respect for the Spanish name. They're celebrating 911 patriotism. I hesitate on my way out of town, and for a second-just for a second-my body leans the bike to the right, and I struggle against the urge to turn around and race to Mexico after all. If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, I fear what is coming, back over those hills in civilization. But, like a siren, my past and my future call to me.

My first couple of days of riding, to the west, did just what I wanted this ride to do. I escaped all that I was, I rode out of those first 50 years, and into an ageless, cultureless, BeHereNow existence. Back into the fantasies of my youth. Back to the music of bliss. Back to the land and the pioneers. Now that I'm headed back east and north toward Austin, my thoughts wonder to the future, past 50. They wander over those hills, back into what goes for civilization in the 21st. Taking the back roads, I roll through Henley. Wonder if they even know who Don is, as I put the Eagles in my headphone and gun it.

Gary can be reached via e-mail at keithandkerr@htcomp.net