This American Summer

After two weeks of travel, we woke up on Saturday, June 14 ready to tackle the state that would take up nearly a tenth of our total travel time over the course of the summer. Our first night in Texas passed in the company of our Couchsurfing hosts Mike and Alicia. The next morning, Alicia made us a full breakfast of scrambled eggs, pancakes, potatoes, and orange juice before we went to see Mike’s bamboo farm. On our way to the farm, we stopped at Mike’s mother’s house to upload our dairy farm episode with her internet connection. While the video was uploading, we chatted, looked at family photos, and played with her chocolate-colored dachshund.

As we drove up to Mike’s property in Wamba, the lush greenery began to surround us. We walked the last few hundred feet to Mike’s bamboo farm headquarters, a shed on a concrete slab at the top of a terraced hill. We sprinkled sulfur and baby powder on our socks and shoes to keep off the chiggers, then got the full tour as Mike told us about the different species of bamboo planted all over the property.

Filming at the Bamboo farm

After the tour, Alicia gave us amazing bag lunches of turkey sandwiches, pickles, chips, and cold water to keep us watered and fed on the road. The entire drive out of Texarkana, we couldn’t get over how incredibly kind and generous Mike and Alicia were to us. Those sandwiches hardly lasted until we got out of the city; they looked too appetizing for us to wait much longer.

It was my turn to drive, but for some reason I was fighting a losing battle to keep my eyes open. Not wanting to crash the mini-van, I kicked myself out of the driver’s seat and switched into the back seat, where I slept like a rock until we reached Alex’s aunt’s house in Kennedale, Texas. Aunt Sylvia ushered us into her living room and introduced us to Alex’s grandparents. We had a good round of story swapping as the rest of the family trickled in, back from splashing the summer evening away at a neighbor’s pool. The hustle and bustle of the close-knit extended family was comforting; not only did we join Sylvia and her husband and children for dinner, but also Sylvia’s parents and two of Alex’s cousins. The cuisine was from a regional favorite, Chicken Express. It was a quintessential southern meal: fried chicken, fried catfish, fried okra, fried corn, and hushpuppies. I also tried Dublin Dr. Pepper for the first time; unlike most Dr. Pepper, Dublin Dr. Pepper is made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. The result is a very different taste, at least to me.

Our original plan was to stay with a couchsurfing host in a nearby town but Alex’s relatives insisted that we stay. Unwilling to refuse such generous hosts, we took up their offer to sleep at Alex’s grandparents’ home. As I had been told that they lived in the next town, I got ready to pile back into the van and drive to our evening accommodations. However, I was instead pointed to a stone path leading through Sylvia’s backyard right up to a fence (and the Kennedale town line) in a far corner. It turns out that Sylvia and her parents are only backyards apart, with a path leading from one backdoor to the other!

The next morning Sylvia fed us a homemade pancake breakfast and we were overflowing with Texas hospitality as we left for Austin. Our goal was the Texas Chili Parlor, where we all ate generously portioned bowls of Habanero Chili. Alex also ordered a Mad Dog Margarita, and David and I washed down our chili with local Texan and Mexican brews like Shiner Bock and Negra Modelo.

The walls of the Texas Chili Parlor

Inside the Parlor

We wandered around Austin to walk off the food, and stumbled across a basement bookstore called Brave New Books. The shelves were filled with books about conspiracy theories, secret societies, and political commentaries. Immediately inside the shop, a small table hosted a miniature Ron Paul shrine, complete with copies of his book The Revolution: A Manifesto and a donation jar. The man behind the counter saw our t-shirts and asked about our trip. We talked to him for a while about the road trip, Ron Paul, and the bookstore. As we were leaving, he gave us a free packet of DVDs - free government conspiracy propaganda!

Storefront: Brave New Books

The Ron Paul mini-shrine

We hit the road again, this time for San Antonio. We pulled in front of Alex’s parent’s house at 6:41pm, and by 6:50pm I was already sipping my way through a Pegu Club concocted by Alex’s father. A cocktail connoisseur, he treated me to a history lesson on cocktails and gave me a list of book titles to look up.

Our time in San Antonio was a blur of good food, good alcohol, and good company. We spent the next day at Schlitterbahn, an enormous water park in a nearby town called New Braunfels. The park is so huge that it is divided into an east side and west side with a bus from one side to the other. The sun blazed down on us at a temperature of 102 degrees Fahrenheit, but we hardly noticed as we tubed, slid, and swam until we were well toasted by the sun and ravenous for dinner. The only low point in the day was when David lost his glasses in some back jets on a slide emptying into the lazy river; we floated around for a long time looking for his glasses, but in the end we gave up and got him new ones at the mall the next day.

When we got home from the Schlitterbahn, Alex’s father had a barbecue feast prepared for us and numerous guests, family and friends of the Guerras. Dinner consisted of ribs, pulled pork, sausages, beans, salad, coleslaw, beers, and cocktails. The cooking had actually begun the night before; “slow ‘n low” is how they do it in Texas. I had my first taste of Shiner Black Lager at this party and fell in love - I’d discovered my first favorite beer! We got to meet many of Alex’s relatives and friends, and the whole evening was a pleasant blur that ended in a blissful food coma.

Alex’s father, A.A. Guerra

The feast

This post is dedicated to Alex’s family and friends - thank you so much for the numerous instances of kindness, generosity, and support you’ve shown for this trip. We’ve had some of the best food, conversation, and fun while in your company.