ROAD TRIP 2006, WESTWARD: AUSTIN

Day 11 (6/17) Meat in the mouth

The next morning we picked up Trey and Andy from the airport. One can still identify Trey in a crowd of virtually any size by searching for a very large man with an equivalently large Superman logo emblazoned on his chest. On this occasion, he also chose to don an excellent Superman ring, a work of detailing difficult to discern at a distance, but nonetheless wholly and completely Trey. If he were to punch someone in the face, the ring’s imprint and the level of otherworldly pain could implicate one of only two conceivable assailants, and one of those is imaginary. We first detected Andy when a very large boom mic began probing us in uncomfortable places. The mic was attached (at a distance) to a video camera, which in turn was attached to Andy.

We did not waste time on “catching up” or contrasting the divergent trajectories our lives had taken since the fabled collegiate years. No, we had come to Texas for a reason: meat. And so, we made our way down to Lockhart, TX, where the article that had inspired the whole trip claimed there to be BBQ the likes of which could not be tasted elsewhere on Earth. Smitty’s Market is one of several barbeque establishments in town, and is, in fact, one of two such restaurants resulting from bitter family BBQ feud. We pulled into Smitty’s dirt parking lot, and beheld an encouragingly worn brick building, piles of wood, and a whiff of smoke. Upon entering you see darkness, smoke stained brick walls blackening your sight as rods and cones realign. The smokey smell gets better, and you see an open fire before you. Around the corner, you see the brick smokers it feeds, a large wooden chopping block, a counter, and line of customers wading through pools of their own saliva. You order by the pound, and they grab it right out the smokers, cut it up in front of you, wrap it up in butcher’s paper, take your money, and off you go. The dining room was lit, with sides for sale, and long tables. As advertized, no sauce. Smitty’s is about the meat, smoke, and rub, no adornment. And believe me, no adornment was necessary. This was fantasicly succulent, flavorful barbeque. Excellent pork ribs, brisket, and sausage.

One of the more amusing aspects of living with these guys in college was observing each person’s distinctive eating habits. I tend to bolt my food down, no matter what it is, then sit around and shred my napkins as everyone else finishes. Dave picks rapidly at his food, parsing out every macroscopic fat fragment he can manipulate, and, ever the BBQ judge, contemplating each and every piece of meat. Andy munches lacadaisically, inevitably leaving about a third of his food uneaten. Trey’s eating in school was usually distinguished by his uber-Atkins diet for track, and by the sheer quantity of food he could down. For this trip, he seemed to have perfected an assembly line approach: bread arranged, meat piled, slaw added, a bit of beans, devour, repeat.

But yeah, Smitty’s. Probably the best BBQ of the trip, both in terms of meat and experience. One little detail mentioned in the article was that long ago, the only utensils on hand were knives chained to the walls by long wooden counters, and indeed, the chains are still there. Great place.

After Smitty’s. We spent what seemed like hours trying to acquire beer and find a place to drink it. Liquor stores wouldn’t accept our un-Texan IDs (?!), state parks don’t allow the consumption of alcohol, etc, etc. Finally, Dave’s friend Dave showed up from San Antonio, and we found a secluded spot in a city park to imbibe.

We spent that night on Austin’s 6th street, where there are many bars and lots of live music. Opted for fish tacos over a street vendor selling “the Best Wurst!” to our detriment. Lesson learned.

Day 12 (6/18) Llano and the Enchanted Rock

The next day’s meat well was in Llano, TX: Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que. The sun beat down in a brutal, Texan way as we pulled in, only to find a massive BBQQ snaking around the building, where the extra Q is for preposterously long goddamn line (queues are only found in Britain and China, where, unfortunately for the denizens of those benighted nations, barbeque is not). After waiting, we were again confronted with a big brick Texan smoker, mounds of tender flesh recumbent in plumes of soft wood smoke. Jalapeno sausage, juicy brisket, chicken, pork ribs, and beef ribs of Flinstonian proportions piled higher and higher on our paper, forming a daunting craggy massif that might ordinarily cry out for sherpas and oxygen tanks. Inside there was, again, a dining room with long tables and an array of sides. Not necessarily to our credit, we steadily eroded our meaty mountain until its demise.

Sadly, we found it lacking in comparison with Smitty’s. The beef ribs were overly fatty, all the ribs were a little over done, or cooked too quickly, and the rub was just too salty. And though the ambiance was the same friendly bustle we found at most BBQ establishments, nothing could stand up to stepping into the dark smokey chamber of Smitty’s. That said, Cooper’s and most of the BBQ joints we visited seemed like the kind of place you could meet someone you knew if you lived in the area. Whole families eat there, and I bet many were semi-regulars (you couldn’t survive as a regular regular). Maybe I just don’t eat out enough, but I don’t know many places like that where I live.

Then began another afternoon of indecisive peregrination. Drove down to Marble Falls to catch a movie, just missed it. Drove back up to Long Horn Cavern State Park, but just missed the last cave tour. We went for a little hike, though, and found some interesting bugs.

Dave’s friend Dave had told us about this cool place called Enchanted Rock, a big rock mound in the middle of nowhere where, supposedly, the cooling rock rumbles and groans after sunset. We didn’t hear anything, but it was a wonderful place to catch a sunset. Titmice and painted bunting twittered in low trees and scrub by the bottom, while scores of vultures spiraled down from on high to roost. I saw my first road runner on top, and many crevice spiny lizards among the rocks. Expansive view of the surrounding countryside from the top, and it was some pretty country.

Driving back at night, I saw a corn snake coiled on the road, slammed the breaks, and investigated. This was sort of a common back road phenomenon for the whole trip. I would yell something alarming along the lines of “FUCK!”, my passengers would spend a half second replaying the fonder moments of their lives or finding God while desperately searching for the oncoming semi, only to realize the car had stopped and I was running back down the road with a pair of binoculars. That’s how I saw my first scissor-tailed flycatcher in Texas! (You would stop for this bird, would you not?) Anyway, the snake. It had been hit previously, as its lower jaw was bent far past the rest of its skull, and it was writhing around in apparent pain. So I euthanized it. I didn’t feel very good about it, but it was just going to die a much slower, more painful death otherwise. Andy was distraught because he didn’t get it on tape. Andy is a soulless documentarian.

The Andy/Trey combo has never failed to crack me up in consistently unexpected ways, and our weekend in Austin didn’t disappoint. It is, of course, nearly impossible to capture than humor in text, photos, or video, but for a taste, you might try these windows into our lives at Williams.