Skip to main content

A Break in the Day at the Filling Station

By

 It’s closing in on noon and we’re sitting in the car at the local gas station finishing up the grocery store salads on the orange plastic trays, from home, resting in our laps.  It’s a nice spring day in Texas and we’re pulled in by an embankment where there are trees above us and we can hear some birds in addition to the Prague Symphony playing Mozart softly on the radio.  Next on the agenda is a nice cup of coffee in the Kwik Café.

 Sometimes we buy a couple of delicious fried chicken breasts and make sandwiches with buns from home since they only have little dinner rolls not large enough to hold the chicken.  The 5 or 6 tables are now open for dining as well as the counter, but most of us are still wearing masks inside except at the tables.  We really like to lunch or have coffee here as most of the patrons are “real” down home Texans and the coffee is better and cheaper than the coffee houses where the tourists and PC people hang out.

 So now it’s time to amble in, pick a table, brew our cuppas and see who shows up today.  It’s a busy place.  All sorts of vendors come by to replace their stock, in fact there was a huge Budweiser truck parked in the street and two men were having to haul the beer up the driveway to the store where one would transfer it to a smaller dolly and zip through the aisles into the back room.  He was a sturdy, but slight young man, and it was like watching a fast moving farce as he entered from stage right, zipped through the aisles and all at once he appeared again at stage right with another full dolly.  He worked so swiftly and efficiently I had to congratulate him as he left and flashed me a huge smile over his shoulder.   Then the elderly granny with the cane I saw earlier came into view.  She had seemed to navigate well then but now she was burdened with purchases, her handbag and the cane.  A young man in the social distancing register line quickly came to her aid and helped her to the door.  And seeing that wasn’t good enough, went on to help her into her car while all the time she was expressing her grateful thanks.  Soon he was back in line to pay for his purchases having done his good deed for the day.

All sorts of purposeful people on their noon break were now milling around checking out the lunch possibilities.  Three young men, with their drinks and chips, were chatting by the MW on its low shelf while two of them, squatting down, reheated their entrees from home.  As they easily resumed standing, I remembered back in the day, when I used to be able to do that too.  Now, geared up after our enjoyable break, it was time to finish up the coffee, gas up the car and head back to the supermarket to tackle the week's grocery shopping.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aermotor Windmill Lives

By
The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise.  Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill.  W e erected the windmill in Fulshear.  It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged.  For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes.  After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cause and Effect

By
 We have this great world atlas book published by the National Geographical Society, which by the way, we bought at the local library used book sale for $2. Probably this low price of the book pains the Society but it sure makes my reference to maps an easy task without having to wake up my computer. The book occupies a permanent spot on a book stand in our breakfast room, standing ready to supply map information on request. The book happened to be open to the page showing the whole of Antarctica featuring all the outposts and even some commentary of scientific significance. One such comment was on ice coring data of historic temperatures and carbon dioxide content.  I can understand how the CO2 content of the ice can be preserved over many centuries at varying depths, but I am unsure how the prevailing temperature of some thousand years ago can be preserved in the ice cores--but that's another issue that we will not get into here. So here is the comment on the data of the ice...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cat Makes BIG trip

By
Cats don't travel all that well, but this cat did pretty well, especially after we told her that it was either this three day trip to Alpine, Texas or to stay in the cat hotel for those three days. So, having made her choice, we departed with her in the cage---a screened enclosure about 3 feet cubed.  For the first 30 miles, a lot of complaining, but then all was quiet.  She had burrowed under the foam mat and was hiding from this reality of travel. In Del Rio, we opened the cage door and she then opted to settle into the foot well of the back seat area.  We often were concerned with her jumping out of the car when we stopped for gas and whatnot, but the opposite was true--it was hard to get her to leave the car. The first night in a motel (Quality Inn in Alpine ---good place and good for pets) was a hoot.  We carried the cage up to the room on the second floor and then opened it.  She cautiously stepped out and then spent the next hour investigating every no...
Post a Comment
Read more