Out in the Country

My wife and I made an almost spontaneous decision to invite ourselves to see my brother in Falba over the weekend. I spoke to him by phone on Friday night and, out of the blue, asked if we could come visit on Saturday...he had told me he was planning a barbeque on Sunday evening, but I suggested a Saturday visit. He agreed, my wife agreed (though she had already planned to work half the day on Saturday, so it would have to be later in the day), and it was a done deal.

Yesterday (Saturday), after my wife spent her half-day doing what I should have been doing, we had lunch, then hit the road for Falba. About 4/5 of the way there, she suggested we get off the Interstate to take some more leisurely back roads the rest of the way. Alongthe back roads, we saw redbud trees in blossom (an absolutely positive sign that Spring is about to visit east Texas), along with an amazing variety of other less obvious but no less attractive flowering trees and bushes. Brillian red cardinals flew across the road many times and zipped along the side of the highway, looking almost like streaks of red paper trying to keep up with the car.

When we got to my brother's house, it was locked. After looking for, and finally finding, the extra set of keys, we still could not get in, so we drove down the road to his friends place, where we saw his truck far aross the pasture next to his friend's daughter's place. He had seen us coming and just about the time we started making our way across the pasture on a not-so-obvious path across the grass, he came wheeling toward us, then saw that we already knew where to find him, so he turned back and we followed him over.

Shortly after we arrived, his friend got there (he had been getting cleaned up over at his place), then a while later another friend, a woman both my brother and his buddy know, showed up. And then my niece and her husband got there. It was really a party!

As we were waiting for the whole brisket and the two slabs of baby back ribs to finish smoking in my brother's monstrous cast-iron wood smoker (it's on wheels and fitted out with a trailer hitch, which is the only way to move it around), we chatted, sitting on the open-air 12-foot-deep covered porch that surrounds the house on three sides. The other three males decided to go down to the "bottom" of the 150 acres to see a horse that had, a few weeks earlier, thrown my brother's friend's daughter, resulting in a bone-through-the-flesh broken ankle. She's on crutches and will be for some time. I figured if the horse was that ornery, I did not want to give it an opportunity to express its disdain for humans by doing some damage to me. I stayed back and chatted.

It wasn't too long before dinner was ready and we had some spectacularly good brisket and baby back ribs, along with accompaniments like potato salad, macaroni salad, ranch style beans, and jalapeños. It was worth the trip.

My niece and her husband had to leave early and head back to Houston, a good hour and a half trip, but the rest of us sat around on the massive porch, listening to stories and just enjoying ourselves immensely,

At one point in the evening, I asked my wife to step out with me into the pasture, away from all the lights of the house, and look up into the sky. It was a magnificent night and the stars were bright and just filled the sky. It was a beautiful sight. We got a pair of binoculars and saw a much closer view of several constellations, including Orion and the Little Dipper. We can never see those sights in or near Dallas.

We finally headed back to my brother's place about ten o'clock and my wife went to bed, but my brother and I stayed up for quite some time talking. It was a great time! I hated leaving this morning, but business calls. I need to make more opportunities to get away like that. It was a blast.