This weekend my wife and I took a driving trip through the Hill Country west of Austin in order to enjoy the show of spring flowers. And we were well rewarded with dazzling shows of yellows, golds, reds and oranges from the daisies, black-eyed Susans, firewheels and Indian Paintbrush along the roadside.* (The bluebonnets were relatively few this year – perhaps a reflection of this reddest of red states in these red-meat times.)
Our dinner options were rather limited (Llano, Sunday night) but we made a sin out of necessity by visiting Cooper’s barbecue, which was an interesting experience for two reasons. Firstly, it was one of these real barbecue joints where you order your meat by amount of weight, directly off the “pit”, and eat it off of butcher paper placed on the picnic tables in the dining hall. Final verdict: the beef brisket was a little dry, though we still enjoyed (guiltily) the perfect “rind”: charred crispy and salty-sweet on the outside, luxuriously oleaginous on the inside. The tender, fatty pork ribs were divine, and the peach cobbler a stunning symphony of fruit, flour, butter and brown sugar. We give extra credit for the enormous self-serve cauldrons of pinto beans (free). We noted (but were not surprised by) a complete absence of anything remotely vegetal (aside from the slightly soggy corn on the cob). My wife’s inquiry about “salad” was met not with ridicule but with honest puzzlement. I don’t believe the cashier was actually familiar with the term.
The second significant aspect of this meal was that for the first time I noticed someone (a customer) not an officer of the law with a pistol strapped to his hip. The “open carry” phenomenon has been up to now an abstract one for me. I associate it with the gun freaks I see on the local news who parade around the statehouse with their good old American Kalashnikovs and Confederate flags. Now that I’m actually within point-blank range of the issue, it feels a little creepy. Still, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. I guess out in Llano it’s normal to pack heat at the dinner table.
But it’s not until later in the evening, as I’m trying to calculate the miles I’ll have to jog to compensate for my evening of greasy pleasure, that the absurdity of the situation strikes me.
About 40,000 people died in the United States last year from gunshot wounds. And something like 60% of those were suicides. But guess how many died of heart disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 630,000. And according to that same source, about 1 out of 4 of us folks dining in Cooper’s that Sunday night will die of heart disease.
So there we all are, waddling from pit to table with trays piled high with heaping helpings of heart disease, type-2 diabetes and colon cancer. And our messmate is wearing a gun in case anyone tries anything dangerous.
But if he really cared about the health and safety of himself and his loved ones, he would direct them all to dump their ‘Q in the big plastic trashcan over by the iced tea urns and take them to the park for a brisk walk. Or do something truly useful with his weapon, like drawing it on the pit-master and politely but firmly asking him to fix us all a nice spinach salad.
* The Garden of Eaton does not claim to the ability to identify wildflowers with any accuracy, only to enjoy their beauty
The Garden of Eaton 