(Road trips are always
a great excuse to get out of the house.)
And, along the way the
missing pieces of my novel began to work themselves out.
The Hill Country of
Texas is very different than the pancake-flat rest of the state. This vast
rural area west of Austin and north of San Antonio is dotted with ranches whose
gates that are sometimes ornately decorated with the ranch’s name, and a
patchwork of fields that in the spring are alive with colors of wildflowers
like the Bluebonnet and the fiery red Texas Paintbrush.
The culture of the Hill Country is a melding of Spanish, English and German and these diverse influences can be found in the food, beer, wine and architecture and even the music. Mexican Tejano music adopted the use of accordions brought here by the German influx in the mid-1830s.
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the solitude and beauty of the Hill Country, but I needed more to complete my novel. That didn't happen until I visited the very completely different world of Austin, the capital of the Lone Star State.
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| Weirdo of the Pecos Leaque |
Before I go any further…Yes. Austin is weird, although the weirdness has dissipated somewhat as tech companies have moved into the Austin area. It’s not quite like Slacker, the Richard Linkletter movie from 1990 weird, but today you’re just as likely as to see a guy in a bathrobe dancing in a bus stop to an unheard song as you are to hail a Waymo car.
SLACKER TRAILER“Weird” is still the
prevailing attitude of Austin and you can get the slogan “Keep Austin Weird” on
everything from t-shirts to shot glasses. There’s even a Pecos league baseball
team called the Weirdos. So, don’t worry I’m not disparaging anyone.
If you’d like to read
about the “decline” of weird in Austin, here’s a great article:
WEDDING AND GOATS
This last visit to Texas was to attend the wedding of Janet’s daughter. The celebration was held at the Quiet Hill Ranch in Doss, Texas, about 25 miles outside of Fredericksburg. The 1,500-acret Spanish sheep ranch is owned by the groom’s family. Evidently, they are great eating, but they weren’t on the menu.
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| Wedding tent |
The family had set up a large tent and served barbeque of brisket, sausage and tender loin they personally prepared. They were proud to tell us they started their barbeque pit at 3 am that morning for the afternoon fete, and when served we were called to the catering table by the chimes of a triangle.
It was all very Texas!
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| Wedding BBQ |
Sadly, we were told we
couldn’t take home a goat as a parting gift. Although the billies and nannies
ARE for sale. (That’s Texas goat farm argot.)
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| Wedding BBQ |
 |
| cowgirl |
WHERE IN THE WORLD WERE WE?
Because we were on a schedule for the celebration, we were not able to meander around the Hill Country and dodge armadillos and deer. We did not even time to stop for a bratwurst or some German beer at the Auslander Biergarden in Fredericksburg.
THE AUSLANDER, FREDERICKSBURG TX
Fredericksburg was founded
in 1846 and named after Prince Frederick of Prussia and is proud of their
German heritage.
If you’d like to read more about Germans in Texas, click here:
Instead, we soaked in
the big sky country of Texas Hill Country for two days and either lingered at
the house of a family member that had 5+ bedrooms and featured a pickleball
court on the grounds, or partied at the Quiet Hill Ranch, about two miles from
where we stayed.
It was great to return
to the Hill Country!
BEER AND WINE
BEER IN THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY
There are also a number of wineries in the Hill Country. As we drove from Austin through Fredericksburg, we lost count of the available stops all advertising tastings. Not that familiar with wine but here’s a list to start:
AUSTIN EXTREMES
Food in Austin can run
from one extreme to the other from food trucks to elbows deep barbeque to “New”
Mexican cuisine. On this particular trip to Austin we experienced all three.
La Santa Barbacha
Leroy and Lewis BBQ
What do you mean by a Michelin rating?
Habeneros Café
Suerte
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| Suerte, Austin |
Though pricey it was
very nice.
SHAMELESS
Okay, after mentioning
my novel several times perhaps you are now interested in reading it. There are
three ways.
Go to Amazon and choose either a Kindle version of THE
MUSIC MADE ME CRY for all of .99¢.
Or, while at Amazon you can purchase a paperback version of the novel for $19.53. Sadly, there is no hard cover version, although the paperback version can still help level out your wobbly kitchen table. To get it perfect though you might have to rip out a few pages.
THE MUSIC MADE ME CRY on AMAZON
Now, if you are REALLY cheap and are not sure if you like
my fiction you can read all but the final 4 chapters for free here and decide
if you want to spring for the upgrade.
THE MUSIC MADE ME CRY (all but the final 4 chapters)
Thanks ya’ll for reading.
Love Janet and greg
© 2026 by Gregory Dunaj
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