2000-09-18 6:17 am
Happily Home
But that is all just stuff. I'm home in Austin and so happy happy happy. There is no place like home.
Spokane is a beautiful city in a beautiful part of the world. I'd go there on vacation but I want Mark to go with me next time. It was just too lonely to be there for nine days and not have anyone to eat with or really talk to or to do things with. I resent the station that brought me up there for not doing anything to acquaint me with the city or entertain me. It was a case of, "Here's your hotel, here's your car, be at the fair every night at seven. See ya!"
I'm thrilled that the Austin temperatures are comparable to Spokane's this weekend. I went to a party tonight and it was wonderful to sit on the patio and be perfectly comfortable. This morning I had coffee on my own patio and just relished being home and HAVING coffee while still in my nightgown. Life's simple pleasures...
The highlight of the Spokane trip was a wonderful diner I ate in on my last full day there. I saw an ad and went to find it and I'm glad I did. It's called Knight's Diner and it has been in business for 51 years in Spokane. It was in an old railroad car and only had the long counter with stools, no booths or any other seating. I got to watch the cook making eggs and pancakes and other fun things right on the grill in front of me. The best part of the meal was a piece of huckleberry pie. No, I didn't know there was really a huckleberry in this world but apparently it is the favorite fruit in Washington (yes, you'd think there would be apple things everywhere but it was huckleberry---lotion, jam, candy, etc.). The pie was the best piece of pie I've eaten since my last piece of my mother's cherry pie in either 1993 or 1994. Mom's cherry pie is THE BEST pie in the world but it has to be made with cherries from certain cherry trees---my aunt has the best one. The cherry tree has been handed down in our family. It grew on my great-grandparents farm in Newburg, then I'm sure my grandparents had it at various homes, my aunt has a big one growing beside their house in Amarillo and we had one behind our house in Amarillo when I was a child. When we moved out to the farm we had several cherry trees but out there the birds devoured most of the cherries. Now that Mom and Dad have moved down closer to Dallas they don't have a cherry tree but my sister had one at their last house and I had "children" of that tree and I moved one down here to Austin with me. Sad thing is, in Dallas and Austin you can't grow cherries. You can grow the tree but it won't produce more than a few cherries because it doesn't get cold enough in the winter.
All that story to say that Mom used to make killer pie but this huckleberry pie came close.
I also went to a wonderful park in Spokane. Beautiful flowers everywhere in full bloom. I sat on a bench surrounded by colorful geraniums and marigolds and pinks and more and read a book for a long time. It's Manito Park if you ever get to Spokane.
I've been thinking about what I would advise someone to do in Austin if they were here alone for a week like I was there. Of course, the capitol and the bats are at the top of the list. And they are both free! Zilker Park, Threadgill's, any Mexican joint on First, and, of course, live music somewhere would be on the list. Kramer has some wonderful Austin lists on his site (astrofish.net) and they were my guide when we moved here. I need to compile a good list of my own.
First I need to explore this town more myself. Today Mark showed me some beautiful parts of town I'd never seen. Friends of ours live in Tarrytown and he showed me their house (just around the corner from bongo-boy Matthew McC.---I'm not going to attempt to spell that name at this time of the morning).
This has certainly been a non-cohesive entry. Thanks, Grace, for stickin' with me! Grace of Grape needs to be revived. It's fall. Time for renewal and change.