The Turner Family

Meg at the airport with her two MUN buddies. They had to be at the airport at 8:30 p.m. for a 11:30 p.m. departure time. They will arrive in Cairo at 7:30 a.m. and be whisked away for some sightseeing before the conference starts on Friday. Meg was SO excited! Jason, Garrett and I are flying up on Saturday night and will do a little exploring on our own until Meg finishes the conference on Tuesday, after that we are all boarding a 3 night Nile Cruise . Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for the care package, everything was a huge hit! I opened up the gate one afternoon and this guy was strolling by, I never did find out what it was he was carrying but my guess would be some empty jugs.

Tiffani dropped us off at a pancake breakfast fundraiser at the Grand Ledge Masonic Temple, then we had plans to visit the public library and mosey home. The breakfast was good, but very sparsely attended: a mother and son, half a dozen firefighters , and us. (Local political intrigue: the former mayor , and the current mayor , were both present. Bitterness?) We made our way to the library via the new path underneath the bridge, but the kids had to regale me with all the stories of already having performed all these stunts, walked these paths with Bompa and Grandma. Some books and movies chosen, a re-introduction to the library cat statute, a ride on the library porpoise, and a pleasant walk home in the sunshiney, chilly morning.

City Market Luling, Texas 3/2/09 The City Market in Luling is one of the premier barbecue houses in all of Texas. It consistently rates in the top ten in Texas year after year, by many different rating groups and/or individuals. We have eaten here once before, about five years ago. Luling is fifty miles east of San Antonio, situated in long low undulating hills. The movie, Second Hand Lions, was filmed not too far away. A double railroad track runs the length of the business district in a grassy parkway. The town of about 5000 hosts a watermelon festival every summer. The City Market is a modest place in an old building in downtown Luling. The pits are in the screened-in back room. It’s necessary to walk the length of the restaurant and enter the cramped dark smoky pit area where you order from one of three pit men. He slices up what you want, flops it in brown butcher paper, squeezes the ends of the paper up so that the package resembles a canoe and you pay for your meat ...

Cooper’s Pit Bar-B-Cue Llano, Texas 2/28/09 This was our second visit to Coopers in Llano. We had learned of it in the first book from Jane and Michael Stern. Llano is a ranching town of 3300 souls, about 80 miles west of Austin. The surrounding country is attractive rolling hills that are dry, dry, dry, and scrub covered. It’s hard to imagine that cattle ranching can be profitable, as little grass as there is. We approached Llano coming 40 miles up from the south, on a state highway. We crossed many cattle guards in the pavement, followed by signs that would announce “Loose Cattle”. The Texans are not intimidated, in that everyone passed us even though we drove about 55 MPH. I didn’t like the idea of impacting a steer at high speed. Cooper’s is a classic Texas joint where you order from the pit man outside. There are eight or ten large brick and steel pits, with the pit man at the one nearest the restaurant door. As he slices off your selections fro...

Click on the title above to go to the digital version of Arrow Trade magazine, then select page 79 for a profile of Family Tradition Treestands , complete with pictures of our entrepreneurial Turners. Or, if the font isn't too small, read my screen capture above. Well done, Jack and Jenny.

We headed into the Texas Hill Country after several weeks along the coast, building up our craving for barbecue. Our first stop was at Texas Pride Barbecue, just east of San Antonio. Texas Pride Barbecue near Atkins, Texas. 2/26/09 We were alerted to this place when it appeared on DDD. The building has been in the Talanco family since 1924, beginning as a filling station. It was closed for many years and re-opened as a barbecue joint in 1996, and has been highly tricked out to look like a 1940s gas station. Inside it’s festooned with all sorts of old dry land farming equipment and old farm signs. We ate in the screened-in side room on the right. I suspect it would be blistering hot there when summer rolls in. Ten foot long picnic tables filled the room. Six dusty farm workers, who obviously come here often, sat behind us telling fishing stories that they all seemed to have heard many times. It was not particularly busy at 2 PM on a Thursday, so the counter man had the time to recogni...