Texan hospitality

Our next boondockig hosts are Val and Gary. They live in a beautiful house in Floresville near San Antonio and on the first evening they invite us over for coffee and cake. We get along well so we chat until late. Next day we spend fixing the brakes (leaking cylinder) and looking for new tires for Eddie. For a while we thought we might drive the whole journey on the old ones, but as Gary noticed they look as if they were going to fall apart any minute now, and if that happens we'll have a problem.

Following his advice we called several places - at first they told us 350 USD for 4 tires, other place - 380 USD. And at the end a phone call to Discount Tire. Their first offer is 388 USD, but after we told them that Pedro from the other place could get me new ones for 350 USD price went down to 334 USD. Few bucks saved.

We also spent lots of time talking to our hosts. They are both retired, for many years Gary worked for American Airforce dealing with weather systems. Because of his job within 22 years they moved from place to place 22 times, before they finally settled in Texas. They spent a few years in Germany and they both speak German fluently. After they retierd they traveled around the country for a few years, and lately they sold their motorhome and became more settled.

Cookies!!!

Floresville until recently was a quiet, peaceful town - local peanuts center. Some people commute to work, some bred cows on the vast pasteurs in the area. Everything changed a few years ago when oil was discovered there. Oil people came, brought their rvs, Wal-mart was built and town became busy. Gary and Val live a few miles from Floresville so they don't really care, but as they say, "it's not the same place as it used to be a few years ago”. Although life of local farmers didn't change that much. As Gary joked now you can meet them at the post office as they pick up their monthly check with a sigh "Eh, another 200 000 USD”, and then they go back to their cows.

Gary and Val's house is sorrounded by the woods, which in a winter looks a bit like from a horror movie. Twisted, dry trees in a few weeks will start to get green, but now they look as if they had evil intentions and just waited for the full moon to make them happen. Unfortunately we didn't hear coyotes our hosts mentioned, but they would fit perfectly. But honestly it is a perfect place to live, we really liked it.

Lately Gary dedicates most of his time to his hobby: old cars. With some help from local shops he is getting a Chevrolet - birthday gift for Val - back to its old-time glory. Couple more details and this pick-up from 1950's will be as good as new. On top of that twice a week he teaches human management at University of Texas. So he keeps himself busy.

Val is an energetic, warm woman, very talented when it comes to cooking, arts and anything manual and she loves children. So when she said we should leave kids with her when we go to see San Antonio we agreed right away. Kids were happy too. 

Val and Gary are an exception among people we meet here when it comes to their lenght of marriage. She is originally from Nebrasca, he is from California, where they met. She was 15 years old, he was 17 and they've been together ever since. They recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. Not bad. We met a few couples that have been married for a long time but most of people we meet were divorced and remarried. Maybe it's a part of being American - full mobility, both when it comes to geography and marriage.

After three days, well fed, soaked in a hottub, with a new haircut (guys), new tires (Eddie) and new cylinder (Grand Cherokee), with cookies for the road, hugged by our new friends we are sad to leave.

Before we got to the highway we visited Gary and Val's neighbour, Spotty. Spotty is a welder but he is also an artist and his shop is more like a gallery. He works mostly in metal but he also makes wooden sculptures, he draws and paints. Rennesaince man (although when we called him that he said he is not that old).

Spotty

In the beginning he made things inspired by Indian heritage (he's got some Indian blood in him), but unfortuately they weren't too popular. Our hosts got from him a table, fireplace screen and couple more thingh. We couldn't leave empty-handed either and we got a metal Indian. You can see his art here: www.ironspots.com. We loved it.