Brisket in Lockhart and the Long Way Home

First Saturday of October and the forecast finally had a number under ninety in it, so I rode down to Lockhart for lunch. It is barely thirty miles from my place if you take 183 straight down, which is exactly why I did not. Went east first on the back roads past the airport and came into town from the north with the sun behind me.

Parked on the courthouse square. That courthouse is a big old stone thing with a clock tower, and every time I see it I forget it is not a movie set. Walked over to Smitty's, the one where you come in through the back and walk right past the fire on the floor of the pit room. Smoke in your eyes, heat on your shins, and they cut your brisket onto butcher paper while you watch. Half a pound of fatty, a sausage ring, crackers and a slice of onion. You eat it with your fingers off the paper like everybody else.

Ended up at one of the long tables next to a family from Houston who had driven two and a half hours just for this, so I did not feel so bad about my thirty miles. The dad rode an old Shovelhead back in the day and wanted to know everything about the Scout. Liquid cooled got a face out of him. Then I fired it up in the lot so he could hear it, and he allowed that it sounded all right for an Indian.

Came home the long way, east and then up through Bastrop on whatever farm roads looked right. Mostly two-lane with nobody on it, the cotton already in and the fields bare and brown, a hawk on about every other fence post. Picked up 71 at Bastrop and rolled back into town with the light going gold.

Ninety-some miles all told and the best brisket I have had this year. The Scout ran cool the whole way for once. Summer around here does not really let go so much as get tired, and Saturday felt like the first day it actually did.