Beer and shrimp

We arose and left Gonzales headed for Shiner. It was not far and we arrived at 10:30. I inquired as to tours from a merchant who thought the tours began at 10:30. We rushed to the hospitality room to discover that the tours begin at 11. While waiting we enjoyed a taste of one of the five beers brewed there. There were many things for sale: a tool box barbecue grill, a keg grill, many shirts and beach umbrellas as well as trinkets. We began the tour with seven other people, five of whom turned out to be brew masters from San Antonio. While watching the bottling process, one of the bottles headed for the labeler fell over and was followed by two others. The operator rushed to set them back up while those following pressed on to follow the movement of the conveyer. He finally succeeded, breaking only one. I laughed because I remember similar events happening to me when I worked at the Falstaff brewery back in Fort Wayne in the 1960s. We finished the tour and returned to the hospitality room to enjoy yet another brew. The most famous it Shiner Bock, but Evelyn liked the Blonde. I don’t want her to like beer too much. She is a great cheap date--at least when ordering drinks. Diet Pepsi usually allows free refills. We bought a button for a friend Paul who collects them and went off to a small store to buy some limited edition Shiner 96. There were only 30,000 cases brewed and they may become collectors items. We then went to lunch at a local “German” restaurant and shared a German sampler plate. The sausage and bratwurst were good but the pork chop was tasteless. It came with good sour kraut and a salad. It was so much that we took some with us. We drove on south arriving at my favorite gasoline fill up location, Odem. We paid only $1.919 per gallon, the cheapest we had paid all summer. Again Odem let me down because gasoline was only $1.849 in the Valley. We drove to Kingsville and stopped because it was getting dark. I remembered a restaurant offering all you can eat shrimp, so we went there. Evelyn loves shrimp. I Had catfish and again the portions were so big we had to take some with us. I must say some other diners had left nearly a full plate of shrimp they had ordered, and I brought the plate to our table and we took them. They would have been thrown out so we saved them. We went to the local Wal-Mart for the night.