Heading for the Wurstfest

Tuesday was reunion day.  Our morning began with breakfast followed by Evelyn’s talking with the breakfast maid about doing the laundry.  She volunteered to do it for us.  When she finished, she brought it to our room.  We gave her a $5 tip.  Then we went to pick up Simon for lunch.  We went to the Piccadilly cafeteria as usual.  They usually have good crawfish etouffee but not so much this time.  We did have a nice visit and learned that Roland had spent much of the summer recovering from hernia surgery.  We told him of our escapades as well.  After we returned him home, we went to Trahan’s to pick up pecans from their yard.  Jimmy is losing the ability to walk without one of his elaborately carved walking sticks, and Betty is nearly totally confined to her wheelchair.  We picked up a grocery bag of pecans but not as many as 2 years ago.  For some reason we were too early even though we come at the same time each year.  They have a neat tool they use for picking them up, and I will post my picture of it soon.  We went to the motel to rest before meeting them for dinner at Fezzo’s.  We shared a dinner as usual.  We had another good visit.  It is fun to hear Jimmy talk about his experiences working in the oil fields.  He is pure Cajun and speaks in a heavy brogue.  We met them in 1969 when I was studying linguistics at USL.  Earlier in this day, we drove past the house we rented during our summer.  The neighborhood was very rundown.  Evelyn wanted to see if our landlord was still living there, but the house was for rent.  We returned to the motel and began preparing to pack tomorrow.

Wednesday morning Evelyn washed her hair because the motel had a hair dryer in the room.  We weren’t sure what would be in our motel in New Braunfels.  We found one here too.  We drove into Texas when the RPMs began to go to 5,000 and the engine began to heat up.  We slowed down and eventually stopped at a rest area.  A young air force man and his young family were there.  We looked under the hood and he found a place where something was leaking.  Another man driving a semi had some tape, and I took a screw from another man in a motor home.  I inserted the screw into the small rubber tube that was leaking.  The truck driver taped over the screw and crimped the small tube that was leaking and stopped the leak.  It was so well done that we were able to drive through Houston and arrive at New Braunfels—a 200+ mile drive.  I will take it to a mechanic tomorrow morning because, even through it ran well, I don’t want to risk causing serious damage to some other part.  We were a day early but were still able to get a room.  In fact we have one of the nicest rooms we have ever had.  We are to meet John and Sue Hamel but found that they didn’t have reservations.  I called and told them, so they called the front desk and got the matter resolved.  They will be here on Friday.