So anyway,
Back on the road tomorrow, me and Janet and the 'Beamish Boy. The general
direction will be west but the precise routing is best left unsaid... The less
warning they have the better!
The layover here has been good... I did not accomplish much on the car but it
was not for lack of opportunity. Did enjoy plenty of quality time with the
kids.
Yesterday, Saturday, August 22, dawned gray, rainy and hot. Actually, the
high only got up to 84 degrees -- cool and comfy by comparison to what we have
been experiencing -- and at noon the relative humidity was 100%. Hovered
around that reading all the day long.
With outside activities not really a reasonable choice, we spent much of the
day at the movies, some big ol' 20 screen movie plex, where we watched The
Negotiator, a pretty decent film though a bit longish. After the show we went
out for -- you guessed it -- barbecue.
Rudy's is a semi-interesting place. A convenience store-gas station with a
barbecue pit incorporated. Actually, that is misleading as all hell since the
pit is now the place. It is an old Austin tradition and I am sure a real gold
mine.
Brian was very hesitant to go near the place this Saturday because it has been
advertised as a Corvette Saturday at Rudy's, about 200 cars and 300 people
expected to show up for show n' shine n' slop. However, I point out to Brian
that: A, ain't no way the Corvettites are gonna have their cars out in the
rain and 2, it is almost 3 PM and there ain't no Corvettites gonna still be
suckin' up the hot guts even if they did brave the rain to begin with.
At Rudy's red clapboard building you go in past the cashier for the gas (the
automotive gas) and queue up for smoked meats, pulling your drink choice
--Shiner's, Lone Star, Big Red, and IBC Root Beer, mostly, out of ice filled
galvanized water tanks on your way. 'Tater salad (reg'lar and mustard), cole
slaw, beans, and so forth are available by the 1/2 pint, pint, quart, and
gallon.
The meats themselves, beef (brisket) @ 4.14 per half-pound, extra lean beef @
4.49 per half-pound, pork loin, turkey, and chicken, all at $4.39 per half-
pound, and hot sausage @ $2.29 per link. I ordered up a pound of extra lean
-- gotta think about the ol' ticker, ya know --, haffa pound of turkey, haffa
pound of pork, four hot links, pint'a beans, pint'a tater salad, and four soda
pops. From the convenience store side Dana picked up a big bag o'chips and we
made our way to spots on one of the extra long picnic tables. We ate inside
because of the ladies... I'd have been happier at one of the outside (under
roof) picnic tables but my opinion was not solicited.
The meats -- which hit the cash register at just over $51, but hey! Half this
stuff went home in a bag -- come with a loaf of sliced Wonder bread, some
plastic table wear, and four pieces of butcher paper. No plates. Quart
bottles of hot barbecue sauce (at Rudy's, spelled "sause") and big boxes of
Morton Salt (no salt shaker) and Pepper (need I say it?) along with bottles of
totally superfluous Tabasco sit at the end of each table.
The beans turned out to be so spicy even I couldn't hardly stand to eat them
but the rest of the meal was absolutely delicious! Janet alone struggled
along for a while with her plastic knife and fork, the rest of us knew that
this is all finger food and proceeded accordingly.
Rudy's is arguably the best barbecue in Austin. Oh sure, it is still pretty
pale when compared to the Saltlick, the Buda BBQ, the Manchaca (pronounced
Man-chak) Fire Department, or the County Line, but awfully, awfully good and
much closer in. I am really glad we were able to get to Rudy's for a bite.
This morning the Sunday, August 23, Austin American Statesman has a big
article on the Kruez (pronounced approximately as "Krees") Market in Lockhart,
Texas, about 40 miles south of here. Now, this joint is the certainteed best
barbecue in Texas.
It is a hundred year (98, actually) old market-butcher shop with a barbecue
pit attached. 'Course, nowadays the pit can seat a couple of hundred people.
When I first ate at the joint back in 1983 the seating capacity was about a
hundred in one room, another hundred in a room that was never open.
The pit -- the place where meats are cooked -- had half-a-dozen brick pits and
the entire inside of the whole room was absolutely black with soot from the
non-stop oak fires. Supposedly, the fires have burned continuously since the
place opened in August of 1900. The black soot on the walls was actually
fairly attractive when compared to the butcher shop -- where the sausage was
made and other meats were prepared for cooking -- which had walls uniformly
covered in a gray fuzz, the result of penicillin growing on grease.
At Kruez Market you get no plate and no fork or spoon though nowadays I hear
that they are letting you have a plastic knife. In the old days (say fifteen
years ago) they had steel knives secured to the tables with two foot lengths
of chain every couple of feet. You just wiped the knife off when you were
done with your meal. If you remembered. Don't you know the health department
just loved that?
Another interesting thing about Kruez Market is they don't serve sauce with
their smoked meats. Yup, no sauce in the place. Fifteen years ago when I
displayed my ignorance by asking for sauce I was told, politely enough, that
they don't serve sauce. I pushed it just a bit and inquired "why not?"
"Because," the man with the big knife told me, "sauce insults the meat." They
feel their meats are of such high quality, the preparation so painstaking,
that embellishment is out of the question.
They do still offer the choice of "bread or crackers with that?", something
that most of the other barbecue pits stopped long ago, instead just flinging a
stack of bread at you as you go by.
Kruez Market is also the only place I know where Smoked Prime Rib is on the
menu written on the wall. Now that is gilding the lily... A good way to screw
up a perfectly good prime rib, donchaknow?
The other smoked meats include beef clod, beef brisket, turkey, chicken, and,
of course, sausage which is made on premises. The newspaper says they are now
making 3,100 sausage rings every day except Sunday when they are closed. Man,
even at 85% beef content that is a lot of hog fat!
Though not up to the standards of the late, great Elgin butcher shop's Hot
Guts, Kruez Market sausage is very good. Nice coarse texture, not too hot but
still authoritative. I remember it well even though it has been years since I
have eaten any.
So anyway, the whole point of today's newspaper article is that Kruez Market
is changing... The owner is erecting a new building which will have have twice
as many pits made out of (gasp!) steel instead of brick. They will be able to
seat 700 people for lunch! This in a town with a couple of thousand
population and thirty miles from anywhere.
The real reason they are moving the pit seems to be (if the paper is to be
believed) that brothers and sisters can't get along. The brother owns the
business, the sister owns the building the business is in. Now brother is
moving up the street a couple of hundred yards and sister plans to reopen
under a new name.
The fires that have burned for 98 years will, however be extinguished. Is
nothing sacred?
Today is another overcast, humid day giving me a perfect excuse to laze around
eating leftover bobbycue and playing with the Alpine.
I got out there in the garage and pulled the JVC deck out. I was able to
confirm that the ground was intermittent due to a screw that was slightly too
small for the hole it was screwed into but correcting that did not give me
sound. We eventually confirmed a good ground, electricity into the radio,
good fuses, and no sound out, so I reluctantly conclude that the radio itself
is dead, RIP.
One real concern, of course, is the amount of rainwater that was coming in at
about the time the deck quit working...
Oh well, I will wait until we are back near home before trying anything else.
I played with the carb linkage just a bit, too, but lacking a proper spacer,
there is not much else for it.
Heavy rain is coming down now and it is time for me to have a nap... Just one
of those days.
--Colin Cobb, Comfortably and Dryly Watching Plenty Big Rainstorm Outside
Austin, Texas
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