SAN ANTONIO

Finally left the friendly confines of Flat Creek RV Park and the comfort and relative luxury of the Scale House for the 185 mile trip south to San Antonio.  We plan to visit and perhaps spend a day or two with a high school classmate of my friend Jim Burns.  One of the endearing features about this trip is that so many people want us to meet the friends they have respect and love for, knowing we will appreciate one another.  The people I meet are universally open and welcoming, each an oasis in the desert of time spent alone.  Time alone and the desert are beautiful in their own ways, but each oasis and every new person is a delightful spring of nourishment, unexpected and unique.

Shortly after leaving Waco we stopped for coffee in a promising little town called Lorena.  Surprisingly charming, Lorena has a Victorian feel not unlike towns in California such as Murphys, but is much smaller.  We visited the Texas Cheese House and were welcomed by Scott Simon and his son, as they were making a batch of provolone cheese.  It takes a hundred gallons of milk (eight hundred pounds) and a three dollar tablespoon of culture imported from France or Canada, to make eighty-five pounds of cheese.  The only differences in preparation of the fifty distinctly different cheeses Scott makes is the temperature of the mix and that one tablespoon of culture. 

Provolone cheese in a steel vat; the tall pipe is a screen for the drain



The whey is seen here pouring through a screen

 Scott purchases his milk from local dairies. The byproduct of the process, the remaining 715 pounds, is a liquid called whey, which everyone has heard of.  It is usually poured down the drain but can be used as an animal feed.

The Texas Cheese House also sells bread and rolls they bake on the premises and gourmet chocolates made locally.  The town is so small and feels so isolated one marvels at the ability of the Cheese House to stay in business, but apparently enough customers take the convoluted path from the freeway to the town to keep them profitable.  The other stores in town are also unique in their own ways and they work together to draw people in.  Scott lives two blocks away and walks to work.

After a three hour drive, we reached San Anonio and the home of Linda and Kelly.  Linda graduated from high school in Clay Center, Kansas, a town of five thousand people, in 1972.  She is the creative director for the San Antonio News-Express and is planning a motorcycle trip from Clay Center to the Grand Canyon with Jim Burns and another classmate in September.  She rides an 1100cc Yamaha Star and her partner Kelly rides an almost equally large Suzuki Boulevard, two impressively heavy and powerful bikes for women their size.

Linda and Kelly in the kitchen

Kelly welcomed us on arrival with a delicious meal, and we spent a delightful evening learning about San Antonio and Texas from the viewpoint of two non-natives who have become Texans.  They've opened their home and their hearts to us, and we've fallen in love with San Antonio.

NEXT: AU REVOIR, TEXAS