Tour de Geezers V
April 2001
Freda and I joined fifteen other Geezers to spend a week in Fredericksburg, Texas (known
as Fred Burg by the locals) where we did daily loops into the country to admire carpets of
bluebonnets, acres of Indian Paintbrushes and skads of little yellow flowers that no one
knew what they were. Of course, we had to have a beer and get our pictures taken next to
the statue of "Hondo" at Luckenbach.
Fred Burg is actually two towns; from about noon on Friday till Sunday afternoon it's a
tourist mecca with bumper to fender traffic and at least 10,000 tourists milling like cows
on main street. At exactly 4:00PM on Sunday, it's like someone blew a whistle or fired a
gun; everyone climbs back on the tour busses, hops in their Beemers or mounts up their
Harleys and all roar out of town. By 4:30, you could fire a cannon down main street and
not hit a thing. All the restaurants close, T-shirt shop doors are locked and the antique
places go dark. Everyone simply locks the doors and goes home. The only thing left moving
on main street is the trash carried along by the wind. One restaurant stays open to feed
the locals.
Fred Burg has about 75 restaurants; 72 German, one Italian, one Mexican and one Chinese.
Instead of going German on the night we arrived, we had dinner at the Italian place where
we were served by a Chinese waitress. Can't get any more cross-cultural than that. Nearly
every restaurant there (except the golden arches) closes at least two or three days a
week. Only the locals seem to know which one will be open for which meals. Out of perhaps
20 meals we had there, I think we had no more than a couple in the same place. One thing
about it, no matter which place we visited, it advertised as having the "Best
Cheeseburgers in Fredericksburg." We know from the menus that Opa (Grandfather) makes
all the sausage and Oma (Grandmother) makes all the cheese served there; perhaps some
little old lady makes all
the cheeseburgers and delivers them to the restaurants.
Other than our bicycle helmets, once the tourists were gone, Fred Burg turns back into a
dusty Texas town of about 6000 residents. Whatever restaurant happens to be open for
breakfast has the usual tables of the
courthouse crowd, cowboy hats, school teachers and old men wearing caps advertising farm
machinery. Of course while we were there, we had our own tables of lycra shorts and
jerseys with more advertising than sandwich boards but no one seemed to notice. Fred Burg
is a popular spot for cyclists and we must have seen fifty of them plus a couple sag vans
for commercial tours.
Due to a dog bite, broken leg and an auto accident, I hadn't been on a bike in over a year
and it was a struggle for me. My muscles had turned to silly putty and the broken leg
still swells after a few miles. Oh well, it's a start down the road to recovery and that's
what counts.
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Copyright © 2001 by Jim Foreman