This was an unfinished post from October that I've finished.

---

So on Tuesday the missus wanted me to run an errand for the studio up to Huntsville. Knowing me better than anyone, she says I can go eat fried pickles and chicken fried steak at a place in town there if I'll just do this errand for her.

Hell, if I could find a way to earn a living by driving around Texas, I'd do it in a second. I'd drive to a mid-sized town like Huntsville for free, no beef involved. I'll take it, though.

So, I hit the road from my job near the airport. First order of business is music. I remember Pete loaned me his Southern Culture on the Skids CD, so I threw it in for a spin. Psychebilly twang was the perfect thing to accompany the road. I'd never driven the Hardy Toll Road all the way north before, so I figured what with the traffic, this would be the perfect time to learn the route.



Learning the route is serious business. Although, Hardy Toll Road isn't involved at all. And, most importantly, speaking as a man, I'm making good time.

I can rembember Uncle Glenn and my dad having long discussions about routes to Roanoke, Virginia, where Nana and Grandad lived. The overriding questions was always about how you could make the best time.

I used to be one of those guys who only liked rural to semi-rural areas and independent, family-owned places. I used to raise my nose at fast food and mass-marketed commercialization. Now that I'm getting older, though, I kind of like it all. The endless wastelands of Houston suburbs, big billboards, wide freeways with feeder roads; maybe it's because it's what's familiar to me, but I like it too.

I have cause to think about this when for several stretches on the Hardy, there are just trees and no signs. I remember Ayn Rand's bit in Atlas Shrugged about not liking being in a place without billboards. I like it both ways, does that make me a bi-Objectivist? Then I hit I-45, and it's back into the suburbia of my youth. Complain all you want about sprawl, but some of my happiest memories are when I got my driver's license and could drive to a Friday night football game under the big Texas sky across the wide open plains of Houston crammed full of fast food joints , strip malls, and concrete bayous. I can taste the feeling of freedom that the wide open road and an internal combustion engine gave me...

Here's the memory trigger:



Then, of course, some people go too far and make the kind of mall I have photo'd below. Speaking of Ms. Rand, Howard Roark would have blown this place up years ago. It's a strip mall but every section is a different architectural style.



It isn't like a style that remotely even belongs in semi-suburban Texas, it's Asian, Roman, Greek, all thrown together.



But then you get out of the city and things look a bit more like Texas.



There's even a giant statue of a giant of a man, Sam Houston.



Caution: Political rant

Seeing Sam Houston makes me want to weep for our soulless generation of lying, pedophiling, stealing, wussying bunch of politicians we got stuck with. Give me a drunk like Sam Houston any time.

So after running my errand, I get to the real business at hand. The missus claims that the fried pickles at Zach's are the kind I like.



Not the fried spears that you get at Katz's that come in a carefully blended breading, no these are the Sysco bulk hamburger dill chips that get dumped by the casefull into flour and something and then fried until greasy. This looks like the right kind of place.



I order the pickles and hope the missus isn't selling them in an effort to get me to make the drive. But I know the missus and she knows me and misrepresenting fried pickles to your husband is not something she would do.

And I was right. Check them out:



So here's the thing when it comes to fried pickles (as Richie Brockelman would have said, "The thing of it is, is..."):

Those cheap-ass dill chips fry good. The batter is important, yes, but the flavor comes when the skin of the cucumber pickle bursts and some of that pickle juice comes out.

These were good. An interesting thing though, several of the pieces were all batter, no pickle. I felt kind of ripped off, but I gave the fried batter a try and yep. It was good. Missing the pickle juice zing, but nicely complemented by the ranch dressing.

So the next course came along, the chicken friend steak.



A brown gravy versus a white one, but it was ok by me. French-fried potatoes versus mashed, but since this was a fried day, it made sense.

The chicken fried steak gets a thumbs-up from me, not the best I've ever had, but very good.

Oddly enough, much excess batter around the sides, making the steak seem small.

But once again, the batter was good. Fried batter and gravy, mmmm. I'm such a simpleton.

So I hit the road back to Houston. In 20 years I can start drawing from the IRAs and 401ks, etc. I think I have found my dream. I want the missus and me with our cats to drive around Texas, try little restaurants, and watch sunsets like this.

In high school, I worked as a cook at Sonic Drive In.

We called the fried pickles Pickle-Os.

The cooks had to make them by hand.

I loved those things -- still love to eat them -- but making them is a real PITA.

I haven't seen them on a Sonic menu in ages. Dang, I could really go for some of those about now...

have you ever checked out this guy
http://texasburgerguy.blogspot.com/

Yes, Jimmy turned me on to him.

I forget the fella's name, but the developer of that funky strip center has done several in funky architectural styles. It's his goofy calling card.