The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 17: Beans at a Dairy Queen in Bowie, Texas

Travel Date:  September 10, 2018

Yesterday, thinking back on the heat and the trip, I was wondering how it could have been close to sundown when we decided to get off of 287 at Bowie in search of a Dairy Queen we saw advertised on a billboard.  Then, I remembered it was September and days were shorter.  Oh, how long have I been away from Texas!  I associate warm evenings with summer, and therefore long days.  So wrong my friend, so wrong.  Heat in Texas is a ten month affair.  Ride 'em cowboy, ride 'em cowboy--don't let that heat get you down.

I don't know why I threw in that last sentence.  It just sounded right.  In Bowie we experienced beans at Dairy Queen.  Perhaps it is because of that.  Marci stood in front of the counter as if the floor had dropped out from under her and a surreal universe opened below her feet, and then spread up around her, as she floated in a star-speckled sky with cartoon symbols of Texas floating around her in bright neon.  There goes a neon blue blue cowboy riding an neon orange bull.  There goes a red neon shape of the great state itself.  There goes a neon pink cowgirl in Daisy Dukes riding a purple bronco--all swirling in and around Marci like a Texas tornado: stars, galaxies--there goes Jupiter!--oil pumps, refineries, bank towers.  I believe that was Ted Cruise that went swirling by just now, smiling like a jackass.  

Through this hazy, Texas-styled psychedelic experience came a deep woman's voice thick with southern drawl:  "Yes Ma'am, beans are our special tonight!"

Marci stood stunned.  Then, finally stuttered, "B-b-b Beans in a Dairy Queen?"

"Yes Ma'am, they's come with hush puppies too."

I stepped in to translate.  "That sounds good, we'll take two."

"Do you dip the hush puppies in the beans?" asked Marci, trying to get a grip on this new universe she instantly founder herself floating around in like Major Tom.

"Well, Ma'am," said the girl, "You can do whatever you like with them there hush puppies."

I stepped in, again, this time more to negotiate a peace treaty rather than to translate.  "That sounds good, we'll take two orders."

We were handed two Styrofoam bowls and pointed towards the bean bar.  "You'll find all the fix'ns there" she said with all that Texas niceness even as she slipped a noose around Marci's neck with her wide, all-encompassing smile. "I'll bring the hush puppies out to ya'll."   I heard that old Pace picante sauce commercial playing in my head:  "Get a rope."

I soon calmed down though.  Those beans topped with onions were oh so warm and comforting.  If I ever find myself on death row in Texas, which statistically speaking isn't that difficult, I think I'll request a bowl of beans as my last meal.  Oh so comforting.  I could tell even Marci enjoyed them.  To this day, she carries a photo around in her iPhone along with pictures of our children and pets.  "And here," she'll say, proudly, "This is where we had beans at DQ."  She never adds, "imagine that!" because that is not her type of phrase.  But I always hear it, because her voice carries that level of astonishment.  "Imagine that!"

On the way out of town, I was mad at myself for not stopping on the way into town.  Unlike Childress, Bowie is a very picturesque town.    From 287, you enter on a backstreet that twists and curves around a low hill, then shoots you along a narrow street along the railroad tracks, and then abruptly sends you left at a right angle across the railroad tracks where you immediately enter one of those great brick downtowns so common in Texas, although this one is not set around a town square, and so it has more of a western feel.  It looks like what Arizona and Utah towns should look like, but generally don't.  And we hit it perfectly.  The sun was setting, and the brick facades were all ablaze.  Unfortunately, my stomach, rather than my eyes, was speaking for me, and we drove on.

When we left DQ, the moment was over.  It was almost dark, and if I remember right, it had clouded over and was sprinkling.  I didn't stop to take pictures on the way out of town either.