With my Austin-to-LA flight leaving today at 3 pm, yesterday was my only shot at enjoying one of those “bail on the film festival in order to absorb rural atmosphere and smell the grass” days. So I rented a Mazda and drove west on 290 out to the Texas hill country.
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The True Grit courthouse in Blanco, Texas — Thursday, 3.17, 7:05 pm.
I first visited Johnson City, and then the Lyndon B. Johnson ranch, just east of Stonewall, for 90 minutes or so. (Those who haven’t yet seen David Grubin‘s LBJ, a 1991 American Experience doc, need to do so.) I then visited and got the hell out of Fredericksburg — a grotesque, tourist-choked Disneyland town — as fast as I could. And finally I checked into a nice little motel in Blanco, where Joel and Ethan Coen shot a portion of True Grit.
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Snapped in one of about 200 tourist shops lining Main Street in Fredericksburg.
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A five-day-old Hereford calf on the LBJ ranch. Wow, here I am, gaining two pounds a day. And when I get big and heavy enough they’ll take me and my pallies off to the slaughterhouse!
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Gravestone of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States and one of the great tragic figures of American history.
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Before I took this the guy sitting at the table had apparently never even looked at the menu painting.
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LBJ ranch main residence — Thursday, 3.17, 3:05 pm.
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