WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 2. Oh, yeah, Junior Brown at Gruene Hall was excellent. I assume his hot-dogging on the guit-steel, rolling his eyes back in his head, etc., are a thoroughly customary schtick, but the crowd seemed very happy to see it however many times they'd seen it already.

I love his tunes and his Ernest Tubb voice. I also admire that he has his missus in the band -- great way to double your share, guy! -- and that they've managed not to kill each other. (Years ago I played briefly and traumatically with my former life partner; when Junior started fiddling with Mrs. Brown's equipment mid-show, I flinched, expecting flying debris.)

The opener was A.J. Downing and the Buick6, who seemed to be taking it easy, which was fine as it made it less daunting for Mary and I to practice our two-step. (She reported later that a woman in the ladies' room told her, "You two are just learning, aren't you? That's so cute!" Terpsichore was never my stock in trade, but as a veteran showman I was stung to the quick.)

We had to miss the Chilifest in Snook for this, but that's just as well, as the event generated 41 arrests and 167 citations, according to our delightful local paper, the Eagle -- DWI, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, etc. The local PD "had judges on call to issue warrants for people who refused to give breath samples after being pulled over on suspicion of driving drunk." That's worse than Saint Patrick's Day on Staten Island!

The Eagle has provided me with a great window on Texas folkways. Just before Easter it carried a story from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times about a local megachurch's membership drive:

Bay Area Fellowship, the largest church in Corpus Christi, is giving away flat-screen televisions, skateboards, Fender guitars, furniture and 15 cars -- yes, cars -- at its Easter services next week...

“We’re going to give some stuff away and say, ‘Imagine how great heaven is going to be if you feel that excited about a car,’ ” lead Pastor Bil Cornelius said. “It’s completely free -- all you have to do is receive him.”

This whole thing is wonderful, but I would like to give reporter Denise Malan a special Pulitzer just for her rendering of this expert-opinion section:

Michael Emerson, a sociology professor at Rice University and co-director of its Institute for Urban Research, said “Wow” several times as Bay Area’s giveaway was described to him.

Rice, locals will have you know, is the Harvard of the South.

I have also been talking to people, all of them so far as nice as pie. Last weekend I got to talk to a machinist about his trade, the fortunes of which ebb and flow with the oil industry; his company makes parts and devices used in drilling. He showed me a ring he'd made on the job out of titanium. And he told me about things he'd seen as an amateur pilot, including a training flight in which his instructor pulled down hard on the throttle to keep the craft in which they were riding from striking a tree -- not due to operator error, but because the engine was balky. (An experience like that would keep me out of airplanes and possibly daylight for quite some time.) We discussed pets and he told me about how a raccoon had gotten the better of one of his dogs. "If a dog fights a raccoon and it's near the water," he had heard, "the raccoon will win every time." We had no occasion to talk at all about politics or the internet, which was a great relief.