On A Slow Clock, Wimberley Trucks Along Gracefully...A Rolling Geography & A Cup Of Hot Chocolate...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

WIMBERLEY, Texas - Breakfast here comes with the usual early-January cold breezes that seem to swirl around the rising hillsides for long minutes and then circle in to slap you in the back as you walk into the lovely Wimberley Cafe on the town square. It wouldn't be Wimberley without the red wing hawks flying the air flows overhead or the road-weary cafe patrons looking for a plate of bacon and eggs. It is a menu of the sort you see everywhere, but, as with most locales, it has its Special.

You'll find it in the kid's menu, but anyone can get it: Peanut Butter & Grape Jelly Sandwich (served with chips). Yeah, $2.99. I didn't ask what chips, cause I settled for the BLT, with kettle chips. A tall glass of iced tea chased that stuff down my throat. My mind was on the ambiance, which seemed a slow-motioned episode of some rural western of the 1970s, the kind where the waitress skips across the dining room sporting a cowgirl smile and the personality of any smalltown pageant Miss Congeniality winner. Ashley was our waitress this morning, and she did her profession proud, granting me permission to take the menu with me, smiling as she said, "I won't tell."

Well, what's a smalltown if you can't walkin and leave with something that speaks of its uniqueness.

Wimberley isn't known for anything special, although it is the hometown of a good friend I met long ago in  Galveston, when I was island bureau chief for The Houston Post and she worked for the American Cancer Society. Somewhere in that friendship, an invitation was extended concerning a drive to her hometown. It never happened; things were moving too fast for me back then. Too bad for me.

The drive into town, on Texas 12 coming from San Marcos, is made pleasant by a sprinkling of odd sights that range from a side-of-the road bed of cactus to emerging businesses that appear not to have been there, say, three-four years ago. Wimberley is growing, is what Becky Murphy told us when we ambled into her shop, Under One Roof On The Square - a neat artist cooperative. She has seen growth walk in, tossing the small town into some rolling angst. It's mostly California people buying huge chunks of acreage in town and on the fringes, building moster homes and spiking the property rates.

Wimberley is so small that septic tanks are the way to go for sewer service. A small sign pasted above the commode in the Wimberly Cafe's bathrooms say as much, so paper and paper towels are tossed into a trashcan set alongside. It's part of the local color, the so-called attraction for anyone looking to get away from the rat race and the comfort of modern luxuries to be found up and down I-35 to the east. But most anyone we know would trade that for the deceleration they'd find here. Jewelry shops do business alongside antique stores and tourist stuff (neat t-shirts), while nearby a cabin motel sits peacefully alongside the small, clear water stream cutting across town. It has four cabins, smoking allowed only outside. The aging tall trees in the back of the property and down in the canal look to be somewhat old.

It was a Wednesday. The crowds would come on the weekend. Still, some wanderers filled the shops on the square and the restaurants that sat as if in a photograph, their facades seemingly at rest. It's growing, however. New construction can be seen in the main drag leading into town. The Burger Barn on the left side looks rather new to the local economy. And one could live with the idea of a town uninterested in the McDonald's of the fast food world, or the Burger Kings, or the Whataburgers. You won't find those here.

But what I couldn't freakin' get is why lovely Wimberley couldn't have at least one Starbucks.

Oh, well. That cup of Joe we could've picked up at Sip! on the square likely would have done the trick. But it was sorta cool, so we went with the hot chocolate. Not bad. It would have been a wild reach on this particular day, but the idea of snow beginning to fall as we walked back to the car seemed, well, neat...

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