If you wanna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band

Hola a todos de Texas. The lone star state is a great, big place. Beautiful, wide-open high plains. Jay and I are attempting to look the part with our new belt buckles.

Alex fits in more naturally. He's a cowboy, of sorts. Down here people wonder where his drawl accent is from. They say he's sometimes hard to understand. I reassure them, in Canada people also wonder where his drawl accent is from and sometimes struggle to understand him.

And after a couple of years of visits, Alex has friends in this neck of the woods. The cowboy hat he's been wearing was a gift a while back from Tammie and Fred out of Fort Worth. We're hoping to cross paths with them while we're here in Texas. Maybe at the Peterbilt truck plant.

Ever since we crossed the border from New Mexico I've had that Alabama song stuck in my head:

"If you wanna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band.
That lead guitar is hot, but not for a Louisiana man.
So rosin up that bow for faded love and lets all dance.
If you wanna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band."

Not sure what that all means to our traveling, non-musical band. But I know that beyond the belt buckles and Alex's hat, we've been missing something. Couldn't put my finger on it. Until we stopped into Shepler's Boots and Jeans.

Alex decided on a pair of boots (s#&t kickers, as I've always heard them called) with leather uppers and ostridge-belly bottoms. Now we're fitting in. Or at least Alex is.

All the best, gang.
Loren