No wine, no mink

Leaving Austin, & heading NW to Lampasas, I ran into a music lecture on the radio about soprano/piano songs of Massenet and his students. It was interesting, and the traffic was too crazy to find another station anyway. Plus I couldn't figure out how to spell "Massenet". That's how I got hooked into listening to Act Two of "Werther" on the Chevron-Texaco Metropolitan Opera Live. I was heading into the hill country, so the reception was off & on. I'd be driving along listening to Albert, Charlotte, Sophia, and Werther singing about butterflies and flowers, while I looked out the window at goat and llama farms and roadside stands selling deer blinds. Then I would lose the signal. A mile or two later, Sophia and Albert would be singing about the pastor's 50th wedding anniversary. I would figure out that all the guys standing around their pickup trucks & chatting on the shoulder of Highway 183 were actually hunters, and the radio would nudge itself over to a staticky mariachi or hiphop station. Two hills later, Charlotte and Werther would reappear singing about dueling pistols, and I would be in a reduced speed zone looking for Mobil station in a town dating from 1854. As a person who thinks "Goethe" is pronounced "Goyth", and that everyone in the story would feel a lot more relaxed if they had a couple Sloppy Joes and a Budweiser, this was a very culturally-improving weekend. I think I missed the part about Werther's pickup with the gun rack. Like a rock.