Places I've Often Driven Past But Never Stopped At

...even though they look like my kind of place...because I'm hurrying to my destination.

1. Hill Country Cupboard, "Worlds Best Chicken-Fried Steak: Nearly 3 Dozen Sold."

2. House Park Barbecue, "Need No Teef to Eat My Beef." The old yellow sign is missing several letters, like the missing teeth in a geezer's grin.

3. Hye, Texas, a town consisting of one intersection between speed-limit signs. A combination post office/souvenir store -- I sometimes think the town exists to keep someone in a postmaster's job, like the job Faulkner was fired from for being too lazy to sell stamps; a small junkyard beside a graying ramshackle house where two or three small brown cows sit flapping their tails against the trunk of a shady live oak; a feed and pipe store with a shiny new aluminum silo; and a recent addition: a creative furniture store with brightly painted wooden benches displayed on the lawn.