Drove into Fairfield to visit the Cooper Farm store and eat at Ponte's Diner. Decided to drive into…read moretown and check out any of the shops, and this place looked worth a stop. Glad we stopped in, one of those places where there's a lot more inside than you would expect. Lots of variety, lots of antiques, even a florist shop under the roof! A very large toy/comic book/record selection as well. We came home with a Renaissance Revival Belgian piece that fits right in with our other eclectic wooden furniture. Surprisingly good deal, and the shop helped disassemble it and load it in the truck. Early birthday/Christmas present for the Hop Queen. Well worth stopping in while driving through, or letting your diner food settle!

I was on another aimless pointless ride. snaking through central texas backroads to bypass…read moredeathtrap interstates, hoping for a chance encounter with the weird, pretentious, unpredictable, diseased... or similar elements on the list of "things quintessentially texan". as i cruised this two-stoplight town's mainstreet, i was wondering whatever became of the 90s glamrock group, spacehog. but i made an immediate uturn when out of the corner of my eye flashed a sign with a singularly iconic word, evocative of life in Austin when it was home to only a few hundred thousand, when it was still hip, before came thousands of clever folks from the digital-world, before their "beemers" replaced handpainted westfalias, before progress transformed the quietly powerful "hill country" into Levittown. the word was "armadillo". I was enroute to kill a weekend at a friends ranch before a meeting in Austin the following week with a client. a well-moneyed techie had kitchen-cobbled his "Texas Woodshed BBQ Rub" only to see sales quickly death-spiral. someone referred him to me and I was soon flying to Austin. quite a production, all in hopes that pairing my experience in food development with his money might resurrect his product à la Lazarus. but the sample he sent beforehand told me immediately that despite my best efforts his amateurish product was doomed. naturally, i took his money anyway. the armadillo, misnomered a "living dinosaur," is an armor plated mammal with pea-size brain. slow moving, armadillo roadkill litters texas roads and, word has it, if grilled a freshly harvested-by-car 'dillo tastes like chicken. perhaps some truth to this because during the great depression, "hoover hogs" were the main course at more than a few texas dinners. the armadillo later reached its heyday when austin became the mecca for texas counter-culture migrants, a kind of mascot for the late 60s goings on in central texas. if you insisted on staying in texas and wanted to adopt the trappings and mind-warp thrill drugs of the day, somehow the armadillo made sense as a metaphor for hip cosmic cowboys here... backwards, out of step, eccentric, oblivious to the pace of the outside world and quaintly unique. as i passed this "armadillo emporium" the thought came that perhaps due to its remote location it might contain more than the usual garage sale goods found in such out of the way towns whose time, if ever it was, has surely passed. more even, could it be that somewhere inside this rummage sale, one might actually find the dehydrated remains of the beloved creature after which the store is named? the answer: no. mostly what is here is neither old nor interesting: handmade jewelry, pottery, macrame and other crafty goods (mostly brand named), like the stuff sold at so many country fairs, farmers markets and other events. as i left the area, i bid adios to the memory of all things armadillo, but much appreciate this armadillo emporium for reminding me of days when kozmic blues untuned the sky.