It’s been between 102 and 107 F. for days now. But that’s August in south Texas.

I got to spend time in a police station in Hondo! A thrilling experience.

I was driving home from San Antonio where I had just had a wonderful lunch and talk and gossip with Jimjr and Nadine and grandson Jimmy (J-III) at a restaurant in The Quarry, coming through Hondo, about a mile beyond on Highway 90, when my temperature gauge suddenly shot up into the red. So I pulled over and the computer, which now afflicts all vehicles, shut the engine down so I had no air conditioning and it was about 108 on the highway.

Luckily a nice young lady stopped and called the Hondo police and a very engaging young policeman named Mario Martinez came out and solved all my problems mainly by calling a tow truck for me. This mean rousting out an unfortunate driver who was having dinner with his kids (it was Sunday evening) and he said it would be two hours before he could come, he had his kids, they had to go back to their mom — obviously divorced and this was his time with his children — so Officer Martinez drove me into the Hondo police station to wait in the air conditioning for the tow truck where I was offered a bottle of cold water and shown where the ladies room was etc., everybody very nice.

But my troubles were not over. Officer Martinez returned to his duties and I waited and waited for the tow truck. The police station was a manufactured home, as they say, and cool, and empty. After a long wait I went outside to look for the tow truck and the door shut behind me and I had just locked myself out in the terrific heat and there was nobody in the station.

I walked all around the station and called and knocked and sobbed and came near to fainting until finally another officer drove up and opened the door for me with his clicker thing.

Hondo is a lovely town and they have a famous sign. There’s a story behind it. Sometime in the fifties the town council decided to put up a sign that said, ‘This is God’s Country. Don’t drive through it like Hell.’ Huge uproar over the use of the word ‘hell’. Finally it was proposed that the sign say, ‘PLEASE don’t drive through it like Hell.’ And for some reason this was acceptable to the opposition. The word ‘please’ some how seemed to undemonize the word regarding the Hot Place.

Hondo is in the flat country, lots of agriculture and big ranches, there was a WW2 airfield for training there and one of the old Supreme Court justices was sent there during the war for flight training. He said the place was hot as hell. I shop there a lot, get my vehicle inspected at Moreno’s (a Texas Ranger referred them to me), it’s not too far from Castroville.