Ingram Will Never Be The Same

I like Ingram. In fact, I like it a lot. It's a little town, nestled in a beautiful part of the Texas Hill Country just west of Kerrville and about two hours from Austin. It is close to one of my favorite places on earth, and so I visit Ingram and its environs several times a year.

In the old days, you used to be able to store your deer at Bernhard's Ingram Meat Locker (motto: "You Can't Beat Our Meat") or go dam-sliding on Ingram Dam. In recent years, the tourist trade has become more important, and now there's the Old Ingram Loop with it rustic furniture, antiques and tschotchke stores.

Life is bucolic out there. You swim or tube in the Guadalupe River all day. In the evenings, you dress up a little and have dinner at Richard and Lorrie Ferris's Cowboy Steakhouse in Kerrville, which is one of our state's best-kept secrets. After dinner, you drive out to Stonehenge II and look at the stars in the middle of a big field.

Now I hear that Karl Rove is coming home to Texas, and specifically, Ingram, where he used to, and maybe still does, own the River Oaks Lodge, which is on as pretty a stretch of the Guadalupe River as you'll ever see.

I'm not sure I see him in the role of guestmaster, though. He's a little too wound up for that. I don't imagine he'll be spending much time there, at least at first -- he's too much of a cash cow for the Republicans right now. I do hope he gets some time out there, though -- maybe he'll get some perspective on the vicious pettiness of his partisanship.

Welcome back, Karl. Behave yourself.