Gammy and I have a daughter in central Texas and we've been coming out to see her the last few years in October.

I'm not quite sure what we were expecting to find when we got here. Part of us knew that people here would be wearing masks everywhere like they do in Illinois.

We hoped that we'd find pockets of people who didn't buy into the hype.

We stopped for gas Monday evening at some random small town. Nobody was wearing a mask. Good.

Tuesday we went to breakfast with our daughter. Cracker Barrel. There was the ubiquitous sign on the door.

Gammy and I went in sans compliance muzzles. No one was looking at us sideways. Nobody said anything.

We got to the table and Tammy came to wait on us. As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew she was not a Texan. She was from back in the hills of Virginia. Talking to her made my southernese pop out. Then the ladies at the next table had to get in on the conversation.

They'd heard that I was from Georgia and said they were too. They were both from Moultrie. One had a nephew that lives in Tifton and asked if I happened to know him. Can't say that I do.

That was the most enjoyable time that I've spent in a restaurant in quite some time.

We've been here the better part of a week and I've been in several stores without a mask. It seems that people just come up to me and start talking - like they are hungering for a normal life. I can see yearning in their eyes.

I even had a boy of about 4 walk up to me while I was at Ace Hardware and tell me that he was going to be a squid for Halloween. Or a ghost. He couldn't decide.

"A squid or a ghost? Be a squid, man! Be a squid! Everybody else is going to be a ghost. Do your own thing!"

I think that really excited him and his mother got a kick out of the conversation.

We're leaving here Friday and going to the Texas Moron Meetup where there will be lots of food, friends and shooting (weather permitting).

This is an annual event and the reason we come to see our daughter this particular week in October.

Last year I brought a .308 to the shooting range. There were 12 inch steel targets set at 500 yards.

All firing was from the prone position and there were some people that were consistently pinging the target. Gammy nor I ever hit the thing. We hit all around it, though, and I'm convinced that if we went shooting more often, we would dial it in.

Getting back to the mask thing... when are people going to stand up and not take it anymore? or will people stand up? What will it take?