Airfares are becoming hard to negotiate now that all of the country except agriculture is on a boom that'd make Christopher Columbus think he'd discovered the seven golden cities of Cibolo. Three weeks in advance of last month's trip to Baltimore and Washington D.C., I studied on-line and off-line fares without finding an agent willing to budge at any airline.

Delta finally gave a decent coach price from Austin. By then I'd clicked and dialed the "ticket saver's" and "cheap fares dot com's" until Amtrak and Greyhound started becoming a consideration for transportation, which is a sign of desperation. The cross country bus schedule may be bearable, but if the Hartford, Connecticut life insurance actuary tables handicapping graybeards my age are accurate, and the stories about Amtrak's arrivals are correct, I am already too old to complete a train trip from Austin to Baltimore.

Baltimore/Washington International is one of the three airports handy to the capital. Express metro trains shuttle passengers from the concourses right on down to D.C. Upon landing, I sought refuge in the restroom to readjust my gear and tuck in my shirttail. Just as I reached the lavatory, an old boy popped from a stall and started singing in a Southern drawl the following jazz melody: "The Queen of Sheba weighed a hundred and four pounds. All this day I fried that much hamburger patties. Counting pickles, onions, buns and cheese, I've lifted ol' Sheba twice today. Gonna' go home to 'Bud the beer' and Mary the gal. And rest my soul for another day. Oh, de Queen Sheba weighed a hundred four pounds. I done lifted her twice today."

Before I gave up and caught a cab to town, I tried to find rides on vans, busses, and trains in a speedway of airport traffic, and failed. The cabby hummed all the way, finding his beat in the meter clicking every third of a mile. In case you haven't observed, musicians, professional or amateur, hum in the daytime and snore a replay at night after playing a gig. I pass this on free of charge for ones dead bent on marrying a saxophonist or cello player. (Reader's Digest once quoted Mrs. John Phillip Sousa, wife of the famous band leader, as saying, "I am soured on married men, married life, and the institution of marriage after 30 years of sleepless nights listening to John snort out the brass section of his arrangements.")

Baltimore abounds in music and art. Cab drivers, fry cooks, and sidewalk troubadours, I was to learn, are supported by symphonies and chamber music in the high-class recital halls of the Peabody Conservatory, a dozen jazz places, and a huge new domed concert hall. Furthermore, 45-minute train service to Grand Central Station in D.C. adds all the attraction of the Kennedy Center. As a guy said at the intermission of a play, "My wife and I also make the little theater group at Annapolis."

Checked in, I realized I had made one bad mistake. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore College, and the Peabody School of Music, to name a few of the area's colleges, were holding May graduation services. My room on the third floor of an 1870 mansion overlooked the main passageway for graduates and families crossing the street to the big civic center. (One class was 5000 strong.)

The whole week, throngs of parents and grandparents trailed behind black-gowned scholars. Scholars who I knew will never come west to be cowboys or ranchers. Graduation time once meant a happy occasion, but now it is one more act in the death knell of the herding and tending of hollow horns and woolies. When the pool halls closed and all this malarkey about higher education spread, our labor supply was doomed. I regret to this day giving shaving lotion instead of buying cue sticks for graduation gifts. I don't recall ever hiring a cowboy who played golf and excelled in the academics, but I knew quite a few who were pool sharks and dropouts.

Cool showers on 75-degree afternoons and 60-degree nights washed away the memory of the drouth back home. Early of morning, the owner placed a newspaper and a pot of coffee on a marble-topped table by my chair in the drawing room. Seated so grand, I stared at my feet, thinking how far removed this is from pulling on your boots in an old ranch kitchen to walk to the barn and a dusty corral.

June 15, 2000