People clustered here and there and lined up for wine.

I’d never heard of a “wine swirl.” The brick streets around what I took to be the courthouse were closed to cars.

We arrived during the 12th annual Nacogdoches Wine Swirl, just by raw chance. Mural detail a block from the square, facing a parking lot. Later in the day, Yuriko and I spent a little time in downtown Nacogdoches, which offers a more sizable square than most towns, even in Texas, handsome on the whole, with a scattering of specialty retail in the area, but mostly still professional services, city government offices and other utilitarian activities. We had a good visit, a good reconnect – I find it good to reconnect – spending most of the afternoon with them, hearing about life in Nacogdoches, his medical practice there, their raising six children, all grown. In exchanging text messages ahead of the visit, we couldn’t remember the last time we’d seen each other, but finally decided, once Yuriko and I met Kirk and his wife Lisa at their home for lunch on April 13, that it was probably in April 1986 at the wedding of a mutual friend of ours in Austin. We hung out mostly in high school, but had known each other as far back as elementary school, ca. When planning our most recent trip, devising its dumbbell structure of three days on the road, five in place, and four more on the road, it occurred to me that with a little southward jiggering from Dallas, we could visit Nacogdoches, Texas, one of the oldest towns in the state, rife with history: home to prehistoric Indian activity and the establishment of a Spanish mission in the 18th century, base of filibusters and other rebellions in the early 19th, mentioned famously in a late John Wayne movie, and much more.Īll that would have been a reason to come, but mainly I wanted to visit my old friend Kirk, resident of the town for nearly 40 years.

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