On the Road: The Centerville Rally

A few months ago Jim bought a pretty little previously-owned Mercedes Benz. It’s a fun car, but I need to fold up like a jackknife to climb in, and I look like a giraffe being born when climbing out. Well, it seems there’s a club for owners of that automobile brand, and the Austin, DFW, Houston and San Antonio branches held their 5th annual rally last weekend in Centerville, Texas. Centerville, a town with 900 plus people and twenty-eight churches, is at the junction of Interstate 45 and Texas Highway 7, halfway between Houston and Dallas.

According to the club’s website, Fort Worth area “BenzNuts” were to rendezvous at 9:30 a.m. at Starbuck’s in Waxahachie, about 30 miles south of Dallas. A half-hour later we were to caravan to Centerville, where we would meet for lunch at Woody’s Smokehouse and then head out to Fort Boggy State Park for the rally.

Jim and I arrived at Starbuck’s right on time. We were surprised that we were the first ones there, and a little nervous when, a half-hour later, we were still the only Mercedes Benz there. We left Waxahachie at ten o’clock sharp and cruised on down to Centerville—apparently the lone ambassadors for all the Fort Worth, Texas BenzNuts.

Centerville is about a hundred miles south of Waxahachie and is one of those “wide spot in the road” kind of towns. There was Woody’s Shell station, Woody’s convenience store and Woody’s Smokehouse. There was a stately old courthouse and a few other businesses in what might be called a downtown, but it doesn’t take much commerce to support a population of less than a thousand people. Woody’s was definitely the gem in their crown and the main attraction of the little burg. Billed as the "Jerky Capital of the World," Woody’s was an oasis in the middle of nowhere.

Inside Woody’s there was a cavernous private room set up for us and a barrier chain with a sign that warned, “Mercedes Benz club members only.” There wasn’t a soul in there. I asked Jim, “Did you actually join this club?” He mumbled something I couldn’t hear, but assured me it was OK to scoot around the barrier. Fearing that we might be the only two to show up for lunch also, we decided to shop a while first and see if anyone else wandered in. I didn’t want to look pathetic—or pretentious—sitting alone at one of a dozen or more picnic tables in a private banquet room.

Woody’s was a supermarket of cookin’ and eatin,’ and it was packed with diners and shoppers. The meat counter held stacks of gorgeous fresh meats, sausages, cheeses and jerky. There was a wall of cold drinks stretching the length of the store and a small bakery area displaying pies and cookies next to the checkout. Here and there were a few souvenir hats and T-shirts, greeting cards and a smattering of collectibles. By far the most interesting area was the sprawling “jarred” section, where it seemed everything that grows in dirt was preserved, jellied, canned, or bottled.

After looking around the store for a while, we noticed four people seated at one of the picnic tables in the Mercedes Benz room, so we strolled over to the lunch line. Woody’s offered standard barbeque cafeteria-style service, but with a salty old guy giving orders as well as taking them. “You gotta tell me if it’s take out; I don’t read minds,” he smilingly growled at a woman in line ahead of me.

Jim and I both ordered the brisket, but he decided to play heartburn roulette and sample the sausage—he lost. The server behind the counter slapped our meat orders on some butcher paper directly on our trays and ordered us to “Take some beans and sauce, ‘cuz their free.” There were little cups of jalapeños and sliced onions to accompany our meat, but I got heartburn just looking at them. The brisket was delicious and possibly the best I’ve ever had. The banquet room eventually filled up with more club members, and the growling meat server brought all of us Woody’s baseball caps and koozies and samples of jerky. I tried the buffalo jerky, and I must say it just tasted like dried beef to me.

Following lunch, we caravanned out to Fort Boggy State Park for the rally. There the Mercedes owners voted for the best cars in four categories, depending on the age of the vehicle. I guess for some Mercedes Benz owners, it’s not enough to just own one. While Jim joined the voting—we didn't win—I found a shady spot at a picnic table and sat down. Everyone we met seemed friendly and sincere, and if it hadn't been 98 degrees outside, we would have called it a real nice day. We left Fort Boggy around 3:30 and set out for Austin and "chicken shit bingo" on Texas Highway 79—a road that could only have been designed by John Deere himself.

Donna

Next: Austin and Number Four on the Bucket List.