QUILT SHOPS & CONRAD HILTON

       It was Ethel who spotted the billboard advertising the JT Ranch Quilt Shop. Google Maps took us right to it, in the small town of Cisco, Texas. Located about 100 miles west of Fort Worth and just a handful of miles off I-20, it’s a town of 3900 people who take pride in their high school football and girls volleyball teams, who decorate for Halloween and lined their main street — Conrad Hilton Boulevard — with gaily painted old bicycles.

       The street is so named because Conrad Hilton started his hotel chain with a single hotel he bought there in 1919. According to one of the clerks at the quilt shop, he came to town to buy a bank, but the owner raised the price when Hilton arrived. The latter noticed the booming business going on at the local Mobley Hotel, so he bought it instead. Today, the former hotel is a community center and local museum with a dozen white rocking chairs stretching across the ground-level, cement front porch and a statue of Hilton on the lawn.

       As for the quilt shop, it is named for the cattle ranch owned by the shop owner and her family. Ethel managed to drop a few dollars there, despite the fact that it was the third quilt shop we had visited during our three-week, cross-country trek.

       We lunched at the Slowpoke Farm Market, which features grass-fed beef and other products its owners either raise themselves or buy from friends and nearby farmers. Each table features a wire cup with two dozen Scrabble tiles for the diner’s entertainment while waiting for the food, which arrived quickly. Ethel had organic pinto beans simmered with a ham hock and accompanied by cornbread made with cornmeal and whole-wheat flour. Lucy had a three-cheese mac-’n-cheese that had slices of bratwurst in it, accompanied by broccoli salad. The pies were like none you’ve seen since sitting at your great-grandmother’s kitchen table. Despite choices such as peanut butter cream, cream cheese pecan, apple crisp and sea-salt chocolate pecan caramel, we passed on desert.  

       All in all, Cisco proved to be a serendipitous experience that re-affirmed our tradition of not passing up a spontaneous side trip down a back road.