On the Road Again [PODCAST]
Dodgy Dutch Barons, Davy Crockett...and a conversation on the run with Chris Mayer
Dear Stir Crazy Reader,
If Europe is best seen by train, the quintessential American experience surely belongs to her great open roads. To travel them is to see the Old World fanned out across the New, and to join that long procession of settlers and nomads, drifters and frontiersman, exiles and outcasts alike, all of whom make up the story of this land.
As that roaming raconteur, Mark Twain, once said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Alas, we hardly had a choice this past year, beset as our ambulatory aspirations were by disasters, both born of nature and exacerbated by man.
It’s been some fifteen months since we last set out across these states, with a full tank of gas and the blistering horizon ahead in the distance. So it was with childlike glee that we embarked earlier this week on the first of (what we hope will be) many future ramblings across this vast and unique land.
Heading northwest from Houston, where we’ve been holed up since we arrived from Argentina a month or so ago, we followed Route 290 out past the sprawling suburbs, beyond the McMansions and strip malls and overlapping spaghetti freeways, and on toward little townships with good ol’ American names... like Brenham and Berlin and Bastrop.
[Downtown Brenham. Rush hour]
[Bastrop: Preferred stomping grounds for dodgy Dutch Barons]
The latter, a delightful little county seat on the banks of the wending Colorado River, was named after the Dutchman, Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, who had fled his native Netherlands under credible suspicion of embezzlement.
Making himself anew, as one did back in the days before Instagram check-ins and omnipresent state surveillance, the shifty Baron soon became the area’s chief land commissioner, helping Moses Austin and his son, the renowned empresario Stephen “Father of Texas” Austin, to obtain land grants around the area for some 100+ families.
In a bit of subsequent (ahem…) “back-and-forthing” with the nearby Mexican settlements, the name was changed in the early 1830s to Mina, in honor of Francisco Javier Mina, a Mexican revolutionary hero and martyr. A few years later, during the short-lived but much-recalled days of the great Republic of Texas, it was given back to the since-deceased Baron. And Bastrop it remains today...
Similar tales and local fables weave together all across this land, like so many rivers and meandering country roads. We look forward to visiting more along the way.
For one thing, it helps the soul to be offline for a while… to stare out over the rolling green plains… to daydream a bit… to visit some historic sites and bygone towns and to remember that, tempting as it is to become mired in the moment, to lose oneself in the insatiable vortex of the immediate, this too shall pass.
Viruses… Republics… Empires and their monies… Nothing lasts forever.
Speaking of impermanence, we took the opportunity while staying in San Antonio’s historic Menger Hotel to set up our temporary podcast studio. For this week’s episode, we caught up with our good friend and fellow storied hotel connoisseur, Chris Mayer.
Long time listeners will recognize Mr. Mayer as the portfolio manager of the Woodlock House Family Capital Fund, which he co-founded along with Bill Bonner back in 2018.
Over the course of an hour or so, Chris generously shared his thoughts on everything from passing concerns like rising inflation, taxation and interest rates (and why, in the long run, none of it really matters… at least not the way you think it does), to investing in the age of disruption, the real story behind the “coffee can portfolio” and the curious life cycle of cicadas.
You can catch all that, and plenty more besides, in my conversation with Chris Mayer, below...
As always, feel free to write in with comments, suggestions and assorted bellyaches here: joel@bonnerprivateresearch.com
Until next time, enjoy your weekend...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
June 18, 2021 ~ San Antonio