I own a ranch in Texas above Dallas on the Red River. It is mostly wildlife preserve with some cow/calf. It’s beautiful with rolling hills, ponds, creeks, forests, deer, turkeys, birds. I have a house for me and a house for my ranch foreman and his wife. It seemed like when people would visit we would run out of room for them spending the night so we decided to build a unique 3 bedroom guesthouse. I then realized the guesthouse would sit empty 80% of the time. Rather than waste it we are going to rent it out nightly for vacation. Close by are 4 wineries, lots of historical spots, two of the worlds largest casinos with Las Vegas acts, three large lakes, two national parks. And it is close to a major interstate highway I-35. To list it for vacation rental we will use the listing site AirBNB.

I’ll think about doing the article on the paradoxes of Texas. Friendly and bristly, courageous and fearful, maverick and repressed, strong women and strong chauvinism. All of it is the material my neighbor Larry McMurtry made a career of writing about masterfully in character, I’d just be writing a blunt and likely uninteresting summation of what Larry, Billy Lee Brammer, Bill Wittliff and a lot more of my Texas author hall of fame have written about us born and raised Texans — the damn contradictions of the place. But it can be beautiful, look on my Facebook of the sunset here yesterday.