The Townie
Know the backroads. Use the front door.
What the Bleachers Hold
Graduation weekend. The bleachers are full and the feelings are complicated.
Dear neighbors,
You can drive past any high school in the Hill Country this month and feel it — Mason, Menard, Brady, Junction, Llano, Harper, Fredericksburg. The parking lots are filling up earlier than usual. The lawn signs went up sometime in late April and nobody’s taken them down. There’s a particular kind of pride that lives in a small-town graduation, and underneath it, a quieter feeling that doesn’t have a clean name. Something like watching a porch light go on in a window across the field, and knowing it’s saying goodbye and hello at the same time.
This week’s edition is about that — the leaving and the staying. The ones walking across the stage on Friday night who will pack a truck in August and drive somewhere bigger. The ones who will pack a truck in August and drive twelve miles to start a job at a ranch supply or a feed store or a clinic. The ones who don’t know yet which kind they’re going to be. All of them matter. All of them are ours.
Show up. Clap loud. Mean it.
For the Feature this week, I wanted to do something different. There’s no shortage of graduation advice circulating right now, and most of it sounds the same after a while. But the best of it — the speeches that actually stuck — said something specific enough to carry home. I pulled together six of them, from six leaders who said something worth remembering, and I tried to translate each one into a sentence that fits in a Hill Country kitchen. Read it slowly. Pass it to the graduate in your life.
Hazel Mae and Fern have a letter from a mama setting up a first apartment for a kid who’s leaving — and trying to do it on nothing. The horoscopes are about thresholds. The Pet of the Week is Rhea, still waiting at Second Chance. And the Business Insights are for every employer in the region who’s wondered what it would take to be the place a young person actually wants to come home to.
With love and a folding chair in the trunk,
Six Things Worth Carrying Home from Six Speeches
The speeches were good. The advice still is. Pass it to the graduate in your life.
Every May, somewhere in America, a stage gets set up under a hot afternoon sun and somebody walks up to a microphone to tell a row of eighteen-year-olds something they hope the eighteen-year-olds will remember. Almost none of them do.
Admiral William McRaven knows this. He stood at the podium at the University of Texas in 2014, looked out at the graduating class, and admitted that thirty-seven years earlier when he sat where they were sitting, he couldn’t remember a single thing the commencement speaker had said. So he tried to keep his short. He told them to make their bed. That speech has been watched more than ten million times since.
The reason it stuck is the reason any of these speeches stick: it said something specific enough to carry home. Not a feeling. Not a flourish. A sentence small enough to fit in a kitchen drawer and pull back out when you need it. Here are six speeches worth carrying home. Six leaders, six pieces of advice, each one boiled down to a sentence you could write on the inside of a graduation card.
Admiral William H. McRaven. Make your bed.
McRaven told the Class of 2014 that every morning during his Navy SEAL training, his instructors inspected his bed first. Corners squared. Covers pulled tight. Pillow centered. The exercise seemed ridiculous, he said, “particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors.” But the wisdom of it proved itself many times over. “If you make your bed every morning,” he said, “you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.”
Hill Country translation · The day you can’t control is shorter if it starts with one thing already done right. Feed the dogs. Put the coffee on. Make the bed. The rest of the day will at least have one thing in it that worked.
David Foster Wallace. This is water.
Wallace opened his speech with a parable about two young fish swimming along who meet an older fish. The older fish nods and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on, and eventually one looks at the other and says, “What the hell is water?” The point, Wallace told the graduating class, was that “the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” His speech was about learning to be aware of the world you’re already standing in.
Hill Country translation · Look around. The dirt under your boots, the people at the diner, the river running through town, the porch light a quarter-mile down the road — that’s the water you’re swimming in. Most people leave home before they figure out what they’re leaving. You don’t have to.
Steve Jobs. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Jobs told three stories — about dropping out of college and following a calligraphy class that ended up shaping the Mac, about getting fired from the company he founded and finding it the best thing that ever happened to him, and about being diagnosed with cancer and realizing that death was the destination we all share. He closed with the line that closed the back of the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
Hill Country translation · Don’t lose the part of yourself that’s curious. The kid who took apart the lawnmower at twelve is the same person who, at thirty-five, will see an opportunity nobody else saw. Hunger and foolishness are the same thing as long as you keep them both.
J.K. Rowling. The fringe benefits of failure.
Rowling told Harvard’s graduating class that seven years after she’d graduated from college, she had failed on an “epic scale.” A marriage gone, a job gone, a baby and no income, and “by every usual standard,” she said, she was “the biggest failure I knew.” She titled the first half of her speech “The Fringe Benefits of Failure” — the discovery that the worst case had already happened and she was still standing, with one thing she’d always wanted to do still in front of her: write.
Hill Country translation · Failing isn’t the end of a thing. Failing is the part of the story that finally tells you what you’re actually built for. Every rancher and every shop owner in this town has a failure story they’ll tell you over a beer if you ask. Listen to the ones who tell it without flinching. Those are the people worth learning from.
Conan O’Brien. Work hard, be kind.
Conan O’Brien gave his commencement speech in 2011, eighteen months after very publicly losing his dream job as host of The Tonight Show. He stood at the Dartmouth podium and told the graduates the truth about it. “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique,” he said. “If you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.” He closed by repeating the line he’d used to sign off his last NBC broadcast: “Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”
Hill Country translation · The plan you have right now is not the plan you’ll end up with. Something will go sideways. A job will fall through. A relationship will end. That’s not the end of the story — that’s the part where the story gets interesting. Keep working. Keep being decent to people. The road will bend, and you’ll find yourself somewhere better than where you were headed.
Lin-Manuel Miranda. Your stories matter.
Miranda — fresh off the Broadway success of Hamilton — told Penn’s graduating class about how the stories he was told as a kid about Puerto Rico, where his family was from, became the foundation of every song he ever wrote. The stories you tell about yourself and where you come from, he reminded the graduates, shape the path forward — the ones we hold onto, the ones we share with strangers, the ones we pass to the next generation.
Hill Country translation · Where you’re from is not a thing to outgrow. It’s a thing to carry. The kid who tells the story of Mason or Menard or Brady well — in a job interview, in a city, on a stage, in a song — is the kid who has something the city kids don’t have. Don’t ever apologize for it. Use it.
The seventh thing — the one nobody says.
Here’s the thing about commencement speeches: they’re aimed at the kids walking across the stage, but the people in the bleachers are the ones who carry them home. The graduate hears the speech once and forgets most of it by Monday. The mother and the grandfather and the uncle in the back row — they’re the ones who write the sentence down. They’re the ones who’ll be reminding the graduate of it three years from now, when the kid calls home from a city or a job or a marriage and needs to be told something true.
So this week, if you’re sitting in a folding chair at a high school graduation in Mason or Llano or Junction or Brady — listen carefully. Not for the kid. For yourself. You’re going to need at least one of these sentences before the year is out. Pick the one that sounds most like home. Carry it back to the truck. Keep it where you can find it.
Make the bed. See the water. Stay hungry. Fail honestly. Work hard, be kind. Tell your story.
The rest will take care of itself.
What’s Happening This Week & Beyond
Events, news, weather, and what’s shaping the Hill Country right now.
On the calendar
Louisiana-style mudbugs, shrimp, and crab dumped on butcher paper. Bring an appetite and a friend who’s not afraid of Cajun heat.
Specials at local shops, a margarita or two, and the particular joy of running into half the county on a Friday.
Folk-leaning songwriting and tight harmonies under string lights. The second set is always the better one.
Four-night run at four dollars a ticket. Hard to beat that math for a true small-town movie night.
Antiques, handmade goods, and food trucks. Wear sun-friendly clothes; the grounds get warm by lunch.
Yes, that’s the name. Yes, you should go. Live music, cold drinks, river breeze.
A free Disney/Pixar afternoon with snacks and prizes. Tote a blanket and a small human who needs a screen break.
Four days of wheeling, river time, a Saturday-night live band, and a crawfish boil. Special weekend rates apply.
A flock of woolly sleuths solving the murder of their shepherd. Pure Odeon weirdness. Four dollars at the door.
Three days of crawfish, live music, and Memorial Day weekend energy. A long-running Jaycees fundraiser.
Memorial Day weekend kicks off Menard-style: free admission, BYOB, lawn chairs, live music on the San Saba River.
The quiet story of three men whose roads from Nicaragua, Venezuela, and West Texas converge. Four dollars.
Will Taylor and Strings Attached reimagine the catalog you grew up with. Equal parts concert and meditation.
Treasure hunters welcome — Texas Topaz could be under your boots. $40 per person; closed boots and a snack on you.
A glass of Robert Clay’s finest and an afternoon under the oaks. The Hill Country triple crown.
The original Top Gun and its 2022 sequel back-to-back across Memorial Day weekend. Four dollars per show.
Member-owned since 1947. Light supper, short business meeting, the kind of co-op democracy that still works.
Nine decades and counting — one of the oldest rodeos in Texas. Bronc bustin’, barrel racing, and a Saturday-morning parade through downtown.
Crawfish boil, street dancing, the Miss Kimble County Pageant, and Fast Moving Train on the bandstand.
A charreada-style afternoon with horses, music, and a side of the Hill Country that doesn’t always make the postcards.
Four days of pickin’ and grinnin’. Bring a lawn chair and patience for the sing-along that’s coming.
Classic cars and motorcycles ringing the Square, hot dogs sizzling. Roll your ride in or come admire chrome.
Pat Green and Cory Morrow on one stage in Menard. $20 general, $10 for ages 7–20 and 65+, kids 6 and under free.
The second weekend in July belongs to Mason. Three nights of rodeo, the Saturday parade, and a crowd where everybody waves.
A reenactment and display marking 175 years since Fort Mason was established on the hill above town.
What’s moving across the region
Community. Junction’s Saturday Farmers Market is back on the Kimble County Courthouse lawn (501 Main, 9 AM–noon). Llano’s Visitor Center is gearing up for a banner summer. Castell General Store keeps proving small-river towns know how to throw a party.
Business & schools. Menard Bulldogs Baseball clinched their district championship. Mason ISD seniors are wrapping up scholarship season — watch the Mason County News. Mason Chamber Expo (July 17 on Railroad Avenue) is taking vendor sign-ups with an early-bird discount through June 1. Email events@masonchamber.com.
Recognition. Mason Town Square named again to Texas Monthly’s “five most beautiful squares in Texas.” Texas FFA scholarship recipients being named through the end of May.
Weather. Wet, active pattern continues. Above-average temps and precipitation through May 21. Highs upper 80s to low 90s, lows mid-60s, 40–60% chance of afternoon storms with possible hail. Watch NWS San Angelo and NWS Austin/San Antonio.
Policy & funding. Texas Water Fund implementation continues — TWDB project cycles open ahead of summer awards. NIFC flags above-normal fire potential June–August. USDA Rural Development’s Community Facilities Direct Loan & Grant remains open.
Economy. Dallas Fed describes regional tourism-driven retail and hospitality holding firm. Mason Chamber Expo vendor registration up year-over-year. TWC continues to flag rural childcare and skilled trades as biggest pressure points.
Ag. May 5 Drought Monitor shows much of the region in D0–D2 with active rainfall expected to bring short-term relief. Texas A&M Forest Service lifting some burn bans. AgriLife encouraging producers to lock in supplemental hay early.
Market. San Angelo Producers Livestock Auction May 7: 509 head, feeders $3–$8 higher than previous week. Slaughter cows mixed. Kid goats at late-April Producers sales jumped $20–$30 per cwt.
Grants. Texas Rural Funders maintains a rolling tracker at texasruralfunders.org. Texas Commission on the Arts Arts Respond Project Grant (FY 2027) accepting Letters of Intent — rural counties scored for priority.
Tourism. Fredericksburg CVB reports strong Memorial Day and Father’s Day booking pace. Visitor-center traffic in Llano, Mason, and Junction climbing week over week. Local lodging operators say June and July weekends are filling fast.
All listings verified for the May 14, 2026 edition.
What It Takes to Be a Place Worth Coming Home To
For every employer in the Hill Country wondering what it takes to keep young workers in town.
Hiring Young — the Quiet Math of First Jobs
There’s a particular kind of math that doesn’t show up on any spreadsheet, but every Hill Country employer is doing it right now whether they realize it or not. A kid graduates from Mason or Llano or Brady High this month. They have two options — a full-time job at a place owned by someone they’ve known since they were eight, or something three hours away in a city they’ve only visited twice. The salary in the city is higher. The job here is more interesting. Which one do they take?
The honest answer, more often than it should be, is whichever one made them feel wanted. That’s where most rural employers lose the math without knowing they were running it.
A first job is not a transaction. It’s a structure — the framework someone builds the next decade of their working life on top of. If the framework is good (the boss explains things, mistakes are allowed, the work has dignity, there’s a clear path to growing) — the kid stays. Not just at that job. In that town. They put down roots because the soil was prepared for them.
Internships are the cheapest version of this you can offer. Even ten weeks of structured, paid, supervised work does more to retain Hill Country talent than any signing bonus a city employer can write. The kid you train at seventeen is the kid who, at twenty-two, looks at the offer from Austin and remembers that the work they actually liked doing was at home. If you can’t afford to bring on a high schooler this summer, run the alternate math: how much does it cost you in five years to replace the senior employee you didn’t grow yourself? That’s the number that matters.
Workforce Retention Starts at 17
There’s a regional marketing campaign quietly running across five Hill Country counties right now, and most people don’t know it exists. It’s called Come Up for Air — a coordinated effort across Mason, Menard, Gillespie, McCulloch, and Kimble counties (about 44,500 people across roughly 4,300 square miles) to position Greater Mason County as the authentic, uncrowded, affordable alternative to a Hill Country that’s become expensive and hard to live in.
The campaign has two taglines. Come Up for Air is aimed at visitors. The second tagline gets less airtime, but for any business owner reading this, it’s the one that matters: Wide Open. Deeply Rooted. That’s the one aimed at people who are ready to stop visiting and start staying.
44,500 residents across five counties — Mason, Menard, Gillespie, McCulloch, Kimble.
4,300 square miles of Edwards Plateau terrain.
$5.9 million — Gillespie County’s annual hotel occupancy tax. The marker of an overheated Fredericksburg market.
Two pressure points — rural childcare and skilled trades. TWC’s biggest flags for employers across McCulloch, Mason, and Llano counties.
The four outer counties of this region — Mason, Menard, McCulloch, and Kimble — offer exactly what Fredericksburg used to offer before its hotel occupancy taxes crossed $5.9 million. Genuine Texas character. Space. Affordability. Five rivers. The only natural blue topaz deposits on earth. Some of the darkest skies in Texas. And — most importantly for any employer trying to keep a young workforce — a quality of life that the next generation is increasingly looking for instead of running from.
Remote work has restructured what young professionals consider as “home.” TWC data continues to flag rural childcare and skilled trades as the two biggest pressure points facing employers in McCulloch, Mason, and Llano counties — which is another way of saying: the demand for young workers here is high, the supply is constrained, and every kid who chooses to leave at eighteen is a kid the labor market here will spend a decade trying to replace.
But retention isn’t a poster campaign. It’s a posture. It starts in the seventeenth year, not the twenty-fifth. It looks like a paid summer job, a Chamber-sponsored internship, a graduation card from your business with a job offer inside it, a quiet word at the diner about how the place is hiring. It looks like every adult in this community treating every graduating senior as a person they’re trying to keep, not a person they’re saying goodbye to.
The Come Up for Air campaign is going to bring visitors. The visitors will spend money and a few will move here. That’s good and it’s coming. But the workforce that runs this region in 2035 is the kid who walked the stage in Brady or Junction last weekend. They’re already here. Whether they stay is a question the next ninety days will answer.
The Mason Town Square got named again to Texas Monthly’s “five most beautiful squares” this month. We talk a lot about the square. We talk less about the seventeen-year-old who’s about to spend the summer working a register on it. Both are the same investment. The square is a hundred years of someone choosing to stay and tend it. The seventeen-year-old is the next hundred. Hire the kid. Run the internship. Send the card. The square doesn’t keep itself.
Want to go deeper on Come Up for Air?
The Townie Business Circle is running through the Come Up for Air regional marketing campaign in detail this month — what it means for your business, how to plug in, and the specific tactics members are using to attract and retain young workers. $10/month.
Join the Business Circle →Dear Hazel Mae & Fern
A first apartment, a tight budget, and the love that gets packed alongside the skillet.
Dear Hazel Mae and Fern,
My oldest is graduating in three weeks and starting community college in San Angelo this fall. He wants to get his own apartment. I want him to. We’ve been saving what we could but it isn’t much, and when I look at the list of things a young man needs to start out — a bed, a couch, a kitchen table, pots and pans, sheets, a coffee maker — it just feels like a mountain I don’t know how to climb without going into debt. I don’t want him to start his life owing money for a frying pan. How do we do this on almost nothing without making him feel like he’s starting out behind?
First Apartment, First Try
He’s not starting out behind, sugar. He’s starting out carried.
Sweetheart, you are not starting him behind. You are starting him right. Now listen — here’s what we do. First, you walk through your own house and look at every drawer with fresh eyes. That second set of sheets in the linen closet? His. The coffee maker that got replaced last Christmas but still works? His. The little cast iron skillet your mama gave you that you never use because you have a bigger one? His, and it might be the most valuable thing he leaves your house with. Then you call your sister, your best friend, and the lady from church who downsized last year — and you tell every single one of them what you’re doing. They have things they’ve been wanting to pass on and didn’t know who to give them to. He’ll come out of it with a kitchen, not a credit card balance. Last thing: the only things you actually have to buy new are a mattress and a pillow. Everything else has had a life before and will have a better one with him. He’s not starting out behind, sugar. He’s starting out carried.
Send him with the skillet.
There’s a beautiful old tradition in nearly every culture that says when a young person leaves home, the people who raised them send them off with what they need — not by writing a check, but by reaching into their own kitchens and closets and pulling something out. The skillet that fed your family for twenty years carries that with it when it goes. The quilt your grandmother made doesn’t lose its warmth when it moves into a new apartment; it brings the warmth with it. A house full of brand-new things bought in a hurry is a house with no story yet. A house full of hand-me-downs is already a home before the lights are even on. The mountain you’re looking at isn’t a list of objects, dear. It’s a question about whether your son will start out feeling alone or feeling held. Send him with the skillet. Send him with the sheets. Send him with the quilt and the chipped mug and the lamp that used to sit in his grandfather’s office. The new things in life come later. The old things are what teach you that you came from somewhere.
Got a question for Hazel Mae & Fern? hey@thetownie.ai
Readings for the Week of May 14
The week ahead is built around a doorway. Some of you are walking through one. Some of you are watching someone you love walk through one. The question the planets are asking is the same: what are you ready to begin?
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Aries
Mar 21 – Apr 19
The thing you’ve been circling for weeks is the thing you’re meant to start. Stop measuring whether you’re ready. You’re ready. Walk through the door. |
Taurus
Apr 20 – May 20
Birthday season for some of you, and the gift this week is permission. You’ve earned a fresh start somewhere in your life. Taurus doesn’t rush. But begin. Quietly is still begin. |
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Gemini
May 21 – Jun 20
A conversation you have this week opens a door that’s been closed since winter. Don’t overthink what to say. Just say the true thing. The other person is waiting for permission too. |
Cancer
Jun 21 – Jul 22
Something in your family is shifting — a graduation, a move, a milestone that asks you to step into a new role. The role suits you. Take the seat at the head of the table. They want you there. |
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Leo
Jul 23 – Aug 22
You’ve been hesitating because the next step looks bigger than you are. It isn’t. The courage you’re waiting to feel arrives after you start, not before. Begin. The courage catches up. |
Virgo
Aug 23 – Sep 22
Stop making the list. The list is done. What’s left is the part you can’t plan for — the part that requires you to leap and trust that you’ll figure the rest out on the way down. You will. |
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Libra
Sep 23 – Oct 22
This week asks you to choose. Not between two equal options — between the safe one and the true one. You already know which is which. Choose the true one. |
Scorpio
Oct 23 – Nov 21
A door you closed last fall reopens this week. Not to repeat what was — to do it differently. This isn’t going back. This is the next chapter of the same story. |
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Sagittarius
Nov 22 – Dec 21
The wide open road has been calling you for months. This is the week to point the truck. You don’t need a destination. You need movement. Just go. |
Capricorn
Dec 22 – Jan 19
You’ve been building something quietly for months. This is the week it becomes visible. Don’t shrink when someone notices. You earned it by showing up when no one was watching. Now they’re watching. Stand tall. |
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Aquarius
Jan 20 – Feb 18
The community you’ve been building is starting to build back. People you helped six months ago are showing up for you this week. Let yourself receive it. |
Pisces
Feb 19 – Mar 20
A creative project, a calling, a dream you’ve kept folded up in a drawer — this is the week to unfold it. You’ve been waiting for a sign. This is it. The waiting has been long enough. |
The threshold is in front of you. Step through.
Meet Rhea
German Shepherd mix · under a year old · still waiting
Rhea was our Pet of the Week last Thursday, and she’s still at Second Chance Mason waiting for her person. We’re carrying her forward this week because the right home hasn’t found her yet — and a dog this sweet deserves a second chance at her week in the spotlight.
Meet Rhea — our newest rescue from the Mason City Pound, and the kind of dog who makes you wonder how she ended up without a home in the first place.
Rhea is a beautiful German Shepherd mix, just under a year old, with warm amber eyes and ears that say she’s listening to every word — and probably understanding more of it than you’d expect. She’s big enough to look like she means business but young enough that the puppy in her still shows up in the way she leans into you when you scratch behind those ears. And if you’re the kind of person who sits on the porch in the evening and wants someone to sit beside you without needing to fill the silence — Rhea is already auditioning.
Second Chance volunteers have been getting to know her this week, and the reports are unanimous: sweet, affectionate, a snuggler. She loves to stay close, the way some dogs do when they’ve figured out that people are the best part of any room. She’s not bouncing off the walls or demanding. She’s just present — calm and warm and happy to be wherever you are, as long as you’re there too.
Rhea has completed all her vet work. She’s been spayed, fully vaccinated, and is heartworm negative — which means she’s ready to go home with someone who’s ready to have her. If that’s you, or someone you know who’s been saying “maybe” for a while now, reach out to Second Chance.
She’s under a year old. She’s healthy. She’s sweet. And she’s waiting for someone to scratch those ears every evening instead of just on volunteer days.
Pet photography by Suzanne DeMaree — capturing the heart of Hill Country companions.
Send a Graduate The Townie
This week’s edition is dedicated to every kid in the Hill Country walking across a stage — and to every parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, neighbor, coach, teacher, and friend in the bleachers cheering them on. You raised them. You drove them to practice. You showed up when it mattered. The stage is theirs, but the whole town is up there with them.
A weekly thread back home, free forever.
If you know a Class of 2026 graduate leaving for college, the military, or a job in another town — gift them a subscription. It costs nothing. It carries the Hill Country with them.
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The Townie