There ain't no more Bon Ton in La Grange ...

Now, this little tidbit will no doubt zip right past many of you.

But those of you who ever had reason to commute regularly between coastal Texas and Austin along State Highway 71 know exactly what I'm talking about.

Last weekend, I made that run for the first time since the day -- 22 years ago -- that I left Austin, University of Texas diploma in hand, my license to conquer the world and take no prisoners.

(Okay, okay, you got me -- it was really just a blank scroll, a prop that they handed out at commencement so they could hold the real thing hostage against your deciding to moon the chancellor from center stage).

I was headed back this time for what turned out to be a delightful -- if drizzly -- weekend with a bunch of fellow cyber-humorists hailing from Washington State to Tennessee to Georgia to Massachusetts to Canada and even Australia, who call ourselves the NetWits. That, at least, was my main reason for heading to Austin, although I had my own, additional, agenda -- but more on that later.

Back in those fondly-remembered college days, I used to cuss Highway 71 for being just two lanes wide. It was odds or evens on whether you'd get stuck behind some lumbering piece of farm machinery for 25 miles, or find an angry Mack bulldog snarling in the rearview, threatening to climb into your back seat if you didn't pick up the pace.

I always wished they'd widen the road to four lanes. It seemed ludicrous that the main road between the state's largest metropolis and its capital was little more than a cowpath.

But eventually, the road curved down into the Colorado River valley, which meant La Grange was just ahead -- La Grange, and a hot, black cuppajoe at the Bon Ton.

The Bon Ton was one of those small-town eateries that catered as much to locals as the highway trade, and it was always packed with an eclectic mix of weatherbeaten farmers who'd arrived in battered old pickups, and dewy-faced youngsters driving shiny new high-school graduation presents with UT's orange student parking stickers pasted in the windshields. The food was all homemade, you could order off the menu or go through the buffet, and a loaf of hot, fresh bread was complimentary.

It sat at that time on the east end of Travis Street (Highway 71), just beyond the Katy tracks and the stately old cemetery, and was at exactly the spot in the trip that you wanted to get out, stretch your legs, get properly caffeinated, and maybe have a slab of pecan pie.

Eventually, they did widen Highway 71 to four lanes, but (and here I urge you -- be careful what you wish for!) they also put in bypasses around all the little towns along the way -- Columbus, La Grange, Smithville, Bastrop. The Bon Ton closed its original east end location, now decidedly off the beaten path, and built a new restaurant on the west side, where the Highway 71 bypass re-joined the old route. And this was where I was going to stop on last weekend's drive ...

... Except that it, too, had closed. Shuttered, abandoned, dark, dead -- closed as closed could be.

I don't know why it closed; perhaps the string of shiny new fast-food franchises just down the road had a role in it.

But I felt like I'd come to pay a surprise call on an old friend and found out he had died. I remembered the heady, happy time of life that I associate with the name ''Bon Ton'' -- how warm and welcome that hot coffee was on the way back to school after Thanksgiving the year all the bridges were iced over and sleet peppered my windshield the whole trip -- how the waitress slipped me two crisp dollar bills when she found out I had just graduated, on that last trip through in 1978.

So I sadly went on my way to Austin, uncoffeed and discomfited. After meeting my new NetWit friends at the Town Lake Holiday Inn, I went off on my own errand -- to the UT student union, where I settled myself down in front of a TV set in this hallowed precinct of my youth, ready to watch my beloved 'Horns open up a major can of whup against the heathen Sooner redcoats from across the Red River.

And then ... well, like I said:

There ain't no more Bon Ton in La Grange.

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