Perhaps you’ve seen it?

While traveling through the east terminal section of Austin Bergstrom International Airport, just beyond the last glorious whiff of Salt Lick BBQ brisket, past the folks drinking expensive cheap wine at Vino Vino, and just before you get to the elevator of the Delta Sky Club… There it is– one of the most unusual pieces of art to be found in any airport. 

The Toy Joy laughing cat. 

Toy Joy– the greatest toy store on the planet, and possibly the strangest collection of stuff, loosely referred to as "toys" in any airport– complete with their crazed kitty logo. Toy Joy is an Austin icon. 

It’s just one of the brands in the retail portfolio of Fred Schmidt and Shelley Meyer, two smart, successful and worldly entrepreneurs who have also been responsible for several other much-loved Austin retail brands including "Wild About Music", "Austin Rocks", and "Yummi Joy". 

Oh, in addition, Fred has been instrumental in helping to globalize one of the most successful tech incubators in the world, Austin's Capital Factory, and has worked extensively with several London mayors to build relationships between American business and the United Kingdom. 

But what happens to someone who in every respect, was thriving when Covid jerked the steering wheel? 

You might learn what an event like that can take you away from– and what you might find when you arrive at the place you never thought you were going.  

Frelley’s Freedom Machine

Fred is a friend, and this is what I know about Fred and Shelley's entrepreneurial journey since they convinced the City of Austin to let them put up that laughing cat sign in the middle of the airport. 

From the start, Toy Joy was a hit. Both kids and adults loved Toy Joy, the airport got even more hip, and Fred and Shelley rocked it as a business with their partners at Delaware North Corporation. 

That was, until March of 2020. Covid hit. Folks quit traveling; retail sales dried up. 

Fred and Shelley, who I will henceforth refer to as "Frelley", had to run for the hills. Them hills might have looked like "Mount Disaster", yet, they turned into the best thing ever. 

In them hills (I promise, it's the last time I will say "them" instead of "those", I can’t resist…) something was calling, although they could not hear that call at the time. 

That "something" was a big box on wheels sitting dusty and forlorn on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country.  Somebody got the idea to spiff up this old RV, and sell it to some city slicker who maybe didn’t quite know what they were getting into. 

That plan worked. Frelley answered an advertisement– only $10k for a 24-ft ‘98 RV with just 32,000 miles on it. 

Ever the bargain hunters, Frelley headed out to meet their new happiness machine.  

We all know people, particularly those of a certain age (talkin’ ‘bout YOU, Boomer…) who decide to quit their day jobs, and head out on the highway, all Born to be Wild-like. That was not Frelley in 2020. They were running for their lives, when a stray-kitty-like thing, an old RV, adopted them. 

Just as some folks, myself included, don't think they are "cat people", the Fred portion of Frelley was very convinced he was not an RV person. Only his love of Shelley allowed him to put aside his anti-RV prejudice. 

So, they came, they saw, and they were the ones who were conquered (in Latin, "Veni Vidi Me-Vici") by this....RV thing. 

Call it an RV, or, better yet, call it a Freedom Machine, a Self Discovery Mobile, Roots Rejuvenator, Healing Haven, or even, A Life Force Launcher, compelling one to see and do things differently. 

When Covid brought the world we all knew to a standstill, Frelley did not stand still. They hauled ass, in their 20-year-old, newly-tricked-out RV. To parts unknown, or so they thought.  There was no place else to go during Covid. 

Nothing was open except the wide open spaces– parks, lakes, parts-of-self which hadn’t been visited for quite some time. As they traveled across America, just the two of them, plus two pet cats for company and a motorcycle for joy rides, spaces began to become even wider. 

Their minds, hearts, desires, needs, new visions of who they were, and could become. 

Turns out– the parts they went to were not so unknown, just forgotten. 

Buried by years and layers of self, glued on like sheets of wall paper over fine wood paneling, left unseen, but still there, just waiting to be rediscovered. 

Only when they left home, could they return to who they really were: 

Campers, swimmers of wonderful swimming holes 

Tellers of stories by a roaring oakwood fire 

Walkers of cowpaths-to-nowhere 

through a cedar tree-lined countryside 

Readers of entire books 

listeners of vinyl records 

which had been gathering dust in the closet 

Examiners of their own hearts with the question: 

Where have you been all of these years?

From Nowhere to Somewhere New

The answer was: they had been nowhere. At least nowhere as good as here, today, on the other side of Covid, hanging out in their old RV together, souls reshuffled, decks redealt, not valuing the explanation of what the hell had happened to them as much as the prospect of what their new future had in store. 

This is that moment we all hope to get to, when we know that the PTSD of the Covid years has finally run its course. 

When we don’t care about it all that much anymore. 

That’s when we no longer see ourselves as the freaked out, eye-bulging version of the Toy Joy cat, but rather, the face aglow, tongue-wagging, pink-faced kitty who has just seen something to like. 

They had escaped from nowhere to somewhere new. 

That somewhere new is as crystal clear and cool as the waters of the Medina River where they now live most of their days.

Escape is highly underrated. Sometimes you just gotta head for the hills. And if you’re lucky.... really lucky– like Frelley, you just might end up exactly where you needed to be going in the first place. 

The journey is no longer an escape. It’s deliverance.

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