EXPLORE - October 2017

OCTOBER 2017

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For this special issue, we contacted several of our writers, some that are actively still contributing, and some who worked with us in the years gone by. EXPLORE has always been always been about “The Story,” so we asked them to pick some of their favorites that impacted them the most over the past 10 years.

We hope you enjoy this special edition.

KENDALL D. AARON

I’m not a writer. Never have been. I like to think I’m a “thinker” and that I like to ask questions, but the act of “writing” was something that I never envisioned for myself.

Then throw in that I somehow stumbled into the writer for a “spiritual” piece, and I assure you that it’s certainly outside of my comfort zone. That said, for 10 straight years, I have penned this little column and have enjoyed it more than I would have ever admitted.

While I have written this column for general consumption, the conversations and self-introspection that it has brought about have truly been priceless and are things I will be forever grateful.

Marjorie Hagy

Marjorie is a bibliophile, a history nut and an insomniac, among several other conditions, both diagnosed and otherwise. When she's not working tirelessly to avoid getting a real job, she nurses an obsession with her grandson and is involved in passing legislation restricting the wearing of socks with sandals.

She is an aspiring pet hoarder who enjoys vicious games of Scrabble, reading Agatha Christie, and sitting around doing nothing while claiming to be thinking deeply.

Marjorie has five grown children, a poodle to whom she is inordinately devoted in spite of his breath, and holds an Explore record for never having submitted an article on time. She's been writing for us for eight years now.

Jeanna Goodrich Balreira

The day I shook hands with Ben Schooley and sealed my fate as a writer and designer for Explore, he said something to me I’d never forget: “Well, Jeanna, I hope you’re not here for longer than two or three years.” I. Was. Petrified. What in the world did he mean by that? He had just offered me the job of a lifetime for a yearout college grad: the chance to meet some of the most interesting and exciting people I’d ever meet and design art to capture their stories.

I never wanted to leave the coolest job ever. It just turned out that I had to. Ben was right: Two years in, I got “the itch.” I wanted a mentor to teach me more about art and design; I wanted to go back to school to really learn programming; I wanted to stretch my wings and see where they could take me.

See, it wasn’t that Ben didn’t want me there for longer than two years (I don’t know, maybe he was sick of me by the end!)—it was that he knew Explore would be a place for me to, well, explore... to grow, and then to keep going.

The lessons I learned and the memories I made have kept me going. It’s been more than two or three years since I’ve left, but thanks, Explore, for having me back.

KATE KENT

I worked for SMV Texas Media from August 2012 – August 2013. While it seems like a short run, during that year, the team managed two current magazines at that time, launched a new magazine, and watched Ben learn the in’s and out’s of opening a men’s hair salon (which I found so random at the time….hair salon and magazines??). There were happy times and times of trial. In the office wheels were always spinning and there was always talk about “what’s next.” I learned early on that I needed to keep up, get it right the first time or my phone would be ringing. I had to put my “girly emotions” to the side.

Imagine working for a team (mostly Ben) who had the energy (even when he was his most tired) of a Red Bull addict. I found out I was pregnant with my second child a month into working. GREAT. Clearly men aren’t expected to understand the side effects that go along with pregnancy (they couldn’t handle it), but they also don’t want to hear anything about it. Working in a fast paced environment, pregnant, and without being able to enjoy an adult libation at the end of a long week was a challenge in itself. I tried to keep up but after trying to work from home with a three month old, I had to say my goodbyes. Above all a very fun year – was asked to do random jobs, but that’s what made it fun – something different everyday – you never knew what to expect!

Michelle Hans

While my time with Explore was unfortunately short, it was definitely a memorable and fun “season” of my life. Having been a Boerne-ite since 1992, I hold a very special place in my heart for this town. Therefore, I absolutely loved being able to work for a magazine that reflected our town’s unique and wonderful attributes – from our rich history to the current events and everything in between. It’s no wonder so many families have moved to this “little” town – we’ve got a pretty great thing going here, no matter how fast it’s expanding – and Explore has done a great job showcasing our amazing community.

To be a part of Explore’s 10year history and our town’s very-own unique, monthly ‘must-read’ is something I will always treasure.

That and meeting Old Timer.

And let me tell you…he is every bit of a curmudgeon in real life as he is on paper. But I wouldn’t have him any other way.

BEN WEBER

I don’t usually write. I prefer to take the stories and articles produced by the actual writers and put my personal design touch on them to add another layer of depth. I started at EXPLORE doing the design and layout of the magazine. That morphed into also doing photography. Then that morphed into writing. I suppose my next step is to completely take over the magazine in a coup of bright colors eye catching layouts... or have I already done that?

People like to talk about all the interesting characters they meet in a particular job, and while that certainly does keep life interesting around here, the best part of EXPLORE is that it has allowed me freedom. Freedom from having to produce something to please someone else. I get to design and write things that I think are cool. If the reader likes it, GREAT. If not, that’s ok too.

This publication is truly unique. Ever seen a whole magazine done in 3-D? We did it October 2015. It was hell. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve truly been blessed to be a part of this magazine.

EXPLORE magazine is published by Schooley Media Ventures in Boerne, TX. EXPLORE Magazine and Schooley Media Ventures are not responsible for any inaccuracies, erroneous information, or typographical errors contained in this publication submitted by advertisers. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of EXPLORE and/or Schooley Media Ventures. Copyright 2017 Schooley Media Ventures, 930 E. Blanco, Ste. 200, Boerne, TX 78006

Publisher Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com

10 | EXPLORE

Operations Manager Peggy Schooley peggy@smvtexas.vom

Creative Director Benjamin N. Weber ben.weber@smvtexas.com

ADVERTISING SALES 210-507-5250 sales@hillcountryexplore.com

COMING NOVEMBER 2017

|

NE XT TO LIT TLE GRETEL

DEAREST EXPLORE READER, “From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent, It only can be squandered.”

- Roman Payne Welcome to the 10th Anniversary edition of EXPLORE. Wow, what a sentence to read. What began as little more than a silly and crazy idea, has consumed the past 10 years of my life, and has been something that I never imagined would reach as many people as it has.

I’ve told the story of EXPLORE and how it came to be a few times in my Publisher’s letters, so I’ll spare you another re-telling. If you haven’t heard the story, we’ll just say that EXPLORE was born of necessity and has grown to something with a life of its own. And for that, I am quite proud.

I have too many memories of working on this publication to share, but I can confidently say that when I think about EXPLORE, I just smile. It has its own personality, its own heart, and it truly does beat. Thank you to each and every one of you that have allowed us to produce this publication, and I sincerely pray that you smile when you think of EXPLORE as well.

For this issue, we reached out to several of the people that have worked on it over the years with us, and asked them to share a few memories. As their submissions came in, the quote above came to mind as I recognized that while working on EXPLORE was a “job” for each of these people…it was also an adventure. It involved a lot of laughs, some great memories, and in looking back on their time here, each person seemed to do so with a large smile.

So I smile, too.

It’s been hard at times. It’s been stressful. It’s been a lot of late nights. But it’s also simply been an exploration of every emotion imaginable, and an appreciation for virtually every person that has crossed my path. And really, we should all be so lucky to call such an adventure their “JOB”.

Welcome to October. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for 10 years of reading, 10 years of laughter, and for 10 years of EXPLORATION. Here’s to 10 more as I hope that we all continue to EXPLORE. Smiling,

Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com

PS – You will find throughout this issue some comments from people that have worked with us. Part of their assignment was also to select their favorite article from when they worked on EXPLORE. As for me, I’ll begin with the following Publisher’s Letter that I wrote back in 2011 about my grandparents. Sometimes I re-read it and think that it plays out almost like a movie. My Epaw is still with us, we had dinner just the other night, and I always hope that I can never be scared to throw off my lines, catch a breeze, and drift in whatever direction the wind takes me.

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ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: SEPTEMBER 2011

From the Publisher Dearest EXPLORE reader,

These are my grandparents: Patsy Sue Craighead and Bedie Lee Craighead, Jr. They celebrated 65 years of marriage this past fall. Like many, many others, we (the grandkids) created ridiculous names for them that then stuck and followed them forever. For me, this is a picture of my Tutu and Epaw. They liked to go bowling, they enjoyed frequent excursions in their RV, and at one time they enjoyed dancing. Basically, they did everything together. They were the best of friends. One simply didn’t do anything without the other.

When I was a kid, they had a little condo down at Port Aransas. All of us kids would go down, and we would jump into Epaw’s old boat and he would motor around the bays in search of reds and trout. Looking back, I think I spent more time on the water than dry land during those summers. And the love of the water that I have today probably comes from Epaw. Sure, we caught some fish, but mainly, it was just nice to be out there smelling the air and listening to the gulls overhead and feeling the sun. Because of these summer trips to Tutu and Epaw’s condo, the coast is still one of my favorite places.

On one of those trips, we were out in the bay and passed a sailboat.

I’ve never understood the fascination with sailing. Give me a motor. Being at the mercy of the wind doesn’t sound all that appealing to me. I said something to this effect to Epaw, and he smiled and said, “Not me. I’ve always wanted to sail. I’ve never learned how, though.” He laughed, and continued, “I almost did once. I bought a little sailboat and took it to LBJ with your uncle David (his son). We put it in the water and David says that he wants to sail it real quick. So I let him. And you know what he did?

He drove it right out to the middle of Lake LBJ, flipped it over, broke the mast, and sent the keel straight to the bottom!!” I laughed heartily at this.

Epaw laughed, too. But then added, “Maybe someday I’ll get another sailboat. I sure would like that.”

And with that, it was the last time we talked about a sailboat for 25+ years.

In March, we lost Tutu.

Damned Alzheimer’s took her from us. I sat with Epaw on the back porch of his house when they came outside and told him that his best friend was gone.

With his daughter (my mom) sobbing on his neck, he patted her head and said “She was a good momma.” I don’t think that he slept the next 3 nights.

Shortly before her passing, he was bringing her home from the hospital for what turned out to be the last time. With his ailing wife soon to arrive by ambulance, he spots a little sailboat sitting in a driveway with a simple FOR SALE sign taped to it. Epaw stops, gets out, asks “How much?” and within a few minutes, drives off towing his beat-up $150 sailboat.

We (the whole family) assumed he had lost his mind. “Epaw, it’s 100 degrees outside!! You’re 86!! You can’t go out there and clean up a sailboat!! Now is not the time!” He scoffed at us all, and ignored our “logic”. I personally figured the boat would simply rot in his backyard.

I was wrong.

After losing Tutu, he went out there in the mornings and the evenings and worked hard on the boat. The ropes were rotted, the paint was peeling, and the entire boat had to be rebuilt. He worked tirelessly on the boat, and everyone called him frequently to ensure heat stroke hadn’t set in.

But sure enough, at 86 years young, and after 4 months of very hard, hot, back-breaking work, he actually finished his sailboat. I was honored to be there on the banks of Canyon Lake yesterday as myself and several of his grandkids (and great-grandkids) helped him lift the mast, assemble the keel, and raise the sails. His weathered hands ran the ropes through the assorted buckles, and the sun beat down on us tirelessly.

He climbed in, we gave him a gentle push, and slowly the sails grabbed the wind and he sailed off. I sat on the shore with my own son and couldn’t help but smile as we watched Epaw fulfill his dream. Later, my son and I climbed in with Epaw and he gave us a nice, gentle sail around Canyon Lake. Three generations of us, listening to Epaw explain the ropes and the wind directions and cautioning us what to touch and what not to touch. My son didn’t appreciate the significance of it, but I did.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you that you can’t do something. Epaw didn’t even know how to sail when he bought the sailboat. So, he went to the library, checked out a dozen or so books on sailing, and read each of them in the evenings after working on his boat. I smiled when I saw the stack of books, and saw his notepad of hand-written notes beside them.

There’s a whole lot here to learn from my Epaw. If you have a dream, do it. If you don’t know how, learn how. If it’s hard work, don’t let that stop you. If you’re up there in years, that’s no excuse.

If you need help (as in a gentle push from shore), ask for it.

And perhaps the most important lesson of all: never, NEVER, stop dreaming. No matter what you may lose in your life, as long as you have your dreams, you have more than most.

Welcome to September. May cooler temperatures be just around the corner. And may gentle breezes sail you through the Hill Country as you EXPLORE, love, and dream.

AREA EVENTS

Get out and enjoy the great Texas Hill Country!

The most comprehensive events calendar. Send submissions to info@hillcountryexplore.com October 21-22 Old Gruene Market Days Nearly 100 vendors offer uniquely crafted items and packaged Texas foods. Gruene Historic District. gruenemarketdays.com KERRVILLE October 7 Kerr County 4-H Wild Game Dinner Enjoy a feast of wild game, chicken, or catfish, as well as an auction and raffle.

Kerr County Hill Country Youth Event Center, 3785 Texas 27. kerr.agrilife.org October 12 Symphony of the Hills Concert—“Wild, Wild West” This concert features a theme inspired by the American frontier spirit as seen in the cowboy personae, the grand landscapes, and even the frontier of musical composition. Cailloux Theater, 910 Main St. symphonyofthehills.org October 13-15 James Avery Invitational A 54-hole, two-man golf tournament is played over three days and three different golf courses: Scott Schreiner, Riverhills, and Comanche

BANDERA October 3 Cowboy Capital Opry Grand Old Opry-style entertainment is hosted by Gerry and Harriet Payne.

Refreshments and door prizes. Silver Sage Community Center, 803 Buck Creek. silversagecorral.org October 7 Market Days Arts and crafts vendors downtown. Bandera Courthouse Lawn, 500 Main St. banderatexasbusiness.com BLANCO October 21 October Fall Festival Features a barbecue lunch (beef, sausage, potato salad, beans, cole slaw, and dessert), rummage sale, silent auction, quilt drawing, and prize drawing. All funds raised will benefit Trinity’s Scholarship Fund and 2018 Youth Campers. Trinity Lutheran Church, 703 N. Main St. trinityofblanco.com BOERNE October 13 Texas Hill Country Fall Fine Art Show and Sale A premier three-day event featuring more than 40 artists, produced and presented by Boerne Professional Artists. You’ll see a diversity of art and media created by renowned artists from across the state. Cana Ballroom, 202 W. Kronkosky St. visitboerne.org October 14-15 Market Days Artists, crafters, and vendors share their creative talents and wares to the sounds of homegrown Texas musicians. Main Plaza, 204 E. San Antonio. visitboerne.org October 14-15 The Key to the Hills Rod Run The 31st annual event features a pre-1949 cut-off year which distinguishes it from a “classic car show” (1949–1964). Nearly 500 coupes, sedans, and roadsters coming from across the country will take over Main Street on Saturday, and cars will be on display on Main Plaza and throughout downtown. Hill Country Mile, Main Street. visitboerne.org October 28 Brew Bash Come to RANDOM Beer Garden and enjoy costume contests for adults & children, tons of Halloween games, live music by Chris Lopez Band and enjoy pint glass and Oktoberfest brews. 11 Upper Cibolo Creek Rd. October 28 Boerne Boo Celebration Celebrate Halloween with mule rides, a balloon sculptor, face painting, artsand crafts, a bounce house, a trunk or treat, a costume contest, and a boocycle contest featuring decorated bicycles for a Halloween parade with prizes. Patrick Heath Public Library, 451 N. Main. visitboerne.org October 28 Hot Rod Night—Halloween Bash Reminiscent of oldfashioned Americana street parties—a gathering place for old and new friends. Dress in costume for this event. Soda Pops, 103 N. Main. visitboerne.org

14 | EXPLORE

BULVERDE October 7 Fall Chamber Market Day The semi-annual event will host 100-plus vendors on the blacktop, attracting more than 500 shoppers looking for unique treasures, delicious eats, and fun times. 20475 Texas 46. bulverdespringbranchchamber.com COMFORT October 15-31 Scarecrow Invasion Visit Comfort to see many scarecrow displays. Businesses and residents go all out to create unique and imaginative scarecrows for the enjoyment of all who see them. Various locations. comfort-texas.com FREDERICKSBURG October 1-31 Texas Wine Month Trail Take a self-guided tour of Texas Hill Country wineries and receive special tastings and discounts. Tickets are limited and available online only.

Various locations. texaswinetrail.com October 6 First Friday Art Walk Tour fine art galleries offering special exhibits, demonstrations, refreshments, and extended viewing hours the first Friday of every month. Various locations. ffawf.com October 6-8 Oktoberfest Celebrate the fun and flavor of Fredericksburg’s German heritage at the 37th annual fest, with three days of music, food, drink, dancing, arts and crafts, children’s entertainment, and more. Marktplatz, 126 W. Main St. oktoberfestinfbg.com October 7-8 Pacific Combat Living History Reenactment See equipment and weapons used during WWII and a battle reenactment set on an island in the Pacific. Pacific Combat Zone, 508 E. Austin. pacificwarmuseum.org October 20-22 Trade Days Shop more than 400 vendors in seven barns, with acres of antiques, a biergarten, live music, and more.

Sunday Farms, 355 Sunday Farms Lane. fbgtradedays.com October 28 Fredericksburg Food and Wine Fest A grand celebration of Texas food and wine with musical entertainment and several special events. Marktplatz, 126 W. Main St. fbgfoodandwinefest.com GRUENE October 5-8 Gruene Music and Wine Fest This Americana event benefiting the United Way of Comal County features the best in live Texas music and the best in Texas food and wines at Gruene Hall and The Grapevine. All four days of the 31st annual event will be filled with vintner and music events, food and beer samplings, and the Great Guitar Auction.

Gruene Historic District. gruenemusicandwinefest.org October 19 Come and Taste It A featured winemaker showcases three of its newest released, top-selling, or hardest-to-find wines, alongside a craft brew hand-picked by The Grapevine staff. The complimentary tastings are held on the patio and garden. Samples of food will be provided, and each event features live music and prize giveaways. The Grapevine, 1612 Hunter Road. grapevineingruene.com

October 14 Hill Country Swap Meet A giant community garage sale, flea market, and trade days all-in-one. Buy or sell new, used, antiques, collectibles, arts and crafts, knives, books, furniture, tools, clothing, kitchen and household items, and more. Concessions on site and lots of free parking. Pets on a leash are welcome. Kerr County Hill Country Youth Event Center, 3785 Texas 27. kerrmarketdays.org October 14 Kerr County Market Days An indoor marketplace for vendors of original handcrafted goods, artwork, and homegrown plants and produce. Pets on a leash are welcome. Kerr County Hill Country Youth Event Center, 3785 Texas 27. kerrmarketdays.org October 26-29 Kerr County Fair The 38th annual event features a judged creative arts exhibits, 4-H prospect show, bull riding, carnival/midway, scholarship pageant, parade, dance, vendors, children’s activities, and more. Kerr County Hill Country Youth Event Center, 3785 Texas 27. kerrcountyfair.com October 31 Family Fright Night An evening of safe and traditional family fun. Trick-or-treating, games, popcorn, and a movie. Kerrville-Schreiner Park, 2385 Bandera Highway. kerrvilletx.gov MEDINA October 6-9, 14-16, 21-23, 28-30 Great Hill Country Pumpkin Patch Enjoy unlimited hayrides, hay bale maze and giant hay stacks, a petting zoo, tours of the apple orchard and cider mill, pumpkin painting, storytelling and sing along time, and mural painting. For a small fee you can ride a pony, take a barrel train ride, enjoy face painting (weekends only), complete a sand art project (weekends only), build a pomander, or feed the animals. Love Creek Orchards, 13558 Texas 16. lovecreekorchards.com October 7 The Old Timers Trading Post Meet local artists and artisans. The Old Timer, 14178 Texas 16.

NEW BRAUNFELS October 28-29 Train Show Event includes a free train ride on the Landa Park railroad for children up to 10 years of age. Civic/ Convention Center, 375 S. Castell Ave. PIPE CREEK October 7-8, 14-15, 21-22, 28-29 Pipe Creek Pumpkin Patch Activities will include a hayride, hay jump, scarecrow dressing, visiting farm animals, and pumpkin painting with the purchase of a pumpkin. Snacks and drinks are available for purchase, as are other activities. Pipe Creek Christmas Tree Farm, 805 Phils Road. pipecreekpumpkinpatch.com WIMBERLEY October 7 Market Day Walk along a shaded path to discover treaures of all sorts and enjoy lots of great food and live music. Lions Field, 601 FM 2325. shopmarketdays.com October 27-Nov. 19 “The Diary of Anne Frank” Performed in the Burdine Johnson Indoor Studio Theatre. EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens, 1101 FM 2325. emilyann.org

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WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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The following article was the 1st one that I ever put together for EXPLORE, which was also the first ever issue printed, hence the black and white layout as it was initially produced on newsprint. I sat on a dock and had no idea what I was doing, but I just started “talking”. It’s not the deepest column, nor is it the best written, but for me it was the initial step in a 10 year long journey that does a good job of reflecting where I was in that particular moment. There have been a lot of memories created since then, and I hope to create many more. Thanks for reading, thanks for the countless emails I’ve gotten, and thanks for the many, many words of encouragement.

- Kendall D. Aaron

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: OCTOBER 2007

18 | EXPLORE

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One of my favorite subjects has been Dr John Francis Nooe, legendary physician of old Boerne. Dr Nooe was a legend in his own time, and many babies delivered in their mother’s bed were named in his honor; many a gallbladder or set of tonsils removed beside a fire on a scrubbed table in a nighttime kitchen. Dr Nooe was active during Boerne’s Resort Era, when Boerne was known all over the world as a spa town whose mountain ozone and sulfur springs had curative powers for those cursed with tuberculosis or attacked by poison gas in the Great War. This is the story I wrote about Dr Nooe in January 2010, when I was just new to EXPLORE. - Marjorie Hagy

20 | EXPLORE

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: JANUARY 2010

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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22 | EXPLORE

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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The first interesting and exciting person I met was wearing an evil eye on a silver band around his ring finger. Dusty Pendleton, Bandera resident and Hill Country landscape artist, had invited me to the Grotto Grill and encouraged me to order the warm lentil salad—all while his evil eye was burning a hole in my own. Little did I know, that ring would burn a hole somewhere deep in my soul, too; as we toured his artist that afternoon, I learned so much about life and art—and the scary thought of life without art—that I vowed from that day forward never to forfeit the things I was passionate about. (I would later recognize Dusty’s landscapes spread across the walls of Robert Earl Keen’s Kerrville home and notice them peeking out from the corner of a Skype screen with a professor at Texas Tech.) That evening, I left Bandera with a burning desire to create, to challenge myself, and that desire hasn’t left me since.

- Jeanna Goodrich Balreira

Exhibited at ARTIFACTS (by the Art Associaton of Bandera), Dusty’s dozen-canvas portrayal of what life in Bandera might have been like during the rustic yet baroque period when true cowboys first came to the Cowboy Capital of the World.

F F

rom the moment we shook hands, I could not stop staring at his glass eye. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. And it stared back at me enough to burn a hole straight into my curiosity. “Dusty,” I asked, “Is that… is that a glass eye?”

“Oh this thing?” he laughed, taking it off and setting it on the table.

“Pick it up and look at it.” It was glass alright, but it looked so real. Real enough to look back at me, almost as if it was seeing into my soul. “I got it in England, in the Greenwich Village,” Dusty continued, as I held it cautiously between two fingers. I studied it closer: the piercing hazel eye was nestled in a silver setting atop an etched, silver band. “I found it in this jewelry store, and it was really the only thing there that stood out to me, so I bought it and wore it.”

“The evil eye, mal ojo,” he said the gypsies called it; certainly, speaking with a man wearing an eyeball set in a ring around his finger would make for quite an interesting lunch conversation. And sure enough, over a warm lentil salad at the Grotto Grill in Bandera, I began my investigation into the insights of Dusty Pendleton, Hill Country painter extraordinaire.

Six of Dusty’s oil paintings hang on the walls of the back room of the Grotto, and hues of deep blue and purple bring a surreal dusk to the window-lit space. In one, a lone, nude woman stands upon dark grass; in another, a tricycle upon stones. Soft, cool, yet vivid tones demand the same sense of calm reflection the subjects in the paintings have.

“I met an English artist, Niel Bally, while living in Oaxaca,” he began.

“Niel ended up passing through Texas on his way home, and he talked me into going out to paint en plein aire with him. As we are on the same latitude as is Cairo, he found the sun to be too bright and the landscape colors flattened by the light. I took his point,” Dusty noted, “but knew that the crepuscular light of evening allowed for a much more diverse palette in mauves and blues and violets as the daylight faded into night. Then came the night and the moonlight that allowed for even more experimentation. The colors allow for an overall sense of mood in the works, and that allows for more surrealist

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approaches to standard subjects.”

Yet Dusty’s subjects seem far from standard. Some of his paintings feature nudes in comfortable settings and poses, some display vast landscapes saturated with tints of dawn or dusk—and some combine the two. Taking “simple sketches” and meshing them with “landmark shapes,” Dusty inserts inhabitants into his surrealistic scenes. “My figures come from sketches,” he said; “I like to catch people being people, and make a note of it. Real people are my inspirations, and I craft my memory of their profiles into an artistic design.”

Beginning his foray into the field of art at a young age, Dusty was involved with art and theater at Tivy High School in Kerrville. He graduated from Southwest Texas State University in 1970 with a major in commercial art, initially aspiring to become a professional artist in New York City.

Following his dream, Dusty eventually “stopped off” in New York City during his life’s world tour, but not before exploring spirit and art across the pond.

That same year, Dusty married his wife, Martha, and in 1971, they took the little money and big, open minds they had, and set out to immerse themselves in the European art world. First stop: Spain. Europe’s artistic atmosphere allowed the artist to expand his perceptions on art and art appreciation. “The European attitude towards the arts is…” Dusty paused, “well, it’s different. I remember going to an art show in Hannover [Germany] where I saw children, second graders through junior high, completely nonplussed by nudity. But back in the states, I didn’t get any exhibits. In Europe, you tell someone, ‘I’m an artist,’ and they ask, “What discipline?’ In the U.S., you tell someone you’re an artist, and they ask, “But what do you do for a living?”

Yet after a while, “the money ran out,” Dusty recalled; he and Martha packed their bags for home in Texas, where they had their daughter.

After some success with a solo exhibit, the family decided to return to Europe, where they expanded their world tour through France, England, and Spain. Dusty even received an offer to live in a castle in Scotland, where, though the colors of the weather would have suited his painting

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: JULY 2009

Hanging from magnets on his wall is a photograph of Francis Bacon inside his studio.

“Sometimes I think my studio is a huge mess,” Dusty commented, “but then I look at that photograph and I am reminded that

I’m doing a pretty good job keeping things clean.”

environment nicely, the “dark season was dark—too dark.”

“My wife and I seemed to be turning our backs on the American lifestyle that the Europeans were striving for,” Dusty said. “But once your horizons are expanded, you continuously learn from them.”

Dusty’s horizons soon reached to Oaxaca, Mexico—“where even the ugly is beautiful,” he laughed—where artistic lessons became saturated with vivid color. When their time in Oaxaca was done, they once again returned to the place to which Dusty had always come back—Texas.

Spain, New York, Houston, Taos, England, Paris, Mexico: the arrows on the imaginary map in my head were bouncing back and forth faster than I could follow. “Everything is an adventure, even getting your clothes washed,” Dusty said about the multiple stops on his spontaneous tour. “Eight trips,” Dusty said, “of going somewhere, running out of money, coming back, and leaving again.” Eight trips—to understand, to experience, to learn from. “But,” he added, “what the foreign experience teaches you the most is how great it is to be home.”

And if home is where the heart is, Dusty’s heart is in the hills.

Returning to his Hill Country roots, Dusty has settled in Bandera with his wife, his paintbrushes, and some loving pets. As we climbed the stairs to his studio—a split-level area in his home that defines the traditional artist loft lifestyle—with walls covered in paintings and sketches and floors covered in paint splatters and canvas tubes. An old, yellowed newspaper photograph hangs from three magnets on the aluminum wall: Francis Bacon, the Irish figurative painter, sits on a bar stool in the middle of his studio, surrounded literally on all sides by pieces of his work. “Sometimes I think my studio is a huge mess,” Dusty commented, “but then I look at that photograph and am reminded that I’m doing a pretty good job keeping things clean.”

Though he described it as messy, I found it rather comfortable, and began to realize that the perspectives in his paintings are as intimate and thought-provoking as the setting in which he paints them. Dusty surrounds himself with inspiration: photographs by artist-friends, drawings from his daughter when she was a child, and books, books, books—one specifically covering the history of art, from which Dusty pulls such visual inspiration as ancient cave drawings and the figurine of Venus of Villendorf. “As humans,” he said, “we were drawing before we ever learned to write, in order to capture something so abstract as an idea and make it concrete. One could even go as far to say that if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.”

Well, Dusty’s art sure exists, experienced as both the concretely physical and the intensely emotional.

Among the colors, the subjects, and the surroundings, what exists in between his strokes is far deeper than merely a painting. “I get lost in the world of art,” Dusty sighed; “The universe is populated with people and circumstances.

I look at stuff and I watch things just start to happen,” he said. “As a culture, we are bombarded by watching—many times, watching five or six things at once. We live in a time where the every blank space on walls in a home is filled by a flat-screen television,” Dusty remarked. “But as far as I’ve noticed, experiences can’t be repossessed.”

Find Dusty Pendleton’s work throughout the Hill Country:

Artifacts: The Artist’s Association of Bandera 714 Main St Bandera, TX 78003 830-796-9669

River’s Edge Gallery

832 Water St. Kerrville, TX 78028 (830) 895-5184

Hill Country Arts Foundation 120 Point Theatre Road South Ingram, TX 78025 830.367.5120 July 10—Aug 1, 2009 in “Turning Point II”

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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My Road Trip column quickly grew to be my favorite part of Explore every month. Alison and I would close our eyes, point at the Texas map, and see where our gas tanks could take us. No road trip was quite as memorable (or, now that I think about it, as quintessentially Texas) as our trip to the Shiner Brewery. It was February. It was raining. It was cold. But we were two redheads on a mission, and nothing was going to stop us from paying homage to the brewery that had served us so well during our college years.

And we weren’t the only ones. We threw back beers with worshippers from England, Arkansas, and even the major of Shiner and a city councilman. They all asked us what brought us to the tiny Texas town, and it was such an amazing feeling to answer, “Work! We’re on the clock!” Their responses were unanimous: “you two ladies have the coolest job ever.” We couldn’t have agreed more.

- Jeanna Goodrich Balreira

Had the Eagles been blaring “Life in the fast lane will surely make you lose your mind,” the first hour of our trip would have been picture-perfect. We, however, were too busy buzzing on what we can only describe as Super Caffeine and had already completely lost our minds.

We were at it again—another road trip to another fabulous place somewhere in the great state of Texas. Only this time, we knew where we were going, we knew exactly how to get there, and we knew we were running really, really late. This—only, let’s say this part is fiction, to avoid any potential trouble from my police-officer-nextdoor neighbor—this leg of the trip called for a smooth 90 miles an hour and a radar detector. No lazy sauntering down mistcovered gravel roads, no sentimental solitude or photos of cattle guards; nope, we were two redheads on a mission, and that mission was BEER.

Alison and I were headed to the beautifully infamous Shiner, Texas. We’d spent our college years occasionally swimming in the deliciousness of Blonde, Bock, and Hefeweizen, and had concluded that it was time to pay homage to that which served us so well. We were scheduled to make the 1:30 tour of the small-town brewery, but somehow we’d fallen sorely behind.

So, after a harrowing journey around 1604 and a mad dash down Interstate 10, our minds were spinning and our hearts were racing (and all of this was after only one cup of coffee). What would it be like? What amazing new facts about beer would we discover? And, perhaps most importantly, would we even get there on time to experience it at all?

Peeling into the parking lot, we grabbed the camera and some cash. It was 1:42, and we’d made the world’s fastest trip to Texas’s finest beer-brewing town. As we ran for the front door, the sweet aroma of fresh hops and golden wheat filled our senses. We could almost taste the beauty of what we were about to experience—almost. As we darted up to the Gift Shop, the last trickle of tourists was headed for the brewery’s front doors.

Success! We’d scooted up right on time, falling in with the back of the line like we’d been there all along. It didn’t take much time for us to make friends with the people who were on our tour, and as we ooh’ed and ahh’ed over prohibition-era gadgets and conveyor-belt bottle toppers, we were on top of the world—or at least on the top floor of the Shiner brewery.

Though there were no golden Oompa Loompas, there was a scientific Beer Lab. Yes: a laboratory dedicated solely to testing and tasting Shiner beers. Huge copper drums filled with warm, flat beer ran straight to—get this—a beer fountain. And a story below, some fifteen- to eighteen-hundred cases of beer were being bottled purely for our satisfaction. It was a dream come true.

Back at the Gift Shop, we tried our first of four samples and made our first of many new friends. Neither of us being the shy types, we met people from England, from Arkansas, and, of course, from Shiner—the mayor and a councilman, in fact. They all asked us what brought us to the tiny Texas town, and it was such an amazing feeling to answer, “Work! We’re on the clock!” Their responses were unanimous: “you two ladies have the coolest job ever.” We couldn’t have agreed more.

As the daylight dwindled and our fuzzy heads became clear again, we took in some freezing cold air outside before heading back home. Though we’d earned invitations to visit a bank, bar hop at the Riverwalk, and even to stay in Shiner forever, we still had a

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ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: FEBRUARY 2010

couple of stops to make before bringing our road trip to an end. Bidding farewell to the town that had (and forever will!) put so many smiles on our faces, we set out with our last destination in mind: Mecca. :: Insert ‘screeching halt’ sound effect here :: Wait, what? Mecca? Is that even on I-10?

For those of you who have ever driven to Houston on the aforementioned Interstate, you know exactly what I am talking about. Around mile-marker 599 a billboard reads that there are only 33 miles to go, and from there, the countdown begins. As Exit 632 looms in the distance, bright-red flashing LEDs beckon you to try the best homemade fudge in the land. A fluorescent, yellow glow lights up the sky, and a goofy beaver in a red baseball cap smiles with his two big buckteeth.

It’s heaven on earth. It’s Road Trip Mecca.

It’s… Buc-ee’s.

Home of Beaver Nuggets and spicy peanuts—and, of course, restrooms so clean you could have lunch in them—Buc-ee’s surpasses any modern convenience store. I would vote for Buc-ee’s for president. Bigger than many grocery stores and far more entertaining, there’s nothing else quite like it on earth. Buc-ee’s is the worst place in the world to get stuck if you’re a vegetarian (turkey jerky and summer sausage and breakfast tacos all day), but the best place in the world to get stuck if you’re almost out of gas (and, well, the Passat said it had 8 miles left in the tank when we got there).

If you’ve never experienced the magic of the Beaver, you’re missing out on the hottest restroom break this side of the Mississippi. “Ice, Beer, Jerky—All 3 Food Groups,” their billboard boasts; and to top it off, they make an amazing bag of taffy guaranteeing to stick your kids’ mouths shut.

After picking up said Beaver Nuggets and spicy peanuts, we filled the gas tank, posed for a frosty picture, and made our way back to Boerne. Our tummies were full of goodness, and our souls were too. Of course, it was this finally peaceful satisfaction (and maybe the fact that I wasn’t fully focused on driving way too fast) that invited me to reflect on my day’s amazing journey.

Never in my life did I imagine that a job would take me to a brewery, to Buc-ee’s, and back. Hearing echoes of “You really do have the coolest job ever,” I had to stop and think about it: Wow, I really do. I haven’t been in the “real world” too long—it seems like only yesterday I was living in a dorm room and, well, drinking way too much Shiner. By some mix of fate and God’s sense of humor, I now find myself in Boerne, sitting behind a desk in a little blue house, in my jeans and flip-flops. Somewhere along the line, my job stopped being a job and became a passion. I honestly couldn’t be happier.

Though I joke about it all the time, I truly feel blessed to be in a situation where I work doing something I love— really, how many people can say that? Am I just plain lucky? Or have I stumbled upon the greatest discovery of my life yet? I feel an incredible enthusiasm for meeting new people, for working with clients, for being in the middle of it all. Through stress and swear words and sarcasm, I leave work every day knowing that I couldn’t be happier, I wouldn’t be happier, doing anything else.

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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28 | EXPLORE

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While there are a quite a few of them, I am always intrigued by the more scandalous and dramatic stories. One that comes to mind is “The Ancient Scourge” which gives a remarkable insight into the area’s historic influx of TB patients seeking treatment at some of our past, and various, health resorts from the mid-1800s until the early 20th century. “Murder in the Castle”, written about the fascinating background of the Graham family is another favorite! Did you even know that Boerne at one time had a castle?!? Another gem that comes to mind as it is a bit relevant to the current goings-on around us is “Generally Speaking”. Marjorie writes about the many (locally) famous residents’, their businesses, and the very interesting “Did you know?” accounts of providing goods to this area of long-ago.

- Michelle Hans

BY Marjorie Hagy If you’ve never heard of a book called Historic Images of Boerne but you don’t actually own it, then I think you should put this magazine down and go buy yourself a copy immediately. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Welcome back. That book you just purchased is an invaluable, encyclopedic resource for all things old Boerne. I’m seriously on my second copy, the first one having fallen all to pieces due to frequent thumbing and the current number not looking all that chipper. It’s not everything you’ll ever need, and it’s not the whole story, but it’s this great jumping-off place that’ll make you want to dive into the vertical files at the library and only come up for air and the occasional bathroom break or at least that’s the effect it had on me a long, long time ago.

Written by a wonderful man whom I personally knew named Garland Perry and first published in 1982 - the year I graduated from Boerne High School - Historic Images happens to contain two oddly intriguing sentences; a little scrap of a story that started it all for me: “Reinhard ignored his advice and went on out to the woods near the present Masonic Lodge on Blanco Road. Later his team came running into town pulling an empty wagon.” That’s it, that’s the one random, kind of offhand little morsel that grabbed my imagination and set off a lifelong fascination with real-life history. It was so mind-blowing to me that right there, along Blanco Street in the middle of town, a place I passed every day on my way to school, had once been a stand of thick woods on the outskirts of town, and that on a January morning more than a hundred years ago, a man rode into that cold, foggy thicket and never rode out.

After that - and I was 18 years old! - I developed this weird habit of lurking around cemeteries and trespassing on other people’s property on the trail of rock fences and weed-choked ruins and skeletons of longgone houses. I mean, before that sentence caught my fancy, history had just been a required course at school; one that was usually assigned to a coach and that consisted mostly of names of dead presidents and battles long won or lost, fought for reasons nobody could remember anymore.

But Garland Perry and his two fluky sentences got me hooked, and I owe him a debt of gratitude not only for all the facts and the pictures and the stories he rescued from the past, but also for inspiring this love of Boerne and its history in me.

Having said all that, I do have this one bone to pick with my hero: his book barely mentions the long period in our town’s early history

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when Boerne was a world-famous health resort and spa town; when the visitors who came here from all over the world often outnumbered the permanent citizens and almost every home sheltered a lodger. I mean, he alludes to it kind of offhandedly here and there when talking about an old building, but come on, man, this is a big deal! That said though, I’m still permanently in Mr. Perry’s debt, and right now as I write this I’m pouring out a little of my iced tea for my homie.

Tuberculosis was an ancient scourge that cut a swath through every segment of every society in the world. It was a disease that had ravaged the Holy Lands in ancient times and killed pharaoh and slave alike.

The Old Testament speaks of it - a consumptive illness that felled the Jewish people if they strayed from God. As phthisis, it first made an appearance in Greek literature five hundred years before Christ was born, and Hippocrates called it the most common cause of illness and death in his time. In Europe, an epidemic had begun in the 17th century that would rage for two hundred years, earning itself the epithet The Great White Plague, and in the United States nearly twenty percent of all deaths were due to the scourge of tuberculosis. Consumption. The White Death. “Captain Among these Men of Death”, they called it.

Throughout history, tuberculosis has killed more people than the black death, leprosy, and HIV combined.

German scientist Robert Koch, who in 1882 first isolated the bacteria responsible for TB, wrote that, “If the importance of a disease for mankind is measured from the number of fatalities which are due to it, then tuberculosis must be considered much more important than those most feared infectious diseases, plague, cholera and the like. Statistics have shown that 1/7 of all humans die of tuberculosis.” Wow. By the middle of the nineteenth century, about the time Boerne was first settled (1849- but you should already know that), consumption had been romanticized by poets and novelists who portrayed tuberculosis as an idyllic, dreamy kind of death; a “good death” in which long-suffering victims had time to put their earthly affairs in order and arrange poignant deathbed scenes. The mal de vivir was dreamily supposed to confer heightened sensitivity upon the sufferer, and came to represent spiritual purity and even worldly wealth. To the extent that rich young women would sometimes make themselves up to appear pale, sickly and wasted.

Lord Byron once wrote, “I should like to die from consumption,” making

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: FEBRUARY 2015

it seem like a disease of artists and a lovely way to go. People died fanciful, maudlin deaths from tuberculosis in popular works of the time like Les Misérables, Verdi’s La traviata and Puccini’s La bohème. Even today, when we should all know better, audiences still thrill to Nicole Kidman kicking a misty, euphoric bucket in Moulin Rouge. Rot and nonsense. The truth is that TB is a nasty, painful death, with the victim coughing until their ribs break and the abscesses in their lungs bleed and breathing becomes nearly impossible.

In contrast to the whimsical image of TB as a spiritual, romantic death for artists and the wealthy, the disease raged alike among the poor in the cities, while both physicians and the middle class blamed the poor themselves for the spread of the White Plague. It was a mean killing disease and knew no social boundaries, nor age restrictions. Dr Ferdinand Herff, San Antonio doctor and Boerne landowner, saw its victims dying no sentimentalized “good” deaths, but only the sadness and utter heartbreaking waste of the thing.

Dr Herff, after much adventuring around in his German homeland and in the high Texas Hill Country, finally settled down with his family in San Antonio where he would eventually help found Santa Rosa Hospital. Like most German-Texans, Dr Herff cherished the dream of land ownership in addition to his home in the city. And in 1850, after searching for some months, he “finally arrived at the rim of the Boerne Valley,” where the sight of “pastures padded by knee-deep stands of grass; sturdy, primeval trees hovering like great beasts of fable; Texas wild flowers closely crowding each other in a colorful, paradisiacal riot, their hues now changing, now fading into the hushed anonymity of twilight,” made him fall in love with the place. The next day he signed the papers for the first three hundred acres of a freehold that would one day encompass most of the Boerne valley. The town had only been established in 1849, barely a year before Herff discovered it, so the history of the Herff family here is nearly as old as Boerne itself. This would become their beloved retreat and second home, with members of the family still living here today.

One thing Herff the doctor noticed about this mountain village he loved, was that he’d never seen so much as one case here of the disease which was killing people elsewhere at a devastating rate. He’d been a surgeon with the Hessian army before coming to Texas and had developed his own techniques for treatment of the disease, which he had then applied in his work among the Texas Indians and with his patients in San Antonio. He, along with many physicians of his time, was a proponent of the open-air method of treatment of TB, which called for plenty of pure air, lots of rest and a plethora of good food, but especially the pure air. As a professor of medicine of the time stated, “[t]he more abundantly the former can be given the greater and faster will be the progress towards recovery”. And Herff’s adopted Boerne certainly had an inexhaustible supply of pure air. “The burg is principally noted for the unlimited quantity and excellent quality of its ozone, whatever that is,” reads a contemporary travel guide about Boerne. It didn’t take Herff long to attribute the absence of consumption in this burg to the high, dry mountain air. Sometime in the 1860s, he sent his first tubercular patients to town to try some of that famous ozone.

There were a few hotels in town by this time, although the village was still very small, but most visitors or passers-through would lodge in boarding houses or with families with a room to let. But neither of these options were always open to “lungers”, and for obvious reasons. It would be twenty years before scientist Koch discovered what caused TB and how it was spread. And even if the townspeople had known that the disease was wildly contagious, it would hardly have encouraged them to throw their doors open to the pale, hacking foreigners suddenly in their midst. It’s hard to say when and where the first consumptive found lodging in Boerne. It may have started when some householder decided that the money offered outweighed the danger of contracting the sickness and took the chance. Or maybe it was compassion that opened the first door. And after all, Dr. Herff may have lined up the lodging situation before he sent his first consumptive to town. At any rate, the sufferers who came to town for the cure found places enough to take them in, and enough good people to tend to them.

At first, Herff sent his most hopeless cases, the victims for whom nothing else worked, for whom nothing more could be done, maybe as their one final hope or perhaps simply for the opportunity to die in

relative comfort, breathing in the thin, dry mountain air. He sent so many of these pale ghosts to Boerne that some began to call the town “Herff’s burying ground”. “His detractors,” said Herff’s grandson in later years, “blamed him for having converted their scenic mountain hamlet into a graveyard for tuberculars.” “A consumptive newly arrived in Boerne,” one man complained, “found too many invalids like himself, invalids who talked about themselves and their poor remnants of lungs, and coughed and groaned all night. The hotels and boarding houses smelled like drugstores, and the invalids drank to each other’s better health in cod liver oil until they smelled like ancient fishermen.” So there’s that image.

But then something happened. Herff’s “lungers”, those walking dead, began to heal in the higher altitude and drier air in the hills above the city. And other San Antonio doctors began to recommend Boerne’s air to their TB patients, and Boerne’s reputation spread, a little at first, until folks were arriving here and there from further afield, from Chicago and St Louis and New Orleans, from the damp and soggy coastal states.

More homes took in more boarders, so that at one point they said almost every household had at least one consumptive lodger. Nobody, though, knew anything then about how TB was spread, and precautions against the spread of the disease weren’t always maintained so that some families had members who became infected and died. Servant girls,

too, who were poor and, in those dirt poor days after the Civil War, often hungry, sometimes finished the uneaten food left on the lungers’ plates and they would sicken and sometimes died. It wasn’t a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination, but Boerne was fast becoming known as the Texas Alps, and more consumptives arrived all the time.

What changed the game was when the railroad came to town. Dr. Herff was also instrumental in getting the branch line of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass (SA & AP) Railroad to Boerne, donating a lot of land from his hill country ranch for right-of-way as well as tracts in San Antonio.

And in March of 1887, the first train arrived in Boerne. Suddenly it was a whole lot easier to get to the Texas Alps, to that healing, life-giving mountain ozone. And suddenly it was time for Boerne to step up its game. The San Antonio Daily Express, in an article titled “First Train to Boerne over Northwestern Extension: A Pleasant Ride over a Beautiful Country; Day Spent in Romantic Hills around Boerne”, touted the numerous enjoyments to be had in Boerne, including opportunities to “drink the cold water of the iron and sulphur spring four miles distant,” or “expand the lungs with deep draughts of ozone, or “watch the slow and painful steps of the poor consumptive invalid who generally comes to West Texas when it is everlastingly too late for all the ozone in the world to do him any good.” Fun times indeed. The piece ends with a suggestion to the townspeople that they would soon take to heart: “Altogether, Boerne offers a desirable place for excursionists, and it can be made one of the most popular health resorts in the South, if her people will exert themselves a little and make her advantages known to the great outside world. Nature has been most lavish in her gifts to Boerne and Kendall County. The ozone is there, but her people must do the rest.”

So they did. A Dr. William Miller opened one of the first sanitaria (which I just discovered is the plural for sanitarium) in town. A stone building he called White Gables on the property along Main Street across from St Helena’s Episcopal Church, where today the new library and city campus stand. Over on Adler Road, the Frederick Adler family added a four-room wing onto their home and ran it as Adler House, a boarding home. It would become a tuberculosis sanitarium called Winona Home after the railroad began to bring more of “the invalid[s] with flushed cheek and hectic cough.” The house still stands today, roughly across the street from Curington Elementary, looking slightly different without that extra wing. But the largest of the tuberculosis hospitals by far was the one built in 1896 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, with the very substantial help of, once again, Dr. Herff, as an extension of Santa Rosa hospital which did not accept TB cases. The Sisters bought the White Gables hospital from Dr Miller and rebuilt it, added kitchens, a chapel and a laundry, and re-christened it St. Mary’s Sanitorium. (For some reason the terms sanitarium and sanitorium were used pretty much interchangeably.) At first the hospital had beds for about thirty patients, while an additional one hundred and fifty were farmed out to so-called “open-air sanitaria”. More rooms were added as the hospital was rebuilt, and between 1896 and 1897, 731 patients were treated at St. Mary’s.

The permanent population of Boerne was about seven hundred people at the time, so St. Mary’s literally doubled Boerne’s population.

There were other resorts as well, that catered to a different kind of visitor and didn’t welcome lungers to join in on the fun. Judge John Reinhard bought a 640 acre property on the road to Sisterdale in 1882 and opened his Walnut Grove resort in 1885. At first, the Reinhard family boarded guests in their home, but soon the resort went upscale, adding cottages, tennis courts, a limestone house around the springs and a broad, tree-lined esplanade along which guests could walk to their familystyle dinner in the main house. “There is a mineral spring within one mile of Boerne, iron and magnesia,” stated early Boerne citizen John O’Grady in a piece he did for the 1867 Texas Almanac, “said, by Dr. [Herff] and other scientific men, to be invaluable, particularly for consumptives.”

Unfortunately for the consumptives, after Reinhard got ahold of the place, they could no longer try the water cure there. About that esplanade though: I went to a BBQ out on Walnut Grove Road back twenty years or so when I was struck by the eeriest sense of deja vu, another gift from Garland Perry and his Historic Images. I suddenly found myself standing between two straight rows of mature trees, with a bit of crumbling concrete border at my feet, and then this half-forgotten picture emerged from wherever it had been hiding in my memory: the image of the wide, paved avenue they called Broadway at the old Walnut Grove resort, that I remembered seeing in Mr. Perry’s book as a teenager. It doesn’t get too much closer to time travel than that.

There were Phillip Manor House on North Main and Becker House, proprietor Mary Becker, first white child born in Boerne, on Rosewood near where Ebensberger-Fisher stands today; there were the Boerne Hotel/Kendall Inn and the St James Hotel on the corner of Main across the street from the Dienger building, and rooms to let in just about every house in town for those of more humble means. And folks could come to Boerne and not rent a room too, once the railroad made a trip to Boerne - a thing that could be done over a weekend - a campground sprang up on the Cibolo on River Road. They called the spillway below the River Road dam the Boerne Lake, and it was a very popular picnic spot with the campground next to it. Thousands of people made the trip to Boerne in its resort era, to walk the streets and breathe in the air, to take the waters and to take the cure, to bathe in the sulphur springs and bask in the high, dry, mountain ozone. Boerne was a tourist town way, way before the pretty red benches and the River South art thing, and the whole Dickens

32 | EXPLORE

on Main thing, and the over-priced boutiques and all the rest; people came from all over the world to the Texas Alps, just to be and breathe in Boerne.

After the first World War ended, a whole new wave of sanitaria came into being to treat not only lungers suffering from TB, but to minister to returning soldiers whose lungs had been poisoned by mustard and nerve gasses. A Dr. WE Wright bought the old Kuhlmann house on the hill where Care Choice nursing home stands today, and turned the big private home into a hospital surrounded by smaller cottages, housing four men a piece. In 1919, Dr. Wright contracted with the VA to treat WWI vets recovering from TB and poison gas. His first of one hundred and fifty patients was one Dr. Dewitt Hogue, who would heal from his lung ailment and, along with his wife Cora, live the rest of his life in Boerne and be laid to rest in the cemetery here. The Lex Sanitarium also began operation in 1919, when Emilie Lex opened her home on Johns Road a mile from town, where she took Dr. Nooe’s patients, eventually converting two rooms into operating rooms for him. Henry Graham, who had his finger in just about every pie in town, built a huge frame home on the Guadalupe near Bergheim, opening it in 1920 as the Rainbow Rest Home, also catering to returning soldiers with lung troubles. That home would eventually become the ranch headquarters for the enormous Elmax Ranch.

The tuberculosis epidemic had slowed way down by the early 1920s, and with the dawn of the Dirty Thirties, nobody had the money anymore to see and be seen at all the old fashionable resorts anymore. The tourism industry in Boerne, which had once involved just about everyone in town, from merchants and politicians and businessmen to servant girls and livery boys and the women who did the laundry for the hotels, just kind of withered up and blew away one day. The Adlers tore down their addition and used the wood to build a house for a family daughter.

The Becker House Hotel, opened in 1896 and grown to include fifteen rooms, favorite vacation destination for several Texas governors and other notables, finally closed its doors in 1920. And also begun in 1896, the great St. Mary’s Sanitorium on Main Street was down to sixty or so patients by 1923, and then, finally, there were none. The beautiful building with its long, wide screen porches both upstairs and down and the gracious gables looking out onto Main Street, was used for a time as a retirement home for the Incarnate Word nuns for a while, but in 1930 the whole thing was bulldozed. Ashes to ashes. Sometime in the late 70s, an old photo of the Sanitorium that once doubled the population of Boerne appeared in the Boerne Star over the caption, “Does anybody know this place?” And it was an appeal for help, not a ‘Remember When’ kinda thing. We had just forgotten. Not fifty years later and nobody remembered anymore.

Boerne had been a “health and recreation resort ringed by wooded hillsides, spreading its winding streets past old stone houses.” The railroad had delivered thousands to town. “[N]early every passenger train,” said Herff’s grandson years later, “brought in several hollow-eyed, hectically coughing specters, many of whom were journeying to their deaths.” But many weren’t. Many took in the ozone and were healed, and stayed in the pure mountain air and prospered, and when the end finally came were laid to rest under that precious ozone. Boerne, in common with most little towns all over the South, would face an era of dirt-poor hard times, the boll weevil would come and the Depression and drought and war. Maybe those lean, gritty years had the effect of grinding down the memory of when this town was something different, something more, something special; when Boerne was the gem of the Texas Alps, when the air was pure and healing and good, and this was the best place to be.

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

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| 35

I have many articles that I enjoyed, but my one of my favorites was the March 2013 Military issue highlighting veterans in our area, specifically Richard Cole. He was the last living member of the WWII Doolittle Raids. I read a ton of books, especially when I am pregnant, and I had just finished Unbroken, a book about WWII. I was able to talk on the phone to Richard Cole. His memories and his stories fascinated me – these men truly are heroes. I was star struck when I got to meet him.

- Kate Kent

From those who battled during WWII to those who served in more recent wars such as Iraq,we wanted to honor and recognized some of our local veterans. These men and women gave the ultimate sacrifice by fighting for our country and we wanted to get to know them a little better by asking them questions about their service.

Enjoy getting to know some of our local heroes.

36 | EXPLORE

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: MARCH 2013

Rebecca Wainner Rank: Army: SPC Years of Service: Active Duty Dec. 31st 2005 - Sep. 7th 2009 / Reserves Sep.7th 2009 - Nov. 21st 2011 Branch: U.S. Army; 92 G (cook); Combat Experience: 7.OIF 7-8

The most memorable moments I’d have to say would be while I was deployed to Iraq. There are so many memories I will never forget good and bad.

When I first went into the military, one misconception I had was that I wasn’t going to get deployed or have to do PT. But that’s only because my recruiter lied to me!

So far, I have been rewarded CAB (Combat Action Badge) ARCOM (Army Commendation Medal) AGCM (Army Good COnduct Medal) NDSM (National Defense Service Medal) ICM-CS (Iraqi Campaign Medal W/T Campaign Stars) GWTSM (Global War On Terrorism Service Medal) ASR (Army Service Ribbon) OSR (Overseas Service Ribbon)

“

I loved how the other soldiers in my MOS and I were all like a big family. The cooks stuck together no matter what!

”

Richard E. Cole Rank: Lt Col USAF, Retired Years of Service: U.S. Army (USAAC, USAAF) 1940-1947; U.S. Air Force 1947-1966; World War II 1941-1945; Cold War 1945-1966; Korean War Theater 1952-1953 Branch: United States Air Force; Military Occupation: Bomber and Airlift Pilot In World War II on 18 April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Cole participated in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, Japan as a B-25 pilot on General Jimmy Doolittle’s crew. This mission was personally ordered by President Roosevelt, but the aircrews were unaware of the mission, destination, or the risks they faced. These 80 brave Warriors voluntarily went into harm’s way because they knew their country needed them. This was a critical time in the war with morale sagging due to a series of military setbacks.

The success of the raid was an immediate high octane boost to the American fighting spirit. The Japanese responded quickly and their devastating defeat at the Battle of Midway turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

Today at 96, Lt. Col. Cole is the oldest of the 5 remaining Doolittle Raiders and he is the only airman to have participated in both the Doolittle Raid and the aerial invasion of Burma, two of the most memorable and daring mission in special operations history.

“

He was asked how he came to be Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot in the lead aircraft of the historic raid. “It was not planned,” he explained. “It just happened! We were at Eglin Field in Florida for training. We had to become carrier qualified, and we had instruction in low-level navigation and bombing. Each plane had to take off within 500 feet with a full load of gas and 2,000 pounds of bombs. We were about to go up on a training flight just before leaving for San Francisco to board the carrier, Hornet.

I was in the co-pilot seat, but my pilot wasn’t there.” Doolittle saw the empty seat, climbed aboard and took over. It turned out that the pilot was sick and never made the raid. But Jimmy liked the crew and their teamwork, so he stayed with them. “Airplane numbers hadn’t been assigned yet, but of course we became aircraft No. 1 when they were,” said Cole.

”

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I’ve never been what you might call a talkative person. I prefer to keep to myself, sit in my cave, and design pretty things. This piece was not the first I had written for EXPLORE, but it was definitely the most difficult. I got to a point in the story where I hit an emotional wall and it took a good week or two to break through. It was therapeutic... I think. At the very least, I got to go to an air show on the company dime.

- Ben Weber

N O

The alarm on my phone goes off. I have no sleep to blink or rub from my eyes because it’s only been two hours since laying down. The time is 1:15am on a Saturday morning and while I’m filled with anticipation for the coming day, it feels as if 50lb weights are strapped to each of my limbs. I stumble downstairs, having slept on the sofa upstairs to spare my wife the annoyance of being awakened so early by an alarm, and start getting ready for the 4 1/2 hour drive ahead of me.

I curse whoever came up with the brilliant idea of putting Halloween on the day before MY big event. I had the plan all laid out. I was going to bed by 9:00pm to get at least four hours of sleep before waking up at fifteen past stupid. But when you have little kids, for some reason their joy takes precedence over your need to remain

My dad, Rodney M. Weber - Pilot training.

40 | EXPLORE

S G N I W E TH L E E T S OF

S L E G N A

By Ben Weber (and he took all the photos too!)

awake to prevent death on the road in the middle of the night. As it was, my children were having such a great time passing out candy to roughly 1 billion trick or treaters in our neighborhood, I didn’t get to bed until 10:30pm. Then true to form I couldn’t stop thinking about what needed to be done or packed or not forgotten in a few hours.

With everything loaded, I cracked open my rocket fuel (Rockstar energy drink, fruit punch flavored, yummy) and pulled out of the driveway. Time: 1:30am. First stop, San Antonio. You see, I don’t do things like this alone. I make sure someone is there to suffer with me. And keep me awake so we don’t “pass” in a fiery inferno of twisted metal, plastic and photography equipment. Strangely enough, there was good music on the radio that early

so the drive to the Sea World area wasn’t so unpleasant.

At approximately 2:00am I pulled into my fellow idiot’s driveway, let’s call him Frank. As planned, Frank was ready to go at 2:00am; he loaded his equipment and we were off.

Where you may ask? Houston. To what end? An air show.

Stop laughing and let me explain.

Frank and I are huge aviation fans. My dad flew B-52 bombers for the Air Force and I grew up around his love of aircraft. Obviously it rubbed off. I had (actually still have) books and toys and posters and t-shirts with planes on them. I built scale models and went to air shows at Randolph and Lackland in San Antonio. It’s been a lifelong obsession of all things aviation. Frank’s

background was similar. Even though we’re much older, we still turn into little kids when we see or get around airplanes, and for years San Antonio air shows have been as reliable as the sun rising in the morning. Until two years ago.

Frank and I had been planning on attending that year’s air show for months. We had been before but this time was going to be different. This time around it was going to be just us. No wives. No kids. Just a couple of professionally amateur photographer plane nuts renting some photo gear that was waaay above our pay grades and spending the day at our wonderland. Then roughly a month before the show, the sequester was put into effect.

You know that thing that was so horrible everyone thought the powers that be would never let it happen?

Well, it happened. And as a result, it grounded all “nonessential” military flying which included the flight demo teams, Blue Angels and Thunderbirds. And since half of the air show is other military aircraft, it put the skids on the whole event.

I was devastated. Truly crushed. Tell a child Santa isn’t real. Or that their dog died. That’s how I felt. But this trip was going to be our vindication. So what if San Antonio, a city with two of the largest Air Force training facilities (Randolph is a primary stopping point for pilot training and one of the places my dad trained at in the 70s), wasn’t allowed an air show? So what if the show was in Houston and we had to buy tickets (San Antonio shows were always free)? We didn’t care. We were going.

Maybe it was because we were excited about what was going to happen that day. Maybe it was because it was the wee hours of the morning. Whatever the reason, the drive, which I had made just two weeks prior but in the daytime, flew by. Before we knew it was 5:30am and we were driving through Katy and only 30 minutes from where the show was being held. So close we could almost smell the jet fuel.

After navigating the stupidity that is the highway system in Houston, we arrived at our destination. Almost. Since it was 6:00am and I had been driving since 1:30am and only on two and a half hours of sleep, I wasn’t really using common sense or reading the context clues. I saw a gate

that said Ellington Field with a line of cars going through.

That must be where I go. I see military guards looking at IDs of the cars in front of me. Context clue ignored.

Didn’t seem that out of the ordinary. I mean, there were military aircraft at the show and that particular field is part military part civilian. As I pulled up to the guards I handed my driver’s license to the MP who was probably 10 years younger than me. He took the ID and stopped.

You know that look on someone’s face when they smell something a little weird and can’t figure out where it came from? That’s the look on this kid’s face. “What are you doing here?” “Going to the air show.” “Do you have any documentation?” “I have the tickets.” “Sir you’re in the wrong place.” Oh. Ummm. Stupid damn GPS and zero sleep. One MP, the one who asked for documentation was not so friendly. I can’t blame him.

I was wasting his time and holding up the growing line of cars trying to get through the gate that were really supposed to be there. The other MP, the one with my ID instructed me to make a U turn and get my ID on the other side of the station. He then kindly told us where to go. No, it wasn’t hell. We set off in the direction where he said we would find signs. There were no signs.

Twenty minutes of driving, stopping, asking for more directions, stopping, thinking we found the spot, then thinking better, we FINALLY made it to the parking area.

We were jazzed. Hopped out of the car and… holy jeez it’s cold!! Cold and windy. After a great 15 second

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: DECEMBER 2014

debate, we agreed it was best to sit in the car and try to nap until the gates opened. We were only two hours early. Why not? Frank was snoring in 5 minutes. I was still hopped up on my rocket fuel and couldn’t keep my eyes closed.

back to me, and more emotion than I care to admit.

Maybe that’s why I came to the air show to begin with; it brought me a little closer to my dad. This was HIS plane, and sitting in this tiny co-pilot’s seat was about as close to him as I could be on this cold Saturday morning.

After getting spooked by some tow trucks that showed up close to us we decided to find yet another parking spot, grabbed all our gear and went to stand in line out in the cold.

I walked back down the steps, making room for all the kids clamoring to get a view inside the huge jet, and did a final walk around before turning to head back to my chair along the fence before the show and the flying officially starts.

When the gates finally opened we bolted to get our spot along the fence line for prime, unobstructed airplane viewing awesomeness. Actually, I bolted. Frank drives like an old woman and walks like one too. We found our spot, laid claim, and set up our gear. Then we waited.

Time flows at the same pace no matter what is happening. It’s our circumstance and perception that causes it to speed up or slow down. And when you’re wearing shorts and a light pull over fleece jacket, facing into wind with a chill of about 45 degrees… time practically stands still.

The day officially starts and the planes begin to fly. WWII warbirds, acrobatic planes that make you glad you’re the one with both feet on the ground, a fly-by of a P-51 Mustang and a German ME-262 (the first jet airplane to enter any military service), some Vietnam era jets and then the grand finale: The Navy Blue Angels.

If you have never seen this group perform you’re missing out. The skill that is demonstrated in precision handling jets traveling at 400mph is incredible. The military uses these groups, Blue Angels and Thunderbirds, as

To pass the time, per our original plan, one of us stayed at our spot along the fence, while the other ran around like a kid in a candy store taking photos of the static displays. For those who aren’t familiar with air show speak, those are the planes on display that do not actually fly during the show. When it was my turn to go play, there was really only one plane I was after and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when I got there.

I mentioned earlier my dad flew B-52s, and there happened to be one on display at the show. I’m always excited to see one in person, but this time was different.

On January 1 of this year my dad passed away. Even though he had been in and out of the hospital for most

of 2013, for me it was unexpected. Seeing the plane that had brought us together and been the source of so many memories was going to be tough.

As I approached the beautiful behemoth, I was filled with the feeling of seeing a loved one after a long absence.

There was no sadness. Only a friendly, familiar warmth as I approach and ran my hand along the gray riveted metal that makes up one of the engines. I walked around slowly, making sure to look not only through the camera viewfinder but with my own eyes unobstructed by glass and plastic. I notice details I had never seen before. A ladder up to the cockpit shows me a view I had also not seen before. The co-pilot’s seat. That’s where dad would have sat. I realized how small the space is. With a plane that big, it’s easy to think the crew has tons of room to move around during a flight, plenty of room to get up a move around and get the blood flowing. I guess that explains why he once told a story of almost getting frost bite on his toes during a mission through Canada and Alaska.

I climbed into the seat, slowly put my hands on the yoke, and just stared at the marvel of it all. Countless dials and switches. Levers and lights and buttons. I held on firmly and just looked at my hands. This is what my dad’s hands looked like while holding a virtually identical yoke. Yes, I’m a grown man sitting in a B-52, and at the same time, I was a little kid at that moment. So many stories came

recruiting tools. Who wouldn’t want to sign up after seeing fighter jets fly 18” apart while going REALLY fast?

And that speed makes for a fun challenge when taking photos. Between the two of us, Frank and I probably took about 2,000 images just in the 20 minutes the Blue Angels were flying. Thank goodness for digital cameras.

After the smoke and crowds had cleared we made our way back to the car. It was now roughly 6:00pm and we were beat. It’s easy to say photographers have an easy, glamorous job. But you try it and see how easy it is to carry 20lbs of camera equipment all day while trying to take good photos. Not as easy as it may look. AND we still had to drive back home.

Frank and I got the adventure we wanted. As admitted aeronautic nuts, we were more than satisfied to leave with memory cards full of images and the smell of jet fuel all over the interior of the car. San Antonio might get an air show in the future, or maybe not. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose. We’ll be there, wherever it is we must go. We’ll go for the planes, and for the images that they’ll give us. For me, I’ll go for the exhilaration of the show itself, but I’ll also run my hands along the controls of a B-52 while I sit in the co-pilot’s seat.

And I’ll simply smile.

WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | OCTOBER 2017

| 41

These single page pieces are always fun to do. They’re not deep or introspective or really do anything to further human knowledge.

Usually they’re just stupid and funny. They give the reader what we hope is a fun break from the “deep” stuff to allow them a chuckle or to reminisce. EXPLORE is about “the story” but I think these pieces shed light on the personalities of the people behind the scenes.

- Ben Weber

LAWN DARTS It doesn’t take much imagination to see why steel missiles with weighted skewers could make for a dangerous toy. Originally designed to pierce lawns in a game similar to horseshoes, children found different ways to use the darts. After the deaths of at least three children lawn darts were banned by the CPSC. The agency also recommended the destruction of existing sets. But unless you’ve spent hours heaving these bad boys straight overhead and then running for dear life, you haven’t REALLY lived.

EASY-BAKE OVENS The popularity of the Easy-Bake Oven, which uses a real heating element to actually bake dessert items, may have reached its apex in 2006. That year, it was voted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

But Hasbro, the makers of the Easy-Bake Oven, didn’t have long to celebrate. A year later they were forced to recall one million of their plastic models when it was discovered that a design flaw allowed the oven to easily trap and severely burn children’s tiny little fingers.

This is obviously a recipe for disaster, especially given that the ovens could reach temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius (400 °F). All told, nearly 250 incidents were reported, including 16 cases of second- or third-degree burns. One unlucky five-year-old girl was even forced to undergo a partial finger amputation. But I bet those were some damn delicious cookies.

42 | EXPLORE

SKY RANGERS Sky Rangers Park Flyer Radio Control Airplanes (dang that’s a long title) were voluntarily recalled after 45 reports of exploding airplanes, 5 of which involved minor burns. Fun Fact: the actual Navy plane this is modeled after had almost a 90% mishap rate while in service. Maybe the makers of this toy were just trying to be realistic. Mind = Blown.

GILBERT U-238 ATOMIC ENERGY LAB Maybe you think it’s obvious that including uranium in a child’s toy isn’t an especially good idea. But apparently that never occurred to the makers of the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab. Described when it was sold in the early 1950s as “the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced” it featured four Uranium bearing ore samples and a preformatted order form for more. Even in an age when science sets routinely came with substances like potassium nitrate (a component of gunpowder) and sodium ferrocyanide (these days classified as poison), the Atomic Energy Lab was positively glowing with danger. We bet if they look back far enough they’ll see a bunch of these were sold to North Korea. Kim Jong Il was a curious and enterprising little scamp before sending an entire country into poverty.

ORIGINAL PRINT DATE: AUGUST 2014

POWER WHEELS MOTORCYCLES Fisher-Price recalled 218,000 Power Wheels Motorcycles after nine reports of injuries; the gas pedal would often get stuck in “go” mode, causing one child to drive himself into his house at full speed.

Don’t worry, he was fine. In fact, he later grew up to jump the Grand Canyon.

THE AUSTIN MAGIC PISTOL In the 1950’s, when BB guns weren’t considered particularly dangerous, it took something special for a gun to stand out. The Austin Magic Pistol managed to do that with its gas-powered combustion. The gun used what the manufacturer called “magic crystals” made from calcium carbide – a hazardous material.

When mixed with water the crystals would explode and fire a plastic ball 70 feet or more. Automatic airsoft guns just don’t seem very epic anymore after reading this do they.

AQUA DOTS Chinese-made Aqua Dots, small dots which were constructed to make colorful images, were recalled after the date rape drug GHB was found inside the product.

There were reports of slowed breathing and heart rate and even coma in children who licked the dots. Don’t think too badly about the Chinese though. In China it’s used to increase male virility and a setting agent for concrete. Those Chinese sure are innovative.

CABBAGE PATCH DOLLS “SNACKTIME” EDITION The Cabbage Patch dolls were the must-have toy of their time, sparking department store fights and pulling in billions of dollars in sales. The Snacktime edition pulled in more than just money however, as its mechanical jaws tried to consume the fingers and hair of inquisitive and unlucky children. The Snacktime’s mechanism was a one-way battery-powered roller with no off switch. It was supposed to be activated by the accompanying snacks, but the little tykes made no distinction between “food” and fingers.

The dolls were eventually pulled from the shelves… after the Christmas season. Because capitalism shows no mercy.

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