MARCH 2018
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CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Marjorie Hagy History 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 five years now.
Old Timer Just Old Timer The Old Timer tells us he's been a resident of Boerne since about 1965. He enjoys telling people what he doesn't like. When not bust'n punks he can be found feeding the ducks just off Main St. or wandering aimlessly in the newly expanded HEB. Despite his rough and sometimes brash persona, Old Timer is really a wise and thoughtful individual. If you can sort through the BS.
Kendall D. Aaron Spiritual
10 From The Publisher
24 Boerne Performing Arts
12
26 Swan Song
14
Calendar
28
Road Trip Games
18 Art of The Title
22
St. Patrick’s Day Facts
Road Trip
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
36 Spiritual 38
do not necessarily reflect the opinions of EXPLORE and/or Schooley Media Ventures. Copyright 2016 Schooley Media
Old Timer
Publisher Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com
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EXPLORE magazine is published by Schooley Media Ventures
30 History
20 This Month in Texas History
I’m just a normal guy. I’m not a theology student, I don’t preach in church, and I’ve never written a book. I’m just a normal guy that thinks, and feels, and is on a never-ending journey attempting to be the best person I can be. I fail frequently at this quest, yet each day, the quest continues. I’ve lived in Boerne since the late ‘80s, I’ve got a most beautiful wife, three wonderful children, and just really, really love God. Thanks for going on my spiritual journey with me.
Ventures, 930 E. Blanco, Ste. 200, Boerne, TX 78006
Operations Manager Peggy Schooley peggy@smvtexas.vom
Creative Director Benjamin N. Weber ben.weber@smvtexas.com
ADVERTISING SALES 210-507-5250 sales@hillcountryexplore.com
NOW OPEN!
512 RIVER RD.
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BOERNE, T X
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NE XT TO LIT TLE GRETEL
DEAREST EXPLORE READER, I once saw a simple little sign in a guy’s office that said, “If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I snorted a chuckle and moved on with my day. Strangely, I have thought about that little sign time and again over the years. Through a particular set of circumstances, I’ve found myself in new situations where I have come to see how people actually use the same concept above, but sometimes, for nefarious reasons. And it just bums me out. If I were to ask 100 of you out there “Do you think that you’re a GOOD person?”, 99 of you would say “Well, sure.” Most of you would be correct. I mean, it’s not like you guys are out there robbing banks or kicking puppies. Nope, I’d be safe to say that 99 out of 100 of you are actually pretty good people. There’s that one guy that IS robbing banks and kicking puppies, and he sucks, so we won’t talk about him. I would also hazard a guess that I could randomly grab one of you, put you on trial to find out if you actually are a GOOD person, and hold court. If I were the prosecutor, I would round up your family and friends that would surely testify that while you might have had too much wine at Thanksgiving one year, for the most part, you are a pretty good person. I would present records that show your charitable giving and volunteering, show a photo of you coaching little league, and even a note from your boss that says “Sometimes he’s an idiot with his reports, but from what I know about him, he’s a model employee.” Because my MOTIVATION is to prove your “good worth”, I could find the evidence.
certain that you fudged a few numbers on your expense reports. Wow. Your wife also told me about the one time that you got super angry in an argument with her and slammed the door so hard that you damaged it. Anger issues? Hmmm… Since I have now presented both sides of this argument to the jury, how would they vote? Would you be found to be a “good person” or would you be found to be a complete jerk? I know that this is an imaginary situation, but ya know, it’s really not. I have a friend that I have known for a really, really long time. Well, I HAD a friend, I should say. For years and years we hung out frequently, ate lunch together all the time, had beers while the kids played in the front yard, and we shared our lives with one another and leaned on each other for support in a variety of ways. We were the very definition of FRIEND to one another. Something occurred and we had a disagreement, which ultimately turned into a large disagreement. One of those kinds of disagreements that just festers and grows and suddenly you realize that you haven’t talked to your friend in months. Then those months become years. Then you hear from a mutual friend that your dear old buddy has really been talking poorly of you around town. So in your anger you start saying to yourself: “Screw that guy. He’s a coward because…” “What a loser. He always was a cheat.” “Whatever. He wouldn’t know honesty if it bit him in the ass.”
Now, if my MOTIVATION was to prove that you were, in fact, NOT a good person but actually were a terrible human being, do you think that I could do it? I mean, we’ve got a lot of people saying that you’re a good person, and we have photos of you smiling with happy kids around you, but what if I wanted to prove a negative? Do you think that I could do it? You’re darned right I could. That photo on Facebook that you posted of you and your buddies drinking beer at the coast is certainly evidence to your heavy, irresponsible drinking. Why isn’t your wife in that photo? Hmmm. Sweet Jesus – did I just hear that you took your kids to RANDOM and had wine? AND THEN YOU DROVE YOUR KIDS HOME? That one co-worker that you didn’t get along with just told me about how you were argumentative, and he has no proof, but he’s almost
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“Man, that pisses me off. If he was here I’d punch him square in the jaw.” Yes, I said every one of those things about my dear friend that I had hung out with for years and years and years. In one minute he was my dearest friend that I would have defended to anyone, and in the next I was tearing apart his character and accusing him of all sorts of things. At one point, I would have said he was salt of the earth and my best friend, and then my entire narrative changed and my old friend was borderline criminal. I’m sure that I’m not the only one to do this either. I think that if we all get real honest, we could probably identify a person from our past that had gone from saint to sinner in our eyes. Sometimes it happens in the blink of an eye. Friends and neighbors, that is just WRONG.
We all have bumps and bruises and imperfections in our character that make us less than perfect, obviously. There was one guy that was perfect a few thousand years ago, but they nailed him to a cross. As for the rest of us, we’re imperfect and will never be anything but. When I think back to that silly little sign in that guy’s office, the question its asking is: “Could I convict you of BEING GOOD? Would there be enough evidence?” The answer is yes. At the same time, could I convict you of being BAD? Would there be evidence? The answer is yes. So perhaps the real question is: WHICH WOULD I PREFER? Do I want you to be GOOD…or do I want you to be BAD? As I sit on this concrete picnic table by the river, watching the stupid ducks waddle this way and that, and while I smile at the passing people with their dogs, or pushing strollers, or laughing with their partner…I WANT to think that I wish everyone was good. A world full of GOOD people sounds a lot better than a world full of BAD. Maybe it’s just that easy: I’ll try to make the choice to see the good in you. And you. And you. I’ll also choose to ignore the bad that I see in you. And you. And you. And if I do that, maybe you’ll ignore all the bad in me. There’s a little GOOD in there, too, if you’ll look close enough. If we all saw the good, maybe we couldn’t find the bad anymore. In order to find either, we have to take the time to look for it, and since we’ve already agreed that 99 out of 100 of us are pretty good people, that tells me that we sure do spend a lot of energy looking for the bad. Oh, what a mess. Sigh. Maybe I should pick up the phone and call my old friend now. Welcome to March. Hope springs eternal, as do the flowers of spring. Get out, EXPLORE, laugh, sing, cry, and dream. Find the good, ignore the bad, and call an old friend. Smiling,
Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com
Authentic
WE AR E
518 RIVER ROAD | BOERNE, TX | WWW.LITTLEGRETEL.COM | 830-331-1368
AREA EVENTS BANDERA March 3, 10, 24, 31 Bandera Cattle Company Gunfighters Experience the excitement of the Wild West with the awardwinning Bandera Cattle Company Gunfighters, re-creating shootouts and daily life of the Old West. Shows are at high noon and 2 p.m. Bandera Visitors Center, 126 SH 16 S. banderacowboycapital.com March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 Chuckwagon Dinner and Show Enjoy a barbecue dinner and dessert, live country Western band, gunslingers, Western photos, kid’s face painting, wagon rides, roping lessons, and archery. Flying L Hill Country Resort. banderacowboycapital.com March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 Cowboys on Main Every Saturday expect to see and interact with a sample of the Old West cowboy lifestyle on Bandera’s Main Street. Cowboys on Main, 500 Main St. banderacowboycapital.com March 6 Cowboy Capital Opry Grand Old Opry-style entertainment hosted by Gerry and Harriet Payne. Refreshments and door prizes. Silver Sage Community Center, 803 Buck Creek. banderacowboycapital.com
Get out and enjoy the great Texas Hill Country!
The most comprehensive events calendar. Send submissions to info@hillcountryexplore.com
FREDERICKSBURG March 2 First Friday Art Walk Fredericksburg Tour fine art galleries offering special exhibits, demonstrations, refreshments, and extended viewing hours the first Friday of every month. Various locations. ffawf.com March 10-11 WWII Pacific Combat Program at the National Museum of the Pacific War Bringing history to life with equipment and weapons used during WWII and a battle re-enactment set on an island in the Pacific. Pacific Combat Zone, 508 E. Austin. pacificwarmuseum.org March 12-16 Texas Hell Week Bicycle Tour Features daily 40- to 100-mile bicycle tours of Gillespie County. Sunset Inn Motel. hellweek.com/texas.html March 16-18 Fredericksburg Trade Days Shop more than 400 vendors or relax in the Biergarten with live music. Sunday Farms, 355 Sunday Farms Lane. fbgtradedays.com March 17 Guy Forsyth in Concert Fredericksburg Theater Company presents one of Austin’s premier musicians. Steve W. Shepherd Theater, 1668 S. US 87. fredericksburgtheater.org
March 11 Second Sunday Music Fest The Frontier Times Museum and the Bandera Music Hall of Fame join together to present an afternoon of music, food, and fun. Bandera County Public Library. banderacowboycapital.com
March 17 Luckenbach Mud Dauber Festival and Chili Cookoff Open chili cookoff and music festival named in honor of that pesky wasp. Luckenbach Texas, 412 Luckenbach Town Loop. luckenbachtexas.com
March 17 Wild Hog Explosion Wild hogs are brought in for an action-packed day. Teams of two enter the ring, catch a hog, and race to the finish line. Fun-filled day with vendor booths, arts and crafts, cookoffs, music, and much more. Proceeds to benefit the Kronkosky Library of Bandera County. Mansfield Park, 2886 SH 16 N. banderacowboycapital.com
March 24 Hill Country Indian Artifact Show More than 60 tables of Indian artifacts including arrowheads, beads, and pottery. Pioneer Pavilion at Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park. hillcountryindianartifacts.com
March 19-22, 24 Bandera Fiber Arts Retreat Enjoy and learn all about the fiber arts. Suzoo’s Wool Works, 584 SH 16. banderacowboycapital.com March 22-25 Thunder in the Hill Country Biker Rally An event consisting of tent camping, poker run, vendors, food, field events, music all day Friday and Saturday, a bike show, tattoo contest, and Sunday morning church service. 21 and older, no exceptions. Mansfield Park, 2886 SH 16 N. banderacowboycapital.com BOERNE March 1-31 March Mining Madness Come dig for rocks, fossils, gems and artifacts in our new quarry at Cascade Caverns. $6 everyday in March. 10:00a.m. - 4:00p.m. 226 Cascade Caverns Road March 3 Glen Rose Formation—Musically Evocative orchestral suites of music tuned specifically to the resonant frequencies in the cave. In premiering this uniquely site-responsive music, the ensemble will essentially be “playing the cave itself.” The suites are narrated by Mary McGrath Curry, the 89-year-old adventurer who discovered the cave as a young girl. Cave Without A Name, Throne Room, 325 Kreutzberg Road. cavewithoutaname.com March 17 Spring Equinox Concert Enjoy an evening of contemporary acoustic music, soaring vocal harmonies, and a percussive tribal/world-beat vibe performed on an unusual mix of ancient and modern instruments, all focused on the theme of the beginning of spring as a time of rebirth and renewed energy. Some of this concert will be performed in total darkness, illuminated by periods of flickering candlelight, providing a visually rich, spellbinding setting and mesmerizing listening environment. Cave Without A Name, Throne Room, 325 Kreutzberg Road. cavewithoutaname.com MARK YOUR CALENDAR EVENT: April 28 2nd Annual Cave Fest Cascade Caverns presents their 2nd Annual Cave Fest 10:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.. Come enjoy children’s activities, food trucks, cave tours, live music, and more. Vendor booths available. Proceeds benefit the “Save The Cave” legal fund. visit www.cascadecaverns.com for more information.
GRUENE March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 Friday Afternoon Club at Gruene Hall A Gruene Hall tradition, now in its 20th year, where hipsters, oldsters, suits, locals, and drifters mix it up to start their weekend rite (pun intended). This quintessential Friday happy hour celebrates the warmer weather with great beer prices, prize giveaways, and the best in Texas tunes broadcast live by KNBT 92.1 FM Radio New Braunfels. Gruene Hall, 1281 Gruene Road. gruenehall.com March 2 Texas Independence Day Celebration To celebrate the 182nd anniversary of Texas independence, Gruene Historic District is throwing its ninth annual Texas-sized celebration with special offers and special events. Gruene Historic District, 1601 Hunter Road. gruenetexas.com March 3 Kinderschuhe 5K Run & Walk All proceeds help Communities in Schools purchase shoes for low-income school children. Open to all ages. Gruene Historic District, 1601 Hunter Road. gruenetexas.com or nbu5k.com March 11 Gospel Brunch with a Texas Twist In the tradition of a New Orleans-style gospel brunch, this event serves aweinspiring gospel music coupled with a mouth-watering buffet catered by the Gristmill River Restaurant and Bar. One complimentary Champagne drink and a long stem rose for your sweetheart are included. Gruene Hall, 1281 Gruene Road. gruenehall.com March 15 Come and Taste It: Meet Texas’ Best Winemakers 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 that is offered for sale will be provided, and each event features live music and prize giveaways. The Grapevine, 1612 Hunter Road. grapevineingruene.com March 17-18 Old Gruene Market Days Nearly 100 vendors offer uniquely crafted items and packaged Texas foods. Free admission. Gruene Historic District, 1601 Hunter Road. gruenemarketdays.com JOHNSON CITY March 24-25 Market Days Local artisans sell handmade items, bakery goods, jewelry, plants, and food items. City Park, US 290 and Avenue G. lbjcountry.com March 31 Art Walk All galleries will be open from 4-8 p.m. serving adult beverages and munchies while visitors peruse art from new artists. Nugent Avenue and Main Street. lbjcountry.com
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KERRVILLE March 2 Kerrville Farmers Market-Downtown A producer-only market offering a variety of locally sourced produce, meat, eggs, bread, cheese, beer, wine, and more. Dallas Daughtry Boardwalk Pavilion, 805 Water St. kerrvillefarmersmarket. com March 3 Hill Country Swap Meet A giant community garage sale, flea market, and trade day 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 SH 27. kerrmarketdays.org March 3 Kerr County Market Days The indoor marketplace showcases vendors of original handcrafted goods, artwork, and home-grown plants and produce. Pets on a leash are welcome. Kerr County Hill Country Youth Event Center, 3785 SH 27. kerrmarketdays.org May 12 Kerrville School of Dance Spring Variation Kerrville School of Dance and San Antonio Performing Arts Classical Ballet present their spring show. Cailloux Theater, 910 Main St. caillouxtheater.com March 30-April 1 Easter Hill Country Bike Tour Experience the charm and hospitality of the Texas Hill Country and three days of the best riding Texas has to offer at the 44th annual event. Quiet, well-paved roads, fully-stocked rest stops, and panoramic scenery have made this ride one of the premier cycling events in Texas with routes suitable for all categories of participants, from novices to experienced riders. Schreiner University, 2100 Memorial Blvd. ehct.com March 31-April 1 Easter at the Empty Cross A free two-day Easter celebration with speakers, music, and a Sunday morning “sonrise.” Sculpture Prayer Garden, 520 Benson. thecomingkingfoundation.org March 31 Easter Eggstravaganza Two Easter egg hunts with more than 15,000 plastic eggs stuffed with candy, plus bounce houses, games, arts & crafts, food, and more. The Salvation Army Kroc Center, 201 Holdsworth. kerrvillekroc.org NEW BRAUNFELS Through Jan. 31, 2019 “War Stories: New Braunfels in World War I” Presented as part of the commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of America’s role in WWI. New Braunfels’ uniquely German character compelled its citizens to respond with fervor once America was at war with Germany. On view in the exhibit will be artifacts from the Sophienburg’s rich collections—posters, photographs, uniforms, and other historical objects to showcase events, individuals, and ideology during 1914-19—as well as touch on the lasting impact of the war on this German community. Sophienburg Museum & Archives, 401 W. Coll St. sophienburg.com WIMBERLEY Feb. 9-March 4 “Death by Design” Experience what happens when you mix the urbane wit of Noel Coward with the intricate plot twists of Agatha Christie. Wimberley Playhouse, 450 Old Kyle Road. wimberleyplayers.org March 3-25 “Princess and the Pea” A classic tale told for the enjoyment of all ages. EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens, 1101 FM 2325. emilyann.org March 3 Market Days The oldest outdoor market in the Texas Hill Country and the second-largest in the state features more than 475 booths filled with art, crafts, antiques, and treasures. Stroll the tree-shaded paths, listen to live music, and shop to your heart’s content. Lions Field, 601 FM 2325. shopmarketdays.com March 10 Second Saturday Gallery Trail On the second Saturday of every month, come early and stay late for wine, light bites, and an art-filled evening at many of the galleries in and around Wimberley. Various locations. gallerytrail.com
Beverly Houston & the Breezin’
Purchase tickets at Sharedbeat.org includes dinner 11 Upper Cibolo Creek Rd. | 830-428-3026
W
THE ROAD TRIP GAMES We all have happy memories of long road trips made bearable by the blissful hours of Simon Says, I-Spy, and the ever popular Alphabet Game. What other games helped speed along those endless road-trips with your family or friends? To help you out this coming Spring Break, we asked our readers to send us a few recollections of their own road-trip fun!
THROWING STONES
THE OTHER ALPHABET GAME
ZITCH DOG
“My grandma used to let me and my brothers and sisters grab a few handfuls of rocks off the side of the road before we began a long trip. We would drive with the windows down and pelt the rocks at signs as we flew by. It sounds simple, but we always had a blast!” -Ben
“My parents and my sister and I used to play a different version of the traditional alphabet game. We started with “A” and each person had to come up with a name starting with the letter, where they were going, and what they were bringing with them. An example would be ‘My name is Anna, I’m going to Argentina, and I’m bringing an apple!’ This game provided hours of entertainment because every round sent us into new fits of laughter!” -Anna
“The game is simple enough. Every time you see a dog, you yell Zitch Dog! We actually discovered this game on a TV show, but we’ve been playing it ever since! It’s harder than you might think.” -Freddy
20?
JELLY BEAN PICK
SLUG BUG
TWENTY QUESTIONS
“My family and I would get a bag Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans and we would take turn picking jelly beans. It was like a race to get all of the good ones because when you start getting close to the end of the bag all the beans are “Snot” or “Brussel Sprouts”. -Santi
“Whenever any passenger in the car sees a Volkswagen Beetle, they get to ‘slug’ everyone if they yell the color first. By the end of the trip we would all have bruises, but we still play the game every time we get in the car.” -Matt
“This was my family’s favorite car game. We would pick and noun and the others would ask yes or no questions to try and figure out what we picked. The object of the game is to guess the noun within twenty questions, but we never stuck to that limit! -Elizabeth
• Ken Nietenhoefer •
Premier Custom Home Builder in the Texas Hill Country For over 40 years, KCN has been building beautiful custom homes of all sizes in Boerne, Comfort, Bandera, Pipe Creek and throughout the Texas Hill Country. Our reputation for honesty and integrity, combined with our commitment to deliver excellent quality, expert craftsmanship, and customer service, has afforded us the opportunity to build many long lasting relationships with our clients. In fact, we have constructed two or more jobs for 32 different customers.
830-816-5202 920 East Blanco Road Boerne, TX 78006 www.kcnbuilders.com
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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ART OF THE DEED BY BEN SCHOOLEY
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Handling the title policy on your new home purchase may not seem like the most emotionally intense job out there, and for many it probably isn’t. However, for Randy Allen and his team at Alamo Title of Boerne, they take the process seriously. And yes, they attempt to take what many might consider mundane and make it as artful as possible.
Randy Allen, whose father was in the Air Force, grew up near Castroville, amongst other places. Upon graduation from high school, he attended undergraduate classes at Virginia Commonwealth with an emphasis in Real Estate and Urban Land. He continues, “I went to 2 years of college after graduation in ’76. I then played pony polo traveling up and down the East coast and ended up in San Antonio and played out there in Retama Park. I crashed one day while playing and wrecked my knee terrible.” With 2 years of schooling under his belt, and 8 years of polo, Allen was forced to spend the next year rehabbing his knee back to health. As his knee healed, Allen was able to complete his schooling, and marry his wife Kelley, who recently celebrated 27 years together. At this point, Allen began to turn his attention to his future career and make decisions on where he wanted to be headed. “My grandfather built shopping centers and whatnot, and I really liked that. So I went to St Mary’s and got a joint degree including a Juris Doctorate from them. When I got out of law school, I started doing oil/gas work and real estate in the San Antonio area. Things picked up quick and Kelley was able to quit teaching, which was a blessing. For the last 22 years I’ve been doing real estate, oil/gas title issues. Anything doing with land or property was of interest to me.” As for WHY it’s of interest to him, Allen puts it succinctly: “Really, it’s this: if you’re a land guy or a property person, then you like being out on it and studying the history of it. You love reading the chain of ownership, you love the maps and plats, and it is just
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infinitely fascinating. My practice is like an inch wide but a mile deep. It’s certainly a very niche industry, but with a lot of potential customers.” And those customers see Allen and his team as a core component to their business. He explains, “With oil/ gas titles, you’re telling the exploration companies who owns the surface, who owns the minerals, liens, divided ownership, ,etc. It’s a good business to be in. There’s not a winner or loser like a lot of law. You’re just a function of business. Nobody is griping about dollars because my part of their program is miniscule, but they will tell you that they’re not worried about the bill, but if you slow them down, you’re gone.” As any oil/gas person will tell you, the industry is volatile. Allen agrees, “Oil/gas is good when it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s non-existent. Every time we’ve hit a bad spot, I’ve thought about doing a small title business. I finally said OK, I’m pulling the trigger in the summer of ’15. We thought we knew title and while we’ve had a learning curve, I’d certainly say we’ve got a pretty good business going. It’s in great hands, and there’s no way that I could ever do the things that I do without the people that I have working with me.” Boerne and the surrounding area has proven to be a wise choice for his team, and Allen has no regrets. “The growth has been a huge factor for us. I moved here for the schools so that’s what drove us to Boerne. Once we got here, we saw what a great place this was to get a great staff and they’re all local. There’s so many subdivisions coming in and we knew that it was time to jump in. This business is
100% driven by the realtors. That’s their livelihood and I thought when I came in that it would be a bunch of divas. But I was wrong. These realtors are true professionals and I’ve so enjoyed working with them.” While the realtors are important to Allen’s business, his internal team is just as crucial. With a hand-selected team of people, Allen has been equipped to grow his business and make what could be a cumbersome process into a smooth machine. “Cathy (Spain) is our marketing person and is just so transparent and is known all over town. Our escrow people are bilingual and super experienced and they are having to field all the calls and all the details and hold hands with the buyer through all that. We have several attorneys that finalize the deal and for the most part, they’re younger. They relate to many of our buyers and they’re our closers.” While one might guess that Allen is a fan of the growth in Boerne as it assists his business with finding a constant stream of new clients, he adds that the growth isn’t just good for business, it’s good for the town. “We had our child christened here christened here in ’95. We didn’t move back here till ’05. We always kept up with things, but it has seen so much growth that for an old German town it could be very difficult. But the thing is that it’s hard to find a stranger here cause we’re all strangers. Castroville is still small and tight. There’s not near the growth. Boerne doesn’t have that, and so I think the growth is great because it makes people welcoming. I love it here, my family loves it here, I love this business, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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314 Schweppe St $479,000
129 Mustang Run $282,500
Charming cottage on .66 acre lot one block off Main Street. 3/2 Main house 2403 sq. ft. 1/1 Guest suite off garage (not included in footage). Mature trees and meticulous landscaping.
Very clean, well maintained 4 bedroom, 2.5 Baths. Open concept kitchen, breakfast area, family room and Master bedroom downstairs. Other 3 bedrooms, full bath and loft upstairs. Home not far from pool, playground, and near walking trails.
MLS# 1234208
MLS# 1292244
Gentle, Caring, Family Practice, Courteous Professional Staff • State of the Art Procedures & Techniques
WE’ VE RECENTLY E XPANDED George E. Metz III, DDS • Michael Hoeppner, DDS
830-229-5581
Gentle, Caring, Family Practice, Courteous Professional Staff State of the Art Procedures & Techniques
NowRaccepting appointments for Kevin Beitchman, DDS, MS - Orthodontist WE’ VE ECENTLY E X PA N DED George E. Metz III, DDS • Michael Hoeppner, DDS
Kendall Woods Dental 830-229-5581
25 FM 3351 South Boerne, Texas 78006
Now accepting appointments for Kevin Beitchman, DDS, MS - Orthodontist
Kendall Woods Dental
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SPRING BREAK
AT THE CAVE Picnics • Geocaching Hiking Trails • Horseshoes Food Trucks • Cave Tours Come Mine for Fossils, Gems, Rocks and Artifacts in our new Mine Quarry.
April 28th 10:00 A.M. - 8:00 P.M. Food. Beer. Family Fun. VENDOR BOOTHS Virtual Reality Cave Simulator www.cascadecaverns.com * 830.755.8080 ADMISSION $15 PER CAR WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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History is a popular topic with our readers. Marjorie Hagy’s HISTORY piece is probably the most popular article in our illustrious publication month after month. With that fact, we thought we’d share some broader Texas history each month. Nothing earth shattering, but we hope you might find something to make you pause and say, “Huh. Well I’ll be.”
March 1, 1978
March 6, 1836
March 23, 1893
The Nature Conservancy, a private concern based in Arlington, Virginia, bought Enchanted Rock for $1.3 million and agreed to act as interim owner until the state could take over, thus guaranteeing that the area would not be opened to private development. Enchanted Rock, a spectacular granite dome near the Gillespie-Llano county line in southern Llano County, rises to 1,825 feet above mean sea level and is the second largest such mountain in the United States. Its name derives from Spanish and Anglo-Texas interpretations of Indian legends and related folklore, which attribute magical properties to the ancient landmark. The first owners of this land were Anavato and María Martínez, to whom a headright certificate was issued in 1838. Over the ensuing 140 years the property changed hands numerous times; eventually Llano rancher Charles H. Moss and his wife Ruth acquired full title to the property but decided to sell it in 1978. Moss first offered it to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department; the Nature Conservancy stepped in when the agency could not pay his price and deeded the land to the state six days later. Following eighteen months of renovations, the site reopened as Enchanted Rock State Park in March 1984. Today the 1,643-acre Enchanted Rock State Natural Area is a favorite destination of hikers, campers, rock-climbers, hang-gliders, and other outdoor enthusiasts from around the state.
The fortified compound of San Antonio de Valero Mission, under siege for thirteen days by the Mexican army under General Antonio Lòpez de Santa Anna, was subjected to an early morning assault. After a fierce battle, lasting for perhaps some 90 minutes, the defenses of the Alamo were overrun and all the defenders were killed. The chapel fell last. The slogan “Remember the Alamo!” subsequently became a rallying cry for the Texas Revolution, and the Alamo became a shrine to fallen Texas heroes.
the Fort Worth Stock Yards were officially incorporated. The Fort Worth livestock market became the largest in Texas and the Southwest, the biggest market south of Kansas City, and consistently ranked between third and fourth among the nation’s large terminal livestock markets for five decades, from about 1905 to the mid-1950s. When the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived in Fort Worth in 1876 promoters built pens to hold cattle, but business leaders were already dreaming of packing plants and stockyards to make their community a permanent focus of the cattle industry. By 1886 four stockyards had been built near the railroads. Boston capitalist Greenleif W. Simpson, with a half dozen Boston and Chicago associates, incorporated the Fort Worth Stock Yards Company and purchased the Union Stock Yards and the Fort Worth Packing Company in 1893. In 1896 the company began a fat-stock show that has survived to the present as one of the largest livestock shows in the nation, the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show. An agreement with Armour and Swift brought in two of the nation’s largest meatpackers, who constructed modern plants adjacent to the stockyards. By 1936 Texas had become the largest-producing state for both cattle and sheep, with Fort Worth as the industry’s hub. The stockyards began to decline in the 1950s as the industry became more decentralized, and today the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District is primarily a tourist attraction.
March 2, 1836 Texas became a republic. On March 1 delegates from the seventeen Mexican municipalities of Texas and the settlement of Pecan Point met at Washington-onthe-Brazos to consider independence from Mexico. George C. Childress presented a resolution calling for independence, and the chairman of the convention appointed Childress to head a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. In the early morning hours of March 2, the convention voted unanimously to accept the resolution. After fiftyeight members signed the document, Texas became the Republic of Texas. The change remained to be demonstrated to Mexico.
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March 10, 1890 The John Sealy Training School for Nurses, the first formal nursing school in Texas, opened with eighteen students in Galveston’s two-month-old John Sealy Hospital. The school was established by a group of philanthropic ladies of that city as an educational entity independent of the hospital. In 1896, however, the school was subsumed by the University of Texas Medical Branch. Training schools subsequently opened in hospitals throughout the state. In the majority of hospitals the actual education students received was secondary to their service in the wards caring for patients. This pattern of training nurses predominated until well into the 1960s. By 1991 UTMB had conferred more than 4,000 nursing diplomas or degrees.
March 14, 1964 Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. On November 24, 1963, Ruby, then proprietor of the Carousel Club, had shot and killed Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in the basement of the Dallas City Jail, during Oswald’s transfer to the county jail. Millions of witnesses watched on national television. Although he was defended by Melvin Belli on the grounds that “psychomotor epilepsy” caused him to black out consciously while functioning physically, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice. His conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and Ruby was awaiting a retrial when he died in prison in 1967. Ruby denied involvement in any conspiracy, and maintained to the end that he shot Oswald on impulse from grief and outrage.
March 26, 1945 the battleship Texas supported the landings for the battle of Okinawa, the final great amphibious assault of World War II. The keel of the Texas, the second battleship to bear this name, was laid at Newport News, Virginia, on April 17, 1911. After serving in the Atlantic Fleet in the First World War, she supported the World War II landings in North Africa, Omaha Beach, southern France, and Iwo Jima. After more than thirtyfour years of naval service she was retired and given to the state of Texas to be used as a memorial. She is permanently moored at the San Jacinto Monument off the Houston Ship Channel.
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March 17th is fast approaching. The day when it becomes socially acceptable to start drinking at 8:00am... at the office. The day when everyone is Irish isn’t JUST about drinking. It has some interesting history to go along with your green tinted beer goggles. So we thought we’d share all little about who this guy was and some fun/interesting facts about this special day.
A BIT O’HISTORY So who is this St. Patrick, patron saint of drunkenness. Because we all need someone to pray to while we kneel before the porcelain altar. For starters he’s credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. However, Paddy boy wasn’t even Irish. In fact, Patrick wasn’t his original name. The man known as St. Patrick was born Maewyn Succat of Britain in 385 AD and his parents were Roman citizens. The unconfirmed consensus is that they were the Roman equivalent of hipsters. I mean, who names their son Maewyn? Why not Maximus or Brock? Anyway... When Maewyn was 16 he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland. Fun. There he tended sheep. Because it was pretty much the only thing to do since potatoes wouldn’t show up for another 1200 years. Wrap your head around that little tidbit of knowledge. After getting tired of dealing with sheep for years, he ran away when he was 22 and took refuge in an English monastery. Why it took him so long to get tired of sheep is anyone’s guess. Maybe he was an Aggie. He was later ordained a bishop and changed his name to Patricius. Armed with the might of God and a trunk full of Holy Hand Grenades, he returned to Ireland with one purpose. To completely eradicate the sheep population. Finding this task virtually impossible (even God couldn’t figure out where they all came from) he began the much more attainable goal of converting the entire country to Christianity. After pretty much pulling off his goal, Patricius died in on March 17, 461 at the age of 76. Which in those days was pretty damn old. And even though he was never canonized by a pope, he is still recognized to this day for his holy works.
PADDY FACTS You might have heard that St. Patrick was responsible for driving out all the snakes from Ireland. Truth is, there is no evidence that snakes lived in Ireland. EVER. The climate is too cold for them to thrive. It’s believed that the term “snakes” is a figurative term for pagan religious beliefs and practices. If you don’t see the irony in celebrating a man who rid Ireland of pagan practices by getting black out drunk, you’ve probably already started celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.
Sit down for this one. St. Patrick’s day was traditionally a DRY holiday. Between 1903 and 1970 it was a strictly religious holiday for the entire country of Ireland. This meant pubs were closed for the day. Today, roughly $245 million is spent on beer for March 17th. There’s a lot of catching up to do people.
Largest St. Patrick’s Day parade is in New York City. With and average of 150,000 participants each year.
The first time the Chicago River was famously dyed green, in 1961, they used 100 lbs. of green vegetable dye. That doesn’t sound too outlandish. Right? I mean, you have to use damn near an entire bottle of food coloring if you want your Easter eggs to be anything other than a light pastel color. But they didn’t know how much they really needed back then so they just dumped a bunch of color in there an hopped for the best. The river was green for a full week. These days they use 25 lbs. and it stays green for a few hours. We don’t know what the big deal is. Cibolo Creek is green 365 days a year. Unless someone forgets to turn the spigot back on.
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Apparently, the odds of finding a four-leaf clover are 1 in 10,000. Which means there should be roughly 50,000 of them in my back yard alone.
Green beer. It was tradition in days of yore to drop a clover in one’s beer and shotgun the whole freaking thing. Clover and all. Then in 1914, during a celebration in New York City, a doctor, coroner physician actually, named Dr. Curtin presented the revelers with a bright, vibrant green beer. When asked how he did it, the response was the addition of a product called Wash Blue. At the time the product was a blue dye used to color fabrics/textiles. Probably not the smartest thing to be tossing back in excess. But hey, those were simpler times. Toxic chemicals be dammed. If you’re wondering why blue, think back to kindergarten art class. Beer is yellow. Yellow + blue = GREEN. Just remember, don’t use commercial fabric dye, and one or two drops can go a long way. Drink up me lads and lasses.
First ever St. Patrick’s day parade was held in Boston on March 18, 1737. Almost 40 years before the United States was even the United States. Ireland didn’t jump on the bandwagon until 1931 with their own parade. What can we say? America loves it some parades.
TAO
By Sue Talford
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Back in Boerne by popular demand, the TAO Taiko Drummers will take to the stage with their latest production: Drum Heart! These internationally acclaimed percussion artists have transfixed audiences worldwide with their modern, magical, mystifying performances that are the hallmark of the ancient art of Japanese taiko drumming.
This is not just your ordinary drum show…but one filled with contemporary costumes, precise choreography and innovative visuals that combine highly physical, large-scale drumming that has transfixed audiences worldwide. Approaching 8 million spectators, all over the world, including the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, TAO has been hailed as “undoubtedly one of the finest shows on stage” by the Edinburgh Evening News. Their performances have been hailed as the most prominent entertainment in Japan, as evidenced by their receipt of “The Sixth Japan Tourism Agency Commission’s Award”. Their 2018 North American tour is both mentally and physically exhausting… having started January 31 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada…extending down the entire eastern seaboard…then back up through the Midwest…before journeying to Texas. Their Texas shows include Houston (Jones Hall), Dallas (Strauss Square), Midland (Noel Performing Arts Center) and Boerne (Champion Auditorium). After Texas, they continue on to the west coast, where their tour will finally end on May 6th, in the 2000seat Zellerbach Hall on the campus of University of California-Berkeley. That totals 63 shows in 96 days…in 40 US states! Demanding? Yes! Exhausting? Yes! Exhilarating? Yes! The Chicago Tribune reviewed TAO as “supernaturally fit and superbly trained…stunning…fully deserving of the standing ovation that the company receives!” while the Central News Agency commented, “You’ll regret it for life if you miss this!” So let’s get ready for an evening of highly physical, large-scale drumming that creates an energetic, yet breathless performance. The place to be on Friday, April 13, will be Boerne Champion Auditorium, when Boerne Performing Arts closes out their seventh sensational season of bringing the world of professional performing arts to the hill country.
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Are you familiar with taiko? Were you aware that taiko drums are crafted from the trunks of the Japanese Zelkova tree? A master carpenter carves out the rough shape of the drum body with a chisel to soften the tone of the drum. Did you know that the skins, or heads, are made from the cowhide of Holstein cows? And for the larger drums, a bull skin is preferred? What other components of taiko should you know? Bachi: Sticks used for taiko. Made in various sizes and from different types of wood (white oak, bamboo, and Japanese magnolia). Kumi-daiko: Type of performance involving multiple players and different types of taiko. Shie-daiko: Small, high-pitched taiko where the skin is pulled across the head using rope. Byo-uchi-daiko: Taiko where the skin is tacked onto the head. Tsuzumi (NOT a tsunami!!!): Rope tensioned drums with a distinct hourglass shape. Kata: Term used to describe the posture and movement associated with both taiko and martial arts. Tickets ($30-$40-$60, $20 for students) are available online at www.BoernePerformingArts.com, or if you would prefer personal attention, give them a call at 830.331.9079. Showtime is at 7:30 p.m. at Boerne Champion Auditorium.
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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SWAN SONG By Ed Davis
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It is difficult to have an original thought, idea, or theory. Conventional wisdom says that very few people ever think about anything deeper than what they are going to wear or that which their job requires. In spite of that I have found that almost every time I think I have an original answer to one of life’s question, someone has been there before me. And this is only counting those things that have been written. Most people never have the opportunity to put their reflections into print.
When I was a boy living in the country, in the summertime, I sometimes slept on a bed outside the house. Looking up, I could see only the fluid blackness of the night sky, pierced by millions of tiny lights. The Milky Way arched over me in a silvery luminescence. All this was a source of awe to an ignorant country boy, and yet I somehow felt at one with its essence. Lying quietly, my ear pressing against the thin mattress upon which I lay, I fancied I could hear music. It was faint but I believed it was coming from outside me and not just the sound of blood rushing through my head. Not like putting your ear to a seashell and hearing the roar of the sea, but rather the sound of the universe being picked up by the springs of my bed like a radio antenna. There was no melody such as I was accustomed to hearing at church or from the dry cell radio we owned, but it was as if the universe was harmonizing in a quiet ethereal peace, Last week I spoke of this to our son and he said Pythagoras was away ahead of me. I asked him if he had an equation. H said that I should look it up. Here is what I found. After more than two thousand years his exact beliefs and equations are not completely clear, but it is apparent he believed all the universe resonated to some musical definition. I quote this from a treatise not attributable. “The Pythagoreans believed that everything that existed had a voice and that all creation was eternally singing praises to their Creator. Man fails to hear these divine melodies because his soul is enmeshed in the delusion of material existence. When he liberates himself from the bondage of the lower world with its sense limitation the music of the spheres will again be audible as it was in the golden age. Harmony recognizes harmony and when the soul regains its true estate it will not only hear the celestial choir but join with it in an everlasting anthem of praise to the eternal Good controlling an infinite number of parts and conditions of being.” It seems he equated harmony in musical terms with good and disharmony with evil, perhaps a universe infinitely beautiful built on a basis of infinitely beautiful music. It is
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interesting to note that many people who have had near death experiences comment on the beauty of the music they heard. And it is common knowledge that the popular music of these days brings up more of a feeling of half naked warriors dancing to the beat of a tom-tom around a pot of boiling missionaries than it does of sweet uplifting emotions associated with the old hymns. This very fact is bringing the disharmony of which Pythagoras spoke into our churches and, I believe, hastening the deterioration of our Christian heritage. But, moving on to a corollary of the idea of cosmic music heard only in the heavenly precincts is the fact that in many instances a person, animal, or vegetable will do its best work just before dying: an apple tree producing a bumper crop just before it withers and dies, a horse running its fastest race, or a singer surpassing all previous performances. Everyone is familiar with the expression, “Swan Song.” It derives from a legend about a swan, which was genetically mute all its life, and yet sang a beautiful melody just before dying. It is, presumably only a legend but has struck a responsive chord in humanity, presupposing that the proximity in time to the ethereal beauty of the afterlife. Orlando Gibbon’s madrigal begins: The silver swan, who living had no note When death approached, unlocked her silent throat. And Tennyson wrote as if he had personal knowledge: The wild swan’s death hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear, But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold: As when a mighty people rejoice With sshawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold. Twice it is recorded in the gospels that after the twelve finished the “last supper” they sang a hymn and went out and the Christ then performed the greatest act in the history of the world as he died for it. The Bible says that He was mute (like the swan) before his accusers, but went on to sing a deathless song that has resonated down through the centuries.
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THE GRAPES OF WRATH By Jeanna Goodrich
“Crossroads”: A song that has inspired many a road trip in my day. Though the Eric Clapton version is a bit more upbeat, and the John Mayer version is a little smoother, there’s nothing like the original dirty, gritty vocals of Robert Johnson to stir up some serious sense of adventure. Over time, I found myself behind the wheel at a crossroads, comfortable with the fact that I didn’t quite know where I was going next.
It was the end of a long, amazing afternoon and, fittingly, I had found myself again at the Crossroads. I wasn’t here to fight the devil or to flag a ride—I’d taken care of those things already—and the only thing I was sinking in was the mellifluous mixture of at least a dozen different red and white wines. Rather, Crossroads was the perfect place to end the perfect day—the Crossroads Steakhouse in Fredericksburg. Seeing the stage, the lights, and the hardwood floors beneath my cowboy-boot-covered feet made me want to get up and dance (or maybe it was the bubbling concoction of beer and wine dancing around in my system). Don’t worry—I wasn’t behind the wheel this time, and Crossroads was the final stop on a grand tour-de-wineries of the Texas Hill Country. Knowing full well that such a tour would require lots of wine drinking and thus lots of judgment impairment, Alison and I opted out of taking the ol’ Passat (with its Service Engine NOW light flashing every 10 miles) and opted for a designated driver. Fortunately for us, this driver just happened to be a great guy, and he just happened to be driving a great big tour bus. When Alison and I first suggested our “Trail of Tears” wine tour, we hadn’t thought it all the way through. A wine tour sounded like so much fun… if we didn’t have to drive. And if we didn’t have to drive, then how would it be a road trip at all? Enter our crazy boss with his crazy-boss ideas: “Why don’t y’all take a tour bus?” Well, he didn’t have to ask us twice. And with an adventure this fun, why not invite our friends? So, with an amazing charter bus from Roadhouse Coach in Comfort, and twelve awesome ladies looking to get too much wine flowing through our veins, we were off on our “Trail of Tears” Hill Country Wine Tour. Attention, Men: this might be your worst nightmare. Our first stop was Sister Creek Vineyard in Sisterdale, where we toured the storage rooms and got to watch the wine being bottled. A handful of us tasted their Muscat Canelli, which we unanimously decided was one of the best wines we’d ever tried. We quickly discovered that a dozen women in a winery is a situation begging for some trouble, and amid giggles, cutting up, and the first couple of sips of wine warming our souls, we were determined to make this a hell of a fun day. Boarding the bus again, we set out for Becker Vineyard in Fredericksburg. After a slight back-road detour (May I just insert a small note here? I’d like to point out that no matter where Alison and I go, we manage to get lost. Even when we’re not driving. Go figure.) we discovered that we couldn’t barrel the bus through the back entrance—no matter how much we wanted to. Finally en route via Highway 290, we made it to Becker, enveloped in the rich scent of lavender and grapes, the Hill Country in its most aromatic essence.
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At this point in our journey, we were at our first real Crossroads: to keep drinking, or to not? It was a toss up. We’d already consumed our fair share of flower wines and zinfandels, and our small frames were begging us to stop while we still had the chance. It seemed only natural that the wine sampler serving us gave us an awkward sideways glace as we filled up our wine glasses with the water normally saved for rinsing out glasses between tastings. We weren’t ashamed—no, we were smart! or so we thought—we were just… well, staying hydrated. Passing off our extra tickets to some visitors from Mexico City, Alison and I decided to take it easy for a while. As we stepped away from the group, idly smelling lavender soaps and shower gels, I took a casual glance around the room. Here we were, a dozen different women, all here from different places with different stories, gathered together to celebrate adventure, excitement, and the fermentation of grapes. At that moment, I couldn’t help but smile. The sounds of story-telling, jokes, and laughter saturated the air with an enthusiastic energy, a happiness so contagious that I was pretty bummed to have to round everyone up to move on to our next stop on the tour. Only a few short minutes down the road, we parked the bus at Torre Di Pietra, a unique winery filled with even more unique wine trinkets (and covered in the Papyrus font, but I suppose that is a rant that I won’t bore you with… this time). I’d given up on the sobering up at this point—we’d opened a box of Shiner on the bus and now all hope was lost. This was going to be a Trail of Tears to remember… or not. I can only imagine, dear reader, that you must consider me somewhat of a drinker. Last month we made up an excuse to tour a small-town, big-time brewery; this month, we rented a Roadhouse Coach just to experience the best of three Hill Country wineries. But wasn’t it the great Benjamin Franklin who once said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”? I jest, but only a bit. We had all walked on to that bus barely knowing each other, but we walked off of the bus great friends. Sharing wine was only the beginning—sharing stories, thoughts, and laughs were what made the trip so memorable and so exciting. Our “Trail of Tears” had morphed into a “Trail of Togetherness,” and as we pulled into the CVB parking lot ready to part ways, I couldn’t help but feel a little warmth flood my veins. Sure, it could have been remnants of the last red blend, but I’d like to think it was my heart beating a little happier for having the chance to experience such a fantastic afternoon with such amazing people. …Admittedly, said warmth was even more comfortable when I went home and immediately took a nap.
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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BLESSINGS OF THE GREAT MYSTERY By Marjorie Hagy
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Do you guys remember 1492? When Columbus sailed the ocean blue and all that and discovered America? Maybe you dozed off a little because the classroom was nice and warm and you’d just had tater tots in the lunchroom and a fly was droning around pleasantly.
When you startled yourself awake the teacher was talking about the pilgrims, you got a little mixed up and got ahold of an idea that Columbus drove the Mayflower over and wore one of those pointy hats and had big buckles on his shoes. Something like that. I know memories can be tricky - how they can be affected by things that we learn later on in life - but I swear I can remember wondering during that lesson about this: If Columbus discovered America, then how was it possible that there were already a whole bunch of people here to welcome them?
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Right? Well now I’m all grown up and that still seems like a valid point. A lot of other people must’ve felt the same way, since poor Columbus has gotten a lot of flak over these last twenty or thirty years. I’ve also discovered this other thing too, with advancing age that is: the older I get, the less black and white things are, and the more I see these thousands, even millions, of different shades of gray to all the issues that once seemed so open and shut. This is one of those things that I think about: here’s this thing we call ‘social media’ for
instance - Facebook, to be specific, since I’ve been forbidden by my children to fool around with Snapchat and all that other stuff. Facebook, along with whatever else it is, is this place where people of all ages and colors and genders and beliefs are all mixed up together, and you get this unique opportunity to see how all these different people are feeling about the same issues. (Oh, and believe me, it’s not always a positive experience as you’ll quickly realize when you get that friend request from a guy you haven’t seen since high school and you’re like ‘Jerry! I wonder what that old so-and-so is up to these days.’ Then you find out it’s a far better thing to just content yourself with fond memories of ol’ Jer razzing the cafeteria lady instead of reconnecting with him now that he’s a camera-happy nudist and a zealous Amway rep.) Social media is just this really good place to observe people, like my sister and I used to do at the food court at North Star Mall, only on Facebook you get to observe the workings of their minds, in a way, and one thing you notice is how adamant people are! They’re always so positive that there’s only one absolutely, irrefutably correct stance on any given issue and simply no other way of looking at the thing - and that just isn’t true. The world really doesn’t work like that, where there’s one right answer and one wrong one, where one group of people are all saints and the other side is completely evil. I mean, you’re not going to come across a lot of people who say, ‘Eh, well, Hitler did have his good points too’, but most people and most situations are more complicated than just good vs. evil, you know?
her nature had become almost an inborn gift. While Europeans would come with hubris, with the audacity to believe that they could conquer and improve upon this place, the indigenous people treated their world with respect borne of long fellowship. The first people to come here to Texas - actually to North America at all - got here long, long ago, maybe even as far back as 37,000 years ago. The very first primitive people, called Paleo-Indians, who were the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans, most likely got here by way of walking across a spit of land where the Bering Strait is now. During the Ice Age, when the first people came, everything was so much colder and all this water was being sucked up into brand-new glaciers, making the world’s ocean levels a lot lower. That meant that the Bering Strait (which separates Russia from Alaska, or more broadly, Asia from North America) became the Bering Land Bridge, and the ancestors simply walked across this, fifty or so miles, to a whole new continent. From Alaska - or what would eventually become Alaska - the people migrated southward, into Canada and beyond, and spread out to populate all of North America.
“Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land ‘infested’ with ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’ people. To us it was tame, Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.”
I’m talking about European settlement in the United States and the indigenous people whose land this was already when the white people got here, like we’re going to be doing this month, is always a tricky proposition. It’s such a sad story of conquest, disease, violence, racism, and genocide. It’s difficult to see heroes in any of the people who took part in that ruination of a whole civilization. Believe me, when you get into any kind of research at all about what the white people did to the Indians - and equally on the other end of the spectrum, what the Indians did to the white people - it’s enough to make you sit down and cry. You have to confront all kinds of things within that - like the part where me, as a white person of European descent and all that stuff that other people did a long time ago - that’s how I got here. That’s my story and the history of my people. What’s my ownership of that, or am I exempt from responsibility if my ancestors arrived on these shores after the natives had already been destroyed? What is my own obligation, one hundred, two hundred years later? What was a simple matter of Cowboys and Indians when we were kids, one guy has a white hat and a gun and the other guy sticks a feather on his head and bam, the good guy shoots the bad guy and that’s the way it is - you grow up and you see all the many, many facets of the real story and yeah, you figure out real quick that nothing is ever really as simple as that. Take Columbus. He’s been vilified of late for sure, but was he a bad guy, deserving of all the scorn that’s been piled on him lately? He was a man of his times, and those times were very different than ours - I’ve muddled my way, as a history detective and as a human person, into the realization that maybe that’s the most important thing to remember when looking at the past. It’s a big mistake to judge people who lived in the past by the standards of today - it’s a mistake, but it’s an enormous temptation. I would love to believe that in antebellum times or during Jim Crow, I would’ve stood up against the system in which I lived, or that in Nazi Germany I would’ve damned the costs and been the lone voice crying in the wilderness. Yet, we - none of us - can transport ourselves back into history armed with what knowledge we’ve garnered with the passage of time, any more than we are qualified to dispense judgment on those men and women who acted as they saw fit during their own brief time here. Columbus has been disparaged because his ‘discovery’ of the New World opened the door to the conquistadors and the rest of the Europeans who followed, and who would exploit the land and decimate the natives, but that was so horribly inevitable, with or without Columbus. Did he discover America? Not really, but he did stumble onto a whole – literally - a whole New World that Europeans had never known was here, and in that his achievement was noteworthy. Columbus has been celebrated for that achievement for more than five hundred years now - perhaps it is time we shift the focus, and instead honor the lives of the people who’ve lived here all along. Ten million people lived here in 1492. Ten million people to whom this was no new world at all, but an ancient one, long sustained and enriched by the blood and hearts of their ancestors, stitched together with their stories, understood through their customs and their gods. This was the land they had known for generations, knew her cycles, her seasons, and her perils - this was the place their families had inhabited for so long that familiarity with
Including Texas. Texas has been home to millions of indigenous people, according to the fossil record and to discovered remains, since the Stone Age. When the Spanish explorers first arrived here looking for gold, riches, the fountain of youth, and all that stuff, they found the place already long inhabited by many - Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux different tribes, bands, and families of natives. From the Karankawa tribes of the Gulf Coast to the Wichita and Caddo Indians of the eastern Piney Woods; from the Suma and Pueblo people of the deserts and mountains of West Texas to the Bidai, Tonkawa, and the great Apache tribes of the verdant Hill Country; from the Coahuiltecan and Carrizo tribes of the Rio Grande Valley, to all of the bands, families, clans, and confederations in between, such as the Atakapa, Neche, Kadohadacho, Natchitoches and Mayeye bands, the Kiowa tribe, the Kitsai, the Tawakoni, Cava, Cantona, Emet, Sana, Toho, and Tohaha Indians…this land was home to age-old cultures. Native Texans had been weaving their stories on this land for thousands of generations, as hunters and farmers, artisans and traders, warriors and healers, before the Europeans arrived and called them savages. Here in the Hill Country, where the German-Americans would eventually come to plant the seeds of their Latin colony, where the businessmen John James and Gus Theissen would follow a few years later selling lots in their new city of Boerne on the ancient Pinta Trail - the lush Cibolo Valley had been home to a tribe of the Apache people called the Lipan - meaning ‘light gray people’ - since sometime between 1400 and 1600AD. The Lipan Apache were a tribe of Plains Indians, and they moved from the Great Plains - that swath down the middle of the United States long marked the ‘Great American Desert’ and into Texas, claiming the area around San Antonio as theirs, which they called ‘Many Houses’. These Lipan Apaches were the dominant tribe in the area that would become Boerne for many years, until a formidable enemy arrived in town to challenge them - and until both they and their enemy were driven out of their homeland by an even greater enemy. The Lipans lived mainly by hunting the great bison herds that migrated throughout all of the United States and Texas in those days, herds of a hundred thousand heads and more. The Hill Country was different in those pre-European days - it had fewer trees and more prairie, dominated by the tall prairie grasses that grew throughout that old Great American Desert - the Great Plains - that would eventually be put under the plow and result in the catastrophe known as the Dust Bowl, the worst manmade disaster in the history of the US. The great herds of buffalo roamed the land during their migration, eating everything in sight (including sapling trees, which is one of the reasons there were less trees here), and the Lipan Apache would hunt them twice a year. These big hunts were the red-letter events in the Lipan’s year, socially as well as in provisioning the tribe - many different bands of Lipans would gather from their various locations for the hunt, and it was a big occasion and a joyful reunion for the people. Babies were shown off, and wooing and flirting and all that was undertaken, marriages were arranged and celebrated, and presumably additional babies created as old friends and family members got together for the great buffalo hunt. Before the hunt started, a holy man would consult with the gods to get a fix on the location of the herd (a Spanish explorer who would later witness a buffalo hunt, which he called a carneada, wrote of such an Apache holy man who pronounced, after council with the deities, that the bison were ‘two days to the east and were “as numerous as grass in the fields.”’) Before the Lipans got ahold of horses in the late 1600s, they did this hunting on foot. There’s an old expression about using everything from a pig ‘except his squeal’, and the Lipans found a use for just about everything from the buffalo except for his...snort?
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | MARCH 2018
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Anyway, they turned the buffalo into all kinds of things they used every day - from food, clothes, and shoes to their tepee coverings, cups, bowls, tools, knives, and decorations. The Spanish explorer, again on all the uses the Apaches had for the bison: they lived ‘in tents made of the tanned skins of the cows [bison]. They dry the flesh in the sun, cutting it thin like a leaf, and when dry they grind it like meal to keep it and make a sort of sea soup of it to eat...They season it with fat, which they always try to secure when they kill a cow. They empty a large gut and fill it with blood, and carry this around the neck to drink when they are thirsty.’ The Lipan also hunted antelope, which they called tcela-a, deer (kockeya), rabbit, turkey, quail, and javelina. They believed in leaving the eye of the slain animal, as well as pieces of its meat, between the ribs for the crow who was the guardian of the hunt. The women of the Lipan tribe also gathered and prepared vegetables, roots, and herbs, including cactus, yucca, mescal, palm, mesquite, honey, and wild plums and fruit. They used chilies and wild onions for seasoning. Lipans were also farmers, of a sort. The women - they seemed to be in charge of the fruits and veggies while the dudes were responsible for the meat - would plant crops of corn, squash, and things like that alongside riverbanks where the soil was fertile. The group would camp in the area long enough for the plants to come up. They’d then go on with their business, whatever that was - the bison migration or wherever else they needed to go - and eventually circle back to their farm site in time for harvesting their crop. When the Spanish first founded San Antonio, they happened upon a crop of Lipan corn growing that way north of town, and called the place ‘elotes’ meaning ‘green ears of corn’. The Lipans kept using that particular corn camp all the way up until the late 1850s or so, and over time elotes became Helotes. Helotes was founded on this site of an old Lipan farm venture. When the Lipan Apache finally got ahold of horses in the late 1600s, they quickly became excellent horsemen, and were lethal warriors on horseback with bow and arrow. Around 1700, things got a lot tougher for the Lipan Apache when the Comanches moved into town. Now these guys, the Comanches, they were a whole different ballgame than what the Lipans had been used to, since the Lipan were pretty much in charge of the place ‘til they showed up. The Comanches - even their name meant enemy - were just downright mean. The Comanches weren’t native to Texas - they were relative latecomers, in fact.
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Their deal was that they’d been members of the Shoshone people and had come from the southern Rocky Mountains, but the Comanches, once they’d discovered horses, turned absolutely horse crazy and nothing would do but that. They’d split off from the Shoshone and go off in search of more horses, and in Texas they found vast numbers of feral horses - some two million wild mustangs. The Comanches soon distinguished themselves as the fiercest and meanest Indians in Texas, by far the biggest threat to European settlers and by far and away the most feared of all the tribes. Within a relatively short time of their arrival in Texas, the Comanch had established an enormous territory as their own comancheria. The Lipan Apache quickly became the sworn enemy of the Comanche tribes, and this fact drove their sort of love-hate, symbiotic relationship with the Spanish missionaries, and later, the Texans. They were some of the favorite targets of the missionary zeal of the Spanish in San Antonio, and was variously either working at what amounted to slave labor at the mission in San Antonio, taking refuge there from their enemy the Comanche, stealing horses in surprise raids from the mission, or at out-and-out war with the city. In between warring with the San Antonians, the Lipans often allied with them in campaigns against other Indian tribes. In 1836, in another twist in their weird relationship with the people of San Antonio, the Lipans watched the Battle of the Alamo and even offer their aid to her defenders. Smallpox, borne to their numbers by the Europeans and against which the Lipan Apache had no natural immunities, decimated the Lipan people in epidemics in 1750, 1780, and again in 1850. A concentrated campaign against them in the 1860s further reduced their population. It’s a story as old as the story of Europeans in North America at all - a story as old as 1492 and beyond - when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, stumbled across the New World, and set off the events that would eventually destroy the natives, their cultures, their lives, and all they had built for thousands upon thousands of years with the diseases, the hubris, the violence, the Imperialism, and the greed from the old, old world, against which no amount of time nor pride, nor fierce, desperate fight is sufficient.
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WORRY NOT By Kendall D. Aaron
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We all tend to worry a lot. We all do it – we worry about our jobs and our kids and our relationships and our money. We worry about war, and politics, and even the weather. Whatever it is – somebody, somewhere is actively stressed and worrying about something.
It could be something global: “Man, I hate to see those poor African kids on the tv infomercials – I worry about them so much…I wish that somebody could help them!” Or it could be something personal: “I’m so worried about my career. It’s going nowhere. This is awful!” We worry about big stuff, and we worry about little stuff. We wring our hands, and talk about it incessantly over coffee, and we stare at our ceilings while we lay in bed and just wrack our brains seeking the solution to it all. I had just lost my job one time. I stood in my kitchen, hand on the counter, and blabbered away to a friend about how awful this was, and what was I going to do, and the bills, and damn near hyper-ventilated myself into unconsciousness. My fears and anxiety was certainly justified, in that it was certainly not going to be an easy time. I would have to find a part-time job, cancel day care, and shut down any expense deemed extraneous. I had to brush up my resume, start networking, and beat the street like none other in order to find my next gig. That episode in my kitchen was sometime in 2006. I can’t remember exactly when it was. Want to know why? It’s because it wasn’t important. While I stood in the kitchen and blabbed with my friend, he said, “Look, take a deep breath. Tell me – what is the absolute worst thing that can happen?” I sighed and told him about how I could potentially lose my car, and struggle for food, and would have to shut down this very phone I was talking on, and begin mowing lawns to make grocery money. “Ok”, he said. “So, are you going to die?” No you dolt, I said. “Are your kids going to die? Do you think you’ll have to lose your home? Will you be living on the street in a month, and do you think you will end up drunk in a gutter somewhere? Well, DO YOU?”
Friends, how many times have you had a complete FREAK OUT moment like me? Has it been a while, or did you have one just last week? Proverbs 19:21 is a favorite of mine: “Many are the plans in the mind of man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” Many are the plans in the mind of man. Yeah, that sounds about right. I’ve got plans for this week, this month, this year, and this decade. I’ve got the entire dang thing planned out. I know exactly how it’s supposed to go, and let me tell ya, there is no deviation in my plan. My plans are many, and my plans are MINE. And then things break down and don’t go as planned. You lose your job, you get sick, your car breaks down, your home burns down. Whatever it is, it WILL happen. I’m not here to make light of REAL issues, either. I recently lost a family member. I had this same discussion with myself upon diagnosis: “Ok, what’s the absolute worst that can happen?” And yes, my answer was, “He will die.” But it didn’t change the plans of my God. I still had to sit there and cry it out and say, “Ok, then if that is what is to happen, the only thing I can do is navigate it in a way that is honoring of you, God.” And so I’d like to say that I did. I certainly had my moments, but what would my worrying have accomplished? Would it have changed anything? Nope. Would “life” still have followed the plan of God? The one that I really, really did NOT like and did not want to happen? Absolutely. To have the trust in God that “things will just be ok” is not an easy one. Sometimes things don’t just work out. Sometimes everything falls apart and you really do find yourself homeless. Sometimes your friends and family (or you) actually die. Sometimes the worst that can happen really happens. And it’s utterly miserable. But all you have to hold to is the last part of the verse above: The purpose of the Lord will stand. That pain, that struggle, that fear that you are engulfed in is serving a purpose. It’s changing your life. It’s moving your heart. It’s following a story that was written for you before time began, and it is God’s purpose for you. Sure, you can worry, and you probably will because you are a regular ol’ run-of-the-mill sinner, just like everyone. What I pray for you is that, at some point, you find the peace in the moment that God can provide, trust His plan, and make it your finest moment. Face the adversity, and re-emerge knowing that you tried to honor God throughout. Don’t worry about the circumstance.
After a few minutes at being irritated at his line of questioning, ultimately, I had to take a deep breath and admit that things would probably be ok. They might not be easy, but yes, they would probably work out.
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Instead, worry that you trust enough. If you do, life will be exponentially less scary.
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O
OLD TIMER I WOULD vote, but I clearly have to go to space. And my drink is almost gone so I have to get more. Oh, and it’s raining so... you know.
By the time that you read this, our hotly contested Kendall County elections cycle should be over (March 6). I obviously can’t comment as to who won (as I’m writing this in mid-February), but the entire process of elections in this town is one that makes me batty. I shouldn’t say “process” as that’s not the issue, but the engagement of the populace is more than a little bit of a head-scratcher. We are what I would call an “angry” town in that we like to bitch. A LOT. About damn near everything. From the low-hanging fruit of “GROWTH” and “TRAFFIC” to things such as City Council legal issues, financing, taxes, and water. If there’s a topic, the collective population of this county is always up for a good old fashioned slug-ofwords either online, in the paper, or even in person. What perplexes me is that these topics that are of such debate and vitriol in our town are not handled in the one way that they can actually be handled: IN THE VOTING BOOTH. Last year, Mad Money Mike $chultz was up for reelection. He got a terribly unprepared opponent, but $chultz was wildly unpopular for his handling of several issues, not the least of which is his railroad-job that he did on the City Hall Project. Again, his opponent was a mess but hey, at least he had an opponent. So with the opportunity to finally oust him from his throne, a jawdropping 772 people showed up to vote for the mayoral
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election. The last time that I licked my finger and put it up in the air, Boerne had approximately 14,000 residents. 772 of them voted. 772 people out of 14,000. Sigh. Oh, so the turnout was pathetic because both candidates were horrible? Well, in 2016 we had the vote for the school bond. Turnout: 14%. In 2015, turnout: 17% 2014: 25% And on and on. I chuckled at our District Judge debate when our friends at the Kendall County Republican Club patted each other on the ass that there hadn’t been a Democratic nominee in Kendall County since they chased off the last Comanche, and yet, the voting turnout numbers speak for themselves. I mean, let’s all high-five that we’re a bunch of gun-toting, Bible thumping Freedom Fighters with our beloved guns tucked securely in our truck consoles…and yet the population of our town can’t be bothered to take 7 minutes and exercise the ONE right that allows them a very real voice in how our town is governed. In my younger days, it would make me mad. I mean, I fought in The War. I shot Nazi bastards so that my family could enjoy a few things, one of those being the honor of living under this democracy. As I’ve gotten older, I
suppose I’ve become the crotchety old guy that is a bit apathetic and simply expects the younger generations to yawn at the notion of civic duty while surfing their phones. However, I suppose I’ll never get comfortable with the amount of BITCHING that goes on in this town…when people can’t be bothered to speak in the voting booth. As with any town, you have a few factions of people: Those happy with growth. Those that hate growth. Hardcore Republican “Obama is the Devil” types, and then the free-spirited Mother Earth liberal types. Rich. Poor. High class and white trash. We’ve got them all here in town, too. Apparently, we also have an extremely large group of all these people that like to go on Facebook, scream like children about some great injustice in our town, and then turn on Oprah when it’s time to vote. We’ll see how it all turns out. But no matter how it turns out, if you couldn’t be bothered to participate, I will expect you to sit quietly in the corner for the next few years until the next election and have very, very little say. After all, you HAVE a say in things, but only if you exercise that right. Many people, far greater than you, died to ensure that right. Honor them.
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