AUGUST 2018
FARM & RANCH INSURANCE ANIMALS ARE ASSETS TOO!
Livestock is a big investment and financial asset. You will want to provide them a level of protection to! Coverage can include protection against financial losses if your animals are harmed or killed as a result of a covered loss. Even if your animal is in transit! Livestock includes: Horse, Cattle, Deer and other Exotics!
PROTECT YOUR INVESTMENT THE RIGHT WAY!
We know that your farm or ranch provides a valuable service to the community, and we’d like to return the favor by offering you the comprehensive protection you deserve. Q: Do I need Farm and Ranch Coverage? A: Are you raising and selling crops or animals? Do you own a horse or other non-domesticated animals? Are you fishing or hunting on your land? If you answer “Yes” to these questions then you need Farm and Ranch coverage. Your regular homeowner’s insurance will not cover these exposures. Q: What is the difference between Homeowners and Farm and Ranch coverage? A: Farm and Ranch coverage begins when you’re using your property/land in a way that a homeowner does not. For example; breeding and selling animals for profit. It’s designed to cover all the extras that aren’t covered under your homeowner’s policy.
Don’t lose your life’s work because you’re not covered properly! Farm and Ranch Liability may pay for:
• Attorney fees and court costs due to a covered loss
• Medical expenses for people injured on your property • Injury or damage to others caused by your animals • Other claims for injury from specific farm or ranch operations
Yates & Associates gives you more than 30 years of experience! Q: We have a house, barns, vehicles and farm equipment. Can you cover all of that? A: YES! Farm and Ranch policies are designed to cover ALL your property investment needs. Coverage can be offered for homes to sports utility vehicles to tractors and other farming equipment.
OVER 20 YEARS IN THE HILL COUNTRY 1002 East Blanco | Boerne, TX 78006 | (830) 816-6601 | info@yatesinsurance.com
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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
26
12
28 History
Calendar
Read All About It!
EXPLORE magazine is published by Schooley Media Ventures
16 Art of The Vine
32 Spiritual
20 This Month in Texas History
34
Apple of My Pie
24
38
Old Timer Strikes Again
Badass of the Month
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.
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 2016 Schooley Media Ventures, 930 E. Blanco, Ste. 200, Boerne, TX 78006
Publisher Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com
8 | 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
C O C K TA I L S • B A R • L I V E M U S I C 512 RIVER RD.
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NE XT TO LIT TLE GRETEL
DEAREST EXPLORE READER, James Robertson is a factory worker in Detroit. Each day he wakes up and begins a 21-mile journey to his job that pays $10.55/hour. He has no car, so James walks that distance each day. At the end of his 8 hour shift, he reverses course, and completes his 42 mile roundtrip journey on foot every weekday. He walks as he has no car that he can afford, so this has been James’ routine for the past decade. A local news program heard of James’ story, and aired it one night on the news. A story to end the broadcast with so that we could all revel at James’ work ethic. A 19 year old college student named Evan Leedy was watching the news that night and found the story to be quite touching. The next day he logged onto GoFundMe. com and established an account for people to donate to James, and set the goal at $5000 to help him get a cheap car and maybe make a few insurance payments for him. Within a month there were over $350,000 in donations made on James’ behalf. Evan delivered the car to his new friend James, and Evan recounted, “Before James drove off in his new car to go home, he gave me a big hug and said ‘It’s not even about the money and the car, it’s about random strangers like you wanting to help a guy like me just doing what I was blessed to do.’” I’ve written about my friend Pedro that I worked with in Florida. I’ve written about my old college roommate, the guy that mowed my yard, a dog I once found, and Greg Noble, whom I picked on in grade school and who eventually kicked my ass over it. I’ve chronicled my brother’s death from cancer, the breakdown of my marriages, and even Houston traffic. I’ve rattled on about words of wisdom from my parents, the stupid ducks by the river, and my children. I’ve touched on every subject imaginable and have found great “meaning” behind some of life’s most mundane (and not so mundane) experiences. Almost universally, these experiences are tied back to random moments of time where my life bumped into someone else’s. These little moments where fate brought us together, even if for a moment, and I was left writing about it years later. I was changed, most of the time for the better, and my life’s trajectory was altered. No, I’ve never been touched by a news broadcast and been inspired to raise $350,000 for a stranger although I wish that I have. When I heard of this story and Evan and James, I suppose I found some really great inspiration
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not only in these two characters, but in a lot of other characters. Let me explain. All around us, life is occurring. Sometimes it’s beautiful, and sometimes it is very, very ugly. Sometimes it’s just flat out mundane. But rest assured, as this little blue marble spins in space, we are all bumping into each other at various times and having a variety of influences on one another. I think that every story that our lives create can be found to be inspiring. Much like James and Evan. I think that we often minimize the beauty of our stories in our lives. We shrug our shoulders at some of the obstacles we have overcome and mumble “I just did what I had to do.” Or we humbly disappear into the shadows when someone wants to celebrate the impact we might have had on someone. We put our hands out and say “No thanks is necessary” and shyly let the subject quiet down. If I sat down to type up the life story of the late Sam Champion, and how he overcame alcoholic parents and many life struggles only to become the Boerne High School principal that impacted so many lives that his funeral had to be held at the UTSA gymnasium in order to accommodate the numbers of people that came to pay their respects, you would say that he was a pretty extraordinary man. He, on the other hand, always laughed, gave you a hug and just told you to “Behave!” if you embarrassed him by telling him what he meant to you. I have a friend that is a single parent of three young kids here in town, and is doing everything that she can to get by. She works with a local ministry because her heart is passionate about it, and makes very little income. She pawns her household items so that she can take her kids to the movies sometimes, and does everything she has to do in order to keep them happy and content. And you know what? Her kids are lights in a dark world. They want for nothing (though they have little), and they are learning what hard work and dedication look like via their mother. She is up late at night worrying, but her independence will always keep her moving forward. It’s almost like a Hollywood script, but it’s happening at the corner of Plant and Rosewood right here in town. My friend Johnny quit his career in the restaurant industry because “God told me to.” He moved to the crummiest part of San Antonio, started a church, and stands around on street corners in the dead of night and
prays with people. He takes people sleeping on benches into his home and feeds them. How many lives has he changed? How many people are out there right now telling the story of this tattooed guy named Pastor Johnny who helped them get out of the gutter and ultimately on to living a great life? How many generations will be impacted because of one guy handing out food at 2:00am to broken people? And how many of you have ever heard of him? The story of James and Evan is a great one that received a fair amount of publicity. The news covered it, Facebook posted all about it, and millions of people smiled due to Evan’s kindness. I smiled, too. However, I think that stories like James and Evan are literally everywhere…. if you look for them. Heck, you are probably the key character in a story that someone is telling about your impact on their lives at some point. You may not even know about that impact, but I have to believe that all of us have the ability to impact each other in very profound ways. What seemed mundane to you, altered another’s life. And frankly, I find that to be very beautiful. Look around you. Breathe in the experiences of this life, and dig until you can find the beauty in the stories you are witnessing. The stories you need to know about don’t always air on the evening news, but rather, they play out every day and in every way that you seek to find them. Welcome to August. May you take this month to really focus on the beautiful things that your life contains. EXPLORE your heart and witness the amazing stories unfolding around you. They are there for the taking, and maybe you’ll even be inspired to write your own new…. amazing….chapter. Smiling,
ben@hillcountryexplore.com
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AREA EVENTS
Get out and enjoy the great Texas Hill Country!
The most comprehensive events calendar. Send submissions to info@hillcountryexplore.com
KERRVILLE August 3 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 830-928-4261 August 3 Movies in the Park Load up the car and bring the kids, blankets, chairs, and flashlights for a free evening outside at the movies. Kerrville-Schreiner Park, 2385 Bandera Hwy. kerrvilletx.gov 830-257-7300 August 10 Movies in the Park Load up the car and bring the kids, blankets, chairs, and flashlights for a free evening outside at the movies. Louise Hays Park, 202 Thompson Drive. kerrvilletx.gov 830-257-7300 BANDERA August 8,11, 18, 25 Bandera Cattle Company Gunfighters Experience the excitement of the Wild West with the award-winning Bandera Cattle Company Gunfighters, recreating shootouts and daily life of the Old West. Shows are at high noon and 2 p.m. Bandera Visitors Center, 126 SH 16. banderacowboycapital.com 830-796-3045 August 4 Bandera Market Days Arts and crafts vendors in downtown Bandera. Bandera County Courthouse Lawn, 500 Main St. banderacowboycapital.com 830-796-3045 August 4, 11, 18, 25 Cowboys on Main Every Saturday expect to see and interact with a sample of the Old West cowboy lifestyle on Bandera Main Street. banderacowboycapital. com 830-796-3045 August 4 The Old Timers Trading Post Meet local artists and artisans. The Old Timer, 14178 SH 16 N. banderacowboycapital.com 830-796-3045 August 7 Cowboy Capital Opry Grand Old Opry-style entertainment is hosted by Gerry and Harriet Payne with refreshments and door prizes. Silver Sage Community Center, 803 Buck Creek. banderacowboycapital.com 830796-3045
August 17 Movies in the Park Come out early, pick your spot, get a movie snack or two, and enjoy free entertainment before each movie. Kicking off the summer season, this movie showing features “The Little Mermaid.” Festivities begin at 7:30 p.m., and the movie begins at dark. Boerne City Lake Park, 1 City Lake Road. visitboerne.org COMFORT August 14 Music in the Park Outdoor music featuring The Sarah Pierce Band. Cold non-alcoholic beverages provided. Bring lawn chairs. Comfort Park, 423 Main St. comfort-texas.com 830-995-3131 DRIPPING SPRINGS August 3-4 Hill Country Rally for Kids Barbecue Kickoff One of the best parts of the rally is the IBCA-sanctioned barbecue competition, featuring $6,000 in prizes with several categories to compete in, including brisket, beans, and chicken. There is overnight camping and hookup facilities for your trailer and gear. Camp Ben McCulloch, 18301 FM 1826. hcrally.com/bbq-cookoff
August 16 Third Thursday Cowboy Camp Pickers who play cowboy, Texas, or Western swing music are welcome to sit in at this free event. Public welcome. Bandera Beverage Barn RV Park, 1407 SH 16 N. banderacowboycapital.com 830-796-3045
FREDERICKSBURG August 3 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 830-9976523
August 19-26 Buck Sloan’s Musician Reunion Bring chairs, camping supplies, snacks, and fans if you have one. Enjoy a community dinner every evening around 5 p.m. Come prepared to have lots of fun listening to music, playing music, or dancing. Mansfield Park, 300 Seventh St. banderacowboycapital.com 830-796-3045
August 4 Texas Ranger Day Honoring those who have served and those still commissioned with a two-part event featuring historians and educational programs, including Ranger Camp re-enactments and cannon firing. Texas Rangers Heritage Center, 1618 E. Main. trhc.org 830-9901192
BOERNE August 11-12 Boerne Market Days Since 1850, Main Plaza has been a center point of trade for the people of Boerne. In the present day, on the second weekend of every month, Main Plaza is home to a magical outdoor market that blends the traditions of the Texas Hill Country with the creations of today’s culture. Hundreds of festive booths display everything from collectibles and remembrances of the past to modern innovations that will bring a smile of wonder to those who stroll past. Scrumptious food and captivating music top the experience and delight the senses. Boerne Main Plaza, 100 N. Main. visitboerne.org August 11, 25 Hot Rod Night Hot Rod Saturday Nights are reminiscent of old-fashioned Americana street parties—a gathering place for old and new friends. Soda Pops, 103 N. Main. visitboerne.org August 11 Kuhlmann-King Museum Tour Located behind Boerne City Hall, the Kuhlmann-King house gives the public the opportunity to step back in time to see what a historic Boerne home looked like “way back when.” Historic Kuhlmann-King House, 402 E. Blanco Road. visitboerne.org
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August 7-8, 25-26 Live Pari-Mutuel Horse Racing Fun for the whole family featuring a full slate of live quarter horse and thoroughbred races. Gillespie County Fairgrounds, 530 Fair Drive. gillespiefair.com 830-997-2359 August 17-19 Fredericksburg Trade Days Shop more than 400 vendors in seven barns, featuring acres of antiques, a biergarten, live music, and more. 55 Sunday Farms Lane. fbgtradedays.com 830-990-4900 August 23-26 Gillespie County Fair & Parade Agricultural, livestock and home skills displays at the 130th annual event. Horse racing, concerts, dances, carnival, and midway all at the oldest continuously running fair in Texas. Parade starts at 10 a.m. on Friday on Main Street. Gillespie County Fairgrounds, 530 Fair Drive. gillespiefair. com 830-997-2359 August 31-Sept. 1 Vereins Quilt Guild Show The 10th biennial judged show, “Rhapsody in Blue,” features 100 quilts, old-fashioned bed turning, vendors, a boutique, scissor sharpening, a tea room, donation quilt, and more. Fredericksburg United Methodist Church, 1800 N. Llano. vereinsquiltguild.org 701-371-8719
August 17-Sept. 2 “Glitter Girls” Playwright Mark Dunn, creator of the popular comedy “Five Tellers Dancing in the Rain,” has penned a brand new southern comedy that he describes as “Steel Magnolias” meets “Survivor.” Playhouse 2000 VK Garage Theater, 305 Washington St. playhouse2000.com 830-896-9393 August 18 Kerrville Kids Off- Road Triathlon Ages pre-K through 18 will swim, bike, and run at the 23rd annual event. Distances are designed for your average kid; perfect for first-time participants. Singing Wind Park, 2112-2116 Singing Wind Drive. kerrvilletx.gov 830-257-7300 August 25-26 Hill Country Gun Show Sales of guns, ammo, and more. All prodeeds go to local veterans. Hill Country Veterans Center, 411 Meadowview. doehill6679@gmail. com 830-315-3101 August 31-Sept. 2 Kerrville Fall Music Festival A three-day event that combines camping, music, and the best Texas wines and beers. Quiet Valley Ranch, 3876 Medina Hwy. kerrville-music.com 830-257-3600 LLANO August 24-26 The Peddler Show + Hill Country Hunting Expo A his and hers weekend in Central Texas, located inside the 25,000-square-foot, air conditioned event center just west of Llano. John L. Kuykendall Events Center, 2249 RR 152. llanochamber.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. Exhibits feature artifacts from the Sophienburg’s rich collections— posters, photographs, uniforms, and other historical objects to showcase events, individuals and ideology during 1914-1919—as well as touch on the lasting impact of The Great War on America and on this German community. Sophienburg Museum & Archives, 401 W. Coll St. sophienburg.com 830-629-1572 WIMBERLEY August 4 Market Days The oldest outdoor market in the Texas Hill Country features more than 450 booths filled with unique treasures. Plenty of food, drinks, and live entertainment make it a shopper’s delight. Lions Field, 601 FM 2325. shopmarketdays.com 512-847-2201 August 2-11 Shakespeare Under the Stars: “Romeo and Juliet” Shakespeare’s classic love story told under the stars. EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens, 1101 FM 2325. emilyann.org August 11 Second Saturday Gallery Trail The art galleries in and around the Wimberley Square invite you to come early and stay late for wine, light bites, and an art-filled evening. Various locations, 100 Wimberley Square. gallerytrail.com 512-722-6032
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14 | EXPLORE
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WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | AUGUST 2018
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THE ART OF THE VINE
S 16 | EXPLORE
BY BEN SCHOOLEY
Silouan Bradford had his life mapped out. Then, he decided that maybe he didn’t have it perfectly mapped out. Then he switched gears yet again in the pursuit of his passion. It wasn’t an inability to settle on a direction, but it was an honest pursuit of what he felt was his purpose. Luckily, he has found it in the hills just outside Boerne, and has quickly grown a following producing world class wines in Boerne’s only wine-producing vineyard, Saint Tryphon Winery.
After growing up in the Houston area, Bradford graduated high school in 1999, and ultimately headed for the prestigious St. Johns University in New Mexico to study Literature and Philosophy. During his studies, Bradford pursued life as a monk and found a home in Bergheim. “The true story is that I am a pretty zealous guy and when I do things, I do them big and sometimes to a fault. I just felt compelled to live a monastic life but decided celibacy at the age of 20 just wasn’t for me. My wife and I met there years later at the Holy Archangels Greek Orthodox Monastery outside Kendalia. Folks travel from all over to go there as it has a tremendous following.” As he left the church, he resumed his schooling. “I came back to San Antonio and finished school. My folks were not too happy about the whole monk experience. When I left school, my folks said that if you go back to school, it’s on your dime, so that’s why I left ST. John’s in New Mexico and ended up at UTSA.” Bradford laughs. Then, after initially intending to pursue his doctorate, Bradford took a road trip that would ultimately spark his appreciation for fine wines. He continues, “I took a road trip to San Francisco and I had a friend that lived out there and asked if we could crash at her place and we showed up at like 9pm and her folks were cooking this amazing dinner and her dad popped some wine and I grew up on Hamburger Helper – I was enthralled. But sure enough, it turns out that her dad is one of the preeminent winery owners in Napa Valley, and I began to study and learn everything that I could about wine.” So with his newfound love of wine, and his newfound wife, Bradford began to pick some new directions. “I started applying to grad schools for my PhD but then decided I’d rather be married a while, and wine had become a bit of a hobby. I was interested in green energy and wine. I got on as a wine steward at HEB, then got picked up at Republic (distributor), and this afforded me the opportunity to literally travel the world for their fine wine industries. I have been on the trips of a lifetime and learned so much!” Bradford continues, “My wife was raised in Carmel, California and I had always really been into the organic food movement and eating fresh. We also wanted to farm in some capacity and she loved horses, and one day I had
said maybe one day we’ll plant a vineyard and start making our own. So sure enough, we looked for land in Fredericksburg, Blanco, etc…but we ended up purchasing the property in 2013 between Boerne and Sisterdale. We high-fenced the property in 2014, I went to my buddy’s vineyard in ‘14 and ‘15 and propagated them back at the farm. We had to rip the field in 2016 and immediately planted. So we started making wine in 2016 and have been doing it ever since.” Since then, the popularity of Saint Tryphon wines has skyrocketed. While all of his wines are sold in the tasting room or online, their availability at finer restaurants is growing. Valeria, Peggy’s on the Green, Boerne Wine Co, Brantley’s Bistro and many more eateries are now carrying the wines, with more on the way. For Bradford and his wife Mary Elizabeth, it’s a business but it’s proven to be more than that. “I love the tactileness of wine. The pleasure that it brings to food and friends. I love the yearly work and process entailed in production of the wine – from pruning in late winter to training the vines in the spring, managing the crop in the summer, to harvest, to the actual production, labeling it. We’ve done all of it by hand, hand harvested, labeled, bottled – there’s a tremendous sense of vitality to me that is part art, part science, brings pleasure, and brings joy. What’s really cool too is that wine farming can be done very cleanly, without pesticide, and if you will just give it what it needs it is perfectly designed to do what it does and I find that infinitely fascinating.” What started as interest, grew to a hobby, has now expanded into a full business with much growth planned. Bradford finishes, “Our focus will always be on quality first – our goal is to remain small but when people when see our bottles, we want them to know that we’re amongst the best in Texas wine. We’d like to get to like 5000 cases a year – Becker does like 150k – Sister Creek does 18k. We’re having to expand our parking lot already as we’re getting busier but we always want to remain a boutique winery that focuses on producing some of the finest wine in the Texas Hill Country.” Saint Tryphon Farm & Vineyards 24 Wasp Creek Rd. Boerne, TX 78006 830-777-6704
WWW.HILLCOUNTRYEXPLORE.COM | AUGUST 2018
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24 Wasp Creek Rd. Boerne, TX 78006 830.777.6704 SaintTryphon.com @sainttryphonwine #COMETASTETEXAS
REAL. TEXAS. WINE. Open THURSDAY - SUNDAY
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H
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.”
August 1st, 1731 Capt. Juan Antonio Pérez de Almazán, the commander of San Antonio de Béxar Presidio, presided over what was probably the first election in Texas history. In March he had welcomed a group of settlers from the Canary Islands by laying out a place for their homes and by establishing a municipal government. The immigrants formed the nucleus of the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. On August 1 the new city council met to elect alcaldes, and electoral politics was off and running.
August 6th, 1966
Houston oilman Ralph A. Johnston signed the deed transferring Paisano Ranch to the University of Texas. The 254-acre ranch, fourteen miles southwest of Austin, was the country retreat of J. Frank Dobie. After Dobie’s death in 1964, a group of his friends and admirers, including O’Neil Ford, Peter Hurd, J. Lon Tinkle, and John Henry Faulk, undertook to preserve Paisano as a writers’ retreat. Johnston, to whom Dobie had dedicated his last book, bought Paisano to take it off the market. A gala dinner and art auction in Houston helped raise the money to purchase the ranch from Johnston, who died two days after signing the deed over to the university. Since 1967, more than sixty native Texan writers have worked and lived at the ranch as recipients of Dobie Paisano Fellowships, awarded by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.
August 10th, 1862
Confederate soldiers attacked a force of Hill Country Unionists camped en route to Mexico beside the Nueces River in Kinney County. The skirmish is known as the battle of the Nueces. The sixty-odd Unionists, mostly German intellectuals, had camped without choosing a defensive position or posting a strong guard. Nineteen of them were killed and nine were wounded The wounded were executed by the Confederates later in the day. Two Confederates were killed and eighteen wounded. Of the Unionists who escaped from the battle, eight were killed on October 18 while trying to cross into Mexico. After the war the remains of the Unionists were gathered and interred at Comfort, where a monument commemorates them.
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August 11th, 1914
A mysterious fire destroyed the Duval County courthouse and most of the evidence of illegal activity by South Texas boss Archer Parr and his political machine. Parr arrived in Duval County in 1882 at the age of twenty-two. In 1907 he took command of the Democratic machinery and established himself as the political boss of Duval County. The key to his success was the Hispanic vote, which he controlled through a combination of paternalism, corruption, and coercion. He also converted the county treasury into a political slush fund for the benefit of himself, his associates, and his impoverished constituents, who received informal and modest welfare payments. In 1914 a preliminary audit of the county financial records conducted by his opponents revealed fourteen types of illegal activity, but the courthouse fire crippled the investigation. Undeterred, a local grand jury still indicted Parr, who had just won election to the Texas Senate, and ten Duval County officials on various charges of corruption. The cases, however, collapsed for lack of evidence. By the time of his death in 1942, Parr had used his control of Duval County to build a vast personal fortune, and his son George, who had pleaded guilty to income tax evasion in 1934 and had served a brief term in prison, was already in control of the political machine that continued to dominate Duval County until 1975.
August 19th, 1749
Four Apache chiefs, accompanied by numerous followers, buried a hatchet along with other weapons in a peace ceremony in San Antonio. The ceremony signified the Apaches’ acceptance of Christian conversion in exchange for Spanish protection from Comanche raids, which had decimated the Apache population. Five years later Giraldo de Terreros established San Lorenzo, the first formal mission for the Texas Apaches, in the jurisdiction of San Juan Bautista in Mexico. When the Apaches revolted and abandoned the mission less than a year later, the missionaries argued in favor of a new mission closer to Apache territory. Construction of the ill-fated mission of Santa Cruz de San Sabá, in the heart of Apachería, began in April 1757; on March 16 of the following year, a party of 2,000
Comanche and allied Indians killed eight of the inhabitants and burned the mission buildings.
August 21st, 1968
Staff Sgt. Marvin Young died near Ben Cui, Vietnam. The native of Alpine, Texas, had graduated from Permian Basin High school and attended Odessa Junior College. He enlisted in the army in 1966. On August 21, 1968, he was leading a patrol of Company C, Fifth Infantry, Twenty-fifth Infantry Division when they were attacked by a large force of North Vietnamese. When the squad leader was killed, Young assumed command and repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire, while encouraging his men. Despite orders to pull back, he remained behind to assist several of his men who were unable to withdraw. He received a critical head injury. Refusing assistance, he still stayed to cover the withdrawal and was killed. His parents were presented the Medal of Honor at the White House on April 7, 1970, by President Richard Nixon. Marvin Young is buried in the Sunset Cemetery at Odessa, Texas.
August 27th, 1990
Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. Vaughan was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954. His exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie’s fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent. By the time he was in high school, he was staying up all night playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum, a popular entertainment district in Dallas. Vaughan moved to Austin in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s he and his band, Double Trouble, had a solid regional reputation. His career took off in the 1980s, and his work eventually garnered four Grammy Awards. Vaughan was killed at the height of his career. More than 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder, attended his memorial service in Dallas.
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BADASS OF THE MONTH
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This month’s Badass is someone who even has a badass name: Lead Belly. Nobody is quite sure where the nickname came from, but legends differ and include the fact that he was strong as a damn ox and he was tough as hell. Another includes the fables that apparently he could drink the nastiest, craziest moonshine and show no ill effects. Yet another has a story that he was apparently shot in the abdomen by a shotgun and survived. No matter which you go with, our man Lead Belly was one badass dude.
So this guy is born to a family of 4 other boys, and quickly sees that his dad’s manual labor life of killing himself with 12 hour shifts for virtually no pay is not the ticket he wanted, so he drops out of school at age 12, and heads to the speak-easys around Shreveport, LA playing an accordion. Born Huddie William Ledbetter, he was then married with two kids by the time he was 16, and divorced by 20. He quickly developed a reputation as one of the more skilled musicians in the area, but he wandered all over the South playing whatever crappy dive that would pay him, and working manual labor when the music didn’t cover the bills.
so some guy decides he doesn’t like his music, and stabs Lead in the neck with a prison shank. Lead pulls it out of his freakin’ neck, and damn near beats the guy to death. For the rest of his life, he had a killer scar along his neckline.
Lead Belly rode the rails, traveling the beer soaked streets of Shreveport’s seediest neighborhoods to playing the hottest clubs in Deep Ellum, Texas (thus why he has made our list of Texan badasses.) While he was skilled with his accordion (only one of the most complicated instruments to play), he also learned the piano, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, and violin, and at one time boasted that he could play any of the over 500 songs he had in his brain’s iPod.
By 1936, Lead was playing twice a night at the world famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, was being recorded for TIME newsreels, had a bunch of articles printed about him in the People’s Daily Magazine (which is kinda funny as the magazine was a Socialist publication and Lead was definitely not a Socialist), and recorded a whole bunch of songs for Columbia Records. But, yet again, our hero Lead found himself back in the clink by 1939 when he got into yet another knife fight, but was back on the music scene as soon as he got out and had a regular spot on the CBS Radio Show, playing Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger tunes.
He ran into a bit of a “problem” in 1915, when he was arrested for punching a dude in the face, pulling a gun in the middle of a barroom brawl, and then pummeling some guy with it. He was sent to work on a chain gang out in Harrison County, Texas, but because his name was Lead Belly, that just wouldn’t work for him. So 2 days into his sentence, he took off running when the guards weren’t looking, got away from their dogs, moved to the next county, changed his name, and resumed his kickass “pickin and grinning” ways. Ol’ Lead laid low for a while and the heat died down, but because he spent most of his waking hours hanging out in dive bars surrounded by folks that hung out in dive bars, trouble found him again. The details aren’t entirely clear, but apparently in 1918, Lead’s cousin’s husband was being a jackass, so Lead decided that the best way to resolve the issue was to go to his house with a knife and a pistol and to beat the holy hell out of him and all his friends. When the dust cleared, the husband was dead, another dude was beaten unconscious, and our friend Lead was sentenced to 7-to-35 years at the Texas State Penitentiary. While he was in the Pen, Lead became a bit of a legend as he somehow managed to smuggle in a guitar, and made a hell of a name for himself amongst the other prisoners and the guards as he played music for everyone because, hey, he had a lot of free time. Word spread quickly of Lead’s musical talents, and none other than the Governor eventually asked the “Singing Convict” to come play for him, and sure enough, Lead knocked his socks off. He then wrote a song about the Governor granting him a pardon for his crimes, and played it for him one evening. He got the pardon. But because his name was Lead Belly, and because he was a badass, trouble didn’t stay far from him. In 1930, he got into a knife fight in an alley in New Orleans and earned himself another lengthy prison stay. Again he kept everyone entertained with his smuggled guitar and was a popular prisoner. However, there are losers everywhere,
Just like before, word travelled fast of the singing convict and his 12-string guitar, and just like before, he somehow talked the Governor of Louisiana into a pardon, and off he split to spend 1934 travelling the country playing his timeless and popular folk music for anyone that would listen.
As for Lead Belly’s music, let’s just say that they called him the “King of the Twelve String” for a reason. He could play virtually any song on demand, almost exclusively finger-picked his songs (very difficult), and had his songs were covered by everyone from Bob Dylan to Pete Seeger. In fact, Bob Dylan once said that Lead was “one of the few ex-cons to record a successful children’s album” (which he actually did). Lead registered for the draft in WWII, but was never called up, so he decided to go on a European Tour to entertain the troops, just because he was a badass. That song that he played for the Governor of Texas that got him a pardon? Yeah, Pete Seeger recorded it and went on to earn millions from the song. He also wrote “The House of the Rising Sun”. Lead Belly died in 1949 at the age of 61 from Lou Gehrig’s disease. There’s a lifesized statue of Lead Belly in Shreveport (across from the courthouse, which is both comical and BADASS due to his many run-ins with the justice system in that very courthouse), and the state erected a grave marker at his site. He was inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, and had his songs covered by Johnny Cash, Elvis, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and dozens of other bands, all whom cited Lead Belly as being a badass influence on their own badass careers. Cheers to you, Lead Belly. You weren’t in Texas long, but I guess enough Texas rubbed off on you to ensure that your entire life was…well…pretty badass.
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READ ALL ABOUT IT!
The Homesick Texan’s Family Table: Lone Star Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours by Lisa Fain From beloved food blogger Lisa Fain, aka the Homesick Texan, comes this follow-up to her wildly popular debut cookbook, featuring more than 125 recipes for wonderfully comforting, ingredient-driven Lone Star classics that the whole family will love. There are few things finer than a delicious, homemade meal shared with family and friends. Take it from Lisa Fain, a seventh-generation Texan who loves to cook and serve up the best dishes her home state has to offer— even though she now lives half a country away. The Homesick Texan’s Family Table showcases more than 100 of Lisa’s best and most-loved recipes, ranging from down-home standards (think cheesy nachos, comforting chicken and dumplings, and fiery wings) to contemporary riffs on the classics (who knew adding Mexican spices to a German chocolate cake would taste so good?). All of Lisa’s recipes are made with fresh, seasonal ingredients, yet still packed with real Texas flavor that will make your grandmother smile. Whether you’re looking for a party-friendly snack like Pigs in Jalapeño Blankets, a Mustard Coleslaw to bring as a side to your next potluck, a weeknight- and family-friendly meal like Steak Fingers with Cream Gravy, or a mouthwatering dessert like Ruby Red Grapefruit and Pecan Sheet Cake, The Homesick Texan’s Family Table has you covered. After all, with some mighty fine food and mighty fine people to enjoy it, any meal can be cause for celebration.
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Texas Hill Country by John Graves Limestone hills, cold spring-fed streams, live oaks and cedar, old German towns—the Texas Hill Country may well be the most beloved region of the state. Unlike West Texas with its dramatic expanses of plains and sky, or the eastern Piney Woods in their lush fecundity, the Hill Country never overwhelms. Its intimate landscapes of rolling hills, fields of wildflowers, and cypress-shaded rivers impart a peace and serenity that draws the urban-weary from across Texas and even beyond. In this volume, two of the state’s most respected artists join their talents to create an unsurpassed portrait of the Texas Hill Country. With an unerring eye for landscape photography, Wyman Meinzer distills the visual essence of the Hill Country—long vistas of oak-and-cedar-covered hills, clear streams running over rocks, bluebonnets turning fields into lapis-colored seas. His photographs also go beyond the familiar to reveal surprising contrasts and juxtapositions—prickly pear cactus delicately frosted with ice, black-eyed susans growing among granite boulders. With an equally true feeling for what makes the Hill Country distinct, John Graves writes about the land and its people and how they have shaped one another. He pays tribute to the tenacious German pioneers who turned unpromising land into farms and ranches, the AngloAmerican “cedar-choppers” who harvested the region’s pest plant, and even the generations of vacationers who have found solace in the Hill Country. As Graves observes, “since well over a century ago, the region has been a sort of reference point for natives of other parts of the state, and mention of it usually brings smiles and nods.” Together, John Graves and Wyman Meinzer once again demonstrate that they are the foremost artists of the Texas landscape. The portrait they create in images and words is as close as you can come to the heart of the Hill Country without being there.
Lone Star: A History of Texas and The Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider’s look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state’s readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans “have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds.”
Speak Texan in 30 Minutes or Less by Lou Hudson In a parody of Berlitz phrasebooks, veteran Lone Star journalist Lou Hudson has spilled the beans on how best to wrap one’s tongue around Texaspeak so that even recovering Yankees can make their way in this whole other country. Finally there’s hope for that brother-in-law from Hoboken and your banker from Duluth. Folks like them will be able to make themselves understood to Texans without having to revert to notepads and hand gestures. Speak Texan not only is a pronunciation guide but also a handy work that provides numerous insights into Lone Star lingo and the thinking that goes behind it in a very entertaining format. It’s designed to fit in the rear pocket of your Wranglers for a quick point of reference. Hudson was born, weaned, and schooled in Texas and has never lived anywhere else. The rest of the book is pure de Texas too. Designer Ty Walls also is a lifelong Texan. The whole deal was printed and bound in Fort Worth. Can’t get more Texan than that, surely. Speak Texan is the first work of the aggressive, but nearly mythical Texas Twang Preservation Society. Its conception was motivated by the need to conserve, promote and document the lingua franca of this unique state of mind, endangered as it is by Hollywood miselocution and by for-profit, accent-reduction scams.
Lone Star America: How Texas Can Save Our Country by Mark Davis Throughout America and around the world, the United States has been known as a beacon of hope and opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, from the crumbling urban ghetto of Detroit to the cash-strapped shores of California to the rust belt of the Midwest, America is not living up to that promise. Except in Texas. While unemployment soars elsewhere, Texans are hard at work. While small businesses across the country are going under, Texas entrepreneurs are thriving. While large companies are being squeezed by taxes, regulations and unions, more and more corporations are moving to Texas to grow and expand. While people of faith are ridiculed and marginalized in most cities on both coasts, in Texas churches and synagogues are bursting at the seams. How did Texas embrace what the rest of America seems to have forgotten? In Lonestar America, popular talk radio show host Mark Davis presents a powerful case for economic prosperity, individual freedom, strong families, and even stronger pride of place – alive and kicking in Texas, and easily exportable to the rest of America. Davis shows how Texas has done it, how some “honorary Texans” in other states (governors and even local communities) have adopted some of the same policies and approaches, and how states across the country can reclaim the promise of the American dream.
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UNWANTED GUESTS By Marjorie Hagy
F
For a long time I’ve been wanting to tell you the story of a Connecticut Yankee who, before he became famous as one of the first American landscape architects and the guy who designed New York’s Central Park, the grounds of the US Capitol building, the Biltmore estate in North Carolina, university campuses all over America including Stanford and Yale, and the big boss of the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893- let me
pause for breath (oh, and that’s just a smattering of the things he did)- anyhoo, before he did all that, this fella, (name of Frederick Law Olmsted, by the way), he came to Texas with his brother on assignment for a New York newspaper (THE New York newspaper, in fact, the New-York Daily Times in those days, before they dumped the hyphen and the ‘daily’ part)...this is one of the sentences which drive the editor of this rag to distraction, by the way.
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In vain have I pointed out to him that Charles Dickens, he who penned perhaps the greatest opening line in all literature, that thing about its being the best of times and the worst of times, was also given to long and euphonious passages consisting of a stunning array of punctuation marks but only the one period- including one memorable sentence from his Barnaby Rudge that runs to 251 words. I have called my editor and friend’s (one guy) attention to the fact that this tendency of mine to long-windedness, puts me in excellent company, right up there with those who have wielded the pens which have produced our classics, among them Leo Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf, EB White and AA Milne,Jane Austen ,who outdid herself with a nice fat sentence of 180 words in Emma- Martin Luther King, for Pete’s sake! who produced a real lulu, weighing in at 310 words, in A Letter from Birmingham Jail! Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship, may well have given himself an incurable case of crab claw with this one sentence that goes on for 2156 words. David Foster Wallace. Proust. William Faulkner with a twelvehundred-plus monster in Absalom, Absalom! I could go on and on, but I think it’s probably become pretty obvious by now that I’m just padding my word count here. By the way, not that it matters, but in case anybody’s keeping track that first sentence contained 164 words- not a bad showing I think. Not too shabby at all. So anyway, this guy named Frederick Law Olmsted, he and his brother came to Texas on assignment for the New-York Daily Times to report in dispatches back to the avidly curious citizenry back East, all about this mysterious no-man’s land, this largely unexplored wilderness of Indians and outlaws and cowboys and the brave, tragic defenders of the Alamo, this state which was still brand-new to the Union and actually, at the time of the Olmsted bros’ visit, only relatively recently emerged from the mists of Spanish territory way so far, far away from long-civilized New York City(and yes, that proper noun should be read in the manner of the picante sauce commercial unless I explicitly state otherwise.) To sum it up real quick- because I’m gonna get to the whole story later, not in this article but kind of a lot later- they, these Olmsteds, ended up taking a 2,000 mile saddle trip all the way from the Sabine River as far west as Fredericksburg, down to the coast from Indianola to Galveston, even making a brief foray into Mexico, then back to San Antonio before heading back home again, writing and having adventures the whole way, barging in unannounced on random settlers unfortunate enough to live along their route, commandeering food and lodging and fodder for their mounts (and then bitching about same in their journal entries), accidentally starting prairie fires, getting their horses and/or mules stuck in muddy bottoms of creeks, victimized by wild hogs and insects, chatting with the native people and the Mexican, French, German, Irish, Alsatian and American newcomers and old-timers alike, and incidentally, passing through “some good bottomland...on the Cibolo, at the road-crossing, where a town called Borne had been laid out and a few houses built”, on their way to a settlement on the Upper Guadalupe called Sisterdale, which both brothers loved so much they seriously considered moving there themselves. 203 words. Bam. I was actually writing this month’s article about the Olmsted brothers, Frederick and John, and after my usual nonsense at the beginning of one of these things had actually written the words, ‘It’s Christmas Day, 1853’...when I was suddenly seized with uncertainty. After all, what was the significance of this pair of Yankees landing in Texas on Christmas Day of 1853? There had to be some context, right? A quick review of what was going on in Texas around 1853 was indicated, a reminder about how new this state was back then, just about eight years old in fact, to the day, it having become the 28th state of the US on December 29, 1845 . It had only been what, seventeen years prior to that 1853 Noel that Texas had become independent of Mexico even, had become her own independent Republic with the defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto, and at the time of the Olmsted brothers’ arrival there were still mucho hard feelings about that whole splitting-off-fromthe-mother-country thing, as illustrated by the occasional-to-frequent raids made by folks coming up from the mother country with disruptive intentions like stealing livestock and burning houses and murdering settlers and that kind of just general mayhem. There existed a state of uneasy tension in the new state then, among all these different people with different ideas who’d come to Texas for their different reasons; the southern Americans who’d arrived in the days before the 1836 revolution, once citizens of Mexican Texas, who’d come down from the backwoods of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi and mountainous places like
that; the Texians, the Anglo settlers of who’d joined up when it was called the Province of Coahuila and Texas and later, the Republic of Texas; and mixed in with the numbers of both groups were all kinds of fugitives who’d slid across the border into Texas before the law could tag them with the ball, since the territory had long been considered a kind of no-man’s land, a neutral strip where la ley couldn’t or wouldn’t chase you too far, figuring there was a pretty good chance that either the Indians or the elements or some combination of both would carry out the ultimate sentence before too long anyway and thereby save a US lawman the trouble. Also in Texas in 1853 were all the former Mexican citizens who had remained in the new Republic, many of whom had fought and died beside those who would free Texas from Mexican rule and who had been promised fair and equal treatment under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but who, in reality, were almost universally looked upon as foreigners- and undesirable, inferior foreigners to boot- by the mostly anglo, mostly Southern, settlers pouring into the state. The treaty promised citizenship to these former Mexican citizens, including the Native Americans living in the territory, but the indigenous people were never given full US citizenship until the 1930s, and in fact continued to be exterminated like pests until their population was decimated, while the Hispanic people of old Mexican Texas were treated like second-class citizens at best, were treated, actually, like crap, their human rights and property rights trampled at a whim, and by the next generation the MexicanAmericans in Texas had become a disenfranchised, impoverished lower caste, despised by the usurpers of the land which had been theirs. In fact, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, finally ending the Mexican War and recognizing the annexation of Texas to the US, hadn’t been signed until February 2, 1848, not six years before the intrepid Olmsteds crossed the Sabine into the brand-new state. Then there were the Germans, many of them so-called 48ers, fleeing their homeland after the revolutions that had broken out- and failed- in 1848, and the Germans who had come to Texas to establish socialist, idealistic colonies here and those who had just come looking for freedom, for a new start. And there were many, many others, pioneers and outcasts and exiles and vagabonds from countries all over the globe, looking for what all of them were looking for, what all pioneers and trailblazers have always sought, from the beginning of time: land, space, a place to make a home where they could be safe, where they could raise their families and live their lives on their own terms,all of them yearning for that sweet, sweet freedom. Oh, and then I realized, sheesh, I need to remind them, too, about how recently Texas and Mexico and the whole shebang had all been part of the great Spanish Empire, that bitter-cold and sleety Christmas Day in 1853, which was the state of the weather as the Olmsted brothers prepared to cross the Sabine, which fact I think I forgot to mention before. See, as of that December 25th of 1853, it had only been a mere thirty-three years and some change since that fateful Diez y Seis de Septiembre in 1810 when, near midnight, Father Miguel Hidalgo ordered the bells to be rung in the parish church in the small Mexican town of Dolores, calling his parishioners as if to mass but instead launching the Mexican War of Independence with his proclamation of the famous El Grito de Dolores, calling on them to join him in throwing off three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. Hidalgo spoke straight to the hearts of the native Mexicans and the lower classes of mixed blood, the Mestizos- in fact, he spoke against the whole caste system in Spanish Mexico- and exhorted his people to “stand up and take back the lands stolen from their forefathers”. By the time he ended his speech with the famous Grito :“¡Viva México!”, the revolution had begun. Within moments, Father Hidalgo had an army numbering six hundred men, with thousands more Indians and Mestizos joining the peasant army in the following days and weeks, every step of the way on their march to Mexico City. The Father himself was captured and executed on July 31, 1811, and independence would not be won at last until 1821 with the Treaty of Córdoba, but Hidalgo’s call to arm, El Grito de Dolores, was to become almost mythical in its importance. It would be- and still is- remembered as the moment that independence was born, and his grito- his cry- became the cry of independence, bearing the heroes of Mexican independence into countless battles during those ten years of war and echoing down the years forever afterwards. Today Diez y Seis is the biggest celebration in Mexico, a national holiday, commemorated by a performance in which the President shouts a version of El Grito from the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City to a sea of over one hundred thousand celebrants: “Viva México! Viva la Independencia! Vivan los héroes!”, and the cry is repeated throughout the country, from almost every public square.
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Did you guys know that? I only had a vague and fuzzy idea about Diez y Seis, and that all mixed up in some way with Cinco de Mayo, and this big blank space in my store of knowledge suddenly being revealed, I was covered in shame. Here I am, passing myself off as a knower of history to the hoodwinked masses, when I don’t even know the first thing about it my own self. In attempting to sketch in a little background detail with which to orient my readers to the atmosphere on that Christmas Day of 1853, I discovered my own vast reservoirs of ignorance. Incidentally, the whole affair has forced me to confront a truism about myself that has long niggled at the back of my consciousness, namely that I never know when to begin a story. It crops up fairly often when I attempt to impart a pearl of historic wisdom to, say, whoever else is in the vehicle (unable to escape) when we chance to drive by something about which I know a Fun Fact: for instance maybe I’ll pipe up with, see that building over there? Intending to follow up with some clever anecdote about how on that very site in 1981 I tripped on some leaves and fell down a flight of stairs while on a first (and only) date with a dude who would go on to develop a habit of ducking around corners every time he saw me for the next thirty-seven years (and counting), but then I realize that I haven’t made it clear that Herman Lehmann, kidnapped by Lipan Apaches but later escaped to the Comanches, actually lived for a time with Quanah Parker’s family on a reservation in Oklahoma where he was noticed and eventually reunited with his family and that the swimming pool in my grandparent’s neighborhood in Houston is actually named after Cynthia Ann Parker. This very failing is what’s always prevented me from getting a good start on my memoirs- I can never decide if it’s better to just plunge right into the action with my actual birthday some fifty-three years ago or whether I should start with the point at which the first single-celled creature emerged from the primordial soup and developed lungs. It’s so hard, you know? Currently, the autobiography project is on hold due to the utter lack of interest among the target demographic, or possibly the lack of a target demographic altogether, I’m not sure, the letter from my agent that put the kibosh on the whole thing was worded kind of ambiguously. I’ll tell you what I did though- oh, and this is back to the story. What I did when I realized that there are these huge holes in my Texas history education or memory or whatever, I stopped trying to write an article about those poor Olmsted brothers and faced the fact that we have a whole lotta work to do before Christmastime 1853. Being serious now- mostly- what has occurred to me is that so many things happened to make this place called Texas, all these weird and really unique historical circumstances, with all these different people and their sometimes wildly divergent, sometimes polar opposite, motives, ideas, visions- and they’re all coming together to settle this land, to grab at their piece of freedom, to plant their own flags, having no idea what kind of place they’re going to build, what kind of legacy they’ll leave, even, in so many cases, whether they’ll still be here in a year’s time, when it comes time to harvest. The Native Americans had lived here all along, they had known nothing else for thousands of generations, they had always known this land and its seasons and cycles, and now this was one of the last places they could still be free. The indigenous people further south, in Old Mexico, they had paired off and intermarried with the invading Spaniards throughout the years, their children were labelled Mestizos and condemned to the lower rungs of the Spanish Colonial caste
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system; there were the Texians and Tejanos, the immigrants and outlaws from the Southern US, and people from all over the world, all leaving their homes and everything they knew, all Gone To Texas. From evidence of the first people to come here some 40,000 years ago to one of the first known Texans, Midland Minnie, who lived and died in Texas some 8,000 to 18,000 years ago, to the Karankawas, the Caddos, Coahuiltecans, Lipan Apaches, Tiguas, Tonkawas, and other tribes and family groups, and later the Alabama and Coushattas, Cherokees, Comanches, Kiowa-Apaches, Kiowas, and the Wichitas. Italian sailors, believed to be the first Europeans to ever see what would become Texas, in 1497 while they searched for new trade routes; the Spanish who established the first foreign settlement in 1519, with visions of wealth and glory and adventure dancing in their heads, and big plans for the thousands of lost souls to be converted, forcibly or otherwise, to the glory of God; the Afro-Americans who have been here since the beginning, some having come freely and others brought as slaves with the earliest European expeditions, working as navigators, soldiers, merchants, and draftsmen, the first known of whom got to Texas in 1528. Under Spanish colonial rule, free black people were accepted socially and could work at whatever profession or trade- and marry anyone- they chose; under Mexican rule, people of color had all the legal and political rights of citizenship, those adventurers and pioneers hoeing their own rows in pre-revolutionary Texas tending to take a man on his merit. Black people and slaves fought alongside the anglo soldiers in the Revolution, and the Republic of Texas paid them back by enslaving them in the new constitution. People from England, from Belgium, from Switzerland and Ireland, from France and Sweden and Norway, Serbians and Polish and Czech and Slovak, Bohemian, Moravian, Silesian, German-Bohemian, Slovak, Ruthenian, Jewish, Austrian or Hungarian, the Syrian and Lebanese and the Greek, whose first community of fishermen, sailors, and merchants was in Galveston and who teamed up with the Serbians, Russians, and Syrians to build the Orthodox church. And all those Germans, beginning in 1831, later groups immigrating with the (sometimes dubious) help of the Adelsverein, the Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in Texas, and many more coming to Texas during the revolutionary 1840s in Europe, settling heavily in Central Texas, our neck of the woods, but making their presence known all over the new Republic. There have been heroes and evil villains and a fair share of plain old idiots in the saga of Texas, nuns and priests and missionaries and drunks and madams and psychopaths, moments of breathtaking bravery and instances of mind-boggling cruelty- just like there are, most of these things anyway, in the history of every other state in the Union, and every country in the world. But this is our history, and all the things that have happened here on this land, ever since the Leanderthal Lady lived and breathed and laughed under the Texas sky, through the violence and the hard times and the droughts and the floods and the wars, have each had their part in shaping this place. And it’s time we knew all about it y’all. So I’m gonna leave Fred and John Olmsted standing in whatever scant shelter their horses afford, in the freezing rain and spitting snow, waiting for the ferry to take them across the river that Christmas Day so many years ago. Next time we see them we’ll all know exactly what kinda Texas they’re fixing to cross into.
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HAVE FAITH By Kendall D. Aaron
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You can’t walk on water unless you get out of the boat. This little saying is used in countless circumstances, and describes pretty well the emotions we all feel when taking on a difficult task, or making the choice to do, well, most anything that’s hard.
And, obviously, in a spiritual sense, it’s a great saying. In the story from the Bible, Peter and his friends saw Jesus walking on the water, and Jesus coaxed him out of the boat. He nervously stood on the water, took a few steps, freaked out, and began to sink. Jesus put out his hand, steadied Peter, and saved him. I love that story. It perfectly encapsulates the emotions that so many of us feel, not when we are necessarily taking on a difficult task, but when we make the decision to change and grow as Christians. Few things are as hard as spiritual growth, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve tried, and failed, countless times.
So, I’m standing there on the edge of the boat with you. I cannot count the times that I have taken a deep breath, said “I’ve got this”, put one toe in the water, and freaked out. My insecurities, fears, and weakness keeps me on the boat. But then I (and you) have to consider the alternative: a life not fully lived in Christ’s image. And that’s simply not acceptable for someone that has come to understand that my life is short, and that I have a brief period here with which to be everything I can be. And that’s really the crux: do it or don’t. Be everything you can be, or live handicapped. Go out as a soldier of God, or cower behind your fears and hang-ups. Drag out a piece of paper. Write on it the things in your life that you want to change in one column. In the other column, write out why you are scared to do so. And then just stare at the paper and see just how weak and humbling your excuses are. For me, I read my reasons and they sounded like reasons my 7 year old son would give me for not wanting to try a new food. I might not be able to do it.
It’s hard because in order to grow as a Christian we must lay bare all of our shortcomings, and then turn our back on them. Sounds easy, right? Well, as imperfect humans born to sin, those sins become pretty ingrained into our being. From anger to addictions, and from lies to rebellion, our hang-ups become very central to our being. They become part of who we are, for better or worse.
I kinda like to (name your sin or hang-up) even though I know it’s wrong. I’m not strong enough. I’m scared.
And then we begin to recognize that these sins and hang-ups are truly holding us back from who we want to be as Christian men and women, and so we stand there on the edge of the boat staring at the angry sea beyond. We are forced to throw open the closet door that hides all of our deepest secrets and shine a giant spotlight on them. We must drag them all out in to the light for all the world to see. And friends, none of that is easy. Not at all. But after we all stand there on the edge of the boat, staring at the angry sea beyond, we think about our friend Peter. Peter, who was mortified (rightfully so) of walking out onto that water, but he did it. He took the all-important first step of admitting that he was terrified, but finally taking a deep breath and doing the impossible. And when he invariably lost faith in his ability to do the impossible, Jesus caught him and saved him.
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I’ve been doing (name your sin or hang-up) so long I’m not sure how to change. And then you just go on and on. And they’re all so WEAK, aren’t they? I mean, Peter was literally asked to do the impossible – walking on water. And yet Christ helped him do exactly that. You and I are sitting on the boat, and we’re just being asked to live in a manner that truly reflects Christ, and we can’t muster the guts to really put forth our best effort! Pray big time. Analyze what you want to change, and how you want to do it. Ask for forgiveness, strength, and direction. And then climb over that railing on the boat and get to living right. If you try, I’ll try. Again. And we’ll both trust that Christ will catch us if we fall.
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THE APPLE OF MY PIE BY KATE WILSON
It is often said that cooking is art and baking is science. Cooking was so natural to a right-brained, artistic type like myself. I viewed a recipe as the canvas on which I would create my masterpiece. A blank space to which I would add my own color with a pinch of this, or a dash of that. If a recipe called for paprika, I could substitute white pepper, or cumin, of whatever I wanted. The resulting dish may not have resembled the original, but was capable of standing on its own merits.
I
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So when I decided to try my hand at baking, I began with the same sort of “devil-may-care” attitude, playing fast and loose with the recipes. Here’s the deal folks: when it comes to baking, recipes are not mere guidelines. They are more like scientific formulas, where each ingredient plays a crucial role in the final outcome. Oh, you CAN substitute margarine for butter in a chocolate chip cookie, but you don’t get a whole new cookie creation. You simply get a weaker chocolate chip cookie. One lacking the full flavor and texture of its buttery counterpart. In baking, your ingredients must be fresh, the steps must be followed, and the ratios of dry to wet ingredients, or fats and leavening need to be respected. This holds especially true in bread and pastry. Stray from those ratios, or use poor quality ingredients and your soufflé will fall. In fact, it may never even rise. After I had earned sufficient lumps in basic pastry and bread making, I figured I was perfectly equipped to take over the baking of the Holiday apple pies. My Grandma was not an especially notable cook, but had always made a fantastic apple pie. When her age and declining health made it impossible for her to continue to do so, and since it just isn’t possible to have Fourth of July, Memorial Day, or Labor Day without homemade apple pie, I decided to take up her rolling pin and forge ahead. I figured it would be a piece of cake. Oh, that it were that easy... My first apple pie was a huge embarrassment of failure. My pastry was good, as I had whupped the pastry making years ago. And it looked beautiful. I guess it would have
ALL AMERICAN APPLE PIE 8 cups apples, peeled and sliced (Jona-Gold, or Tentation) 1 T cider vinegar 1/4 C brown sugar 1/4 C sugar 1/4 C flour 1/4 t salt 3/4 t cinnamon 1/2 t nutmeg 3 T heavy cream, divided 2 T coarse sugar, or sanding sugar (I used gold sanding sugar) Recipe for 2 crust 9” pie pastry Preheat oven to 425* and place oven rack in lowest position. Place apples in large mixing bowl. Toss with vinegar. Mix together all dry ingredients and toss well into apples.
been lovely if we hadn’t actually had to cut it or try to eat it. The golden brown, flaky crust on the top gave way to a great runny mess underneath. Basically, half-raw apples swimming in spiced cider. I poured off juice a few times, and more would appear in its place. This not only made all of the flavors run down the drain with the juice, but made the bottom crust a rather gooey, glue-like mess. I have always taken a scholarly approach to problems, and this was no different. I bought several books on the topic, and read voraciously. The biggest problem with apple pie, is apples. You see,it appears, are all so different. This may seem elementary to you, but growing up I really only knew of three kinds. Red delicious, granny smith, and golden delicious. I had heard talk of McIntosh and Winesap, but never actually ate them. My youth and inexperience told me that apples were apples. They could be used interchangeably. The books told me something else. Apples, you see, are full of juice. Some have a lot more than others. Some apples hold their shape while baking, while others turn to mush. And here’s another little gem...Different varieties of apple taste different. Yep. Who knew? I honestly don’t know why I had to read that somewhere, but bless my blond-headed heart, I did. I began buying every new apple variety that came out, and trying it. I go online and research it. Is it best eaten out of hand, or baked? Does it hold its shape? So whereas I only ate red and gold delicious apples twenty years ago, I don’t
eat either now. Among my favorites for eating out of hand are Honey Crisp, Pink Lady and Fuji. For baking, I love Jona-Gold. But my all time favorite, for any application, is the Tentation. Don’t go word-smithing me on that--that is how it is spelled. It is a bright gold variety from New Zealand, with a beautiful orange pink blush to it. The flesh is crisp, almost yellow, with a very strong, almost spicy sweet-tart flavor. It holds its shape well, and has a moderate amount of moisture. Bad news--it is only available three weeks in June, and doesn’t seem to be widely available. When they are available, I buy bushels full, peel them, slice them, and freeze them in ziplock bags so that I can make pies out of them during the holidays. Anyway, that same year I decided to tackle apple pie, my annual county fair was holding its first ever apple pie bake off. I challenged myself to enter a winning pie. I spent three weeks baking pies, and entered the following recipe in the event, which won a blue ribbon, and the distinction of winning the First Annual Kendall County Fair Apple Pie Contest. I used Jona-Gold that year, but use Tentation when I can (as of this writing, HEB has some in stock). If you can’t find either, then use a mixture of Granny Smith and Gold Delicious. I am including the alternative crumb topping for Dutch Apple Pie, as well.
Roll one half of pastry into a 12” circle, and place in the bottom of a 9” pie pan. Pour filling in, making sure filling is tightly packed and higher in the center. Drizzle 2 T cream over the apples. Roll second dough into 12” circle and place over filling. Tuck the edges of the top crust under the bottom crust, and seal (crimp, pinch, etc..). Cut slits in top to vent steam. Bake at 425* for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with remaining heavy cream, and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Return to oven and bake an additional 20-30 minutes, until golden brown and juices are thick and bubbly. Cool 3-4 hours before cutting. Variations: Dutch Apple Pie--omit the second crust. Crush 1 sleeve of buttery round crackers into heavy crumbs. Mix with 1/4 cup sugar and 4 T softened butter, to form crumbles. After 30 minutes baking, sprinkle the crumb mixture on top of filling and finish baking.
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OLD TIMER
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You just moved to Boerne? That’s great! When you’re done unpacking and installing your enormous security lighting system, I need you to come back to this article and review a few things that we all need you to understand. As Boerne’s newest citizen, PLEASE take at least a few minutes to recognize how to assimilate into our lovely community so that we can all get along a little better. As your resident Old Timer, I have taken it upon myself to give you just a few pointers to make your transition a little easier.
Ready or not, here we go: The ducks, while kinda nice to watch the kids feed, will actually kill you in your sleep so we encourage everyone to run them over at every chance. Yes, I know most people find them endearing, but Old Timer loathes the ducks and has sought their obliteration for years. Heck, instead of being wiped out, there’s a giant stupid duck statue that was erected for them.
Boerne lake is nice, but don’t ever go on the weekends. San Antonio has discovered our little lake, and the weekends are a madhouse out there, and I promise you, there’s not ONE local out there. It’s best just to go on a weekday. Paint your house purple and tear off your patio. Why? Because unless you consistently DESTROY your home’s value, our friends at the Kendall Appraisal District are
supposed to have a beer during the parade (yes, at 10:00 a.m.). This is your first badge you’ll earn toward becoming a true Boerneian. Going to HEB should take you approximately 3 hours, even if you’re just going for a gallon of milk. If you can walk from one end of your HEB to the other and not see at least 6 people you know, then you have some work to do. We have very real water issues here, no matter what $chultz tells you. Please conserve it. Stop putting in an acre of carpet grass. It pisses everyone off and makes you a jerk.
Curfew is at 8:30 p.m. No, not really, but for some reason, there seems to exist one in town. For a reason that nobody has ever identified, Boerne’s streets are clear by 830 p.m. and it’s been that way since forever. So basically, if you are out after 8:30 p.m., get ready to be pulled over from an untrusting cop that will naturally assume that you’re an out-of-towner simply causing mischief in our fine town. Best to be on your couch by 8:30.
going to begin a never-ending campaign to max our your property taxes. Trust me, in 10 years, you’ll be moving away with a mortgage that will have doubled from when your loan started. Your only hope is to trash your house and argue like mad against every increase they hit you with. You’ll lose, but you’ll at least feel like you tried. You must attend the Berges Fest Parade your 1st year. This is an arrestable offense if you fail. Grab some lawn chairs, an umbrella cause it’s always crazy hot, and you are even
Don’t kill the pedestrians that jaywalk on Main Street, no matter how much you might want to. We don’t know why we have that weird statue sitting on the bench at the Park, either. Any time that you exclaim “OMG – I so wish we’d get a Chick-Fil-A!” or whatever stupid franchise crap you just moved away from, there are 6 Old Timers within ear shot of you that is resisting throwing his glass of iced tea at you.
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