Bastrop Home & Hearth by Digital Publisher

BASTROP

Home Hearth Premiere Issue/winter 2016

COUNTY-WIDE COVERAGE! Uncovering Bastrop County’s

Treasures and Pleasures

ELGIN . MCDADE . PAIGE . SMITHVILLE . CEDAR CREEK . BASTROP . ROSANKY

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Can a motley crew of local people who came together almost by accident produce a top-notch magazine? Well, you’re reading it right now. It’s Bastrop Home and Hearth. We think of it as the magazine Bastrop has been waiting for—a chance to celebrate all that makes Bastrop unique. Does Bastrop have creativity? The place is teeming with it. And we’re going to focus on it in each of the four issues we bring you in the course of 2016. Just page through this first edition and savor the columns we’ll be bringing you. First off, each issue we’ll give you a peek inside a local residence, a feature entitled “At Home.” Then we’ll introduce you to “Little Luxuries,” spotlighting inexpensive items you can buy locally or online and bring into your own space. “Neighborhoods” is a regular feature that gives you a brief history of just that, a section in our county with a particularly intriguing past. That’s just a brief taste of what you’ll find inside Bastrop Home and Hearth. There’s plenty more, because that’s our pledge: to give you a lot of good reading and great pictures. For us, content reigns supreme. We’re giving you the kind of magazine we, ourselves, buy, read and keep. There’s just one more thing to do in this introduction to Bastrop Home and Hearth. We want to tell you who we are. There’s me, Carolyn Banks. I’m a writer and editor, so moving into the role of publisher was seamless and natural. There’s Andrea Haschke, a hugely talented designer and photographer. Little did I know any of this when I approached her for advice on software! And then there’s Tiare Joy Miller, who lives in Bastrop and who is a design whiz. We are the main people behind Bastrop Home and Hearth, but we also tapped the talents of Kate Moss Hurst and William Browning Spencer as editorial consultants, Travis Latham as ambassador and distributor and Bill Haschke, as webmaster and chief financial officer. There aren’t many of us, but we’re the force behind Bastrop Home and Hearth. We want it to be a Bastrop County mainstay. So send us your comments and suggestions and please subscribe on our web site, www.bastrophomeandhearth.com. We welcome you and we hope you’ll welcome us.

PUBLISHER/EDITOR Carolyn Banks

ART DIRECTOR Andrea Haschke

GRAPHIC DESIGNER Tiare Joy Miller

CIRCULATION MANAGER Travis Latham

EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Kate Moss Hurst William Browning Spencer

WEBMASTER William Haschke

CONTRIBUTORS John McPhaul Tacha Ortega Margaret Thomas

ADVERTISING River Road Studio For advertising rates or to reserve space in an upcoming issue, email: cbanks@austin.rr.com or call 512.284.1854. Bastrop Home and Hearth is a quarterly magazine with a combination of paid and controlled circulation. The magazine is distributed by request to advertisers and various merchants in Bastrop, Elgin and Smithville. The magazine can be mailed to a personal address prior to public distribution by subscribing to Bastrop Home and Hearth for $24 a year. Subscribe online at www.bastrophomeandhearth.com or mail $24 check to Bastrop Home and Hearth, PO Box 208, Bastrop, TX 78602. Bastrop Home and Hearth is published by River Road Studio, 223 Riverwood Drive, Bastrop, TX 78602. Bastrop Home and Hearth is printed by Shweiki Media, San Antonio, TX Address all editorial, business and production correspondence to Bastrop Home and Hearth, PO Box 208, Bastrop, TX 78602. Ideas for future issues? Email cbanks@austin.rr.com or mail to PO Box 208, Bastrop, TX 78602. Bastrop Home and Hearth cannot be responsible for loss or damage to unsolicited material Volume I, Number 1 ÂŠ 2016 River Road Studio.

VOLUME I, NUMBER 1/ WINTER 2016

it’s an original

4 6 little luxuries 8 neighborhoods 13 bright ideas at home 14 22 beyond bastrop where it happens 24 great outdoors 26 29 i speak antique 30 special effects 32 forever bastrop

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Tina Woodruff, primarily a watercolor artist, is never idle where any of the arts are concerned. Walk into her Smithville studio and you’ll find evidence of her various passions. There are paintings in various styles, but there are also vintage ladies’ hats everywhere (she restores them)—and beaded earrings (she makes them).

in the advertising field. She landed one in New York City, working on a Maidenform ad campaign that many of us remember (I dreamed I was…in my Maidenform bra). But the walls of the apartment she was sharing were blank, so she started making paintings to brighten them.

In case you think that’s enough, she’s just written 26,000 words--about half of a romance novel, The White Lady. A couple of years ago, she wrote, produced and directed a musical comedy, Neurotic Birds, performed on-stage in Lockhart.

“That was when I was in my twenties, 53 years ago,” she says. Her own ability surprised her and she never stopped.

But let’s get back to her paintings, which is how she’s best known. The picture on the cover of this premiere edition of Bastrop Home and Hearth is an example of the kind of domestic scene that Tina Woodruff conjures. She’ll pick a portion of a room, real or imagined, that exemplifies the kind of life most of us yearn to live, a life filled with light and pattern and charm. “Art is a constant companion in my life,” she explains. “I can lose myself in it. The act of making a painting never disappoints.”

Her intention is “to lift people up,” she says. In addition to the domestic scenes, she does a lot of tightly organized florals. “They are a lot like Japanese woodcuts,” she says, “onedimensional.” But “The subject,” she says, “is always up for grabs. I start applying paint and the paint tells me what it wants to be. I could not stand to do the same thing every day of my life.” While she’s self-taught, Tina thinks she absorbed a lot of about the formal elements of art from her college roommate, an artist who is still a close friend. “I don’t compete. I just paint. I learn from reading and I learn from trying.” With beautiful results.

In college, she roomed with an art major, but she, herself, was preparing for a job

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that you can probably afford. It smells wonderful even before you’ve unwrapped it. The handmade look, as though the piece you’re buying was just hewn from a huge block, is definitely in, but posh packaging is available, too, depending on the mood you’re hoping to create. One caveat—don’t get stingy and leave slivers in the soap dish. Unwrap a brand new bar to impress your guests.

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One of the City of Bastrop’s sweetest neighborhoods, it’s still called “new” after all these years!

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Ask a Bastrop newcomer where “The New Addition” is located,

and chances are, the person will turn the question right back at you. “New

addition to what?” Ask a Bastrop old-timer and the reaction will be totally different. You’ll be steered down Cedar Street, a few blocks past Tracy’s DriveIn Grocery, to the place where Garfield intersects.

Once there, you’ll take Garfield, where you’ll find neat rows of small wooden houses on both sides of the street. You’ll see a series of tidy, little yards, pretty much the same size. And that’s it: Bastrop’s “New Addition.” Ironically, the neighborhood has been there since the 1940s, though the actual year the development began is shrouded in rumor and mystery. Some say the houses were all ordered from the Sears catalog. Others say they had originally provided housing for soldiers with families at Camp Swift and that, after World War II ended, a smart developer moved them in from the military base. The website TexasEscapes.com, however, reports that in 1946, “Camp Swift was reduced to lumber being sold for $5 per truckload.” So who knows? And who was the developer? John McPhaul, who grew up in “The New Addition,” says it was G. B. Mack, a man who went on to become president of the First National Bank. We could find no record of G. B. Mack’s ownership of

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any property between 1920 and 1973 in n the Bastrop County Clerk’s Office, butt he may have functioned as a financer or promoter. The partners of record are J. V. Ash, Sr., Joe Crow, and Bruce Albright. Ash’s Bastrop holdings, in particular, d go on for page after page in the clerk’s records. The deeds that refer to Bastrop Development Company’s “Riverview Heights Addition” are deeds to homes in what would be referred to evermore as “The New Addition.” J. V. Ash, Sr. eventually became the Mayor of Bastrop on April 1, 1952 and was re-elected as mayor in 1956. As a developer, Ash’s vision was spot on. With the end of the war in 1945, young men were returning to Bastrop and needed a place to raise their families. There were 40 houses built, says John McPhaul, whose childhood address became 303 Cedar Street. “They were identical, with two bedrooms and a bath, a living room and a kitchen and a detached garage.” When you cruise the neighborhood now, you see a wide variety of additions—a porch here, a big room across the back there. Brick veneer. And gradually, the cookie-cutter houses became personalized. Those changes are going on until this very day. The houses started out painted white. Now the original McPhaul house is mint green. According to Sue Gurka, Deputy Bastrop County Clerk and someone who grew up in a “New Addition” home, the neighborhood housed a kind of “Who’s Who” of old Bastrop: Linenberger, Fiebrich, Rathman, Owens. She also describes it as a tightly knit community. John McPhaul agrees. “I remember my mother always getting dressed up and going somewhere,” he says. “The mothers were always organizing car pools and going to bridge and canasta games.”

By: J O H N M C P H A U L Kids Ki K id had fun growing up in the New Addition. Wee p W played a special game in the early 1950’s all up and down d do own wn Cedar Street and Garfield Street, the heart of the Neew Addition. Sometimes we would go all the way to the N New corner cco orrn ne of Cedar and Main St. to play. ne On summer On su nights when the adults got together to play card games or dominoes, the kids would be banished to the outside to chase lightning bugs, tell ghost stories, and play Pull the Purse. We placed an empty purse at the edge of the street and tied a piece of stout black fishing line on it–long enough to reach back to the bushes at the front edge of the house. We hid in the dark bushes and waited for the fun to start. It usually didn’t take long for a passing car to see the purse and stop to retrieve it. It was hard to keep still and keep quiet as the game was going down. The kid holding the line had to make sure that there was no slack in it and then to pull hard just as the “victim” bent ben ent over ovveer to to pick pic ick it it up. As the purse flew back into the dark yard,, the th hee reaction reeaaccttio tio ion varied. Most people laughed as they realized they had been had. Every now and then someone would utter some choice curse words. Drunkss we were especially fun. On a Saturday night we could make at least a dozen “pulls”. on The game was not worry-free. Constable Litton an nd d we we had had ad drove the streets on Saturday nights, and n’’t have n haavve a to keep a watch out for him. He didn’t ss,, aand nd n d sense of humor. But he never caught u us, w iit. tt.. we played this game until we outgrew

The beauty of that was that the kids—on the fringe of the little town of Bastrop and surrounded, remember, by wide open pasture and wooded land, with the river beckoning just over the hill—were left to, as John McPhaul puts it, “free range.” “We weren’t allowed to go to the river,” Sue Gurka recalls, but John McPhaul’s memories are just the opposite. “We’d camp on the river overnight,” McPhaul says. “We’d hunt, fish, ride down the river in our rafts and washtubs.” But whatever boundaries each child had been given, the neighborhood itself was, in both––cases, fondly recalled. The oral account of “The New Addition” maybe riddled with rumor but, as realtor David Board said when he advertised a home in the subdivision, “the history of this neighborhood runs deep.” And so does its mystery.

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Your home is your castle no matter where you live...why not give it a name. If you haven’t given your house a name, you’re missing an enormous opportunity for creativity. It’s a great way, too, to fully embrace the life you see yourself living. It doesn’t have to be a huge sprawling mansion like Downton Abbey to merit a name. Aleck Woolcott, a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table, named his New York City apartment “Wit’s End.” Whimsy or an inside joke is often the source of a name. I remember smiling in satisfaction when I drove past a home in Potomac, Maryland. The sign proclaimed “Trespassers W,” and I’m sure all those who got the reference to Piglet’s house in “Winnie the Pooh” felt smug indeed. But the joke can be carried a bit too far. I recall a doctor in Sunset Valley who called his home “Bedside Manor.” I don’t know how long the appeal of a name like that would endure. When Americans move to Mexico, they follow the custom and name their quarters. Often, they dub them something perky

like “Casa Feliz” or “Casa Sonrisa.” I well remember a comic reference to walking on the cobblestone streets when a plaque identified “Casa Dr. Scholl’s” in San Miguel de Allende. I also admired the linguistically oxymoronic “Casa O’Brien.” Beach houses are usually given names. If you’ve ever watched Beachfront Bargain Hunt on HGTV, you can’t miss that fact. “Today I’m showing them ‘Flip-Flop Paradise,’” the real estate agent will say. You can expect a place with that moniker to be a little more casual than, say, something called “Sandcastle” or “Harborview.”

Including the type of house in the official name conveys a lot as well. “Honeysuckle Lodge” conjures up an image quite the opposite of “Honeysuckle Cottage.” When my husband was alive, he painted watercolors; I wrote. We named our place “River Road Studio,” with the ‘Studio’ part covering both activities.

Single word names are especially impressive. Think of “Tara” or “Sissinghurst.” First National Bank CEO Reid Sharp’s home is called “Wexford,” though the Sharps inherited the name when they bought the house. It had been called “Wexford” by Confederate Captain J. W. Fitzwilliam, after the place he came from in Ireland. For as long as the Sharps had a landline, their address was listed in the AT&T directory simply as “Wexford.” Coming up with a name for your home is a fun project. It may help you define the way you want your home to be perceived and, perhaps, will reveal some unsuspected aspect of your personality.

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Editor Carolyn Banks invites readers inside her River Road Studio.

Photos by Margaret Thomas

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Until I saw photographs of Yves Saint Laurent’s apartment in Paris, I thought I might be a hoarder. The famed fashion designer crammed his Left Bank space with all the things that he fancied, pretty much the way I have crammed my home on Riverwood Drive. I think of it as creative clutter. And all of the artifacts pretty much have a story attached to them. A carpenter who has done a lot of work here calls my house “hobbity.” I take that as a high compliment. To me it means that my late husband, Davis, and I often indulged our whims when it came to doing something to the house. We bought this house in 1996. We were looking at a nearby home and, while wandering around, stumbled upon this one. It had long been neglected. There had been a For Sale sign, but it was flat on the ground and grown over.

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The gulley beside the house was filled with old liquor and beer bottles. The windows in the bedroom and kitchen were broken and vines had grown through the cracks and far into the house. Still, when we walked through the house we felt something. I remember saying, “I don’t know, I just love it.” And Davis said, “Me, too.” We had to research to find the owner, who was living in California. When we talked to him on the phone and asked if he would sell it, he said he would sell it for the amount of the various debts he owed. When we asked him how much that was, he said, “I don’t know.” Well, we did eventually buy it for a reasonable price. Anytime a workman came to the house, he would look around and say, “Oh, yeah, I used to party here.” It explained the contents of the gulley, which we hauled out in wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load. But the house was right on the river. What more could anyone ask? And the train was up above, paralleling our road. I remembered all the times I’d ridden the train from Washington, D.C. to New York City, looking at and envying

all the properties sandwiched between the train and a river. I don’t mean posh waterfront estates. The railroad never went near those. I’ve always been drawn to humbler homes. Most of the houses on Riverwood—the older ones—were fish camps. Ours was no exception. There was no central heat or air conditioning. And portable heaters, if we tried to use more than two at a time, blew all the fuses. Sometimes I look at photos of the house when we first moved in and laugh. I will never run out of things I’d like to do around here. I just put a new roof on, and although the old one didn’t leak, the job was long overdue. The paint, both inside and out is dingy, but I have so many bookcases and paintings on the walls, no one but me is likely to notice. Outside, well, that’s another story. But I’ll get to it.

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If I had to identify my style of décor, I’d say bohemian, or boho as it’s called now that the style is somewhat fashionable. It’s bright and colorful and eclectic. I have a lot of work by local artists—something that was very important to Davis and will always be to me. Some folks walk in and look askance, but others say, “Oh, wow,” and love it. The house sort of absorbs you when you enter. Yes, I could use more space—even another room, perhaps—or less of the stuff that’s already here. But when it comes to tossing something away, I just can’t seem to do it. Maybe I am a hoarder. Maybe Yves Saint Laurent was one too. Shhhhh.

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It’s true that I came into the marriage with a wrought iron French bed, and he did deign to sleep in it. Trouble was, throughout our time together it was covered with no-nonsense white sheets and a striped Pendleton camp blanket. After Davis died, I went frou-frou, so much so that my bedroom now looks as though a courtesan is in residence. But here is how my method works: Going frou-frou enables me to conjure a stronger memory of my husband with every object that I bring into my room. The gilt-framed mirror? Davis puts his hands on his hips and says, “What the hell is that thing doing here?” The scrumptious satin bedding and all those fancy pillows? He shakes his head, “How can you ask a full-grown man to sleep on a thing like that?” The white fluffy sheepskin throw rug? “Now what? Do I have to leave my boots at the door?” Truthfully, I like the way I’ve tricked things out, even though I know that Davis never would have allowed those furnishings into our home. And it tickles me, remembering the way he expressed his displeasure over decor of which he disapproved--something he did plenty of times after we’d left the homes of some of our friends. “Glory be,” he’d say, “I was

afraid my manhood would shrivel if I sat on that dainty little chair they had in the corner there.” In deference to him, the sturdy oak hardware cabinet that was our chest of drawers is still in the room that we shared. But it’s opposite a gussiedup French commode and an ornate boudoir lamp. The thing is, Davis would have approved of my technique. He loved devilment. The night before he died, he and I, in his hospital room, watched one of those-caught-on-camera video shows. In this one, several Longhorns that were being paraded through a Texas town had broken ranks and about six of them had run amuck through a convenience store. So the last thing I remember my husband doing is laughing, laughing really hard. His laughter was nearly always right behind any criticisms that he had, just as it would be now that I’ve gone frou-frou. There he is, my husband Davis, glaring at a Corinthian pedestal I just found at a yard sale and spray-painted. He is saying, loud and clear, “Who on earth would have paid good money for something as god-awful as that?”

“I love folk art and all of former Bastropian Mike Todd’s furniture had that feel. Although I have many of his pieces, I am especially proud of the table (left).” The artifacts on the table are precious as well: the paperweight Banks was given when she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and the FVMKLX VIH ½VI ERX E KMJX after she completed the JIEXYVI ½PQ WLI [VSXI ERH directed, “Invicta.”

While all the Americans were combing the Paris cemetery for the grave of The Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison, our editor went in search of the resting place of a man of letters, Oscar Wilde. Here’s what she found. HOMAGE, INTERRUPTED Oscar Wilde—Victorian playwright, poet, raconteur and martyr--is much revered. So much so that his tomb in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery was often covered with bright red lipstick kisses. In 2011, the tomb was scoured and a seven-foot glass barrier erected to screen it from Wilde’s admirers. Wilde was an aesthete and an artist, and surely would be displeased by the barrier. The tomb itself is a work of art, the design of sculptor Jacob Epstein. It features an art deco sphinx, its lips puckered as if awaiting a kiss. The wings on the sphinx, it is said, were meant to represent Oscar Wilde as a messenger. Indeed he was. Flamboyant and foppish, Wilde was tried in England and imprisoned for indecency because of his involvement in “the love that dare not speak its name”—a phrase coined by Wilde’s lover and used against Wilde at his trial. Wilde is now thought of as “the patron saint” of the LGBT community, hence the impromptu adornments at his tomb. But the “protectors” of Wilde’s resting place had a point: grease from the lipstick was sinking deep into the porous stone and attempts to remove it were eroding the tomb itself. On the 111th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s death, the glass surround went up. This photo, thankfully, was made before the barrier was erected.

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Would you guess that The Popcorn Times, which goes to 80,000 readers, is put together in Karen Sterling’s Cedar Creek home? It started in New York City, but 15 years ago, Karen Sterling moved to Texas and brought her widely-read movie reviews with her. She largely credits her love of cinema to her father, who, along with all the neighborhood parents, used the local Brooklyn movie house as a babysitting service. “Those were the days when different movies played all day long,” Karen Sterling recalls. Her every weekend was spent this way. But even though she was crazy about movies, her memory wasn’t all that great. “I was watching a movie with my friend, Lisa, and three-quarters of the way through it, I realized I had seen it before. Lisa said, ‘You ought to write down something about the movies you see.’” That was the way The Popcorn Times began. Nowadays Karen Sterling is retired, and, goes to movies Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes as many as four films in a single day. “I see everything I can at Lost Pines in Bastrop,” she says, but then goes into Austin to see those that don’t come here. “Every Friday morning I go online and check out what’s playing at the Alamo Drafthouse and the Violet Crown. Sometimes I fill in with reviews of vintage movies.” The Popcorn Times comes out at least once a week and sometimes twice. It gives readers thumbnail accounts of eight films and their stars. Karen’s favorites are epics with great cinematography. Although she doesn’t like romantic comedies much, she does review them. And she includes the

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work of directors whom she despises: Judd Apatow, Noah Baumbach. Some actors— Adam Sandler, to name one—are definitely not among her faves. How did Karen build The Popcorn Times from something she shared only with friends? It’s classic word-of-mouth growth. People kept forwarding the email publication to others and the others asked to be put on the list. When she reached 50,000, her email carrier thought she’d been hacked. She ended up putting the man who called her on her list. He was in Bangalore and was thrilled to learn that she not only knew about Bollywood, but went to and reviewed Bollywood movies. Pretty soon his friends were subscribers. “I have 30 people in New Zealand,” Karen boasts, “and several in France and Germany. I even have a subscriber on Christmas Island.” But it’s all done on a small desk in Cedar Creek, where Karen, surrounded by feline art (she admits to a fetish) and her real life felines, sits down to comment on the silver screen.

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If you’ve been near the Colorado River late at night, you’ve probably heard it: the song of the animals and insects who awaken here in Bastrop after dark. It’s impossible to record, a symphony of sounds that often rises to a roar. Bastrop County resident Beth Whitley Banks is well aware of the night song. She’s a wildlife biologist working for a firm in Austin. She says the noisiest nighttime critters are frogs, toads, crickets, and katydids, but that owls—Great Horned Owls, Barred Owls and even little Screech Owls—contribute.

the occasional bobcat or mountain lion.” Yes, in Bastrop! An imported animal, the nutria, is active before dark and at dark. “It looks like a beaver with a rat tail.” The nutria, she says, was brought from South America to eat the nuisance plant, hydrilla. But, “nutria are voracious eaters and destroy huge amounts of vegetation causing erosion problems.”

“The Screech Owl makes a sort of descending whinny,” she says. The Barred Owl, however, “sounds as though it’s saying ‘Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?’”

And, Banks says, “Don’t forget crickets and other insects like moths.” The Sphinx Moth, she says, is nocturnal, and other moths are, too. Their host plants conserve energy and wait to produce nectar at night to attract such pollinators.”

Bats are out there, too, but “their sounds, created from echolocation, are too high-pitched for us to hear.” Flying creatures aren’t the only ones adding to the nighttime symphony, Banks says. “Raccoons are out along the riverbank. I see their tracks all the time. They’re hunting frogs and anything they come across. Opossums and skunks feed on a wide variety of prey from insects to small mammals. And although armadillos don’t make a lot of sounds that add to the night song, “You’ll hear them rummaging around, even grunting, digging for insects in the underbrush.”Be assured, Banks says, “Most everything comes to the river to drink. The nocturnal animals include coyotes and perhaps even

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Nature has arranged itself so that those who eat during the day aren’t competing with those that feed at night. “Consider hawks, who hunt in daylight,” Banks says, “and owls, who hunt at night. Owls are often harassed by crows, called ‘mobbing’ as they try and sleep”. And then the flip side. Cicadas sing in the daytime. That sound merges with turtles who cloop into the river after sunning on stones and logs. Deer begin roaming, roused from sleep by dawn’s early light. The day shift is about to start. The Colorado River holds this wonderfully balanced way of life together. But make no mistake—the balance can easily shift. Although we hear most often about threats to our groundwater, the water in aquifers beneath our land, there is a prominent threat to our surface water—the Colorado River—too. A huge battle between the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basin has broken out, with Austin in the middle. The Highland Lakes folks (the Upper Basin) don’t want the water in the river to be released below Austin because we in Texas have had so much drought. Their supply, the Upper Basin folks feel, is paramount. We down here in the Lower Colorado object!

But if the water isn’t released, what happens to the animals you see in the charming poster on page 26? What happens to the creatures who rely on the river and who sing to us softly by day and sonorously by night? What happens to the chain of life; the animals and communities that depend on the Colorado River? Is there something we can do? Yes. We can join the Lower Colorado River Basin Coalition— which consists of Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative Corporation, Ducks Unlimited, County Judges from Bastrop, Colorado, Fayette, Matagorda and Wharton counties and more. We can go to waterdownstream.org and donate to their cause and subscribe to their newsletter. We can pay attention to the announcements that sound very technical, but in reality, mean that the river could one day be thick with algae and no longer beckon to the creatures great and small. Take a good look at the faces of the animals Vicky Balcou has drawn. Let’s keep the smiles on their faces and the beat of their river song in our hearts.

Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative

encourages support for The Lower Colorado River Basin Coalition

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I stewed and chewed on the idea, but could not decide if the pursuit of things that are old is a universal impulse (and “old” is relative; I know some people who collect things from the 1980s!). Are all antiquarians alike?

very aesthetically inclined, and passionate about their acquisitions and interests, they expressed very different philosophies and desires.

And if not, could I, by categorizing antique lovers, not only connect to the spirit of other collectors in a resonant way, but also make the pursuit of antiques accessible and interesting to people with just a glancing interest? Looking for answers, I turned to a number of my more hardcore antique-world friends and asked them to explain what about antiques inspires and attracts them to the pursuit.

It became obvious to me there is not one universal, driving antiquing urge or identifiable personality characteristic. However, curiously enough, I did notice three main themes and three types of antique aficionados emerged. My conclusion is that most people who are consistently attracted to old things–to the point of seeking them out–experience at least one of these three impulses, and that most of us lean heavily toward one. I emerged with The Nostalgic, The Steward, and The Historian. Which type are you? (For the record, I personally veer heavily toward the “Historian.”)

People were very eager to discuss their personal motivations. Almost forty people answered my email query. While everyone struck me as

The Nostalgic

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The Steward

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The Historian

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It started as an interim screen door, something my carpenter, Jeff, threw together from his junk pile while he promised to craft me something brand new out of treated lumber. But things kept occurring in his life and he put me off and put me off. Meanwhile, I stared at the tear in the screen and began to see the possibility of making it look heart-shaped. Of course even with this emendation, the screen door looked pretty bad, shabby without a hint of chic. I began to envision it brightly painted and, one day in Wal-Mart, I bought three cans of spray paint, purple, orange and chartreuse. When Jeff finally contacted me about starting on the new door, I said, ‘Um, there’s been a change of plans.” Jeff has worked on what he calls my “hobbity home” for years and he knows that when I want something, arguing against it will only make me dig in deeper. But he didn’t argue. He said, “Hmmm…” Thus I have a screen door that’s purple, orange and chartreuse, but there was icing to put on that cake. Years prior, my son, Donald, had given me an old wooden door pull. I had it hanging against the wall, but here was a great opportunity to use it as it had been intended. It was meant for a much

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larger door than mine, but, proportion be damned, I like it anyway. I call the result Grand Funk. I should note that the screen was always double, so that the tear with which the screen in the door began didn’t mean that flies and mosquitos would get in. But if those bugs like it as much as I do, they just might try! I find myself re-thinking the tear, but I’m putting off re-screening. Here’s the important part of this project: purple, chartreuse and orange are very bright colors, colors that would war with each other if used in equal measure. But a rule was drilled into me early on when I was playing with crayons, the 60-30-10 rule: You choose the color you like best as the basic color, in my case, purple, and you cover 60 percent of your project with it. You use the trim color 30 percent, and the accent color is allotted 10. That way, every color knows its place and, no matter how intense the colors you use, peace will reign.

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Kyle Roberts came to John’s Hair Design on Main Street in Bastrop for a shave. Tomorrow, at the Hyatt, he’ll be married. “I had a shave here in February,” Kyle says, “and it was awesome.” Kyle is bearded and plans to stay that way. John Villareal, the maestro at John’s Hair Design, starts by marking the shape of the trim Kyle is seeking with a kohl pencil on Kyle’s cheeks. Then client and cutter retreat into a back room of the shop and the “Old Fashion Shave” that John has been advertising begins.

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Hot, moist towels are wrapped around Kyle’s face. “It softens the beard,” John explains. When the towels are taken off, John spreads a thick, white lather all over Kyle’s lower face. And then, as you’d expect, the straight-edged razor comes out and John—with a steady hand--works his magic. John Villareal has been at the same location on Main Street since 1969. He started offering shaves the old-fashioned way a couple of years ago, when a television crew got him to do one for a show that was featuring a day trip to Bastrop.

WINTER 2016

After the show aired, “all of a sudden, people started coming in and asking for them,” John says. “They came from Houston, from Dallas, from all over. I didn’t understand it. Every barber knows how to give a shave.” John’s precision with the blade seems far above average, however. And customers like Kyle don’t forget. Kyle is from Richmond, Texas. The shave at John’s Hair Design was high on his pre-nuptial to-do list. The shave takes about forty minutes and costs $25. “Well worth it,” according to Kyle.

Oscar Wilde—Victorian playwright, poet, raconteur and martyr--is much revered. So much so that his tomb in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery was often covered with bright red lipstick kisses. In 2011, the tomb was scoured and a seven-foot glass barrier erected to screen it from Wilde’s admirers. Carolyn Banks photographed Wilde’s tomb (seen on pages 22-23) and detail from it (above) before the barrier was in place. To purchase a framed copy of the photo above, send a $24 check to: River Road Studio, 223 Riverwood Drive, Bastrop TX 78602 No postage fee is required.