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Welcome Home WINTER TEXAN • • • March 9, 2022
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We’re just connecting the dots.
VOLUME 7 • ISSUE 21 • March 9, 2022 • • • your official connection to the rio grande valley • • •
hello F R O M K R IS T I
And just like that, we’re nearing the end of the season. By no means am I encouraging you to leave; we keep the party going all summer long. We start it off in April with our Converted Texan Corral April 14, where we will dance and celebrate the off season, recognizing those who stay year-round. We also have our Summer Supper Club on the horizon--scheduled to start in May--where we dine around the Rio Grande Valley, selecting a different restaurant each week and making new friends along the way. It’s a great way to try new places and let someone else do the cooking. We are also looking at doing some fun trips and tours this summer with our Converted Texans to kick off our Tour Division, something you will have to look forward to next season. Whether you stay or whether you go back home for a bit, we’re sure glad you’re here right now. • We’re just connecting the dots,
Kristi
THANK YOU TO OUR
2021-2022
SEASON SPONSORS
Story and photos by Eryn Reddell Wingert
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f you attend dances in the midValley, you probably know Gus Muniz. But did you know he used to ride rodeos and that he won awards for rebuilding tractors, water and snow skied, has great-grandchildren and even great-great grandchildren, and loved to dance with his wife? Gus is from Colorado. Orphaned at the age of eight, he worked irrigating farmland and picking crops as a child. He was a small kid. When he first learned to ride horses, the saddles were too big, so he was literally strapped on at his feet. But
it wasn’t long before he was cutting cattle and doing tricks on horseback. He was a cowboy before high school and rode bulls in the smalltown rodeo circuit before he even had a driver’s license. When he worked in a junkyard as a young man, Gus taught himself how to build and re-build things like tractors and old cars. His first rebuild was a 1955 Crown Victoria. “I loved that car,” he says, with DANCING GUS CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 >>