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For years we always made an effort to stop in Comfort on the way from Medina to San Marcos in order to catch the used book sale of the Friends of the Library.  It is held in an old metal building that once was the old ice house.  A damp metal building is not the perfect place to store books, but there is no other facility to hold the books, apparently.  As a result of arriving early, we always found a parking place near the book sale location.. Not that the book sale is all that popular, but on this day, the town is set up for their big Christmas in Comfort street sale and parade. Last year, we went after lunch and found that it was so busy that finding a parking place anywhere near the action was near impossible. So,this year we went early so that we could get to the book sale and to have some time to roam the street vendors----and, you guessed it, have lunch. It all worked perfectly.  We arrived a the book sale and were able to park nearby.  We found some go...

During late September, 2018, we visited with a neighbor, a rancher, who has lived in this general area all his life and in Hays County, his present location,  since 1946. We contacted him from a clue that he is one of  the oldest of our neighbors here in Southeastern Hays County. On the phone, he said, sure come on over, I am here all the time.  So, we visited, armed with a list of topics of at least 20 items that were of interest. Here are a few one liners which we found interesting: He attended a one room school in the area.  The school was on Purgatory Road, and still stands.  Later we drove the short distance to the site and spotted a building through the brush that borders the road and took this picture.  Later, we sent the picture to the historian and he said it looked like it was the old school but could not be sure.  Here is the photo:  There is a cave on the Summer Mountain Ranch subdivision near the old windmill on the south end...

Criminal investigators always use the phrase "someone of interest" when they refer to suspects regarding criminal activity.  In this case, the term is used differently. We are always on the lookout for a good cup of coffee; not the Seattle, Washington stuff, but one of the myriads of other good coffees. The Seattle people would like you to think that there is only one coffee worth paying $3 per cup.  Discerning drinkers like us always shy away from the hot-pot-on-a burner coffee because they have a reputation of having set on the burner for a long time.  The bigger urns with specialty coffee may not be any different but they seem different. Alpine does not have but one or two specialty coffee shops, and they are all Seattle prices (oh, yes, that's another criterion for good coffee, it has to be reasonably priced). So, we have learned to stop at those big service stations for a cup of coffee because they often go big time for good coffee.  We hit the Stripes gasoli...

We ventured to west Texas this year.  We often go to Taos during this time frame, but the two day drive is getting kinda burdensome, so we picked west Texas.  This time of the year is the conference of the Center for Big Bend Studies and that was our primary reason for the trip,  But, seeing an opportunity to take in some scenery of the rugged area and possibly finding some land to acquire we went three days early. Cat, as usual was riding shotgun.  As long as we can find a motel that will take cats, we choose to haul her along with us for two reasons.  One is that she is entertaining, and second, the cost is usually less than putting her in the local kennel.  In addition, she has told us that she does not like to stay in any kennel where she can hear dogs barking. We travelled around San Antonio, heading first for Castroville where we stopped at an all time favorite bakery for some pastry and coffee.  Since we left home without breakfast we did not...

We both grew up in an era and an environment that was conducive to playing outdoors.   Perhaps that was because of the absence of television and certainly before cell phones and digital games.   We have always looked upon our experiences in the out of doors as a “given” and not anything unique.    That’s all changed---especially for the urban population. On the subject of nature, as we like to write about each month, we often hear how we must do certain things to preserve and protect things in nature.   We hear that native plants, clear running streams, all the natural components of the out of doors need our help to survive.   Because of population growth and land development, there is no doubt that is true. Then we happened on the comment by a conservationist which went something- like this:   “We need nature as much as nature needs us”. So, for this newsletter, we did some research into that concept and here is what we found: Children are...

By now all readers know that we are always on the lookout for picnic style lunches put on by local churches, or other groups in the area.  Heck, will drive two hours for a lunch of this type if the prospects for information are good. So it was that we headed for Geronimo, a small town, really small town, just north of Seguin.  The menu was advertised as chicken and dumplings, plus dessert.   Chicken and dumplings are not at the top of our list of food delights but we decided to try it out for a "first time". The hosting organization was the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Geronimo.  The VFW seems to be suffering lately based solely on conversations with veterans of more recent wars.  Often time we find that veterans of the Korean or Vietnam wars never join the VFW.  The sense seems to be that the VFW is for the two world wars vets.  It would be interesting to find the view of the VFW on this matter.  Anyway, as a result, the VFW volunteers seem...

We always have had an interest in geology and now we are digging deeper into caves, springs, and sinks.  This topic is high on our list because we live in an area where the geology is primarily limestone and with its karsty formation, there are a lot of caves and sinks.  Springs are a bit scarce as water is rather scarce most of the year. Longhorn Cavern is north and west of Kingsland, and is now part of the Texas Parks system.  The cave is rather unique in that it is one of the few caves in the state that is the result of an underground river that hollowed out its channel and formed the cavern.  All of that process of forming happened thousands of years ago.  The cavern can best be described by imagining a river of water flowing toward its junction with another river, but in the last mile of this river, it drops down into a hole in the limestone and flows underground for the remaining mile and then empties into the main river.  There it would flo...

Off on this nice day to visit the old town of Yoakum.  Yoakum is like many towns of this size, they grew to moderate size in the mid 1900s, then plateaued and now are not growing at all.  Yoakum has a central area that consists of old brick buildings that are mostly unoccupied or are occupied with marginal businesses. We attended a church picnic in Yoakum a year ago, but that was the Lutheran Picnic and this one is sponsored by the Catholic church.  We first drove directly to the Church, but this was not the place where the picnic was held---it was at the Community center in the old part of downtown, along the rows of warehouses paralleling the railroad tracks.  This town was once a shipping center for agricultural products, like especially tomatoes.  Now there is little of that produce and so the warehouses sit there rather bleak looking. The dinner was the usual, beef stew, sausage, smashed potatoes, sauerkraut, and bread.  And don't forget the desserts...

We passed up a 4th of July church picnic in Weimar because of the forecast of bad weather (and it was true to the forecast).  That made us very eager to go to one this last Sunday.  So, we consulted polkabeat.com  and lo and behold there was one listed in the schedule for the 15th---how could we be so lucky?  It was to be at the St. James Catholic Church on College Street. So off we go at 9:15, down through Luling to Gonzales only to find that there was no church picnic.  A parishioner said that if there was to be picnic, no one had told them. So, since we had decided on the way down that it might be a no show, we vowed not to be upset.  So, we hunted for a restaurant for lunch. Gonzales has not been discovered by the chain restaurants (thank goodness) so it was a tough search. There appears to be nice Italian Restaurant on main street, but it looked to be more than we needed. So, we settled for a Whattaburger and coffee from the Circle K store on the ma...

This book fair was not vigorously promoted in the newspaper, but we found it at the Wimberley Community Center.  Right off, we need to say that this was one of the best book fairs that we have attended in this area--or anywhere for that matter. There were about 50 authors present and had the presentation of their work well organized.  Most of the authors were middle age or older.  Many authors focused on fiction and about the same number on children's books.  There were a few who wrote "historical fiction", but not nearly as many as wrote pure fiction.  One author wrote small format travel guides of Texas.  These might be classified as non fiction, but except for this one author, there were no non fiction authors. We bought two books, one from author Bob Doerr and the other from Larry Lee Farmer. Larry was an interesting salesman for his four books on display.  He told of his wanderings along the hippie trail in the 1970s.  He said the hippie tr...

We stopped a the city café in the small town of Flatonia for many years, but this served buffet style café folded up and now does not exist.  So, we know Flatonia cafes and coffee shops.  Now, however, we headed for the Sacred Heart Catholic Church Picnic last Sunday.  We had been to this church picnic many years ago but so long ago that we had difficulty recalling the date. The church is located about 5 blocks south of I-10 on Highway 95.  We arrived not long after the 11 am starting to serve time, found a short line to buy tickets.  From those already eating, we decided they started serving earlier than the 11 am posted time. In line, we were just ahead of the local policeman, so we probed his mind to fill us in on the local police activity.  He said that about half their police action was due to locals, the other from those passing through on I-10. With all the nefarious activity that goes on in big cities, can you not imagine all the miscreants travel...

We needed a slab of black walnut to make a table from a fantastic piece of walnut left over from our Arkansas log.  The mill in Cedar Park is one of the best places to buy wood of this type so off we went yesterday.  Its about a hours drive to there from our base. We always look for other things to see and do while on trips like this, so we decided to have lunch at Coffee Dog in Bastrop.  Found it after having not been there for some time and had a good lunch and good coffee.  I think we are the only people who drink hot coffee in Texas when the outside temperature is 100 degrees. While dining, we checked the internet for museums in Bastrop and chose the County museum in the old section of Bastrop.  It is not a large museum, but a good one covering the history of Bastrop County and its historical events of Texas. Here are photos of two of many displays; This one is a map of Texas showing the area of the state where there were many longhorn cattle running wil...

We have attended many of these church picnics in past years and don't seem to get weary of driving 90 miles for lunch.  Well, its more than lunch, its to get revitalized on the norms of rural America, many  of the norms which seem to have been lost in urban areas.  This day, in Shiner, was the picnic sponsored by the Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church. This is no small production.  It is held in the American Legion Hall in Shiner.  Its a great place to have Memorial Day Picnic as this hall is a good reminder of the contribution the military people have made to the security of our nation.  Last year the church served about 10 thousand picnic goers.  This year the price had risen from $8 to $10, but still a bargain for this great picnic. Here is a photo of the picnickers inside the hall. This is mainly Czech and German country with a dash of Polish.  They seem to enjoy their ethnic differences.  As we were in line, the ticket take...

The last weekend in April found us at the Wimberley Art Fest on the grounds of Rio Bonito.  Rio Bonito probably is the best layout for an art festival that we have ever experienced.  It has ample parking, well organized and the art stalls are located among a huge grove of pecan trees.  All on the bank of the Blanco River, We cruised through all the booths quite rapidly as many of the artists were hawking their stuff that we were not particularly interested in.  We came across the wood turners father and son by the name of Graham.  The younger Graham is the fellow we bought the American elm bowl from in Lockhart a year or so ago.  Someday we will have to visit the elder Grahams shop in San Marcos to see his setup and to deliver some blocks of wood for his use in turning some items for his sales. We nearly bought a giclee print from a lady, name of Wilkerson, from New Mexico, but decided not to because it would have only limited value in our displays ...

You may recall the museum display of some 2000 reamers, or "juicers" as we always called them---the kitchen device that you use to squeeze the juice from a half of an orange..  That display is enough to draw one to this museum, but we read more recently that the museum is the new owner of a vast collection of hand painted Japanese porcelain cups, saucers and tea pots. So, a trip to Cuero on the 25th of March,  but first lunch now that we have arrived in Cuero about noon. We went to a place familiar to us, the Main Street Kaffee haus and bakery.  The special for the day was either barbequed beef on a waffle or barbequed beef spaghetti.  I advised the congenial order person behind the order counter that both sounded horrible.  Dee made amends for me by saying that I was a traditionalist when it came to barbeque.  I picked up on that and ordered a bbq beef sandwich. It was good.  Here is  the inside of the self order café. The café is owned by ...

This community museum is small, but packed with interesting community historical information.  It is operated by the Lavernia Historical Association. We had travelled through Lavernia a few weeks ago and opted to return to this area specifically  to check out the museum.  It was a closely timed visit as they are only open for general visits one day per month.  They have quite a few visitors however, but most arrange a visit with group. Some interesting highlights:  One of the past featured displays was focused on churches in the area and the gist of that display is retained on the west wall.  Churches played a big role in the history of the area, and area settled mostly by immigrants of Poland and Germany origin. Pottery making was a significant industry here in Lavernia in the 1800s and so there is a feature showing the history of the Suttles Pottery and many examples of their pottery.  The pot making area of this pottery was within a stones throw...

We drove to north of Lockhart to visit the Reclaimed Space Factory on the access road of  Highway 130.  Reclaimed Space builds small (generally less than 1000 square feet) homes in their factory.   They try to use reclaimed materials in building these homes, put them on a flat bed truck and deliver them to your site.  It reminds one of a "mobile home" and they are similar in business concept, but the construction is not anything like the mobile home you know about.  These are built of real wood and have sturdy frames, solid components.  Presently, a substantial portion of their wood comes from dismantled tobacco barns that once existed in Kentucky. This business approach is ideal for those who want to have a place to live on a remote parcel of land because it completely solves the problem of finding a builder in an unfamiliar area.  The steps would be to purchase land, prepare the site by providing water and sewer facilities and electrical hookup, the...