11-THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY

Spending time with our good friends, Bill and Teri Smith, involved basically two things: 1) Eating (we did a lot of that) and 2) Driving through the Hill Country and sight-seeing. We did a whole lot of that, too…and we won’t discuss the amount of shopping Teri and I managed to squeeze in.

We were outside the town of Comfort, Texas driving back roads and came across a huge mansion on top of a hill.

There were a few different “homes” on obviously numerous acres, all of them were tightly secured behind a decorative fence. Each fence post had the initials “DB” emblazoned on them,

This was the closest we could get…and of course we wondered who actually lived there.

We asked about the property when we stopped at the Singing Waters Winery near Comfort. It seems the original husband and wife owners, who’s initials were “B” and “D,” had sold the property a number of years ago for several million dollars.

Now this place it is called, “Time Ship.” “Time Ship?” Yeah. The company that now owns it is involved in cryogenics here.

In other words, if you want to have your body or certain body parts (Huh?? Which ones???) or possibly your DNA frozen in the hopes that someday they can thaw you (or your parts) out and have you regenerated in good health...well this is the place (for a price) to do it.

Now that is just plain WEIRD, and it wasn’t even in the book our friend, Sonja had on weird places to see! I don’t think I would want to see inside now that I know what they are doing there.

Bill and Teri next took us to the town of Fredericksburg, Texas. There was an incredible Mesquite Show going on here. Tents were set up and numerous wood carvers and artists had their wares on display, mostly made of mesquite wood.

Some items were large, benches, tables and chairs….

…and some smaller items imbedded with Turquoise or Malachite chips. All were beautiful. I took home one of these to hold my cooking utensils next to my stove top.

While having lunch in Fredericksburg, Don learned that German food can be really good. Even though I am full-blooded German, we never ventured out into the ethnic food much beyond sauerkraut…believe me, Jaeger Schnitzel is MUCH, MUCH BETTER!! and even Don agrees!

This entire area was heavily settled by German immigrants years ago. Their influence remains.

Next it was time to wander the shops.

Some place out in the country, we came across Camp Verde. Now it is a store and post office with a small park across the road. Here, in 1857, they were part of a military experiment using camels.

Camels actually worked out fairly well in this area because of how long they could go without water, but the extensive use of them just faded away.

At this point, it was primarily an upscale gift shop with construction going on, for what I guessed, was possibly a hotel or conference center.

There are also beautiful river scenes in the Hill Country.

Next was a trip to Bandera…The Cowboy Capital of the World. We had lunch at OST, the "Old Spanish Trail," Café.

It was definitely time to “Cowboy Up” in Bandera. There were several John Wayne movies filmed in the area and as a result, there were many John Wayne pictures on the walls here.

We also learned that the (mostly plastic) deer on the wall can sing a mean rendition of, “Rawhide,” and that a Texas favorite lunch is, “Chicken Fried Chicken.”

Chicken Fried Chicken consists of a huge piece of deep fried chicken breast with dirty mashed potatoes (it includes some of the potato peel) and wonderful chicken gravy on top. Oh, and so good for you, too!!! Right.

At Kerrville is the Western Museum of Art. Although fairly small, it holds some great art.

Panels in the ceiling that surround the skylights, is made of arched bricks, with no steel infrastructure. They are all amazingly built with mortar only holding them together and in this arched position. There are several of these in the ceiling of the museum.

I loved this sculpture because it seemed so off balance. It leaned backward as well as sideways, and all of it balanced on just one hoof.

There were galleries with both paintings and sculptures.

Bill Smith points out a painting by another William Smith.

Then there was more driving through the countryside. I’m not sure why, but we decided to have dinner at the Welfare Café in Welfare, Texas. Welfare? It was not exactly a booming community.

Basically it was one café, and although apparently well respected and well known, was closed when we arrived. Maybe we should have called ahead for Welfare….

Why would anyone name a community Welfare?? Does it mean anything that it was closed???

Yes, apparently it is a popular location…at least on certain nights.

We continued further down the road

and stopped at…

PO PO’s!

Po-Po’s was first built as a dance hall in 1929. It had a rather checkered past during the prohibition years. In 1932 it was sold to Ned Houston, a very colorful rancher across the road who was known for his large export operation of cattle, mules and other animals to Latin America.

Ned Houston was purported to have sold animals to Pancho Villa in Mexico, Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Somoza in Nicaragua.

Houston started a restaurant in what used to be the Nelson Dance Hall and named it Po-Po Café, short for the great Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl.

Po-Po changed hands several times until 1950 when it was sold to Luther and Marie Burgon where it developed the reputation of being one of the finest restaurants in the area.

The Burgon’s traveled one month a year and began collecting plates as memories of the various places they visited. At this point in time the walls are now adorned with 2,100 different plates on the walls of the restaurant. They close for two weeks annually just to dust them all.

This shows less than one-quarter of the restaurant and the plates on the walls. Just in case you are wondering, they, too, have great chicken fried chicken!!

An interesting thing happened the other day when I was at the Laundromat. I was waiting for my clothes to be finished and to kill time, I was working on the pine needle basket that I am making for my daughter-in-law, Leslie.

A lady sat down near me and became quite interested in what I was doing. She was a former teacher at a local Christian school, K-12 grades. She asked if I would consider doing a demonstration for some students and parents at the local library.

It was short notice, but we were able to pull together an impromptu talk and demonstration at the Boerne Public Library the following morning.

I happened to have several of my finished baskets in the motorhome for them to see. There were about a dozen people in attendance and it was a fun time for me and hopefully instructional for them.

When the library basket demo was over, we took off with Bill and Teri for more touring.

First Teri and I, with hearts pounding, stopped at Coldwater Creek with 40% off coupons tightly grasped in our sweaty little hands. By the time we gave Coldwater it’s due, it was lunch time again. Then we all hit the road.

Next stop was the little town of Wimberly.

Wimberly has a glass blowing shop that did live demonstrations which we watched.

This glass blower is making a lamp shade. It was 91 degrees outside that day and the door was open to the outside. It was even hotter in the shop with the glass melting ovens blazing away.

This is what the finished lamp shade looks like. Beautiful! There was one hanging in the show room with a price tag on it of $2,299.00 …for one! Don bought me a very pretty pair of glass earrings here. They cost a whole lot less!!