Archive for August, 2010
No, No, That’s North Carolina
Thursday, August 26th, 2010Dance Hall History
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010I just got back from Texas where my wife and I spent some time in the hill country outside San Antonio. One of our favorite places was Gruene, Texas (pronounced Green). Unless you stop to read the Historical Markers in the town (something we actually do), the average visitor would be clueless about the town’s history because there is nothing about the town that gives you a hint about its past.
Folks who visit Gruene walk around wearing an assortment of shorts, sandals, tank tops, wranglers or wet bathing suits from tubing down the Guadalupe River. They eat Blue Bell ice cream and Armadillos droppings (caramel candy) from the Country Store after enjoying lunch or dinner at either the Gristmill Restaurant or Gruene River Grill. They shop at places like Cotton Eyed Joes, Gruene With Envy, Tipsey Gipsey or my favorite, Pookie Janes. Pookie Janes was my favorite because of The Man Cave. At the back of the store there is a secret door to a back porch clearly marked “The Man Cave”. Upon entering The Man Cave you will find two lawn chairs, a t.v. with remote control and a small refrigerator stocked with beer and a sign that reads “One per customer”. Shopping just got easier.
All of this makes for a great visit, but were it not for Gruene Hall you would miss the town’s history. Gruene was originally the town of Goodwin until Henry Gruene arrived in the early 1870s, built a cotton gin, dance hall and school. Cotton farming put the town of Gruene( name changed in 1903) on the map. Gruene was a thriving farming community until the arrival of the Boll Weevil in 1925. The destruction of the cotton industry meant the decline of the town.
Gruene was resurrected in the early 1970s as a part of the tourism industry associated with the nearby city of New Braunfels. The cotton gins are now restaurants and most of the original buildings either sell antiques or are trendy boutiques, but if you want to hear, smell and taste a genuine part of Gruene’s history you have to visit the dance hall. The social life of Gruene has been connected to this dance hall for over 130 years. Gruene Hall is wood tables, wood floors, wood bar, long-necks, live country music with audience participation and Texas two-step.
When you step into Gruene Hall you are entering a social world that has not changed all that much since it was built in 1878. It’s just fun. Most of the musicians who perform are local talent who play there because they love music and get paid from tips dropped in large plastic buckets, though Gruene Hall has seen the likes of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson too. Everyone smiles, laughs, nods their heads to the music and a few dance.
Whatever you might think about dance halls, places like Gruene Hall continue to carry part of a town’s living history long after events like the Boll Weevil manifestation devastated its original farming community and destroyed its cotton economy.
So if you are ever in the Texas hill country north of San Antonio be sure to visit Gruene and make sure you sample the town’s history at Gruene Hall.
Proud Parents
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010I am in Texas right now for our youngest daughter’s college graduation. She is graduating with a degree in Social Work and soon after her graduation she will journey to the Pacific Northwest to help plant an inner city church. For a while we thought that she would end up somewhere in Africa working with children and that may still be in her future, but, for now, she has decided to make Starbuckland her home. Her experience as a barista will serve her well in the the land that coffee built. At some point she will have to buy some model of the national car of the Northwest, a Subaru equipped with a Thule cargo rack. But for now I think she is planning to use public transportation.
As your children grow up you play that mind game of ”what they are going to do one day”, but I have decided that the more important question is “who are they going to be one day”? They will change their minds a lot and do all kinds of different things with their lives, at least 40 of those changes will occur in the first two years of college or in the first five years out of college. But it is who they are that matters, that they become people of character who decide that life is about investing yourself in others and not just making sure that the golden parachute is waiting at the end of your career.
Or to put it in the words of Nelson Mandela, “There are two kinds of leaders in the species humankind. There is the man or woman of personal ambition, and there is the man or woman who creates a self out of response to people’s needs, the call of conscience against oppression, injustice, and sufferings of any nature within our human condition. To the one, the drive comes narrowly from within; to the other it is a charge of energy which comes in others’ needs and the demands these make on all of us who share humanity. Conscience is a form of solidarity.”
So to my daughter graduating from college and to all of our children, we are so very proud of you. We are proud of what you will do with your life yes, but, more importantly, we are proud of who you are, people of character. In Mandela’s words, you are men and women who will create a deeper self and a more just world out of your response to other’s needs.