That’s pretty much what it turned out to be over Friday evening in South Texas. When my daughter returned from briskly walking the dogs before dawn Saturday morning, she told me that the grass crackled underfoot. We set out for Goliad just after sunrise, expecting to spend a chilly day selling books in the open-air. Well, the pavilions set up around the edge of Courthouse Square in Goliad were all essentially in the open-air too. We took along our heaviest coats, extra blankets, bundled Nemo in a doggy overcoat, and I made a vain search for my gloves.
To our good fortune and relief, Estelle Zermeno, who has set up Miss Ruby’s Author Corral ever since I’ve been coming to Goliad for the Christmas event, had located an last-minute indoor venue for us – the premises of a closed restaurant, right on the square; a restored historic building with a bathroom, parking around in back and heat. Alas, that was about the last good bit of news about the day. Two scheduled authors had called off appearing, due to the cold and potentially dangerous drive, so it was down to four authors and a handful of friends.
We had shelter at least, but the other vendors were out in the miserable cold – and to add to the misery, there were very few people come out to shop or cheer for Santa. On the good side of that, I got a very good picture of Santa-onna-longhorn, and his military escort, but there seemed to be only about two dozen children and their parents, where ordinarily there would have been hundreds. No posse of cowboys escorting Santa, hardly anyone with a Christmas-dressed dog for the afternoon dog costume contest. I believe I only had four or five potential customers come and look at my books all day.
We packed it up by 1:30, when a light drizzle began falling, and it was so cold that we were afraid it would turn to ice, somewhere along the road back to San Antonio. I am certain that if we had been outside as well, we wouldn’t have stood it for even that long. There were just no customers at all; this marks the very first time that I came away from an event like this without having made a single sale – and I don’t think I was the only one, not by a long shot.
My Christmas marathon continues this weekend – the two hour drive to Goliad for Miss Ruby’s Book Corral, as part of Christmas on the Square. I am loosing track of how many times we have done this event, but it must be about the forth or fifth time. I can’t even remember how I got onto it in the first place, although attending a talk about a local archeological dig in Beeville a while ago might have had something to do with it.
Goliad is a charming little town, with the courthouse square at the heart of it. I am pretty certain that everyone knows each other in passing, and if they don’t, then they have friends in common. The city streets in the old part of town are studded with huge, ancient oak trees, which were so treasured that the streets sometimes go around them. Santa arrives promptly at noon on Saturday, riding on a tame (and probably heavily sedated longhorn) and accompanied by a posse of cowboys.
.
It is one of the handful of towns in Texas which were settled before 1800, and the current shale oil boom has been extremely kind to the local area. The first year that we drove down for it, it seemed like the countryside was more or less deserted, and all the little towns along the way were half boarded up and deserted. Not so last year – they were booming, with the storefronts occupied, and new petrochemical installations and mancamps everywhere. But looking at the weather forecast, it looks like it’s going to be briskly cold for the next few days, which is OK, because it’s a little embarrassing, having to wear shorts and run the AC in December.
One more event – and then I can relax and enjoy Christmas!
Yes, it is that time of year again – and for a wonder, the weather has finally decided to cooperate. One day we were running the AC because the temperature was in the 80s … and then the next morning, a chilly wind was blowing through the neighborhood – and we turned around on the doorstep to put on coats before we walked the doggies … because we had not expected it to be so suddenly cold!
So we were in the mood for Weihnachtsmarkt at the New Braunfels Civic center, and happy, happy, joy, joyful that it was an indoors venue! I don’t think we could have endured outdoors, as we did two weeks ago in Boerne, where it was cool and rainy, not ice-cold and windy. The author book tables are set up in the tall main hallway of the Civic Center, which runs from the front to the back of the building. There are three entrances from the front foyer and the hall into the rooms fitted out as for the market – and Santa is set up in the rear foyer. I am pretty certain it must be a tradition in New Braunfels to come and see Santa at Weihnachtsmarkt. Anyway, this is the third year they have had the author tables, and it’s just a short skip from home, it’s indoors, and most importantly, it draws people with money and the urge to shop, bit-time. I have lots of readers and fans in that area, too. And did I mention that it was indoors?
My daughter says, though – that if I write any more books, I will have to get another table, or at least a larger one. There’s only room for the seven, hardly any space for the various table-top attention-getting items or the little dish of candy that we like to put out … and it turned out that we had eaten all the dark chocolate and peanut-butter M&Ms anyway. This was supposed to be the official-official roll-out for The Quivera Trail – as I just knew that everyone who had read and loved the Trilogy would want to know what happened next!
All worked out as I had forseen – and we had much better results than at the Boerne Market; we came with three tubs and two boxes packed full of books, and brought home only two tubs. This recovered the table fee and the cost of the books themselves. One amusing sidelight was that on Friday afternoon, I realized that the author at the table next to us had a familiar name – and that I had used one of his books about the early history of Austin in researching Deep in the Heart – and that a good few of the incidents he included in his book I worked into mine. I even gave a credit in the notes at the back of Deep in the Heart. Jeffrey Kerr – The Republic of Austin. This is not quite the first time this has happened to me; that was at the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene a couple of years ago, when Scott Zesch was one of the headline guest speakers. I had read The Captured, and was moved to include a story-line in the Trilogy about the tragedy of a white child taken captive by the Comanche and returned – too late – as a young man, never able to re-assimilate to life outside the People again.
The gratifying thing is that the other vendors that my daughter talked to all reported having goodly sales – which is a relief after lackluster sales in Boerne. With this, we have hope that the economy will revive here, at least a little for Christmas. My daughter is already making lists for our own Christmas gift-giving, although some of that will involve going through the ‘gift closet’ to see what there is, and who it would be suitable for. In between the next Christmas Market – at Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, we have Thanksgiving to consider… a roast turkey breast and at least some of the traditional fixings. All good wishes to you – and thanks to everyone who bought books from me, or who will buy them this holiday season!
(Spent all Friday and Saturday at the Christmas Market, or Weihnachtsmarkt, at the conference center in New Braunfels, for the launch of The Quivera Trail. In the mean time, another thrilling frontier adventure, until I can write a bit about how all it went. The details and the quotes are taken from Walter Prescott Webb’s history of the Rangers, which is so powerfully testosterone-laden that I have to keep it sectioned between a couple of … milder-themed books which have a sedating effect.)
After the debacle of the Civil War, the Texas Rangers barely existed as an entity – either in Indian-fighting, or law-enforcing. The Federal government would not countenance the organization of armed bodies of volunteers for any purpose. Combating Indians or cross-border bandits was the business of the regular Army; interested semi-amateurs need not apply. But a Reconstruction-Republican governor, E. J. Davis, did institute a state police force in 1870, the existence of which was lauded as necessary for the preservation of law and order – such as it was. The state police under Davis was relatively short-lived and unadorned by laurels during its brief term, being dissolved at the end of his administration – but one of their officers had such a sterling reputation that when the Texas Rangers were formally reorganized, he was charged with heading one of the two divisions. One was the Frontier Battalion, dedicated to the Ranger’s traditional mission of fighting hostile Indians. The other – the Special Force – was charged with generally upholding law and order, shortly to become the Ranger’s modern raison d’être. Leander Harvey McNelly served for only a brief time in the interim of the change from Indian fighting to upholding law and order – but his leadership inspired many of those Rangers who took note of his personal example to heart.
More »
That is what our booth at the Boerne Market Days contained this last weekend – the first time that we have done Boerne Market Days as a vendor and not as a strolling shopper. Saturday morning was rainy in San Antonio, and the skies were overcast all day. None of the vendors minded not having any sunshine – as long as it didn’t rain! We had a nicely-placed booth space, about midway between the bandstand at one end, and the food-trucks parked at the other. By the way, the gorditas are fab. Sometimes they make the chicken gordita with cut-up chicken chunks, instead of ground chicken meat – but still tasty, anyway. Another good thing – one of the big trash cans was right in front of us, so no need to set aside a bag for our own trash. And it was a landmark for anyone looking for us.
My daughter and I have done a lot of book events, some of them in conjunction with a craft fair, like Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, so we pretty much know the drill; bring tablecloths, plenty of stock (packed in plastic tubs with lids) plenty of change, receipt books, lots of flyers, postcards and business cards, and something to ornament the table with … and chocolate candy. Most everyone likes chocolate, although one of the most relentless book marketer I know has a cookbook with recipes incorporating lemons – she makes lemon cookies or cake, and gives away samples.
This time, we had two more improvements to our retail efforts; a folding dolly hand-truck, which can carry one of the heaviest tubs and one of the lighter ones at a time, and folds up very compactly… no, it isn’t industrial-strength, but better than schlepping the heaviest tubs of books by hand for half a block or more. $20 bucks at Sam’s Club, which might very well be the best and most useful $20 ever spent there, over the long haul. The other was a little attachment for my daughter’s cellphone, which allows us to process credit card payments to her Tiny Bidness Paypal account. We couldn’t process credit/debit accounts before, which has sometimes been a bit of a bind since … well, not too terribly many people carry around checkbooks any more, or cash, either – and going to an ATM and getting cash for a sale is sometimes a bit of an inconvenience for people.
If we keep this up – this making an appearance on the regular market circuit – there are certain things that we will just have to get, in addition to the storage tubs and the hand-truck. We rented the pop-up tent, two folding tables and a chair from the Boerne Market Days management, but eventually we will have to get our own 10 X 10 pop-up; most of the other regular vendors had them, in varying degrees of quality, with zip-up sidewalls for additional privacy, security and shelter from the elements. We will also probably invest in a pair of banners, either to clip to the front of the pop-up or to the front of the table, advertising our various enterprises.
We made back and a bit more the amount that we paid for the space, and rental of the conveniences – but not very much more. We talked to many other vendors, who were similarly disappointed. Either it’s just not close enough to Christmas to loosen the purse strings – or that everyone is looking at the current economic situation with a very tight hold on the pocket-book.
Even so, this last weekend was a learning experience – and one of them was that Boerne Market Days is very animal friendly. A lot of shoppers had dogs on leashes, and one iconoclast among the vendors eve had a pair of infant goats on display. They were such cute babies – but I am told that when they are fully-grown, they can be evil in the extreme.
Recent Comments