Off to Goliad

05. December 2013 · Comments Off on Off to Goliad · Categories: Book Event, Uncategorized · Tags: ,

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.
The Littlest Santa of them All
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.
Christmas On the Square 2012

Goliad Dental Care Bldg

Goliad Oak

Santa onna Longhorn-smaller
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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!

In Memoriam and Missed Chances

04. December 2013 · Comments Off on In Memoriam and Missed Chances · Categories: Old West, Random Book and Media Musings · Tags: , , , , ,

Well, it’s my fault that I didn’t know about the death of T.R. Fehrenbach until last night, when one of the ladies in my Red Hat circle mentioned it. She ventured something about a historian and editorial writer for the local newspaper, whose name was something like “fehren” who had died several days before, and the obituary was in yesterday’s paper. Was he someone that I knew, since I write historical fiction? I asked her if the name was Fehrenbach and she said yes – and would I please pronounce it again.

My fault – I cancelled my subscription years ago, upon realizing that just about everything but strictly local news I had already read on-line and days before it appeared in the rapidly-diminishing pages of the San Antonio Express News. So – I did a quick googlectomy and yes, it was true. T.R. Fehrenbach had a long life and a well-spent one, to outward appearance, and a goodly number of books on ranging wide over matters historical, and readable enough to be outstandingly popular with that portion of the reading public with a passing interest in history and no urge to go wading through the murky swamps of strictly specialist academic historians. No, like Bruce Catton, or Barbara Tuchman – he was erudite and a pleasure to read. Such writers come along rarely enough. I think the greatest service they do, besides enlarging general historical knowledge, is that they get other people interested in history; passionately and deeply interested in it.

When I first began mapping out the general outline of my first books set in Texas, I bought a copy of Lone Star – from Half Price Books, of course. Later on someone recommended his Comanches – The History of a People. By then I had also branched out to other local historians for book-fodder; Scott Zesch, Alvin Josephy, Brownson Malsch, S.C. Gwynne, William C. Davis, J. Frank Dobie, Stephen Hardin and primary sources without number. I do regret that I was never able to meet Mr. Fehrenbach personally, although I have several friends who did, over the years. San Antonio is a small town in a lot of ways, and writers – even just people – pursuing the same interests tend to fetch up in the same circles or at the same events.
I would have liked to thank him. Ah, well – I also missed out on meeting Elmer Kelton, a few years ago. Mr. Kelton was supposed to the the big-name guest author at the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene, a few years ago. And when I was sixteen, I nearly had a chance to meet the founder of Girl Scouting, Olave Badon-Powell, but that fell through as well.

T-Day Wrap-up

01. December 2013 · Comments Off on T-Day Wrap-up · Categories: Domestic · Tags:

Tuxedo Cat With Tablescape of Pumpkins

Here we go, the weekend after the day after Thanksgiving, which has become part of what I call creeping holidayitus, in that once it was just Thanksgiving day itself which was the holiday, and then the day afterwards slowly became a part of it, too… and then the holidayitus began creeping in from the other end of the week, so basically kiss off any serious business being done for the last week in November unless you work in retail … or maybe law enforcement crowd control.

My daughter and I had our Thanksgiving Day dinner at home this year, and carefully calculated what we would have so as to minimize the quantity of leftovers. I mean, we really don’t like baked sweet potatoes all that much, and stuffing gets progressively more disgusting every day after T-day that it sets in the refrigerator, and so does leftover mashed potatoes. So – baked 3-pound turkey breast on a bed of carrots and turnips, a single cooked ham slice, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with red onion and kielbasa, and cheddar biscuits, with the usual corn relish and cranberry chutney. For leftovers the night after I made mashed potatoes and a small quantity of gravy from the reserved drippings … all much, much more appealing. And the cheddar biscuits made a divine breakfast paired with sausage. We toasted to all that we had to be thankful for this year, and hope that by next year we will have cause to be just as thankful.

Best of all, our family shopping obligations were wrapped up by 9AM, courtesy of various websites, especially Fischer and Wieser’s – where they were offering a 50% discount for about six hours on everything on the website. Mom is getting a gift basket of their delicious sauces and condiments. Look, I did retail sales in a mall, the first year that I was retired and had a job on the sales floor of a high-end department store, and after that experience wild horses wouldn’t drag me out on Black Friday to a mall, or to any other big-box retail venue in the wee hours of AM. No, getting into a knock-down drag-out fight over some cheap electronics or whatever from China is not my cup of tea.

Besides, I usually have already picked up sufficient inexpensive or marked down gifts during the year and stashed them in the gift closet… this is what we have done for our Red Hat Ladies group – a tea pot and a cookie jar, filled with some appropriate edible goodies, and there we are. This year it’s cookies for the neighbors that we know, as a change from the flavored oils and vinegars, and home made jam.
Next week – Goliad, with Christmas on the Square, which I hope will be as popular a shopping venue as the Christmas market in New Braunfels was last weekend. In a way, I am still doing retail … just not the usual way.

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