from the April 18, 2011 edition of the Dallas Morning News
Bid to honor Western swing music hits sour note in Texas Legislature Does Western swing icon Bob Wills’ work represent Texas music better than Van Cliburn’s? Or Roy Orbison’s? Or Brave Combo’s? Or Johnny Winter’s? Or…?
By KAREN BROOKS Austin Bureau kmbrooks@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN — An effort to make Western swing the official music of Texas could see miles and miles of opposition, as one Hill Country music lover finds herself in the opening stanzas of a debate over what defines “Texas music.” “When we’re talking about a symbol, we’re talking about culture and heritage and history, and something that has been long lasting,” said Paula Jungmann, a Boerne housewife who is pushing for the legislative declaration. “When I look at Western swing, that is what I see.” But while she counts no time in politics, Jungmann is discovering that elected officials and creative artist types are pages torn from the same songbook in two big ways: You never know what they’re going to do, and you’ll never get them all to agree on anything. Some musicians — and the “Beer-drinkers and Hell-raisers” who love them (thank you, ZZ Top) — are wondering whether lawmakers should be trying to define and symbolize Texas music in terms of one genre. Particularly if it leaves out Hank Williams’ pain songs, Newbury’s train songs and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “The official sound of Texas should be Texas music in all its glorious facets,” said Texas writer Joe Nick Patoski. “No official proclamation is necessary when everybody knows we make music better than anybody else.”
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI June 27, 2003
SAN MARCOS – To finish the Texas Water Safari, you have to paddle nonstop in a canoe or kayak for 260 miles from Aquarena Center in San Marcos (where Ralph the Diving Pig once performed) down the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers to the flagpole at Bayfront Park in Seadrift, Texas.The safari, which was run earlier this month for the 41st year, is called "The World’s Toughest Boat Race." That’s justified by the distance; the rules (you must finish in 100 hours, and team captains supplying crews can provide only water and ice); the stamina (visualize sleep deprivation); and physical demands (millions of paddle strokes).
With more than 300 people racing solo or in teams of up to six people, the safari is also the Texas equivalent of climbing Mount Everest en masse.
Those who complete the race talk in glowing terms about the murky hell, riddled with snakes, fire ants and alligators awaiting them. They speak of the "Gnarly 40" – 40 miles of tree-clogged river channel between Staples and Palmetto State Park – as if it were a ride at Schlitterbahn. They wax nostalgic recounting trips down Hallucination Alley, which is wherever you get so tired you start seeing things.
They sure aren’t in it for the money. Complete the race in 100 hours or less, and you get a patch and a plaque. Be the first across the finish line, and a crowd of maybe 60 will be cheering.
Outside the norm
The Parkers of Tyler don’t appear too outside the norm – other than Marvin Parker, 53, and his brother Charles, 50, having matching gray beards long enough to give ZZ Top a run for the razor.
Then Luke, Marvin’s 16-year-old son, breaks into a goofy grin and says it: "We’re crazy."
Luke and Marvin won the parent-child division in 2001, the first year Luke raced. Last year, they were blown out when the legendary Mynars fielded a father-son team.
"It’s mostly mental," Marvin says. "Keep your mind right, and you’ll make it."
"That’s all I heard about it when I was a kid," Luke says. "How people start hallucinating after a while. That got me worried."
Are the stories true? "Well, I saw myself one time on the banks looking at me," Luke says. "That was scary."
"I saw a solid cement wall the first year," volunteers Marvin. "I was thinking if it didn’t go away, we were going over the dam. But it went away."
A few feet from the registration table, two novices, Julie Basham of Coppell and Ann Best of Houston, sort protein powder, coffee crystals, and some strange stuff called Gu. They declare they’re up for the challenge.
"We’re both 40," says Ms. Best, a marketer for Hewlett-Packard. "I’ve always wanted to do the safari. I just needed a victim to do it with me." She found one in Ms. Basham, her kayak class teacher. In the span of a few months, Ms. Basham had divorced, lost her job and lost her father.
"He’s riding with us," says Ms. Basham, reaching into their canoe and fetching a green pill bottle from a Styrofoam holder. "This is Dad – his ashes, actually. I’m going to spread them at Seadrift. Before he died, he said he wanted to watch me finish."
The two women have paddled 87 miles straight, practicing for the event – long enough for Ms. Best to have seen E.T. going through Hallucination Alley. Two hundred sixty miles is another matter.
Ms. Basham calculates 78 hours to finish.
"Maybe 80," Ms. Best hedges.
"Seventy-eight hours," Ms. Basham says emphatically, splashing bottled water on Ms. Best and soaking her SpongeBob T-shirt.
Adventure in life
Since 1992, save for one year, a Mynar or three have been in the winning boat. The patriarch, Joe Mynar, 55, a stout, steely-eyed truck driver from Kopperl, owns the Texas Water Safari, having racked up 14 wins.
"There’s not much adventure in life these days," he says. "Everything’s pretty much programmed. But for a few days, it’s you, your team, your boat and the river."
This year, Joe’s son, Brian, who lives in Abbott, and Joe’s brother, Fred, who lives in San Marcos, are racing in another boat.
Joe’s crew includes John Dunn, 36, a fire ant researcher and ex-paramedic from Austin who has racked up nine wins paddling with Mr. Mynar, along with Tom Goynes, 52, of San Marcos, a seven-time safari winner, and Bucky Chatham, 60, of Seadrift, a retired shrimper with cancer.
"He had surgery in November and wants to run the safari one more time," Joe Mynar says in a low voice, out of earshot of Mr. Chatham. "We just want to make sure we get him to the finish line."
The last two times a Mynar didn’t win, John Bugge, 52, did. The plumbing contractor from Bryan holds the record for finishing the safari – 25 times. This year, he’s paddling tandem with his granddaughter, Jessica, 9, the youngest entrant in the 2003 race.
Asked to explain why she’s going, the freckle-faced brunette giggles and shrieks, "For fun!" then grabs the hand of her sister, Cecili, 3, and runs off.
"We’ve done the San Marcos River maybe four times and almost all of the Guadalupe," Mr. Bugge says. "She’s practiced running logjams, riding currents, going through stuff in the middle of the night, sleeping, eating and relieving herself. She’s already decided she wants to go solo next year." Before she goes solo, though, they’ll have to finish together this year, he says.
Mr. Bugge’s goal is 55 hours in their 21-foot hybrid boat, if all goes according to plan.
"She doesn’t believe me when I tell her how hard it’s going to be," he says. "But if she finishes, she’ll know more than most adults know."
Donna Bugge, John’s wife, admits some friends think they’re crazy for letting Jessica race. "Then again, they think we’re crazy anyhow," she says.
More intense
This year’s celebrity, Ian Adamson, 38, is a professional adventure racer from Sydney, Australia, who’s won the Eco-Challenge four times.
Paddling with his friend West Hansen, 41, a broad-shouldered barn builder from Austin, Mr. Adamson compares the safari to a single leg of an Eco-Challenge. "But this is more intense. To me, this is the best boat race I’ve ever run, starting in a clear freshwater spring and a tight channel and winding up in swamps with alligators and the coast. The barbecue at the end of the race certainly is unique."
Mr. Hansen estimates 40 hours. "If we get rain, maybe 38. At least in these conditions, we shouldn’t break the boat in half again."
Again?
Nearby, Elmer Haby, 48, inspects his 10-foot Minnow kayak. The Devine resident completed the safari with a partner 18 years ago. Now he’s ready to try it alone. "I’d like to finish under 100 hours," he allows as he lights up a cigarette.
He knows his boat is not made for long distances, and his friends have been second-guessing him, saying things such as, "Are you out of your mind?"
"Probably," he says. "But I won’t know until I try."
John Mark Harras’ blue button-down Oxford shirt, rattlesnake pantyhose and straw cowboy hat stand out in the crowd. He’s a "Cowboy," one of a six-man crew known for its over-the-top behavior. Mr. Harras, 44, of Houston, bubbles enthusiasm as he recounts throwing up during races ("You just keep paddling"), getting a fishhook stuck in his ear, and seeing things in Hallucination Alley.
"I used to race with a woman," Mr. Harras says. "One year, she pointed to the riverbank and said, ‘See that giant priest up there, praying for our sins?’ I looked. It wasn’t a priest. It was a great big Quaker Oats box."
The results
Fred and Brian Mynar and their crew, dressed in matching white hats and white shirts and paddling with military precision, were the first to Seadrift, arriving in the Sunday evening twilight, 36 hours and 15 minutes after departure.
John Mark Harras and his Cowboys were second in 40 hours, 4 minutes. Bucky Chatham came home to Seadrift with Joe Mynar’s crew in 42 hours, 35 minutes.
Jessica and John Bugge made it in 51 hours and 23 minutes. Luke and Marvin Parker clocked in at 61 hours, 43 minutes. Ann Best, Julie Basham and Julie’s father’s ashes finished in 79 hours, 29 minutes. Elmer Haby dropped out before the first checkpoint at Staples Dam, 16 miles from the start.
One racer suffered a snakebite, though he didn’t realize it until 80 miles later. Heat exhaustion, dehydration and hypothermia sent several to hospitals. A thunderstorm over San Antonio Bay swamped four boats. Sane or insane, most will be back in the safari race for more next year.
Songwriter helps lead the fight against development
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI December 12, 2003
EL PASO – Tom Russell can lay claim as the “last” singer-songwriter in Texas. That’s because he lives in a historic 70-year-old adobe home on 3 acres within spitting distance of the New Mexico state line.
The Los Angeles native, whose folk songs have been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith and K.D. Lang, has lived in many corners of the world – Nigeria in wartime, Austin as it was emerging as a music scene, San Francisco and Brooklyn. But he now lives in the far end of far West Texas by choice.
The rural area is known as the Upper Valley, a swath of green bordering both sides of the Rio Grande for a mile or two as it meanders through the Chihuahuan Desert. The rugged western flank of the Franklin Mountains, the southern end of the Rockies that end in the heart of the city, provides a scenic backdrop.
“This is the last oasis in West Texas,” says Mr. Russell, 55. “It’s a refuge for heron, desert tortoises, egrets, raccoons, skunks, badgers, you name it. I have foxes walking through my yard every day.”
But the days of Mr. Russell’s idyllic retreat may be numbered. Progress in the form of two-story stucco houses built to their lot lines – crammed into subdivisions, five to eight homes per acre – are marching his way at a fast pace, with requests by developers for city zoning variances leading the way.
The first skirmish came last year when Mr. Russell and five of his neighbors managed to reroute massive overhead power lines that were proposed to run directly over their homes.
A controlled access highway completed two years ago to link Interstate 10 with Santa Teresa, N.M., has been a magnet attracting subdivisions, which in turn are attracting commercial developments.
Farming on plots of land less than 100 acres was already in decline in the Upper Valley, as it is everywhere in the United States. The sandy river-bottom soil is certainly productive enough. But the cost of planting, growing and harvesting crops, and increased competition from other countries add up to food and fibers being grown somewhere else.
Factor in what Mr. Russell sees as a city leadership overly supportive of growth and development at the expense of residents, and the Upper Valley becomes vulnerable. It is one of the few green spaces remaining in the metro area.
Yet those who support growth and development say that El Pasoans need housing and that it is being provided under the rules and guidelines set forth.
“Ownership of property is one of our basic rights in America, and it cannot be vulnerable to opposition without good cause,” says Rex Smith, a landowner who purchased Upper Valley property a year ago and immediately sought a zoning variance from the City Planning Commission. “Progress happens, and it cannot be stopped.”
Susan Austin, the City Council member who represents the Upper Valley, pushed for lower-density housing rules after initial protests. But she – along with the majority of the council – also voted to approve Mr. Smith’s application for higher-density housing. That has prompted one of Mr. Russell’s neighbors to mount a recall campaign of Ms. Austin.
Even if she has been the object of much wrath, Ms. Austin calls the activism of Mr. Russell and his neighbors “as passionate as any neighborhood group in my district.”
But she pointedly adds that they should put their money where their mouths are. “A lot of people want to preserve the idea of having a ranch-size homestead without having bought a ranch-size homestead, including Tom Russell, ” Ms. Austin says.
“Some of the people all over me don’t even live in the city. They live in the county” – outside the city limits. “The city can regulate. There are no zoning restrictions at all in the county.”
Seeking inspiration
Mr. Russell came to El Paso seeking the same sort of inspiration that artists such as Tom Lea and Luis Jimenez and writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Benjamin Saenz have mined so well. “He always loved places like this,” says his sister Nan Lazzaretto, a schoolteacher.
Mr. Russell’s home is a hideout of sorts, in the outlaw tradition, tucked behind a wall of trees, high brush and cane that suddenly materializes among the fields of cotton, chili peppers, pecan plantations and pastoral horse farms that define the Upper Valley way of life.
“I love that there is no scene here,” he says as he doffs his cowboy hat to reveal a head of graying, wavy hair. “I don’t have to worry about being seen.”
Unlike Brooklyn, where he lived for almost 20 years before moving here six years ago, “people here are pleasant and neighborly,” he says.
“Downtown El Paso is like a movie set. It’s like things have never changed. I love being close to Mexico. I love the history. The Old Spanish Road up to Santa Fe is right down here. I grew up on Marty Robbins’ ‘El Paso’ and the tales of gunfighters.” As it happens, Rosa’s Cantina is not too far down the road.
Sometimes friends stop in. Dave Alvin drops by whenever he’s on his way from his home in Los Angeles to gigs in the southern United States. So does Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
A few years back, Mr. Russell hosted a border-town birthday bash for songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen that drew a gaggle of like-minded professional dreamers. Not everyone gets it. The late folk legend Dave Van Ronk, whose last recording was backing up Mr. Russell, likened El Paso’s dry summer heat to being “in a pizza oven.”
Cowboy songs
Mr. Russell started writing, singing and playing originals more than 30 years ago, inspired by hearing his older brother sing cowboy songs and seeing Bob Dylan perform “Desolation Row” at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964.
He taught criminology in Nigeria from 1969-70 during the Biafran war , then followed friends he made in Africa to Vancouver, British Columbia. A band performing Hank Williams songs on Skid Row moved him to think: “That’s the job for me.” He landed in Austin in 1974 during that city’s nascent era as a music scene. Later, he drifted to San Francisco before landing in Brooklyn in the early ’80s.
He shifted his focus to writing (“I’m a frustrated novelist,” he says) and drove cabs to pay the bills. When he sang a song he’d written called “Gallo del Cielo” to one fare – the composer Robert Hunter, who collaborates with the Grateful Dead – he was encouraged to get back on stage.
Life in El Paso has suited him just fine. His adobe hacienda is filled with Mexican pickled-pine furniture and folk art. He just finished an open, Mexican-style patio. He has incorporated the landscape and local history into his work.
The critic John Swenson called Mr. Russell’s ambitious 1999 song cycle The Man From God Knows Where as “close to a Homeric treatment of American history as we’re ever likely to see.” Two years ago, he released Borderland, which includes “When Sinatra Played Juarez,” a song inspired by his ex-girlfriend’s uncle.
The uncle, who found the house Mr. Russell lives in, used to play piano across the border when Juarez was a hotbed for quickie Mexican divorces. The location also satisfies Mr. Russell’s jones for bullfighting and his love of the border, although twice he’s found himself caught in the crossfire of warring drug gangs in Juarez.
Mostly, though, Mr. Russell’s place offers refuge from a steady touring schedule that over the past half-year has taken him to Ireland, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Calgary and Edmonton in western Canada, and across the United States from Oregon to Maine – including an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman, backed by Nanci Griffith in support of his latest album, Modern Art.
Small victories
Mr. Russell and five neighbors have won some small victories in their effort to ward off more developments. Last summer, they successfully lobbied the City Planning Commission to reduce zoning density from R3A zoning, which allows up to eight homes per acre, to R2A, meaning lots can accommodate no more than five homes per acre.
That may be the best outcome possible, says Elma Carreto, the chairwoman of the Planning Commission. She says she sympathizes with Mr. Russell and insists the commission’s goal is to make sure planned developments conform to the existing area.
She says existing infrastructure, including roads, bridges, police, firefighters and schools, are not prepared to handle the traffic that 2,500 new homes bearing families will bring. But she can go only so far, she says.
While Mr. Russell’s songs classify him as a folkie, he is not known for political broadsides. His body of work tends to speak to larger philosophical issues, such as aging and loneliness. That makes his anti-development activism all the more unusual. “I don’t have any political bent,” he explains. “I don’t write protest songs.”
Instead, he has written letters, called the local chapter of the Sierra Club (the voice on the other end of the line urged him to play at a weekly meeting), attended planning commission and council meetings, and spoken out. “This is not a left-wing or right-wing argument – it’s right or wrong,” he says.
“There’s no real plan for this area. They just want to develop here while the interior of the city begs to be redeveloped. The leaders don’t see the big picture. They just want to develop, develop and develop until there isn’t anywhere left. We don’t need another 7-Eleven. There’s a Circle K a quarter-mile down the road. Lowe’s and McDonald’s will be next. The prognosis is pretty sad.
“You don’t do this to farmland. You don’t do this to your children. It’s corrupt thinking.”
His heels are dug in deep. “I’ll take my stand here,” he says. “Maybe import some donkeys and ducks and pigs, and no one will want to live next to me. I’m talking with some folks about buying up some land to keep it in farming. Other than that, I’m planting a lot of trees.”
The dilemma has moved him to also do what he does best. “I’m thinking about writing a song about all this,” he says. “Only it’s going to be from the point of view of a fox.”
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI October 24, 2003
"Leaving on a Jet Plane,” the pop hit by Peter, Paul and Mary, may have put the romance in flying. But despite all the nonstops from D/FW Airport to just about anywhere in the world, and as appealing as Machu Picchu on the Same Day sounds, truth is I have neither the money nor the time, much less the patience, to play that fantasy out.
My song is “Sixty Minute Man,” the doo-wop classic recorded by Billy Ward & His Dominoes 52 years ago. I’m not that kind of 60-minute dude (I wish!) but a 60-minute man when it comes to getting away. Give me the road trip that’s brief and close to home.
Unfortunately, sticking to the Dominoes’ theory by getting away in an hour or less around these parts is a real challenge. You can blow an hour in traffic alone and still be stuck inside the city limits.
Avoid rush-hour traffic, leave from the right part of the sprawl, and most important, head in the right direction, and you’ll find the ideal version of Texas, exotic nooks and crannies that are way, way out there, all reachable in LensCrafters time.
Disclaimer: Our 60-minute man assumes no responsibility for speeding tickets caused by trying to get to where you’re going within the officially designated time limit. Don’t rush it.
MOVIE TEXAS
Twenty-eight miles south of Dealey Plaza is about the most perfect small town in Texas, an opinion shared by dozens of film crews that have used Waxahachie, its gingerbread homes and the surrounding countryside as stage sets. Bob Phillips even stages his annual Texas Country Reporter festival here.
DMN FILE 2002
The Ellis County Courthouse is the centerpiece of downtown Waxahachie.
The 15-block downtown clustered around the majestic Ellis County Courthouse is a mega-flashback, including the meticulously restored, 91-year-old historic Rogers Hotel, a working soda fountain (Weezer’s Classic Cup) and fancy dining choices (LaPrelle, Emory’s Bistro).
Check the Webb Gallery for Venzil Zatoupil’s toothpick sculpture of a Ferris wheel (constructed with 9,900 toothpicks and 140 chopsticks) and an excellent array of other folk art.
Stop in at the Ellis County Museum on the corner of the square for driving-tour directions to places that appeared in such films as Tender Mercies, The Trip to Bountiful, Places in the Heart and Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” music video.
From Waxahachie, it’s a 15-minute drive west on FM66 – which, for romantic purposes, will be referred to as Texas Route 66 – to Maypearl, through a rolling countryside where tract homes are beginning to pop up, the kind of setting that so intrigued David Byrne when he filmed True Stories, the quirky paean to specialness, around Dallas.
Casting director Carla James says Maypearl “may be the most beautiful place on earth in the spring.” The wide open spaces hold up pretty well, too. The reward at the end of the road is a real, honest comfort meal at the Busy Bee Cafe, a classic chat ‘n’ chew where CFS on Mondays for lunch is $5.75 with tea and dessert. The Busy Bee is now open on some evenings, and on weekends there’s music by touring Texas singer-songwriters at the Back of the Bee.
Head home by taking FM157 north from Maypearl to Venus, 10 miles away. The old bank on the corner of the humble rectangle that passes for the town square and part of the covered sidewalk on the main street were used as a backdrop when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were playing Texas’ most notorious bank-robbing couple in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.
Rogers Hotel: 100 N. College St., Waxahachie. 972-938-3688 or 1-800-556-4192. www.rogershotel.com Webb Gallery: Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. and by appointment. 209-211 W. Franklin, Waxahachie. 972-938-8085. www.webbartgallery.com Ellis County Museum: Mondays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays 1 to 5 p.m. 201 S. College St., Waxahachie. 972-937-0681. Busy Bee Cafe: Mondays through Saturdays from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., also Thursdays from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Fridays from 5:30 p.m. to midnight. 301 N. Main St., Maypearl. 972-435-8222.
OFF-ROADING A CONVERSATION AWAY
Sure, that Hummer may look like a tank and act like a rugged off-road vehicle on a four-lane superslab. But has it really ever been deep in the mud or crawled up a pile of rocks? Put that big-wheeler hog or jimmied Jeep to the test at Tim McGill’s AGR Wheelin’ Ranch. The street-legal off-road ranch is 69 miles northwest of Denton and the Interstate 35 split. Overnight at the Nocona Hills Motel and Campground or the Nocona Inn.
AGR Wheelin’ Ranch: Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays by appointment. Take I-35 north to Gainesville, go west on U.S. Highway 82 for about 30 miles, go right on FM1815 until it dead ends, go left on FM1956, right on FM3301, then enter the Nocona Hills gate on the left. $20 a day for vehicle and driver, $5 for each additional passenger. 214-435-7196. www.agrwheelinranch.com. Nocona Hills Campground and Motel: FM3301, then left on Nocona Drive, left on Country Club Drive, Nocona. 940-825-3445 (campground) and 940-825-3161 (motel). Nocona Inn: 219 Clay St., Nocona. 940-825-8800.
HIGH ROLLING ON THE LONE STAR SAVANNA
Glen Rose, about an hour southwest of downtown Fort Worth, used to be known for its outstanding examples of petrified wood architecture and the dinosaur tracks in the bed of the Paluxy River. These days, it’s a nature hub, beginning with Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, part drive-through zoo and part breeding and research facility for native, exotic, threatened and endangered wildlife including giraffes, rhinos, zebras and wolves. Self-guided tours ($16.95) and behind-the-scenes guided tours ($35, $25 for kids) are fun, but overnights in the Lodge or the Foothills Safari Camp, inspired by lodges in Kenya, are dreamy.
Hunters and nonhunters gravitate up the road to Rough Creek Lodge, an even higher-end rustic luxury lodge that features upland bird, deer, and hog hunting, fly fishing, bird watching and fine dining.
On the same road is Dr. Rickey Fain’s Quail Ridge Ranch, a more intimate five-room version of Rough Creek, with a main lodge, upland bird hunting, fishing, wildlife watching and gourmet meals. The ranch is a showcase of sound stewardship, with the land restored to its native condition of more than 100 years ago.
Hico, 20 more miles down State Highway 220, is about as Western as a Western town can get in these parts, with saddle shops, a Billy the Kid Museum (the outlaw William H. Bonney allegedly hid out here and died an old man) and Dublin Dr Pepper served at better establishments.
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center: Daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Three miles southwest of Glen Rose just off U.S. Highway 67. $16.95, $12.95 seniors 62 and up, $10.95 children 4-11. All ages half-price on Wednesdays. 254-897-2960. www.fossilrim.com. The Lodge at Fossil Rim and the Foothills Safari Camp: Inside the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, Glen Rose. 254-897-2960. Rough Creek Lodge Executive Conference Center Retreat & Resort: Take Highway 67 west through Glen Rose. Take a left on County Road 2013, about 12 miles outside of Glen Rose, then go about four more miles and look for the signs. 254-965-3700. www.roughcreek.com. Quail Ridge Ranch: 1755 County Road 2013, 13 miles outside of Glen Rose. 1-866-897-3618. www.quailridgeranch.com.
RUN FOR THE BORDER
IRWIN THOMPSON / DMN
Check out Oklahoma’s recently upgraded WinStar Casino.
OK, the WinStar Casino in Oklahoma isn’t Vegas, much less Ciudad Acuña. Then again, Acuña isn’t Acuña anymore. And it isn’t Bossier City, La., either. What the Chickasaw Nation’s former Touso Ishto bingo is, is a long hour’s drive from downtown Dallas, half the distance to the Louisiana line, which translates into more quality time when you get there to fritter away whatever coinage you’ve brought with you.
The recently expanded and upgraded 110,000-square-foot layout has two spacious casinos with more than 1,000 slotlike video lottery terminals operating bingo, poker and eight-liner-type games, as well as off-track betting, a mega-buffet, an upscale restaurant specializing in Southwestern cuisine and a theater bringing in “name” talent (Jimmy “JJ” Walker!).
What WinStar doesn’t have is booze. No alcohol is served. To compensate, save enough running change to motor north up Interstate 35 to Exit 24 for a suite, cottage or floating cabin at Lake Murray State Park and Resort and throw yourself a party.
WinStar Casino: Daily from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning. I-35 north to Exit 1, near Thackerville, Okla. 580-276-4229. www.winstarcasinos.com. Lake Murray State Park and Resort: I-35 north to Exit 24, go east two miles to the park, which is just north of Thackerville. 1-800-257-0322 or 580-223-6600.
HEARTLAND PRAIRIE
Stop obsessing over the St. Augustine, Bermuda and bent grass and get out in real nature. Just east of Greenville, 60 miles northeast of downtown Dallas, is the Paul Mathews Prairie Nature Preserve, a pristine meadow of grasses that were here before people were. The prairie’s good earth has never been broken by a plow and is one of the last remnants of the once vast, 12 million-acre Texas Blackland Prairie, a surviving chunk of wild America in a region that’s been otherwise tamed or paved over.
See what Spanish explorers and early pioneers were talking about when they described grass as high as a horse’s belly. The sweep of the sea of big bluestem, switchgrass and Indiangrass waving in the wind is downright exhilarating. In springtime, the prairie is about as close to heaven as you can get in Hunt County.
Paul Mathews Prairie Nature Preserve: From the U.S. Highway 69 junction in Greenville, go west on U.S. Highway 380 for 4 1/2 miles, then north on FM903 for two miles, west on County Road 1116, then west two miles to County Road 1119. Look for the wood sign marking the prairie. (There’s no parking lot or building, just the meadow.) For more information or directions, call the Greenville Convention and Visitors Bureau, 903-455-1510.
COZUMEL JR.
This Athens may not be in another country, but to scuba divers, it’s close enough. Until recently, they had to settle for Possum Kingdom northwest of Mineral Wells or Lake Travis near Austin for some semblance of diving clarity, if they couldn’t make it to Cozumel for the gin-clear stuff.
That was before Calvin and Shannon Wilcher and their son Alex took a 7.5-acre spring-fed quarry six blocks from the town square and 70 miles southeast of downtown Dallas and salted it with underwater wrecks including singer Ray Price’s first touring bus and a Lockheed C-140 Jet Star. They constructed entry docks and a full-service dive shop and let the 35-foot visibility (sometimes ranging up to 70 feet) do the rest. The result is Athens Scuba Park, an unexpected haven for divers and swimmers, with scuba instruction, RV hookups and overnight camping.
Next up to take the underwater plunge: A Dallas DART bus will become the newest attraction when it’s pulled into the water on Nov. 1.
East of the scuba park is another water attraction tailored for the rod-and-reel crowd, the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center. The Texas Parks & Wildlife’s tribute to fishing includes a Fishing Hall of Fame museum; replicas of streams, lakes, and wetlands; catch-and-release fishing in stocked ponds (tackle supplied); aquariums; dive shows; and a hatchery and lab.
Athens Scuba Park: Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Camping available. $15 per diver per day, extra for camping. 500 Murchison St., Athens. 903-675-5762. www.athensscubapark.com. Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center: Tuesdays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sundays 1 to 4 p.m. 5550 Flat Creek Road (FM2495), Athens. $5.50, $4.50 seniors, $3.50 ages 4-12. 903-676-2277. www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fish/infish.
FREDERICKSBURG NORTH
German towns have a rep for being well-built and neat as a pin. Muenster, a small, close-knit community of 1,500, is 73 miles from Dallas and Fort Worth on U.S. Highway 82, just south of the Oklahoma line, and it plays to the stereotype.
Surrounded by a wide-open landscape of rolling hills that sprawl west all the way to the foothills of the Rockies, the town was settled by German immigrants in 1889. Over the years it has managed to retain much of its Old Country charm in the forms of the Catholic church (the town’s most prominent structure), restaurants serving Westphalia-inspired cuisine, three meat markets that grind their own sausage, a bakery with all the requisite sweets, a town museum and a main street of shops and stores. You can also buy your natural dog food direct from Muenster Milling, endorsed by Nolan Ryan and Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor.
There’s one motel in town, the A-OK, and Miss Olivia’s bed and breakfast, and plenty of other overnight options are available in Gainesville, 13 miles east.
The town rolls out the barrel for Germanfest every April. The Muenster Chamber of Commerce (940-759-2227) and the North Texas Info Web site (www.nortexinfo.net/gfest) have the details.
Muenster Milling: Open Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. 202 S. Main, Muenster. 1-800-772-7178. www.muenstermilling.com. A-OK Motel: 700 E. Division, Muenster. 940-759-2268. Miss Olivia’s Bed & Breakfast: 319 S. Denton, Gainesville. 940-665-5558. www.missolivias.com
Justin Lightfoot warms up backstage before his turn to perform at the Celeste Opry. The folksy, family-oriented country music revue is staged once a month in the small town north of Greenville, Texas. Photograph by Randy Eli Grothe.
A Night at the Opry
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI October 18, 2003
The Celeste Opry features old-fashioned jamborees with country-fried fun for the whole family.
Pull off the road on the second Saturday of every month, and cars and pickups fill almost every diagonal parking space in downtown Celeste.
Outside a building on the north side of U.S. Highway 69, a younger man opens a door for three silver-haired ladies shuffling along the pavement. Older men with cowboy hats and gimme caps sit on two benches on either side of the door, shooting the breeze. A hand-painted cloth banner out front explains the hubbub: Kountry Music Tonight 7:30pm
Another smaller, hand-scrawled sign delivers the details: Tonight’s Guest Greg Mealer, Julie Beard Lightfoot, Anna Taylor, Justin Lighfoot, Susie Taylor THE OPRY HOUSE COUNTRYMUSIC SHOW
Over the course of an hour, close to100 people file inside the weathered building between a custom leather store and another saddle shop.
The Celeste Opry is about to begin.
The pilgrims come from Leonard, Greenville, Wylie and other nearby communities. They are a predominantly senior citizen audience. Some are family, fans or friends of one of the featured guests. Most are connected to the Opry House band, led by Tim Gilliam, 53, a stocky gentleman in navy blue T-shirt and jeans. He sings, plays guitar, directs, produces, helps sell popcorn and more or less makes the Celeste Opry happen.
People
Family-style entertainment in a lean, wholesome atmosphere is the meat-and-potatoes of any opry, and he Celeste Opry is no different.
Some bigger oprys – such as the Grapevine Opry, the Texarkana Opry, and Johnnie High’s Country Music Revue in Arlington – are weekly events and feature a mix of established professional entertainers and polished, up-and-coming talent. Most, though, are similar to Celeste’s – small-town affairs run on a shoestring to showcase local talent with a song in their heart and a musical itch to scratch.
Susie Taylor belts out a song at the Celeste Opry, accompanied by background vocalist Billie Gilliam (right). Susie is a regular on the Texas opry house circuit. Photograph by Randy Eli Grothe.
The opry tradition harkens back to vaudeville shows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Oprys were a country music variation on the theme and grew in prominence thanks to several that were broadcast on radio. The most famous, the Grand Ole Opry, can still be heard Saturday nights over WSM-AM (630), a 50,000-watt clear channel station in Nashville that reaches most of the East and Midwest.
But even without radio, the opry concept has persisted and, over the past 20 years, enjoyed something of a renaissance. More than 60 oprys are staged across Texas on a weekly or monthly basis.
A family affair
The Celeste Opry’s roots go back to 82-year-old R.C. Gilliam.
“Pop liked to play guitar, but he quit when he went into the service during World War II,” says his son, Tim Gilliam, who lives in Greenville and works at Procter & Gamble Co. in Sherman. “He was intimidated by how well the city boys played. But after he met and married my mother, who’s a singer, he picked it up again.”
The elder Mr. Gilliam and his wife raised their children on the country music pillars of Johnny Cash, Connie Smith and Buck Owens, which led to the Gilliams’ involvement with oprys.
"When I got old enough to perform, I didn’t want to play clubs or bars,” Tim says. “It’s like work, playing those places. If some drunk wants you to play "Your Cheatin’ Heart" 12 times, you’ve got to do it. I wanted to play in a family atmosphere.
“Daddy, me and my brother, we were in a four-piece band,” he says. After performing at different oprys in east and north-central Texas, the Gilliam family decided to put on a country-oriented talent show in the community center in nearby Kingston.
Billed as the Kingston Kountry Music Revue, the monthly variety show debuted in 1983. Father, mother, two sons and a girlfriend destined to marry into the family all pitched in.
DMN graphic.
“I mowed the yard,” recalls Tim’s wife, Missy. Three years later, Tim moved the show to Celeste, where he says he “made an opry” out of a vacant building that once housed a drugstore and had most recently been a retail outlet for a towel and linen factory. The landlady has kept rent affordable because she’s glad to see the building used.
The format is straightforward. A revolving cast of singers, including several guest vocalists, does one or two songs each over the course of each set, before and after intermission, backed by the Opry House band. Mr. Gilliam describes it as “a set-down-and-listen show, no dancing,” before making a larger point. “It’s an opportunity for everybody to do something on a Saturday night.”
R.C. Gilliam takes tickets in the booth up front. Tim’s brother, Ryon, 37, a banker who lives in Cash, also plays guitar and sings in the house band. So does Tim’s son, Joe Ben, 17, who’s been coming to the Opry “since before he was born,” say his father and mother. Tim’s mother, Billie Gilliam, 75, sings backup vocals as well as taking a few turns as lead vocalist every opry. Missy Gilliam, 43, Tim’s wife and Joe Ben’s mom, runs the “world famous” concession stand behind the stage.
Making an opry
The venue has been a work in progress since it opened. Black curtains have just been added to cover the music stands on the raised stage. A patchwork of colored carpet remnants is affixed to the walls to muffle the sound.
Strings of red, white and blue runner lights enhance the backdrop. A small balcony provides a second vantage point for watching the show. A simple colored disco ball hangs in front of the sound booth to add effects now and then.
The band, whose pay is all the hot dogs they can eat after the show, supports three to five guest vocalists per show, often rehearsing with them before show time.
“We’ve never turned away anyone for being bad,” Tim Gilliam says. “The only reservation I have is if you’ve never sung in front of a live band, you need to come in for an audition. Singing with a band is not like singing along to the radio or singing with karaoke.”
Success is relative. One wall in the backstage concession area is covered with 8-by-10 black and white glossy photos of young female singers, including Stephanie Starr, Misty Sereff, Meagan Counts, many of them poured from the same blond, toothy and precious mold of beauty pageant contestants.
The images testify to the career arc of a chunky, perky North Texas preteen named LeAnn Rimes, who launched her career 13 years ago at Johnnie High’s Country Music Revue, blazing a trail others have chased ever since.
“Debbie Money, she’s in Nashville,” Tim says, pointing to the likeness of one of the Celeste Opry’s bigger favorites. “She started out here 12, 15 years ago.”
As much as Tim accentuates the positive, somewhere along the way he can’t help but roll his eyes and mutter something about “stage moms” under his breath. If every job has a necessary evil, it is the mothers of acts such as those who hang on the wall who give Tim his biggest headaches.
Intermission at the Celeste Opry finds patrons mingling outside, visiting and taking smoke breaks. Photograph by Randy Eli Grothe.
Ryon Gilliam namedrops Chisai Childs, founder of the Grapevine Opry, where Ryon received a crisp $50 bill – his first professional pay, for a performance almost 30 years ago. “Last I heard she was opening for Shoji Tabuchi in Branson.”
On some nights, Tim Gilliam also does comedy bits, donning a wig to become a character named Meatball, adopting a thick drawl and a stiff swagger to do Johnny Cash, or putting on a mustache and slipping into Spanglish to mimic Freddy Fender. “Once, when the mustache started falling off, the audience went crazy. They really loved that.”
It’s hard not to love an opry, even if you don’t know who Freddy Fender is or don’t like country music.
“You can bring your 6-year-old and there won’t be someone blowing smoke in your face and drunks falling over you,” says Bill Seace, 60, of Irving, testifying while his wife, Pat, sitting next to him, nods. ‘We’ve been to Mount Pleasant, Farmersville, Texarkana, Point. We’ve been coming out here for six, seven years now.”
The Seaces are sitting in the only row of real theater seats in the house, two rows in front of the combo sound and ticket booth, where their son, Kirk Seace, is helping out. Kirk’s wife is the singer Susie Taylor, whom the Seaces follow on the Texas opry house circuit.
Showtime
The opry runs like clockwork. Joe Ben Gilliam opens with “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” – a song made popular by Mel McDaniel – before Ryon Gilliam covers Tracy Lawrence.
Brian Sudderth, the house band drummer, sings the George Strait and Alan Jackson collaboration, “Designated Drinker.” Susie Taylor nails Loretta Lynn’s “Blue Kentucky Girl” with sassy aplomb. Dwayne Farrow, a DISD music teacher who also plays guitar in the band, croons the Jack Greene classic “Statue of a Fool,” a dreamy triplet with an Orbison streak of bedroom romanticism that moves Tim to comment, “If I hit that note, I’d have had to go to the doctor.”
“If you hit that note, you’d have lost your bridge,” Ryon Gilliam interjects.
Billie Gilliam, the family matron, pays tribute to Patsy Cline, singing “Back in Baby’s Arms.” The familiar songs are all greeted with aound of applause after the first few chords, confirming the audience’s familiarity and approval of song selection.
“Other oprys are political,” says Greg Mealer, the strapping blondhaired singer who is one of the evening’s special guests. The sweet-natured Mr. Mealer, who trains pit bulls for a living, is a realist. “Out here, they’ll give anyone a chance. There’s no one who’s going to get on a bus next month and be opening for Alan Jackson, but there’s some good music going on.”
“This is the only opry we sign up to come to once a month,” Kirk Seace says as the place clears out, closing another Saturday night at the opry. “Some of the bigger ones, you have to be perfect. Here, not being perfect is part of the fun.”
Teenagers enjoy the rope swing action at Krause Springs in Spicewood, west of Austin. The springs feature 1,000-year-old cypresses, cool waters, fern-choked waterfalls and rocks for sunning. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Cool, clear water
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI Photography by Randy Eli Grothe August 31, 2003
The sweetest pleasure of a Texas summer is the swimming hole. You can have your Colorado mountains, your slices of watermelon and your gallons of iced tea.
You may prefer passing as many of your waking hours in climates far away from here or in climate-controlled comfort 24/7, courtesy of 50,000 BTUs of refrigerated air and driving with the windows up and the MAX A/C control cranked to high.
You can whine all you want about how hot it is.
I immerse. With a swimming hole, anyone can fade the heat.
Which is why I can say with a straight face that my favorite time of year is right now, when these endless strings of broiling days and sweltering nights that wear down the human spirit and sap the want-to and can-do in even the hardiest of souls plod onward to the middle of September.
I will survive. In the hole.
Austin’s popular Barton Springs is fed daily by 26 million gallons of cool, clear spring water. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Oh, I’ll tolerate a swimming pool in a pinch. But whenever I do, I’m reminded why Jed Clampett and family called pools “cement ponds”: It ain’t natural. The chemical scent and sting of chlorine negate any sensations of being cradled in the bosom of Mother Nature. Doing laps in a pool is like getting stuck in rush hour traffic on Stemmons: All I can do is stay in my lane and hope I don’t lose count of the number of laps I have to do before I’m done.
Charting my own course across a swimming hole is more like a meandering Sunday drive on a remote Farm to Market Road. With songbirds, the splish and splash of water, laughs, giggles and the occasional shout of “Marco Polo” providing the soundtrack, you can leave the modern world behind for a little while.
Swimming holes have worked as an effective antidote to Texas’ excessive heat for several millennia. Archeological evidence indicates San Marcos Springs in San Marcos – Aquarena – has been continuously occupied for at least 12,000 years, The area near Del Rio where the Rio Grande, and the Pecos and Devil’s rivers converge is pocked with caves overlooking springs, creeks and rivers containing more examples of Indian rock art than anywhere in North America.
Swimming holes are just as inspirational now, and Norman Rockwell and Thomas Eakins and Austin artists Jimmy Jalapeeno and Malou Flato aren’t the only ones who’ve seen the eternal beauty in them. A good swimming hole is church. Splashing in water that is clean and clear and surrounded by tall, stately shade trees with at least one big rock to lay out on and jump off of, and a rope swing hanging from a limb is compelling evidence there’s a higher power.
Especially in Texas.
Neal’s Lodge, on the Frio River in Concan, has several spots deep enough for diving. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
The lazy streak
Great holes stretch from the Piney Woods near Texarkana to the Chihuahuan Desert of Far West Texas, some wild and natural, others tamed and civilized. All of them promise a place in which one can cool off, cool down and cultivate the lazy streak that resides within us all. The Hill Country is exceptionally blessed. The state’s greatest concentration of swimming holes on creeks and rivers fed by artesian springs are found within a couple hours of San Antonio and Austin, most with hard limestone bottoms that eliminate the “goosh” factor on your feet and towering bald cypresses at waters edge.
Eddie Chiles, the late oilman who used to rant and rave on the radio about being mad all the time, was owner of the Western Company, an oil producer whose advertising slogan was “If you don’t own an oil well, get one.”
I must have had water in my ears because I swore Mad Eddie and his pitchwomen were talking about swimming holes, not oil wells.
So I got one.
It took two years of coaxing from my wife and adjusting to the chilly waters of Barton Springs in Austin to get hooked on swimming-hole swimming. After writing about swimming holes on numerous occasions, discovering new holes almost everywhere I looked and futilely fighting the good fight to preserve Barton Springs against a tide of development upstream, I finally moved to the Hill Country specifically to have a swimming hole I could call my own.
The picturesque Hamilton Pool features a sandy beach and boulders to perch on beneath a waterfall. The swimming hole, fed by Hamilton Creek, is in a canyon west of Austin. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Some people live where they live to be close to work, for the schools, for the neighborhoods. I live where I live for the swimming hole. It’s like I told the mother of a playmate of my son’s, when she asked if I’d moved for the schools or the kids – I moved for me.
A happy dad can influence an entire family, I reasoned. My wife has certainly seen a difference.
“For one thing, it makes you sane,” she has observed. “It improves your disposition. It keeps you from going crazy after spending all day in the heat.”
My younger son learned to swim in the swimming hole. Now 13, he’s been honing his stone-skipping skill at the swimming hole lately, designating one exposed boulder as the “skipping rock” and an adjacent boulder as the “waiting rock,” proving there’s still plenty of kid in his growing teenage body.
My sister tells me the secret swimming hole I took her to not too long ago was the highlight of a weekend that also included a chichi party at The Mansion on Turtle Creek and a movie premiere in Austin. My brother-in-law reports the experience made him feel “giddy” and reminded him of his Arkansas boyhood.
My swimming hole isn’t really mine. I just bought legal access. And to be honest, it’s no rival to Balmorhea Springs in West Texas. But it’s clean enough to attract squadrons of dragonflies and to test better than my well water, and clear enough for visitors to be able to see minnows, perch, bass, catfish, carp and turtles in their element through the goggles, which is enough to make me feel proprietary. Lord knows, I pick up enough trash around it that some litterbugs think I act as if I own it.
Close to nirvana
Trevor Barrientes rides along the rapids of the Medina River at a low water crossing between Medina and Bandera. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
During warm weather months, my calendar revolves around my swimming hole. From early spring until late fall, I swim laps in my swimming hole almost every day. During the heat of the summer, two-a-days and sometimes three-a-days are not unusual. Morning swims are a better wake-up jolt than two cups of coffee.
There have been evening swims at dusk while surrounded by fireflies twinkling under the cypresses and bats fluttering overhead accompanied by the croaking chorus of frogs that have brought me as close to nirvana as I think I’ll get on this earth.
Moonlight swims can be both romantic and spooky.
The end-of-swimming-season swims are tests of endurance, requiring a swim cap and considerable intestinal fortitude. Swimming after floods is not a good idea due to dirty runoff and the fact that snakes can’t see you any better than you can see snakes in murky water. A New Year’s Day plunge has become a small ritual, but nuts nonetheless.
Last month, I went back to Burger’s Lake on the far west side of Fort Worth, site of my first natural swimming experience. Not quite 50 years later, I was pleased to see nothing much had changed. The petrified wood cottage and the little rock building under the pecans and sycamores at the entrance still beckon like an elf’s sentry at the gates to an enchanted forest. The high diving boards at one end and the diving platform near the jet fountain in the middle of the lake were still crowded with kids. The line to the trapeze swing was just as long as I remembered.
Obviously, I wasn’t the only kid who liked the cheap thrill of swinging out, then into the water. Lifeguards patrolled the lake in rowboats same as ever. I didn’t recall the chlorine in the water, but times have changed, I guess. What has not changed is that hundreds of people are willing to pay for the sweet relief of cooling off in the water.
I couldn’t help but wonder if at least one of those visitors I saw at the lake will someday want a swimming hole of his or her own, too.
Crystal Oden, 15, snorkels in the Caribbean-clear waters at Balmorhea State Park in West Texas. The oasis teems with aquatic life, including two endangered fish species, frogs, crawfish and turtles. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Laurie Carlton enjoys the peace and quiet of the waters of the Blue Hole, in Wimberley. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
A swimmer enjoys the rush of the San Marcos River as he clings to the Rio Vista Dam in San Marcos. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
The 2.5-mile-long Comal River begins and ends within the city limits of New Braunfels. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Swimming Holes Across Texas A small sampling of Joe Nick Patoski’s favorite swimming holes across the state.
DMN staff graphic
San Solomon Springs Pool, Balmorhea State Park, Balmorhea. A literal oasis in the West Texas desert that was walled in during the early ’30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, Balmorhea is the bomb of Texas swimming holes with 76-degree spring water so Caribbean-clear that New Mexico and West Texas scuba diving clubs practice here. 915-375-2370
Barton Springs, Zilker Park, Austin. The best urban swimming hole on Earth. Period. 512-867-3080
Krause Springs, Spicewood. This magical hole – 34 miles west of Austin, actually on Cypress Creek – is fed by a waterfall tumbling from an exquisitely manicured bluff chock-full of maidenhair fern. It’s the best-looking natural swimming environment in the entire state. 830-693-4181
Hamilton Pool, Westcave Preserve, Bee Caves, west of Austin. A placid grotto below a surreal limestone overhang that spews a 75-foot waterfall during wet periods, Hamilton Pool is the stuff that picture postcards are made of. 512-264-2740
San Marcos River, Sewell Park, Lions Club Tube Rental in City Park, and Rio Vista Park, San Marcos. Contiguous parkland lines the banks of the San Marcos River as it winds its way through the town of the same name, its transparent waters making for the finest tubing and underwater viewing in the state. Tube rentals and shuttle information, 512-396-5466. 512-353-3435 or 888-200-5620
Landa Park, New Braunfels. The 1.5 million-gallon spring-fed pool at the Landa Park Aquatic Complex on the Comal River, a few hundred yards from Texas’ biggest spring, is a compact version of Barton Springs without the crowds. Wilder thrills are less than a mile downstream at the Prince Solms Tube Chute. 830-608-2163, 830-608-2165
Blue Hole, Wimberley. This private campground along a narrow stretch of Cypress Creek features cool, blue water and several rope swings dangling from the trees for easy entry. Scenes for the upcoming movie The Alamo were shot there earlier this summer. 512-847-9127
Medina River, between Bandera and Medina. Pick your spot along one of the low-water crossings along State Highway 16 between these two Hill Country towns or jump in at Bandera’s city park where the river runs through it. 800-364-3833
Burger’s Lake. (Photo by Randy Eli Grothe)
Neal’s Lodges, Concan. A bucolic, old-fashioned family retreat established in 1926, Neal’s is perched above one of the nicest stretches of the Frio River, with several holes deep enough for diving and swimming laps and on-premises tube rentals and float shuttles. 830-232-6118
Burger’s Lake, Fort Worth. The one-ace lake that started my swimming hole obsession has held up well over the years, functioning like a low-key water park in a natural setting. 817-737-3414
Songwriter helps lead the fight against development
The Dallas Morning News BY JOE NICK PATOSKI December 12, 2003
EL PASO – Tom Russell can lay claim as the “last” singer-songwriter in Texas. That’s because he lives in a historic 70-year-old adobe home on 3 acres within spitting distance of the New Mexico state line.
The Los Angeles native, whose folk songs have been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith and K.D. Lang, has lived in many corners of the world – Nigeria in wartime, Austin as it was emerging as a music scene, San Francisco and Brooklyn. But he now lives in the far end of far West Texas by choice.
The rural area is known as the Upper Valley, a swath of green bordering both sides of the Rio Grande for a mile or two as it meanders through the Chihuahuan Desert. The rugged western flank of the Franklin Mountains, the southern end of the Rockies that end in the heart of the city, provides a scenic backdrop.
“This is the last oasis in West Texas,” says Mr. Russell, 55. “It’s a refuge for heron, desert tortoises, egrets, raccoons, skunks, badgers, you name it. I have foxes walking through my yard every day.”
But the days of Mr. Russell’s idyllic retreat may be numbered. Progress in the form of two-story stucco houses built to their lot lines – crammed into subdivisions, five to eight homes per acre – are marching his way at a fast pace, with requests by developers for city zoning variances leading the way.
The first skirmish came last year when Mr. Russell and five of his neighbors managed to reroute massive overhead power lines that were proposed to run directly over their homes.
A controlled access highway completed two years ago to link Interstate 10 with Santa Teresa, N.M., has been a magnet attracting subdivisions, which in turn are attracting commercial developments.
Farming on plots of land less than 100 acres was already in decline in the Upper Valley, as it is everywhere in the United States. The sandy river-bottom soil is certainly productive enough. But the cost of planting, growing and harvesting crops, and increased competition from other countries add up to food and fibers being grown somewhere else.
Factor in what Mr. Russell sees as a city leadership overly supportive of growth and development at the expense of residents, and the Upper Valley becomes vulnerable. It is one of the few green spaces remaining in the metro area.
Yet those who support growth and development say that El Pasoans need housing and that it is being provided under the rules and guidelines set forth.
“Ownership of property is one of our basic rights in America, and it cannot be vulnerable to opposition without good cause,” says Rex Smith, a landowner who purchased Upper Valley property a year ago and immediately sought a zoning variance from the City Planning Commission. “Progress happens, and it cannot be stopped.”
Susan Austin, the City Council member who represents the Upper Valley, pushed for lower-density housing rules after initial protests. But she – along with the majority of the council – also voted to approve Mr. Smith’s application for higher-density housing. That has prompted one of Mr. Russell’s neighbors to mount a recall campaign of Ms. Austin.
Even if she has been the object of much wrath, Ms. Austin calls the activism of Mr. Russell and his neighbors “as passionate as any neighborhood group in my district.”
But she pointedly adds that they should put their money where their mouths are. “A lot of people want to preserve the idea of having a ranch-size homestead without having bought a ranch-size homestead, including Tom Russell, ” Ms. Austin says.
“Some of the people all over me don’t even live in the city. They live in the county” – outside the city limits. “The city can regulate. There are no zoning restrictions at all in the county.”
Seeking inspiration
Mr. Russell came to El Paso seeking the same sort of inspiration that artists such as Tom Lea and Luis Jimenez and writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Benjamin Saenz have mined so well. “He always loved places like this,” says his sister Nan Lazzaretto, a schoolteacher.
Mr. Russell’s home is a hideout of sorts, in the outlaw tradition, tucked behind a wall of trees, high brush and cane that suddenly materializes among the fields of cotton, chili peppers, pecan plantations and pastoral horse farms that define the Upper Valley way of life.
“I love that there is no scene here,” he says as he doffs his cowboy hat to reveal a head of graying, wavy hair. “I don’t have to worry about being seen.”
Unlike Brooklyn, where he lived for almost 20 years before moving here six years ago, “people here are pleasant and neighborly,” he says.
“Downtown El Paso is like a movie set. It’s like things have never changed. I love being close to Mexico. I love the history. The Old Spanish Road up to Santa Fe is right down here. I grew up on Marty Robbins’ ‘El Paso’ and the tales of gunfighters.” As it happens, Rosa’s Cantina is not too far down the road.
Sometimes friends stop in. Dave Alvin drops by whenever he’s on his way from his home in Los Angeles to gigs in the southern United States. So does Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
A few years back, Mr. Russell hosted a border-town birthday bash for songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen that drew a gaggle of like-minded professional dreamers. Not everyone gets it. The late folk legend Dave Van Ronk, whose last recording was backing up Mr. Russell, likened El Paso’s dry summer heat to being “in a pizza oven.”
Cowboy songs
Mr. Russell started writing, singing and playing originals more than 30 years ago, inspired by hearing his older brother sing cowboy songs and seeing Bob Dylan perform “Desolation Row” at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964.
He taught criminology in Nigeria from 1969-70 during the Biafran war , then followed friends he made in Africa to Vancouver, British Columbia. A band performing Hank Williams songs on Skid Row moved him to think: “That’s the job for me.” He landed in Austin in 1974 during that city’s nascent era as a music scene. Later, he drifted to San Francisco before landing in Brooklyn in the early ’80s.
He shifted his focus to writing (“I’m a frustrated novelist,” he says) and drove cabs to pay the bills. When he sang a song he’d written called “Gallo del Cielo” to one fare – the composer Robert Hunter, who collaborates with the Grateful Dead – he was encouraged to get back on stage.
Life in El Paso has suited him just fine. His adobe hacienda is filled with Mexican pickled-pine furniture and folk art. He just finished an open, Mexican-style patio. He has incorporated the landscape and local history into his work.
The critic John Swenson called Mr. Russell’s ambitious 1999 song cycle The Man From God Knows Where as “close to a Homeric treatment of American history as we’re ever likely to see.” Two years ago, he released Borderland, which includes “When Sinatra Played Juarez,” a song inspired by his ex-girlfriend’s uncle.
The uncle, who found the house Mr. Russell lives in, used to play piano across the border when Juarez was a hotbed for quickie Mexican divorces. The location also satisfies Mr. Russell’s jones for bullfighting and his love of the border, although twice he’s found himself caught in the crossfire of warring drug gangs in Juarez.
Mostly, though, Mr. Russell’s place offers refuge from a steady touring schedule that over the past half-year has taken him to Ireland, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Calgary and Edmonton in western Canada, and across the United States from Oregon to Maine – including an appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman, backed by Nanci Griffith in support of his latest album, Modern Art.
Small victories
Mr. Russell and five neighbors have won some small victories in their effort to ward off more developments. Last summer, they successfully lobbied the City Planning Commission to reduce zoning density from R3A zoning, which allows up to eight homes per acre, to R2A, meaning lots can accommodate no more than five homes per acre.
That may be the best outcome possible, says Elma Carreto, the chairwoman of the Planning Commission. She says she sympathizes with Mr. Russell and insists the commission’s goal is to make sure planned developments conform to the existing area.
She says existing infrastructure, including roads, bridges, police, firefighters and schools, are not prepared to handle the traffic that 2,500 new homes bearing families will bring. But she can go only so far, she says.
While Mr. Russell’s songs classify him as a folkie, he is not known for political broadsides. His body of work tends to speak to larger philosophical issues, such as aging and loneliness. That makes his anti-development activism all the more unusual. “I don’t have any political bent,” he explains. “I don’t write protest songs.”
Instead, he has written letters, called the local chapter of the Sierra Club (the voice on the other end of the line urged him to play at a weekly meeting), attended planning commission and council meetings, and spoken out. “This is not a left-wing or right-wing argument – it’s right or wrong,” he says.
“There’s no real plan for this area. They just want to develop here while the interior of the city begs to be redeveloped. The leaders don’t see the big picture. They just want to develop, develop and develop until there isn’t anywhere left. We don’t need another 7-Eleven. There’s a Circle K a quarter-mile down the road. Lowe’s and McDonald’s will be next. The prognosis is pretty sad.
“You don’t do this to farmland. You don’t do this to your children. It’s corrupt thinking.”
His heels are dug in deep. “I’ll take my stand here,” he says. “Maybe import some donkeys and ducks and pigs, and no one will want to live next to me. I’m talking with some folks about buying up some land to keep it in farming. Other than that, I’m planting a lot of trees.”
The dilemma has moved him to also do what he does best. “I’m thinking about writing a song about all this,” he says. “Only it’s going to be from the point of view of a fox.”
from the April 18, 2011 edition of the Dallas Morning News
