Texas History #3 The Battle of San Jacinto and a visit with The Sweetest Little Rosebud That Texas Ever Grew

San Jacinto Monument  Almost twenty feet taller than the Washington Monument.

      On April 20^th, when Santa Anna decided to camp his men on the plains of San Jacinto, he had already provided for himself the most important facet of the upcoming battle, at least to his way of thinking.   The fact is, he may have hurried his decision in anticipation of the creature comforts he was about to receive. He had selected a mulatto girl named Emily Morgan to provide that precious commodity.  She had been pressed into service and was travelling with a young officer, a not unusual circumstance in those days.  Santa Anna simply had her moved to his tent.  Rank has its privileges.

     Emily Morgan was an indentured servant to James Morgan, the founder of Morgan’s Point, Texas, called New Washington back then and a few miles south of San Jacinto.  Morgan evidently hired Emily in New Haven, Connecticut, for a one year term.  She was to be a house maid in a hotel Morgan planned to build.  By all accounts, she was a lovely young lady with light skin, a very desirable trait for female slaves, or, in this case, indentured servants.  As was the practice, she took her master’s last name.

    Nineteen years of age, Emily was much admired by the menfolk around Morgan’s Point.  Her beauty and her liberal attitude toward copulation did nothing to hurt her popularity.  Some historians have supposed she was a spy for Sam Houston’s army, with orders to distract Santa Anna.  I think that is the wildest imaginable speculation.  I believe she was simply a good looking, well endowed, fairly intelligent, high-yellow house maid, in the service of James Morgan and blissfully unaware of politics, morality, revolution, or war.  She did, however, seem to comprehend economics.

     Consider the idea that Emily had been the main source of the precious commodity for the hired hands around New Haven, and now Morgan’s Point, for as long as she could remember.  She slept on a corn shuck mattress in the corner of a feed bin and wore scratchy homespun underwear.  Not allowed in the white man’s privy, she used the bathroom in a cornfield.  Emily had one dress, which had grown too small in the bust, and a cotton shift that she wore while she worked.  She was “used” all too often by a whole crew of stinky, sweaty field hands, who paid for her charms with a chew of tobacco, if they paid at all.

     A handsome, forty-two year old Mexican General comes into her life and provides her with a warm bath, scented soap, silk panties, French perfume, champagne, chocolates, and a bit of dope.  All she has to do is provide the general with a little creature comfort.  What do you think she would do?

     A few miles to the north, Sam Houston and his ragged little army reached the “Which Way Oak.”  Houston chose south, toward Harrisburg instead of east toward Nacogdoches and Louisiana.  His men were elated.  Finally, they would get to stand and fight.  Their running was over. 

      They found Harrisburg burned out by Santa Anna and his troops, but set up a field hospital there, to give a safe place for their sick and wounded.  The impaired troops were slowing down the column and would be no good in the coming battle.  Two hundred seventy-one soldiers, all told,  were left in Harrrisburg.   Among them, one William Henry McLaughlin, who had dysentery.  His younger brother, James, volunteered to stay and, with his squad, help provide security for the hospital.

      James’s son, James Edward, fought for Texas in the Civil War, and lived to sire my grandfather.   But, that’s another story.

     The Texians literally dragged themselves and two little cannons—the Twin Sisters, given to Texas by the city of Cincinnati---through the mud and into a grove of oak trees at the plain of San Jacinto, directly in the path of Santa Anna’s army.  Houston’s troops, 750 or so unkempt but able-bodied men, settled down out of sight in the woods.

     Santa Anna, seeing his way to Lynch’s Ferry blocked by Houston’s forces, chose to camp almost a mile south, with his back to Peggy Lake.   Buffalo Bayou was on one side and the San Jacinto River on the other.  The whole area was a swamp.  His senior officers were uniformly distressed by this choice of campsite, but Santa Anna could care less.  He was not concerned about Houston and his rabble army.  He was certain they would not attack, so he decided to rest his troops for a couple of days and have his staff plan an attack for the morning of the 22^nd.  In the meantime, he would be closeted in his silk tent, drinking champagne, smoking dope and getting acquainted with sweet Emily.

     Regardless of Santa Anna’s opinion, the exhausted Mexican army expected a dawn attack on the 21^st and spent the night trying to fortify their camp.  They finished a barricade, installed their only cannon, a nine pounder, and waited for the Texians to attack.   The morning was quiet.  The Texian army was tired and Sam Houston had decided to sleep in.  The battle would come soon enough.

     About nine am, there was a commotion in the Mexican camp.  General Cos arrived with four hundred reinforcements, bringing the total Mexican force to something over fifteen hundred men.  Houston ordered Deaf Smith to take a squad and destroy the bridge over Vince’s Bayou to prevent any more reinforcements.  This action also cut off the only path of retreat---for either army.

     There were a few skirmishes during the morning as both sides tried to gather intelligence, but everything quieted by noon.  The Mexicans were exhausted---most of the veterans had been up all night building fortifications and General Cos and the new arrivals had travelled through the night.  Everyone was allowed to rest.  They stacked their weapons and went to sleep, as did their officers.

     Santa Anna didn’t bother to check his army’s state of readiness.  He had people to take care of those details.  He was busy checking an intriguing mole just to the left of Emily’s navel and otherwise wearing himself to a frazzle. He probably had a little toke of opium (he was addicted) and by three o’clock, he was sound asleep, as were most of his soldiers.   In one of those unexplained military quirks which alter history, the Mexicans posted not a single sentry.

     Sam Houston's troops had been near mutiny for weeks and he decided at three o’clock that he could no longer hold them back.  “Fight and be damned,” he said. 

      Even though an afternoon attack was unheard of in those days, Houston prepared his men for battle.  At three thirty, they started across the grassy prairie, walking almost a mile, completely exposed.   The Texians had no way of knowing, but most of the worn-out Mexican army was sound asleep.

     Only two hundred yards from the Mexican lines, and still undetected, Houston had the Twin Sisters fired into the hastily constructed breastworks.  The Mexican cannon crew managed to wake up and fire a round of grapeshot, but most of the Mexican soldiers were sleepy, dazed and confused.  The Texians fired a round from their long rifles, reloaded and fired again. 

   The Twin Sisters breeched the makeshift wall and the Texians streamed unrestrained into Santa Anna’s camp.  The Mexican cannon crew continued to fire until they were overrun and a few soldiers managed to fire their muskets, but the sudden violent attack pushed the sleepy Mexican army into utter panic.  The Mexicans threw down their arms and fled.  Mexican resistance lasted eighteen minutes by Houston’s watch.  After that, the grizzly Texians spent the next few hours killing helpless, trapped and drowning Mexicans.  Houston and his senior officers tried to stop the slaughter, but to no avail.  The Texians remembered the Alamo, remembered Goliad, and remembered months of hiding and sloshing through the mud.  They were going to get even.

     One Mexican survivor said the Texians fought with “drunken abandon,” and attributed the violence of the attack to whiskey.   I suspect many of those ole boys might have had a little drink or two before the battle. 

     Sam Houston rode in front of his men during the entire battle.  He made himself a singular target, being the only mounted officer in the center of the fray.  His cavalry was on the left flank, next to the river. Houston’s magnificent white horse, Saracen, was shot from beneath him, as was a second mount.  Houston’s ankle was shattered by a musket ball, but he mounted and rode his third horse into the thick of the battle.  Santa Anna, by contrast, grabbed a Colonel’s horse and dashed away to temporary safety.

     History shows that there were 630 Mexicans killed, 208 wounded, and 730 captured, including Santa Anna.  The Texians lost 9 dead and 30 wounded, including Sam Houston.  Uncle Henry McLaughlin recovered and ended up down south in Beeville, where I lost track of him.  We'll get to know his older brother, James McLaughlin, a lot better in later editions.

      Next time, we'll explore the aftermath of the battle, tie up some loose ends, and see what finally became of sweet Emily.

The Fruitful Union of Thad and Mandy

     I know that I’m juggling the Barbeque Stories and the History of Texas back and forth in these posts, but I want to add something to the mix.  A good friend of mine suggested I quit gathering only the “low hanging fruit,” and reach up a bit higher in the tree.  This will be my first attempt to follow his advice and reach up for some of the harder to reach and, presumably, more desirable fruit.

     The first tree that I’ll reach up into will be my family tree.  I come from a large family---oh, my immediate family was average size, but my extended family was much larger than most.  My father’s parents, Thad and Mandy, married young and had many children.  My mother’s parents, James and Alice Morris, did the same, but, for now, let’s concentrate on Thad and Mandy.

     Amanda Cummings married Thaddeus James McLaughlin when she was fourteen and they immediately started having children.  Amanda had one child per year until she was thirty, for a total of sixteen children.  She did cheat one year—she had twins and got to take a year off.  The twins died in infancy, and one son died of a burst appendix at age twenty one, but, otherwise, all the children grew up and continued to populate our part of the globe, mostly scattered around Texas.

     When Amanda died, at age ninety four, she had thirteen surviving children, ninety-six grandchildren, one hundred fourteen great-grandchildren, and something over a hundred great-great-grandchildren, all of which were still busy having kids.  My children were not yet born, nor were my brother’s or sister’s.  The three of us were included in the ninety-six grandchildren and we added seven to the total amount of great-grand children, which pushed that total over one-twenty.

     As you can imagine, family reunions were major productions.  Think about it---I had ninety-three first cousins on my father’s side of the family.  I remember many of them and many, I’d as soon forget.  One of my cousins was decorated for valor in Viet Nam.  I heard that he recieved the Medal of Honor, but I cannot find his name on a list of recipients.  Another cousin, so far as I know, is still in prison in Florida.     

     Dad, and his brothers and sisters, were steady, hard-working, basically honest people who did the best they could with their lot in life.  All grew up under the watchful eyes of Thad and Mandy and learned to work at an early age.  They grew up in an earlier and different world than we share today.   More value was placed on family.  Helping each other was expected.  Of course, they all grew up in poverty.  They were uneasy around strangers, especially if the strangers had money, which translated to power.

     The family came of age during the great depression and that time marked their character.    These were remarkable people, from a remarkable time.  In future posts, I will tell you about some of them. 

    

Barbeque # 9 Stay off the Freeways

Just east of Round Rock is a little town called Taylor.  The first Mikeska’s Barbeque location in the world is in Taylor.  John Mikeska started a “Beef Club” there in the twenties.  His son, Rudy, came home from WWII and expanded the idea into a catering company which soon served many clients in the Texas political arena.  LBJ, John Connally, etc., etc.  A sit down restaurant evolved from this beginning, and as they say, the rest is history.  During the fifties and sixties, Rudy’s brothers opened Mikeska Barbeque locations of their own.

Now, Mike has a place in Smithville; Jerry is in Columbus; Louis opened in Temple and Maurice in El Campo.  Clem also went to Temple and all the restaurants use the same basic approach to the business---good quality, honest value and great service.  I have eaten at all these places except the ones in Temple.  I was disappointed in the Columbus location, but, even so, I can’t find much wrong with any of them.  I think the Mikeskas have earned the title, "First Family of Texas Barbeque."

The original location in Taylor is a fiftyish-looking establishment.  I looks that way because it was built in the fifties.  The testimonials on the walls are more impressive than the food.  I found myself wishing I was out at the little league park, eating a meal catered by these folks instead of here in their restaurant.  I found it sterile, which may be strange criticism, but barbeque is not supposed to make you feel sterile.  Also, it was lonesome.  I was there before two in the afternoon and had the whole place to myself.

Just across the street from Mikeska’s, the best barbeque, to my mind, in the city of Taylor is served. Louie Meuller opened a grocery store in 1936, and in 1949 added a barbeque business to the food store.  In 1959, he moved into the present location in downtown Taylor and has been there since.  I can’t swear that the food is that much better, but the experience is absolutely fantastic.  I sat there, breathing in decades of atmosphere, eating succulent beef and sausage, and I entirely forgot about my grading system.  Save the ambiance at Kreuz’s Market (now Smitty’s) in Lockhart, this is the best place to eat barbeque in Texas.  The best barbeque is somewhere else, but this is right up there with the top few.

There’s a place called Rudy’s in Leon Springs, with several clones---I know of New Braunfels, Austin, and, I think, one in Dallas. He serves his meat on white butcher paper, pushed down in a red plastic Coke case. You must stand in a different line for side orders, and eat it all with plastic knives and forks. The brisket I’ve had there was over-cooked and not properly sliced, but there’s always a line around meal time. That proves to me that most people don’t know much about barbeque, but do like to be pushed around. (“Lookey here, Hershel, ain’t this quaint?? They’re gonna make us carry this silly looking plastic Coke case full of groceries all the way out to them tables, and drizzle sauce all over our new Fiesta Texas tee-shirts. Look out for them pigeons, now!!)

Many years ago, when I lived in Dallas, my favorite barbeque was at Sonny Bryan’s on Harry Hines, his first location, I think.  As I remember, it was very good back then.  The restaurant has grown, as has their reputation, and I was anxious to try it again.

I heard a San Diego, California, talk show host on the radio. He said if you go through Dallas, arrange for a four hour layover, catch a cab to Sonny Bryan’s and chow down on his barbeque. That proves you can be dumb as a post and still host a talk show. I went to a lot of trouble to arrange to eat at Sonny’s place downtown, and was really looking forward to the experience.  I should have saved my time and money. The brisket was overcooked, sliced wrong and seemed to grow as I chewed it. A friend described it as “mediocre at best.” That’s lavish praise.

On another day in Dallas, I stopped at a joint called Hardeman’s B.B.Q. on Martin Luther King Street near the Cotton Bowl. It was real dark in there, if you catch my drift. The brisket was not world class, but it beat Sonny Bryan’s all over Dallas and the East Texas hot links were absolutely outstanding.  If I live long enough, I'd like to go thru every black owned barbeque place in East Texas, sampling only the sausage.  It is sooo good.

Out in Lubbock, Stubbs is good, but I think they are pushing the music as much as the meat.  My favorite place there is Tom and Bingo’s on Thirty-Fourth Street.  They serve a great sliced beef sandwich---fresh buns and plenty of perfectly prepared brisket.  I hear it is a favorite hangout of some Tech football players, but none came in while I was there.  My brother’s favorite place in Lubbock was out on East Broadway.  It was called Jug Little’s and served good barbeque.  One of the favorite meals there was a kind of Frito Pie, made with chopped beef, beans, cheese and Fritos.

The restaurant closed when Jug Little came to an untimely end.  It seems Jug was speeding down the freeway in his new Corvette and became so distracted that he ran under an eighteen wheeler and died instantly.  How he was distracted is the subject of some conjecture, but let's not go there.

There are those who will tell you that I hit Sonny Bryan’s on a bad day,  Mikeska’s too late in the day,  Rudy’s too early in the day, or Cooper’s on the wrong day. All that may be true, but to earn and keep the title of “Best Barbeque in the State of Texas and Thus the World,” according to Jim McLaughlin, there can be no “bad” days. For a barbeque place to be that good, they must be absolutely excellent on their very worst day.

            

               Next time, I’ll tell you where that happens.

         

Texas History #2 Sam and Tony

      Very soon, it will be April 21, 2012.  In case you all don’t recognize that date, a very significant event in Texas history occurred on April 21, 1836, and we still celebrate it today.  At least some of us do.

       That is the day that Sam Houston led a group of grizzled, undisciplined, poorly trained and ill equipped Texians into battle and defeated the Napoleon of the West and his finely outfitted, well disciplined, highly trained army.   That eighteen minute battle changed the world.

      Eighteen hundred-thirty six was an unusually wet and rainy year for the Gulf Coast of Texas.  Houston’s rag-tag army had been sloshing around thru the East Texas mud for several weeks, trying to avoid a head-on fight with the Mexicans, which  Houston knew would spell disaster.  Most of the civilian population of Texas was in high gear, splashing east, trying to get across the Sabine River before the Mexican Army caught up. 

     Santa Anna had put to the sword all the defenders of the Alamo, and then burned their bodies.  He considered all rebels to be pirates and felt they should be eliminated without mercy. He had the prisoners at Goliad taken out and shot, and he spread the word that all Anglo settlers who were sympathetic with the rebel army would share the same fate.  He let slip the fact that if someone was Anglo, he considered them sympathetic with the rebels.  His actions had the desired effect.

     Outright panic ensued.   Most every Anglo family in Texas loaded up what they could carry and headed thru the mud for Louisiana.  Many were in such a hurry they left food on the table and livestock in the pens.  Historians called this the “Runaway Scrape”, which I never understood.  The word “Scrape” indicates that there was some sort of battle, and the only battle involved was among the settlers.  They fought to be first in line at the ferries for river crossings.

       Santa Anna had taken a southern route, also muddy, to try and beat Houston to the border.  Along the way, somewhere near present day Wharton, he divided his army and moved ahead with  fifteen hundred men, leaving the bulk of his forces under the command of General Filasola, an Italian who was made second in command.  Santa Anna evidently picked Filasola because of his blind loyalty and complete lack of imagination. 

       Santa Anna saw no danger in splitting his forces.  He was convinced that he could beat Houston’s army with half the number he kept and, with a smaller force, he could move faster and possibly catch Houston before he escaped into Louisiana, which seemed to be the plan.

       There are those who say Houston was, indeed, heading for Louisiana, but with a hidden agenda.  Houston’s close friend and mentor, President Andrew Jackson, had positioned a troop of U.S. Army soldiers, under the command of the less than patient General Edmund Grimes, just across the Sabine River from Texas.  If Houston could create a border incident, maybe get the Mexicans to chase him across the river, or even close enough to say they did, the American army would have an excuse to invade Texas, attack Santa Anna’s forces and take Texas from Mexico.  Andrew Jackson wanted Texas.  Evidence indicates he sent Sam Houston to Texas for just that reason.

      At that time, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was 42 years old and he liked creature comforts.  He was undisputed ruler of Mexico (those who had disputed were now mostly dead) and Commanding General of, arguably, the third most powerful army in the world.  Mexico could afford the luxuries that he deemed necessary for his comfort.  His sleeping quarters were stocked with French Champagne, Swiss Chocolate and Turkish Opium.  Santa Anna considered these bare necessities when a poor soldier was forced to travel for the good of his country.  A bathtub and an oversized bed were also provided to make life easier for the young ruler and the sultry women who furnished him with a most precious commodity.

     During the siege of the Alamo, Santa Anna spied a beautiful young lady, the daughter of a prominent family in San Antonio, and decided that she would be a fine candidate to provide him with “creature comforts.”  The girl’s mother said, “No Wedding, no Creature Comforts.”  Now, that is no hill for a stepper.  Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna simply told the army’s chief priest to set up a wedding.   The priest refused, knowing that the general had a faithful wife back in Jalapa.

     The wily general convinced one of the staff officers to borrow a robe and impersonate a priest to perform the ceremony.  Santa Anna and his new bride honeymooned in San Antonio, while Travis and his men waited, under siege, in the Alamo.   After the battle, the general loaded his new bride and a money chest into his carriage and sent her home to Jalapa.  The soldiers who accompanied the carriage were instructed to put her in a house across town, and, please do not tell his real wife.

     Even though it had little to do with the battle at hand, I brought up this situation to make a point.  Santa Anna enjoyed female companionship and arranged to have it, regardless of the cost or the conditions.  We’ll discover some of the results of this cumpulsion as we get deeper into the next lesson.

     By the way, I have tried to make sure these Texas History lessons are factually correct.  Much of this I have read in various books, starting with the required Texas History course I took in the seventh grade at O.L.Slaton Junior High back in Lubbock.  Some of it comes from oral history of my family, passed down by my Aunt Edith, a crude and coarse woman with a heart of gold and an irritating nasal twang.  Much of the background comes from T.R. Fehrenbach's "Lone Star", to me the definitive work on the subject of Texas.  I have also drawn freely from Jeff Long's "Duel of Eagles", which delves into details overlooked by other historians. 

     As with the work of any other historian, I have freely used my imagination to fill in blank spaces in the narrative.  These details may or may not be absolute fact, but they are plausible, which is all you can really expect from a Texan.

    

Road Trip Number Eleven--Fishing Gene?

Nicole has nothing to do with this story--I just think she's cool.

     On the way back to Medford from Crater Lake, we passed a fish hatchery and decided to visit, since I had never seen anything like that.  They don’t hatch many fish in Lubbock.  The place was designed for self guided tours, with signs leading us into the facility from the parking lot and other signs and closed circuit television showing and describing every segment of the operation.   It was basically a No-Tell Motel for fish.  Salmon eggs were laid, fertilized and hatched here, allowed to grow to a certain size and released into the adjacent Rouge River where they found their way to the sea.  The cycle is complete when these same fish reach maturity, leave the ocean and find their way back to this very place to deposit their eggs—I’m not sure how long that takes.

     The hatchery was interesting, but we discovered something more interesting along the banks of the adjacent river---dozens of fishermen.   There was a dam with a spillway adjacent to the hatchery—an intergal fish ladder allowed the  fish to enter the facility and conduct their mating rituals.  Down stream from the hatchery, beneath the spillway, both sides of the river were lined with fishermen.  Several were wading in the chilled water, and a few had rowboats anchored in the rushing stream.  All were very determined and seriously working at the job of catching fish.

     As we watched from the bluff above the river, one of the fishermen on the near bank shouted, “Fish On”!   Immediately all the fisherman in the vicinity reeled in their lures and stepped back to allow him room to work his fish.  As he wrestled the silver giant to shore, a friend hovered nearby with a net.  When the fish was sufficiently tired and near enough to the bank, the friend quickly dipped the long-handled net into the water and captured the fish. 

      In spite of the fact that Lubbock is surrounded by some of the best fishing in the country--only about four hundred miles in any direction—I evidently did not get that gene.  Still, the whole thing was as exciting as all get out. 

     The successful fisherman and his net man carried the fish, the net, and all the tackle up the bank to the bluff where we were standing.  This allowed the others to resume their places fishing, while these guys admired, weighed, disengaged the hook and put their fish on a stringer.   It also allowed us an up-close look at a beautiful twenty pound salmon and a visit with the lucky guy who caught it.

     Wayne, being a learned fisherman, questioned the fellow on the weight of his tackle, type of lure, strength of line, type of leader, etc., and other fishing minutia that I don’t understand.  They immediately became kindred spirits and engaged in lively conversation about all things pertaining to fish and fishing.  I simply sat there and observed the whole scene and the individuals who surrounded us. 

      We could have been in Louisiana—these guys were Yankee Rednecks.  They all had boots, camo suits or jeans, and heavy sweatshirts.  Some had missing teeth, crew cut hair, tattoos and chewing tobacco.  I learned that they got here this morning about three thirty, made chili on butane camp stoves, sipped a bit of whiskey and started fishing.  They went home before dark and repeated the process on Sunday morning.  Monday morning they went back to their day jobs--hammering nails, selling hardware, lawyering, working in a bank or trading stocks and bonds.

     Wayne and his new found friend continued talking when another fellow yelled, “Fish On!”  The whole scene repeated itself, and another twenty-something pound Salmon ended up on a stringer.  I was fascinated by the ritual and the courtesy displayed---everyone stepped back and stopped fishing while the lucky angler landed his catch.  It occurred to me that these rules were unwritten, but strictly adhered to by all the participants because they made good sense.  It would be almost impossible to land a fish with seven or eight other lines, lures, and hooks confounding the issue.  Common courtesy was at work here, and probably something else—anyone who ignored the unspoken rules likely ended up with a couple of missing front teeth.

     It is a tribute to Wayne’s engaging manner, and his knowledge of fishing, that two of the rednecks  invited him to join them at three-thirty the next morning.  They would provide the tackle, the chili and the whiskey if he wanted to join them, and he could keep what he caught.  Wayne thought long and hard before he declined the invitation.  He knew I was not going to get out there at three-thirty AM when the temperature was below freezing to eat chili and try to catch a fish, no matter how much whiskey they had.  But he was tempted. 

     I cannot help but be a bit sorry that I missed that fishing gene.  It binds devotees into a big fraternity-like organization.  Fishermen respect each other for their dedication and knowledge, their skill and prowess at catching fish.  Nothing else.  They don’t confuse the issue with economic or class structures, education or breeding.  They are all equal when they step up to the bank with a casting rod and a lure.

     As we reluctantly left for the drive to Ron’s, I went over to inspect some deep blue, almost purple flowers that grew in patches over the little bluff and down by the river.  Fascinating.  Here in the forest in Oregon, to form a proper background for these displaced rednecks and their fishing rituals, were little blue flowers.  Flowers that were, just like us, almost three thousand miles from home.  The whole bluff was dotted with Texas Bluebonnets.



Happy Real Estate salesman with part of his catch.  Note the smattering of Bluebonnets in the baclground.



                                                                                                    

The Big "L's" of Barbeque---Number Eight in a Series

                                

I need to remind everyone that I made this pilgrimage about ten years ago, so some of the notes may be a bit outdated.  I have added explanations to bring the narrative up to date, but be careful—some of these places are closed.  So much for a disclaimer.

            Llano has four good barbeque places. (I keep saying “places” because they are not cafes, and they are not restaurants. Some are joints, and some are halls, some have live music, some sell beer, and some have tablecloths. So, rather than dig through my limited vocabulary for just the right word, I call them places.) As I was saying, Llano has four good barbeque places. Inman’s is a big place, justly famous for its turkey sausage. Cooper’s has become one of the best known in Texas, and most everyone’s favorite, but I’ve not had good experiences there. I believe the server is first cousin to the adolescent in Fredericksburg, and I invariably get a bunch of stringy grey meat, sliced with the grain so it hangs in my teeth like half-cooked spaghetti.

Laird’s is the newest barbeque place in Llano. It is in a spotlessly clean, remodeled old house on the main drag, south of downtown.  Ken Laird once cooked for Inman’s or Cooper’s, but I’m not sure which.  Sometimes his bread is not as fresh as I’d like, but he does a good job with the meat. Incidently, in Llano, you don’t buy a barbeque sandwich. In Llano, you buy a chopped or sliced “bun.”

My favorite Llano barbeque is in a place called “Brothers.” It’s out west on Highway Twenty Nine, on the right, across from the Dairy Queen, just before you get to Cooper’s. I’m told that it started as a lean-to shack, next to a gas station operated by the cook’s brother, hence the name. Brother knows how to cook the meat, how to slice it, and how to serve it.  He consistently does all that better than any of the other places in town. The station has now closed, and the barbeque place occupies the whole property.

On a recent trip to Llano, Cooper’s was busier than ever, and Brothers was closed.  That shows how much I know about what is going on in the business end of barbeque.

Lockhart claims to be the barbeque capital of Texas, based upon the presence of Black’s Barbeque, Chisholm Trail Barbeque, and Kreuz’s Meat Market. Although Chisholm Trail and Black’s both serve good Barbeque, I believe their true function is to handle the people who are too impatient to wait in line at Kreuz’s Market. “Kreuz” is pronounced “Krites,” which rhymes with nights. I don’t know if they were Polish or German, or whatever, but they couldn’t spell schitt.

Regardless of the spelling, Kreuz’s is one of the most impressive barbeque places I’ve ever seen. It was started in the 1890's, and the chief cook, a guy named Schmidt, bought out the Kreuz family in 1948, but changed little of the operation. This allowed Black’s (est. 1932) to loudly announce “oldest barbeque place in Texas.” And in little bitty letters below, say “operated by the same family.” On sunny weekends, it seems that everyone in Austin lines up for barbeque at Kreuz’s.

You enter Kreuz’s through big double screen doors, permeated with several decades of Hickory smoke. Once inside, you’re in a dark hallway about 12 feet wide, maybe fifteen feet high, and about one hundred feet long. Everything is covered with layers of smoke, and at the end of the hall, you discover why. There’s a depression in the concrete slab, and what I’d judge to be about a three alarm fire is just blazing away in the middle of the floor.

As you work your way around the fire, you discover that it actually backs up to a low brick wall, and the flames are drawn into an opening in the wall. This wall forms the end of the pit, a brick affair about thirty feet long and four feet high, with counterbalanced steel doors on top and a chimney at the end opposite the fire. The chimney is in the corner of the room, and there is another pit down the back wall, with another fire at the end opposite the chimney. Two fires, two pits, and one chimney. The same design is repeated in an adjacent room with the pits terminating in the same corner, so all four pits can share the same chimney. Only two of the pits were operating during the times I visited. They may fire up all four on busy weekends. A big chopping block table stands out in front of the pits, and a high counter separates the cooking and cutting from the public area.

On my first visit, I ordered a loop of Kreuz’s world famous sausage, and a quarter pound of brisket. It was late in the day and they had no brisket, so I had beef clod (shoulder roast). They weighed my order, put three slices of bread with it, loosely wrapped it in red Kraft paper, and had me pay for it.

I went into the dining room. I had to stand in another line where I could buy a cold drink, an onion, an avocado, a jalapeno or Serrano pepper, a chunk of cheddar cheese, some potato chips or a giant dill pickle. I bought a jalapeno and a Big Red soda, made my way to a long table and sat on a bench like a lonesome private in a strange mess hall.

I may have eaten a greasier meal in my life, but I’m not sure when or where.  Oh, but it was good! The beef was done to a turn, sliced wrong, but so tender that it made little difference. The sausage was bland for my taste, but unique, and I could see how it could be famous, especially if the taste and texture remained consistent over 90 some-odd years. When I cut the sausage with my serrated plastic knife, grease shot all over my shirt, face, and glasses. I could almost hear the arteries clog as I ate, but I must admit the food was good.

In later trips, I ate pork chops, brisket, and beef tenderloin. They just pull out a big chunk of pork, and slice off a two inch thick pork chop or two as you order. Same with the tenderloin. The meat was excellent, except for brisket. The server didn’t want to cut into a fresh brisket so late in the day, so he sold me the dried up remnants of one that had been cut up and kept warm too long. It was obvious to him that I was a greenhorn, and wouldn’t know the difference.

If you go to Lockhart today, Kreuz Market is in a big, new building on the way out of town toward Austin.  The food is good, still cooked as it should be, but on a newer, more modern pit. 

Kreuz’s original downtown location is now Smitty’s and the fires are still on the floor and the sausage is just the same.  All the things I said describing Kreuz’s are still true, but now, the sign out front says “Smitty’s."

Seems that old man Schmidt died and left the business to his children.  To be absolutely fair, he left the business to his son and the real estate to his daughter.  Soon, the daughter decided that the son was making too much money, which was not fair, so she raised the rent.  The son bitched and moaned, and she raised the rent again.

Eventually, the son borrowed a bunch of money, built a gigantic new place, and moved out north of town.  The daughter, who had a hundred-year-old empty building, hired a cook and went into the barbeque business.  She named the place Smitty’s after her dad.   No one ever wins in a situation like this and I’m sorry it happened.  I bet their family reunions are a drag.

I hope that someone will always be cooking Barbeque on those old pits at Smitty’s.  It would be a shame if we lost a hundred year old tradition because two kids couldn’t get along.

While you are in Lockhart, visit the restored County Seat building, a half block from Smitty’s.  Look at the building and read about how it was built.  As you walk through the building, you realize it is special.  If there was an architect with enough talent to design it now, there would not be a contractor with enough knowledge to bid it, much less build it.  Then, if we found those two unlikely people, where would they find the craftsmen to do the work?

I’d better let this go for now.  I still have a lot of ground to cover, but if these things get too long, I fear no one will stay with me and read them.  Next time, we’ll get to Lubbock and Taylor and somewhere else.  Eventually, I’ll take you to what I consider the best in Texas and thus the world.  Hang in there.

Ballad of a Modern Day Pirate

The cheese was binding for ole Kent Hance

His tarnished image needed enhanced.

That silly pirate had him spinning

Quoting Churchill and always winning.

Something needs be done and quickly,

The A D is getting sickly.

That same coach shot him the finger

Trump up a charge, do not linger.

The whole debacle is now history

How it went down is a mystery.

Tommy T. is already installed

And Pirate fans are simply appalled.

But Kent is safe, he’s put out the fires---

The students no longer flip off Meyers.

The Team has made losing look easy

And Tech officials just look sleazy.

     I wrote this a couple of years ago, when I was angry.  I'm not angry anymore.  I'm just sad.  Sad for the boys who could have played for Mike Leach at Tech.  Sad for the boys who did play for Tom Tom at Tech and for the ones who will play for him in the coming years.  Sad to see all the Tech fans move out of the limelight and back into the shadows, no longer proud to talk about where they went to school.  And sad for the administration, who runs the school like a sleezy political campaign, from a smoke filled room where only insiders have a voice.   I am sad for what could have been.

                                                                   Jim McLaughlin 

Road Trip Ten Crater Lake

Ron to Wayne-  "Do you reckon that's safe?"

     The eighty-odd mile drive from Medford to Crater Lake took a bit less than two hours and transported us from early springtime back into mid-winter.  As we climbed the last few miles to the 8,000 foot summit, large soft snowflakes drifted down.  The snow stopped by the time we parked at the visitor’s center but the parking lot was recessed because snow banks surrounding it were at least twenty feet high.  We learned that it snows about forty-four feet (feet, not inches) per year at Crater Lake.  It is advertised as the snowiest continuously occupied place in the world.  At 1943 feet deep, the lake is the deepest in the United States and among the top ten worldwide.   It is fed entirely by snowmelt.  Snowplows start here at four am most everyday for about ten months of the year. 

     The entrance to the visitor’s center appeared to be a double door, with a porch roof, into a twenty-five foot high wall of snow.  We entered and walked about seventy-five feet thru a tunnel-like corridor under the snow to the building proper.  Even though the whole thing was buried in a snowdrift, everything inside the building was as it should be.  The architectural style was 1990’s General Services Administration, National Park Gift Shop with Snack Bar Ensemble.  All rough hewn faux beams , rough sawn plywood siding stained dark walnut, aluminum windows, track lights and endless display cases of turquoise jewelry, gimmie caps, tee shirts and coffee cups.   Everything was logoed for Crater Lake.  I expect the silver and turquoise came from a pueblo outside Beijing, along with most everything else. 

      Snow was banked half-way up most of the windows, even though we were on the second floor.  At the snack bar, we paid nine dollars for a pre-packaged ham and cheese sandwich and then climbed the stairs to the third floor for lunch and our first view of Crater Lake.  Words fail me.  If you take an ole boy from the High Plains of Texas, put him in front of a picture window looking out at a magnificent, placid, deep blue lake in the crater of a long-extinct volcano and ask him for his impressions, don’t be surprised if he stutters.  I will never forget it.

     Outside, we walked about two hundred yards across the paved parking area to the “original” lodge.  It was built by a developer in 1915 and sporadically remodeled during the ensuing years until 1967, when it was acquired by the National Park Service.  In 1991 we, with the help of our government, spent $15 million renovating the property.  The great hall and dining room were dismantled and re-assembled over a new steel framework and two wings with state of the art guest rooms were added.   The structure is magnificent—unlike the visitor’s center, there is nothing faux about it.  The stone fireplace in the great room, a replica of the original, would hold a sofa if firewood ran low.  We had our picture taken there.



Road Trippers in the "Old" Lodge



      Outside, we climbed the snowbank for another look at the lake.  A couple of dozen tourists were clustered at the top, enjoying the unbelievable view.  Wizard Island was off to our left.   Six miles in the distance, the far shore was clearly visible.  Our vantage point was about two thousand feet above the lake and we could easily see the entire panorama.  It was so quiet we could hear normal conversations taking place several hundred feet away.  No one had any trouble hearing us. 

     A cute young girl, somewhat less than forty, said, “Are you fellas from Texas?”   One of us answered, “Why, yes m’am.  How could you tell?”

     The girl’s big brown eyes twinkled, and she said, “I spent some time there once, and I recognized the accent.  Have you ever heard of a place called Hereford, in the panhandle?”

     “Oh, all of us grew up in Lubbock, only about an hour’s drive from Hereford.  What on earth were you doing there?”   Wayne asked.

     The girl’s companion, obviously a boyfriend, was quietly watching, but not entering into the conversation.  I sensed that was not unusual---I had decided he was either very intelligent, or very rich, or possibly both.  She was attractive and outgoing, but he was very quiet and remarkably ugly.   He had bushy black eyebrows over close set, beady little eyes, heavy black stubble and a receding chin.  These features surrounded a beak that took the place of and vaguely resembled a nose.  Since neither of them wore any rings, I suspected this was some kind of weekend affair.  He must have been very wealthy.

     “I’m a dietician.” She said.  “I was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, working on my first real job.  They sent me to Texas, to a company called “Arrowhead Mills” to learn about organic food.  It was headquartered in Hereford.  I was there over a week--talk about culture shock.  It seemed like forever!”

     “A guy named Frank Ford used to run that company.  His brother, Davis, was in our high school class.  Did you meet Frank?”  I asked.

     “Yes, I remember him, a tall guy from Texas A and M.  They were all really nice people, but it has been a long time.  I was a wide-eyed vegan and I asked if there was a vegetarian restaurant in town.  The foreman, a tall, cowboy-type thought a while, then brightened.  He said, ‘Sure!  They’s a KFC right down here on Main Street.’”

     We laughed and separated.  Later, as we walked back to our car, we saw the cute little dietitian and her boyfriend, tentatively kissing each other as they stood above us, on top of the snowbank.  Wayne, who needs to talk about most everything, shouted, “Hey, do you all know each other well enough to be doing that, right out here in front of God and everybody?”

     The little dietitian didn’t miss a beat—she leaned back and said, “Can you believe the nerve of this guy?  I never saw him before in my life!”  Then she enthusiastically went back to kissing him.   Boy, there’s no telling how much money that guy had!   



Crater Lake--Wizard Island on the left.  Far side is six miles away.



 

     

Feathered Friend Protects Lubbock Blacksmith

The Village blacksmith, R.G. Box answers the phone under the protective and watchful eye of Rowdy

Village Blacksmith Outed

R. G. Box, Biscuit and Rowdy, with City of Lubbock in Background

I think it is time that I removed the mystery from the strange happenings in the cotton field south of Lubbock.  My friend, R. G. Box, is doing all that hammering out in his smithy, next to the spreading Mesquite Tree.  He has built, with his large and sinewy hands, a monument to excellence, patience and perseverance.

R. G. and his companion, Biscuit, walk out to his blacksmith shop at six-thirty each morning and fire up the forge.  He stops at noon for a short time, to eat lunch and rest a while, then returns and works until about dark.  Sometimes, he rests on Sundays, but sometimes his work is so compelling he cannot skip an hour, much less a whole day.  A lot of people may work that hard, but most of them are not 77 years old.

Mr. Box works with tools and methods dating from the 1800’s.  His main forge was originally built in 1893.  He restored the forge and mated it with an overhead bellows built in 1890.  He keeps a pot of coffee on a 1912 wood stove made in Michigan.  His 450 pound anvil was made in Denmark in 1903 and still performs superbly—it’s hard to break an anvil and they just don’t wear out.

R.G. keeps all this equipment in his shop, a sheet metal building fifty yards from his home near Lubbock.  Forty years ago, he bought a few acres in the corner of a cotton field, fenced it, planted seven hundred pecan trees and then moved to Colorado.  He planned to return to the Lubbock area and retire in the shade of those trees and live off his pecan crop.  He named the place Pecanderosa, with a nod to the then-popular TV show, Bonanza.

Sitting in the shade and cracking pecans did not suit R.G., so he set about to build the Pecanderosa Forge, a blacksmith shop, to give himself something to do.  He sold mature pecan trees to local nurseries to help with expenses and started to learn the art of forging iron.  His work slowly moved past the point of welding and simple blacksmithing and into the realm of metal art.

For the past eleven months, R.G. has been working on a six foot tall, eleven foot long roadrunner that may become the mascot for the University of Texas at San Antonio.  If so, it will be called “Rowdy.”  The creature weighs nearly 850 pounds and is mounted on a platform that will facilitate relocation.  The original plan was to move Rowdy to the Alamo Dome for each football season, then back to the campus for the rest of the year.  Delivery has been planned for early 2012, after a proper site is prepared.

Rowdy is complete now, finished with 962 individual feathers, each cut out of steel plate and forged by hand, hammered into life on that 1903 anvil.  Each feather was fitted and shaped to its specific position on the roadrunner’s body, then welded into place.  All the welds are concealed beneath adjacent feathers.  The sculpture that resulted from all this care is spectacular.  It is truly one of a kind and cannot be duplicated by simply re-casting as is done with bronze sculptures.

No matter where Rowdy ends up, it is a work of art created by a master craftsman.  R.G. Box dedicated himself to breathing life into the sculpture and it will be admired for many years by everyone who sees it.  Even for a Lubbock boy, R.G. found a unique way to use up a year.

To learn more about Mr. Box and his work, go to pecanderosaforge.com and spend some time in the last century with a unique individual---and his faithful companion, Biscuit.

Lubbock Boy Apple Pie

A Proper Apple Pie baked by a Lubbock Boy

      
      Read this whole recipe before you start.  It will help you understand how to do this.  It is not hard, but does take some patience and time.

       Pie crust is an art form.  My favorite is a flaky combination of flour, lard, egg, vinegar and ice water.  If I was going to enter this pie in a contest, I would use that recipe, but for ease and convenience, prepared crusts are available at the local supermarket and they’re not bad.   Some come frozen in a pie pan and others are in the refrigerator case,  two to a box.  Either works fine.  The frozen ones with the pan are great if you are going to give the pie away and you don’t have to worry about getting your Grandmother's favorite ceramic pie pan returned.

       If you don’t have a nine inch pie pan, don’t worry about it.  Go to the store and buy a nine inch, deep-dish frozen pie crust.  They come with a foil pan and usually two to a package.  Unwrap them when you are ready to make the pie and let them thaw out. Preheat the oven to 350.

        Peel six to nine Granny Smith apples, depending upon what size they are.  The way I do it is peel an apple, slice it up and put it in a big bowl, then peel another apple and slice it up.  That way, I can tell when I have enough apples and not too many.

        To slice up an apple for my pie, I do it this way:  Peel the whole apple, then cut it in half, right down the middle from stem to stern.  Lay each half, cut side down, on the cutting board.  Cut the apple in ¼ inch thick slices, starting at one edge, going top to bottom and working across the apple.  You should get about eight or ten slices, straight on one edge and half round on the other.  Little half circles. The first three slices should be clean, then the next four or so will have some core, seeds, stem and some peel that was deep down in each end.  Cut all that stuff out and discard it.  The last three or so slices should also be clean.  Now, you should have about eight or ten half circle slices, some of them with little triangles clipped out of the middle, where you took out the seeds and core.  The smaller ones will be clean half circles.  Do the other half-apple the same way, then peel and do the rest, one at a time until you have all the apples you need in a good sized mixing bowl.

     In a separate mixing bowl, put ½ cup of regular sugar; 3/4 cup of brown sugar: 1 teaspoon (or more to taste) of cinnamon; three tablespoons of flour; ½ teaspoon nutmeg and ½ teaspoon ground cloves.  Mix all dry stuff together and pour over the apples and shake and stir until all are more or less coated with the flour and sugar and the spices.  If you don’t have all this stuff, don’t worry and don’t buy it just for this pie.  Use a cup and a half of white sugar, the cinnamon and the flour and it will be just fine.  If you don’t have cinnamon, and are going to have to buy it anyway, you might buy “Apple Pie Spice” which is in the store with the spices—if you cannot find it, just buy cinnamon.

        After you have the apples all coated with the flour and sugar and spices, put them into the pie shell that has thawed.  They should mound up in the center and be flush with the edges.  Cut up ½ stick of butter in little pieces and scatter it around on top of the apples.  Pour about 1/3 cup of whipping cream over the apples and let it run down inside.  The cream, butter, sugar and apple juice will cook as the pie bakes and make a sort of custard inside the pie.  Take the other thawed crust and put it over the pie and trim it to size, then take a fork and push it down all around the edge or use your fingers to weld the crusts together.  The crusts will stick together better if you brush the edges with water before you begin to crimp the edge.

     Cut five or six long slits in the top crust, to let the steam out.  You can also cut decorative holes if you want, or cut the dough into strips and make a lattice top pie.  Anything to let the steam out and make it look good is fine.  If you do a lattice top, crimp the edges  just like with a solid top.

     Now, take an egg and break it into a cup and stir it up with a fork and a tablespoon of water until it’s all yellow and smooth.  This is called an “egg wash”.  Brush it all over the top crust—this will make it brown up really nice.  Sprinkle the top with sugar if you want.  Put the pie in a preheated, 350 degree oven for about ten or fifteen minutes, until it starts to look slick on top.  Then cover the whole pie loosely with foil and let it cook.  (The first fifteen minutes helps the crust start to cook and keeps the foil from sticking to the pie.)

     Let the pie cook that way for at least an hour, then take off the foil and let the pie brown up, usually not more than twenty or thirty minutes.  Watch it closely after it has been in the oven for about forty five minutes.  The trick is to cook and bubble the filling until all that butter and cream mixes with the flour and spices and apple juice so it gets cooked all through without burning the crust.  If you just put it in without the foil, the crust will burn to a crisp before the middle gets done.  It will still be good, but there will be burned crust and semi-raw apple in every bite. 

     When the crust is properly brown and the filling is bubbling, remove the pie and let it cool on a rack for about thirty minutes.  Let everyone smell it as they eat supper.  (I know it should be "dinner", but in Lubbock we ate dinner at noon and supper in the evening.) Cut and serve the warm pie.  Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla on top is pure Texan and really good.

     When you first start, before you turn on the oven to preheat, cover the bottom of the oven with foil.  This pie will boil over and burn on the bottom of the oven and stink to high heaven.  With a piece of foil down there, it will still boil over, but all you have to do is wad up the foil and throw it away and the oven is clean.

List of Ingredients: 

Two frozen pie crusts; Six or eight Granny Smith Apples; ½ cup of regular sugar; ¾ cup of brown sugar;  Three tablespoons flour; 1 teaspoon cinnamon (more if you like); ½ teaspoon nutmeg;  ½ teaspoon ground cloves; ½ stick of butter or margarine; 1/3 cup of whipping cream (more if you want, but not more than ½ cup total);  one egg and some water for the egg wash..