So, what’s happening in Flatonia, TX?
Not very much it seems … but I’ll come back to that later.
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| "NO ONE CAN BEAT OUR MEAT" |
Gruene (pronounced “Green”) has been “gently resisting
change since 1872”. Gruene Hall (http://www.gruenehall.com/)
is the oldest dance hall in Texas – and when I say “dance”, I don’t mean
line-dancing (despite popular opinion elsewhere, I haven’t seen anywhere round
here where they do that – it’s “swing” dancing, which is much more
couple-oriented). Having said that, I’m not sure too much actual dancing goes
on these days – it’s more of a venue for country music. George Strait (and if
you don’t know who he is, it says more about the lack of diversity in your
musical eclecticism than it does about one of country music’s biggest stars)
got his start there with the Ace in the Hole band, and numerous other great
artists have performed on that stage. If you remember the movie “Michael”, with
John Travolta starring as a “fallen angel”, you might recognize the dance hall
scene as having been shot there.
Gruene
is about 4 hours drive south of Dallas,
and this weekend corresponded with “Market Days” – the third weekend every
month they host craft and food stalls – so it seemed like a good time to make
the trip. Starting straight after breakfast, I drove all the way there without
stopping (although on the way through Austin, I followed an interesting truck –
the picture is not of the best quality because it was taken through the
windscreen at 75mph – I didn’t dare get any closer!), checked into my hotel,
and went in search of food.
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| Rudy's menu |
I found
Rudy’s – a convenience store/gas station/bar-b-q place. Their motto, on all the
employees t-shirts, is “I didn’t claw my
way to the top of the food chain … to eat vegetables”. Bar-b-q places are
typically very basic, and Rudy’s was no exception: plastic tablecloths, plastic
cutlery, simple menu, beer or iced tea, a meal ordered at the counter and eaten
on the table on a piece of (supplied) wax paper rather than a plate, and “your
mom ain’t here, so clean up after yourself”. I ordered a half-pound of brisket,
potato salad and pinto beans, and was more than happy.
Gruene itself was more crowded than I would have liked – as
the Eagles have already said: “Call
someplace Paradise, kiss it goodbye”. For
one thing, it is in the heart of a popular watersports area, so that there is
plenty of boating, fishing, swimming and tubing in the Guadalupe or Gruene
rivers, as well as surrounding lakes. Almost every convenience store advertises
“Beer, Ice, Bait”, and the roads are
clogged with participants. If you’re a Brit, you may think of Texas as mostly desert, but this is very far
from the truth. Certainly West Texas has a
harsher landscape, but most of the rest, except during very dry summer months,
can be quite verdant.
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| Gruene Hall ... |
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| ... and the men's room! |
I
checked out Gruene Hall during the afternoon, when it’s just a regular bar with
live music. It has unfinished floor boards, which don’t seem well-suited to a
dance floor. There is no air conditioning, but ceiling fans circulate what air
there is (yesterday was over 100ºF (38ºC)), and the “windows” have no glass,
but rather are screened with fine mesh reinforced with chicken wire, and are
battened with wooden boards that can be raised/lowered in hot weather. The roof
is corrugated tin, and swathes of foam filled sacking hang from it, presumably
to improve the acoustics. Old signs, probably for advertisers long since
disappeared, line the walls: the White Comb barber shop, Blue Bonnet Cleaners
& Tailors (“we deliver”), Ed
Moeller’s Café, and the Purity Bakery. I’m not sure they serve anything except
beer – if they do, they probably look at you funny when you ask for it. And
it’s not in glasses either: you drink out of the bottle, and when you’re done,
you put the empty bottle back into an empty case. Periodically they replace
full (of empty bottles) cases with empty ones, take the full ones to recycling
(or trash – who knows?) and the circle is complete.
In the evening, the “doors” opened at 8pm, the support band
(the Sidehill Gougers, whose lead singer I thought looked incredibly like Lara
in real life, though not so much in online photos at http://www.sidehillgougers.com/)
started at 9pm, and the main act (Stoney La Rue – no, I haven’t heard of him
either) at 10:30pm. The support band were great. The place filled up with
people getting steadily more drunk, and who seemed to think it was a better
idea to shout loudly enough that they could hold some sort of conversation with
the person next to them than to go outside, where they could converse normally.
I’d say that it was just me getting old and intolerant, but I think I’ve always
been the same – either listen to the music, or go somewhere else and stop
interrupting (these are not exactly
the same words that were running through my mind, of course). I left before
Stoney La Rue came on – the Sidehill Gougers were good enough for me.
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| Flatonia - the offices of the Flatonia Argus are on the right |
Flatonia?
Ah, yes … Flatonia. Flatonia is a DQ/DG town (Dairy Queen, Dollar General and a
gas station) that doesn’t seem to have a lot going for it. But it does have a
local newspaper: the Flatonia Argus. I picked up a copy of Volume 132, number
33 – August 17th, 2006 from the gas station for 50c, so I’m pretty
well up on the significant events in the town this week. The usual masthead, in
addition to the name, has Old and New Testament verses for this week. Haley
Alexis was born on July 31st, daughter of Heather Taranowski; the
grandparents and great-grandparents are given credit, but there is no mention
of a father. But well done, Dr. Ann Trevino, who delivered her. The Two Sisters
Café serves “good old-fashioned
hamburgers, homemade stew, chili, soup & gumbo”, and, under the
classifieds, is looking for “mature help”.
For lunch on Wednesday, the local schoolchildren have “Chili Cheese Dogs, Oven Fries, Carrot Sticks with dip, Fruit Cup” –
I suppose the carrot sticks are a start, but I think I know what will finish up
in the bins out back. Kassi is wished a “Happy Belated 6th Birthday”
by her family (is the fact that the family missed her birthday something they
would want to go public with?). 83 year old Ernest Hensel fell off his tractor
while hauling a bale of hay, and the back tyres ran over his legs (no! – stop
laughing, this could be serious). A “two story (sic) farm house with large living room, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths,
extra room that could be a 4th bedroom, family sized eat-in kitchen
with tons of cabinets, pool, 1 car garage, pool (sic – I think there’s only one), brick bar-b-que” is for sale for
$65,000. The 2005 Fair Queen, Beth Johnson, will be relinquishing her title to
one of the 2006 hopefuls – there are photos, and, without wishing to be harsh,
I think most of them have been entered by their mothers. Certainly, the
representative of the Optimist Club has earned her membership. If you want to
shop at the nearby Brookshire Brothers supermarket, boneless rump roast is on
sale at $1.99 (£1.04) per pound, a six-pack of Corona will cost you $6.49 (£3.42), a 12oz
can of Spam is $1.97 (£1.03), and three 12pk Diet Pepsi’s are $10 (£5.26).
And that’s all the news from Flatonia!
