We went to Wurstfest in New Braunfels this last weekend, to celebrate all things Germanic. I posted the pics in a Facebook album here – enjoy!
And no, I don’t have a recipe for the German Taco … I would guess, since it is fair food, that it is basically a grilled country sausage, with jalapeno cheese and maybe some salsa, wrapped in a flour tortilla.
Being that I am snowed under with finalizing the last details for the second edition of To Truckee’s Trail, and preparing to launch the sequel to Daughter of Texas at more or less the same time in order maximize my portion of what increasingly looks like a pretty dismal Christmas shopping season with sales of my books . . . I have been only intermittently able to put my head above the parapet lately and take a look around at the socio-political landscape. A more relaxed schedule might permit me to address each of the developments listed below at length . . . but time does not permit. Heck, brevity is supposed to be the soul of wit, anyway.
1. Potential Candidate Cain’s purported sex scandal. Hey, it would be a treat to have a sex scandal in which some actual sex was involved, rather like John Edwards and his campaign-trail inamorata/baby mama? At this juncture, all we have, though – is some unspecified act(s) committed by Mr. Cain, complained of by anonymous persons (presumably female) which took place in some unspecified venue, which resulted in an unspecified money settlement . . . which no one involved can talk about, because they all signed an agreement not to talk about it. At least the time frame of this unspecified action has been nailed down by our heroically working mainstream media professions to sometime in the 1990s. Ok, it’s nice to have that specific nailed down, but seriously; unnamed sources? I’m sorry, but unnamed sources, with a charge like this do not fly freely with me any more. If you want this charge to be creditable, start naming names and specifics, otherwise I will treat this matter like the gutter gossip that it appears to be,
2. At least the matter of the rock on a hunting lease in West Texas, which had a disparaging term for a racial minority painted on it, and which was painted over at least two decades ago, seems to have been dropped – er – like a rock into the well of memory. Did any of the faithful national press gumshoes actually find the damned rock? If that’s all the dirt you can find on Rick Perry . . . Look, the guy has been in Texas politics for years. They play for keeps here, politically – the brass knuckles at no extra charge. If there were any substantial dirt to be found on him, it would have been found, long since. Oh, and thanks for floating teh ghey rumor, alleging it to have been an open secret in Texas political circles for years. I haven’t had a good laugh like that since the last time I watched The Money Pit.
3. So – looking at the list of Occupy Whatever Street supporters and backers . . . including you, “San Fran Nan” Pelosi, Michael “One Teensy Thin Mint” Moore, Mayor Bloomburg, our “illustrious”* Commander in Chief, and assorted other fellow travelers, anarchists, anti-Semites and career protest ‘tards . . . you own them, root, branch and arrest records. They are all yours, even as various OWS locations melt down gloriously into Lord of the Flies territory. I repeat; all yours. Kinda make the Tea Party rallies look good in comparison, don’t they?
4. Isn’t it well past time for the Kardashian sisters’ ration of fame to be up? I mean; fifteen minutes each, there are three of the talent-free and parasitical skanks, which adds up to 45 minutes total. I had a case of mono which lasted longer than Whats-er-fern’s most recent marriage. The Cardassians of Star Trek fame were much more interesting. And realistic.
5. Finally, in site news; this weekend Brian is going to fight off the locusts that ate his day off, long enough to look at why we can’t easily post pictures on this website. I have a raft of pictures I want to put up, including a new header . . . and, well all sorts of stuff.
Sincerely, Sgt Mom
PS: The Kindle version of To Truckee’s Trail – second edition has already gone live. I am still taking pre-pub orders for Deep in the Heart, and for Truckee’s print edition. Your purchases help support me, and this blog, so . . . a portion of your consumer dollars thrown in my direction will be greatly appreciated.
Right, then – I was dragged away temporarily from the computer and the mad gallop of the writer’s life waltz by my daughter . . . because it was Mothers’ Day. No, not for a brunch or something on Sunday; our Mothers’ Day was actually in support of Mothers’ Day, or specifically, the company that my daughter works on occasion for as a delivery driver. It’s called Edible Arrangements; they make cunningly contrived and rather high-end arrangements of cut fruit, made to look like flower arrangements. On certain high-demand holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day, and the Christmas/New Years holidays, the local outlet in San Antonio is absolutely swamped with orders, more than their regular delivery driver can cope with. One of our friends has part-timed like this for years and she referred Blondie; being reliable and efficient, with a good bump of location (or a reliable GPS unit), and owning a vehicle with functional air-conditioning and capable of transporting at least six or eight arrangements are qualities highly valued by the business owner.
Anyway, Blondie inveigled upon me to part-time also. Originally, I think the plan was for me to work as a sort of driver wrangler – but as it turned out, for three days she was driving the shop’s refrigerated delivery van and I was driving the Montero. Look, bills to pay and all that. Only two hundred living producers of popular fiction in America today make a living entirely off their royalties. I am not one of them. Everyone else has a day job, or a patchwork collection of income streams and delivering fruit-bouquet arrangements has now been added to my own personal collection. As for Blondie, she delivered for six days, and can now afford the new front tires for the Montero. The economy in other places may be flat-lining, but when it comes to exotic arrangements of fruit, San Antonio is doing OK. Doing deliveries – it’s not brain surgery, but it helps a bit to know the local area, and to be able to read a map – and a day of it is pretty exhausting. We were falling into bed, and fast asleep every evening almost before it was entirely dark outside.
Some of my deliveries were widely-spaced, and since I knew the areas involved, I could think about things – to do with books, mostly, especially the one under construction. I always thought I did some of my best thinking during a commute. Walking the dog or jogging is pretty good think-time, too – but nothing beats a long drive. I mentally worked out a couple of key scenes, and jotted down the notes for them during the short intervals between sleep and delivering. That was how I spent my weekend – you?
*later – comments frelled, due to hyphen in title. WordPress does not like odd punctuation in titles
So, on the coldest winter day for several winters running in South Texas, Blondie and I set out on a book-talk excursion. This was unique – not just for the very coldness of the day, but also for the fact that this time the location was within city limits, and about a hop-skip-and-jump from the house. Previous book-talks have been as far as Beeville (twice), Junction and Harper, all of which were at least an hour and a half drive away. The weather being what it was, I don’t think we would have risked such an excursion, icy roads being a component. Too many drivers here freak out when it rains heavily – adding ice to the mix is courting disaster. As it was, we encountered the rolling black-out; our first clue being that the traffic lights were out for a good part of the way along Bitters Road, and in Artisans’ Alley.
The venue was to be at Back Alley Antiques, which is – suitably enough – at the back end of Artisans’ Alley. We love a couple of the little shops there, including the one who has a guardian Shi-Tzu dog named Harley – but our very favorite is Back Alley Antiques. Not that we’ve ever been able to afford much there, but what they do have in stock is enviably wonderful, from the large pieces of classic furniture, down to the linens, the accessories, the china and milk glass. (When I’m a best-selling author, and fit out my dream retreat in the Hill Country, a lot of the furniture for it will come from there and from the Antique Mall in Comfort, thank you very much.) The last time we were there, I had a nice leisurely chat with one of the owners, who took my card and seemed interested in the fact that I had written extensively about local history; and so in January, Rita C. invited me to speak to a small circle of antique enthusiasts which she belonged to, about the Trilogy.
Very fortunately, there was not much traffic out on the roads – also, even more fortunately, the power came back on, almost as soon as we walked in the door. It was a nice gathering of ladies about my age or a little older – could have been mistaken for a Red Hats gathering, save that everyone was tastefully dressed in other colors than red or purple – and all of us had on substantially heavy winter coats. They gathered around a couple of antique dining room tables, carefully decked out with equally antique place settings, silverware and linens, held the business portion of their meeting – and then, it was show-time!
I have notes, carefully printed up for the first book-talk that I did – an outline of early Texas history, about the adventures of the Adelsverein representatives in Texas, and the subsequent transmission of settlers from Germany, straight to the wild-n-woolly frontier, together with a short explanation of how I came to write about them. Didn’t look at the notes once, I’ve done this talk so often, since. Took a few questions – some of the lady members had heard in a vague sort of way about the German settlers, one or two – including one who owns a historic home in Castroville – had heard of the general specifics, but the mini-Civil War in the Hill Country was an interesting and fascinating surprise. We had bought along the few copies of books that I had, and some order forms and flyers about the Trilogy. After the meeting, we repaired to the Pomegranate for lunch – another nice round of conversation. Blondie and Rita C. explored a mutual interest in vintage pressed glass, and we had a lot of fun discussing how much more rewarding it was, finding splendid vintage and antique items at estate sales, and thrift stores. Another club member – who has fitted out an entire frontier town as a venue and B&B at her family’s hunting ranch – turns out to know one of my clients, the ranch broker – yet more proof, if any were needed, that San Antonio is just a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city.
… is “shrimplets.”
Shrimplets are the last few frozen shrimp and parts of frozen shrimp left at the bottom of the large bag. Not quite enough to do anything with, except maybe add to the top of an individual cuppa noodle soup for additional protein and flavor.
The food-court flash-mob, singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Avery nicely planned and executed stunt, which took place last month in a mall in Ontario, Canada.
Friend sent me the link via email. I just thought it was so cool. I wonder how classical music enthusiasts will top this – maybe perform HMS Pinafore at half-time at a football game?
That would be so cool…
Can’t stand the usual run of reality TV shoes, but for some reason, this particular show hits the spot for me. Eh, maybe I am a snob, but it is one of life’s small pleasures, enjoying the sight of horrible, tacky, manipulative people behaving badly. And there is always the fair chance of a harassed maid of honor – or maybe even a vendor – loosing it and administering a richly-deserved knuckle sandwich to the bride . . . or a long-suffering groom recovering his gonads and his sanity and ditching his intended at the altar. Seriously, we wonder how many of these featured brides even have friends and family even speaking to them, after some of these televised shenanigans. Some of them may in the ordinary course of things, be reasonable and well-adjusted people under a lot of stress, and some may be spoilt, delusional and egged on by the producers of the show . . . but airing all your wedding dirty laundry on broadcast television?
Besides schadenfreude, close attention to the various bridal-party meltdowns also serves another purpose: an education in what not to do when planning and executing a wedding. Seriously – avoiding anything that the Bridezilla of the moment is doing, purchasing, or generally having a cow over in planning for her particular nuptial celebration – might be a very good thing. Certainly the Daughter Unit is taking notes: sometimes knowing what not to do is every bit as valuable as knowing what to do.
So, in no particular order of importance, here are Sgt. Mom’s thoughts regarding the modern wedding – and how to have one without breaking the bank, alienating family and friends and generally becoming one massive cloud of appallingly tacky taste.
1. Don’t have a comic cake topper on the wedding cake. Please – not that one of the bride climbing up the groom, grabbing his ass, or installing a ball and chain on his ankle. Please, just don’t.
2. If you weigh more than 180 pounds, don’t choose a strapless gown, either for a bridal gown, or for the bridesmaids. Just please don’t. Especially if you have tats that will show.
3. It’s not necessary to arrive at the venue in a horse-drawn carriage, on a horse, carried by the groomsmen, a converted Brinks van or a stretch limo. Really, it isn’t. Plain black town-car is fine. Trust me.
4. Don’t, for the love of god, write your own vows. Stick to the traditional service, of whatever denomination that you belong to, even you only go to church on major holidays – it’s much more dignified. Seriously.
5. If an outdoor wedding, for the sake of your own sanity, ensure that there is a sheltered option available in case of inclement weather. And speaking of outdoor venues; early spring or late fall in most of the northern States is liable to be cold, rainy and stormy. I’m just saying here, that frostbite and pneumonia are not attractive elements, especially if you have chosen strapless gowns for yourself and attendants.
6. Accept the fact that your average VFW hall, conference center hotel ballroom or modern church parish hall cannot be temporarily made over into something which will be mistaken by your guests for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Not going to happen. Adjust.
7. Don’t try and cut corners economically by forcing your bridesmaids/family/significant others to make your damn wedding favors and decorations. Either pay a professional, or skip it entirely. Don’t torture your bridesmaids, etc.
8. A buffet dinner is fine. So is substantial finger-food. Really, you don’t have to have table assignments for everyone: just the bridal party and your respective immediate family.
9. Rough rule of thumb here – tell no one among the vendors of relevant services that it is a wedding reception. Just tell them it’s a party, so many people, such and such a date, and you want this and such for noshes.
10. It’s supposed to be a celebration. For you and your friends and family. And treating said friends and family as if they were some kind of walking ATM is mega-tacky. And basically, the rest of the world doesn’t much care about your special day. Especially if you and the significant other have been living together for ____ years and already have ____ children.
OK – clear on the concepts. Good.
(Don’t have any liquid in your mouth while watching this … look, I warned you, I’m not paying for any new keyboards.)
This five-day long celebration of books and music has been going on for a good few years; two weekends ago, I made the five-hour long drive from San Antonio to participate in the Hall of Texas Authors – for the second time. The Hall – that’s the main display room at the Abilene Convention Center, wherein local authors and a handful of publishers (some established and well known, some whom only hope to be established and well known at some future date) have a table-top display of their books on the last day of the festival. All during the week there are concerts, a medley of free and open events, readings and panel discussions. All of this has several stated intentions: to benefit the Abilene Public Library system and to support their programs, for one, to spotlight local and regional musical and authorial talent, for another, and for a third, to promote Abilene as a cultural Mecca and tourist destination. It isn’t New York or Las Vegas, by any stretch of the imagination yet, but that isn’t for lack of trying.
Abilene, you see, was established in the boom years of the Wild West: every element embedded in popular imagination about the Wild West was present there for one reason or another, from the classical wood-frame buildings, wooden-sidewalk and dusty streets visualization of a typical frontier town, the railways and occasional Indian warfare, to cattle drives and gunfights in the streets and saloons. (And the Butterfield Stage line, buffalo hunters, teamsters, traders and Army posts, too.) A lot of interesting stuff happened in and around Abilene, and a fair number of interesting people passed through town, or nearby. Many of these people are featured in a state-of the art museum called Frontier Texas, where there was a nice get-together for visiting authors, for volunteers and various members of the Abilene literary scene on Friday evening. I was especially interested in meeting one of the two big-name featured authors: Scott Zesch, whose book The Captured, was an account of white children kidnapped by Indians in raids on Hill Country settlements during and just after the Civil War. The story of his great-great-uncle, captured as a boy of ten or so, and eventually returned to his white family haunted me. Such a cruel thing, to loose a child, get the child back years later – and then to discover that the child has been lost to you for all time; I simply had to make that a plot twist in my own book. He’s from Mason, and from one of the old German families who settled the Hill Country. Anyway, interesting person to speak with, and listen to: he spoke briefly at that gathering and at the awards luncheon the following day. He is another of those completely convinced that a place like the frontier was so filled with interesting and heroic people, of fantastic events and things that seem too bizarre to be true (but are!) – and furthermore are almost unknown – that a writer can’t help but try and make a ripping good yarn out of them. The second featured writer had done just that, with creating a novel about a relatively unknown hero: Paulette Jiles, whose book The Color of Lightning was about Britt Johnson – supposedly one of the inspirations for the storyline of the movie The Searchers. It looks like Britt Johnson may get a movie in his own right, according to what Ms. Jiles said at the awards luncheon. The script for a movie based on Color of Lightning is in the works – all about how he went looking for his wife and children, taken by Indian raiders in 1864, and went back again and again, looking for other captives. He was, as Ms. Jiles said in her own remarks, very proper classical hero material: on a quest for something of great value to him, against considerable odds, blessed with a companion animal (his horse), good friends, and lashings of pluck and luck, so it is only fair that he get to be better known than in just dry-as-dust local historical circles. (Blondie and I inadvertently toured the Frontier Texas exhibits with her; just three of us and a hovering volunteer/docent. I didn’t recognize her – not being good at remembering faces. That is, I recognize people that I have seen before, but not always remember who they are or where I know them from.)
I sold a few sets of the Trilogy in the Author’s Hall the next day, and passed out a lot of fliers about my own books – including the one that’s due out in April, 2011 – but it’s not about sales, it’s more about getting out there and connecting with readers and potential readers.
And some darned nice BBQ, too – but that came later, from the Riverside Market in Boerne, on the way home. Only in Texas!
I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine (the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline) actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o’impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the author getting back to me to answer some questions about her MS. Life is good. And so is that 12-ounce bottle of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager that I have drunk about half of, as a reward to myself. Nice burnt-sugar overtones. I’m writing this Sunday evening at about 5:45 PM Sunday, so no need to go all interventionish on me.
Of course, I still have about three other big projects hanging over me – but the largest are out of the way, so I can come up for air and take note of some of the weirdness around me.
OK, so it looks like America’s next top model . . . is six foot something and so impossibly thin that a man’s hands can span her waist: Which was a charmingly old-fashioned standard of feminine beauty in the 19th century, when it was achieved only by the use of a fierce whale-bone corset and a couple of strong maids, hauling away. Dear god, the girl looks like she is morphing into a praying mantis. So, if this is what the fashion designers want to hang their clothes on, just animate a wire hanger and be done with it, and leave the rest of us alone with our cellulite.
So, the same breed of statist limpd**ks that tried to launch the Coffee Party and are trying yet again, with yet an amazingly stupid tee shirt and mug with the logo ‘f*ck tea’. Apparently that’s all you have to do, to get a movement really going. Print up some tee shirts and get your friends in the juice-box mafia (aka whatever has taken the place of JournoList) to push the meme.
Hey, boys and girls, we can put on a show ourselves, around in back in the barn!
Apparently, they insist they are trying to bring about a serious discussion of serious issues and
the something like 54% of citizens who approve and support Tea Party principles should just . . . I dunno, sit down and shut up and be ruled over unquestioningly by the new aristos. OK, one more time: strict interpretation of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, free markets. The Tea Party is a distributed, leaderless insurgency, based on a few core principles, not one person. I don’t know how I can make it any more plain than that. Aside from that, boys and girls, if it looks like bought n’paid for Astroturf, smells like Astroturf, feels like Astroturf and is being rolled out there by the same ol’ Astroturf purveyors . . . then it probably is indeed, Astroturf. Here’s hoping that not too many of the ‘f*ck tea’ ‘tards don’t get stuck with a garage full of un-sellable tee shirts . . . oh, f*ck that – I hope they do.
So, the Mighty O’s approval ratings continue to crater. Time to take another vacation. Look, Mr. Hopey-Changey, coming out with support of a mosque/community/center/arms bunker whatever in the neighborhood of New York’s Ground Zero on one day, then walking back the next – not a good idea. Indecisive, duplicitous, or just plain old telling-the-audience-what-they-wanna-hear? I don’t know, I’m not a licensed political professional, or a mind-reader, but you are getting bad advice from someone. Or if you are getting good advice . . . oh, f*ck it . . . take the bad advice. No one will ever notice. Really. November is a little more than a month and a half away. Kick back, you and the wife and kids take another vay-cay. It’s all on us, I insist.
Yes, freedom of religion in America technically would permit the mosque/whatever to be built wherever . . . good taste and a sense of tact would argue that Ground Zero is perhaps a good place. Sorta like a museum of the Confederacy would not be a good fit in downtown Harlem. (But it might give Cholly Rangel a case of the vapors, so it wouldn’t be a wasted effort to suggest it.)
Ah well – enough of a rant. Blondie and I went up to Boerne yesterday, and brought back some smoked ribs and BBQ sauce from (I kid you not) a Shell gas station quickie-mart on the corner of Main Street and SH-46, which has a meat counter and a BBQ stand which has the best BBQ around. It’s called the Riverside Market. We stopped in for some soft drinks, and it smelled so enticing that we stopped in on our way home from Boerne Market Days and bought some for take out. Remember – Boerne, Shell Station, on Main Street, and SH-46, just as you cross the river. The place was wall to wall with local people. And the BBQ smelt like the food of the gods.
I’ve been invited to be on one of the panels at the 5th Annual MilBlog Conference, in Arlington, Virginia, April 9th and 10th – and Blondie and I are intending to drive, since she will be on spring break! (Route tentatively planned as Dallas-Memphis-Knoxville-Harrisonburg)
Any other milbloggers from the San Antonio or Ft. Hood area also going to the Milblog Conference? Anyone in Arkansas, Tennessee or Virgina want us to stop and visit along the way? Recommend some good eats, or something interesting to see?
So, once the Halloween decorations were sorted out and put away, we could think of nothing better to do than to drive up to New Braunfels on Sunday morning to join in the Wurstfest celebration. What better place, and what better day is there to celebrate suds, sausage and song than in a small town, in a park by a cool green river, and on one of those gloriously cool autumn days? Music and revelry, carnival rides for the kids, and plentiful seating, under the pecan trees, or in the big and little tents, or the main hall. Wurstfest is one of those gloriously scrambled ethnic holidays that can only happen in the US – and possibly only in Texas. For sure, it might be the only place on earth where you can see a woman wearing a dirndl and cowboy boots, or have a serving of nachos and cheese with sauerkraut, while listening to an oompah band play the National Anthem, followed closely by the chicken dance. A monumental beer stein in the main hall features – you guessed it, a painting chickens dancing.
Besides the official leitmotif of sausages in every form – and there practically is every other variety of meat-onna-stick known to man available, the food vendors also have a wide range of fried stuff; regular fairground things like funnel cakes, but also deep-fried pickles and a delight which about made my arteries close up just to consider it; chicken-fried bacon. One of the vendors, the New Braunfels Smokehouse is well-established, but most of the other food vendors were run by local booster clubs and associations, like the Little League, the Canyon Lake Masonic Lodge, and the various Lions Clubs.
Of course – beer is the second official leitmotif, by the glass or the pitcher. New Braunfels was the second town established in the mid-19th century by a massive influx of German settlers brought over by a well-meaning, but ultimately disorganized group of nobly-born philanthropists. The Germans – those who survived the journey and the vicissitudes of the frontier – brought along an appreciation for arts, culture, and technology – and straightaway set to producing beer. It is only fitting that one of the largest, if not the largest collections of beer bottles in the world is permanently housed on the Wurstfest grounds in the Spass Haus, which is either a museum cunningly disguised as a bar, or a bar cunningly disguised as a museum. In either case, no one dares begin to sing “9 thousand, 9 hundred, 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” because they’d be there for at least the whole run of Wurstfest. The bottles are from all over the world; the oldest American beer bottles are from the 1840s.
And finally – it’s hats, some of them very strange; hats shaped like chickens seemed to be awfully popular, I spotted one shaped like a beer keg with a spigot on the side, another shaped like an over-flowing stein, (which really came from Germany, the wearer of it informed me) and the hat with a number of green tentacles on it also seemed pretty popular.
Wurstfest runs until Sunday, November 8th, not only at Landa Park, but throughout New Braunfels.