Janice Williams Loves Austin

May 5, 2013

Too Many Stories

Filed under: Bluebonnets,Cemeteries,Family,Taphophilia,Travel — Janice @ 9:43 pm

I have too many stories rattling around in my head. Every time I think about putting one down, another crowds in and says, “What about me???? You were going to tell about me a year ago. Surely my story is of more import to your thousands of readers and the generations to come than THAT one.” And as soon as I start to consider that and move my thoughts that direction, another demanding, irritating story comes begging in an even more sniveling whiney tone and before long I shut the whole process down and eat chocolate.

I call it my “artistic process.”

Trouble is, time passes and the weight increases, but there are no blogs in the pipeline, no pages piled by the typewriter, no checks in the mail from New York publishers.

So let me tell a story. ANY story. The first story that comes to mind, the closest at hand, the freshest. All those stories of my ancestors can wait a day or 10. Or until I run out of chocolate.

…

Mark and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on April 24th. We are both a little bit gobsmacked (I am not certain that is the word, but it feels right) that we have achieved such a momentous occasion. Him more so than me because I always believed I would get to a 20th anniversary. Since he had had some rough starts and do-overs, he is especially pleased to prove that he could do it. Do it he did. The 20 years flew by and we are still happily doing lots of the things we were doing when we fell in love and started this adventure.

On the weekend after our anniversary we did some of those fun things. On our honeymoon trip we went in search of antiques and bluebonnets and small towns and cemeteries. We did that again.

Our main goal on the first trip was to go to Pontotoc and see the Union Band Cemetery. Mark had discovered it online somehow and had seen a beautiful picture of it in the bluebonnets.  Last year we stopped in Pontotoc on our way to Santa Fe and Taos. It is an interesting small Texas town because it has ruins like few towns have. There are walls and window sills of an abandoned academy that operated there in the 1870s and 1880s. Across the road is another brick building, empty and abandoned. The academy stopped operating in the 1880s when a typhoid fever epidemic wiped out lots of people in the town. In the 1940s, a fire destroyed most of the buildings in the town. The town never recovered and the ruins are still there and are incredibly picturesque.

Sadly, a little abandoned cemetery lies just north of the town. And when I say abandoned, I really mean abandoned. There is no sign or indication that it is a cemetery, only the fact that you can see some graves there. It did look like someone had cleared some mesquite and prickly pear at one time, but they are really fighting a losing battle.

pontotoccopy

Most of the graves were like this… rock enclosures with no markings or identification. Some were upright and in place like the one on the left, but most were tumbledown. Mark noticed that the death dates all seemed to be about 1888. When I got home I looked up the cemetery and read that the typhoid epidemic was about that time and a local doctor was worried that the cemetery was too close to the water supply and the city established a new cemetery on the other side of town. Another account said that the first cemetery got full and they had to start the second. We went to it, too, and it is the “new” cemetery and was founded in 1885. So I don’t know the full story of the change in cemeteries. The new one was very nice and grass and a few bluebonnets. It was a mix of old graves and new.

pontotoccemecopy

I always feel sorry for gravestones that are totally crowded out by trees.

And we did make it to the Union Band Cemetery, which had more bluebonnets than any, but they were going to seed. Notice that this grave has a Texas Ranger marker to the right. Ranger Miller would have been a ranger in the early part of the 20th Century. I’ll have to look him up. He may have been on the border watching out for Pancho Villa.

pontotocrangercopy

We didn’t JUST visit cemeteries with strangers in them. We went through Llano on the way out (and, yes, ate at Cooper’s Barbecue) and I had Mark swing through the huge Llano City Cemetery. I had looked up the location of an aunt and uncle, but didn’t know if I would be able to locate them. Having a location and looking at it on Google or a map is a whole different experience than finding it on the ground, I have discovered. But we got to the area and Mark spotted the Hallford grave right off the bat. He has the pictures with that grave so I can’t post it yet. It is the grave of my great-grandfather’s brother Johnny. I have a transcript of a diary or a life story that his wife, Mattie Phillips Hallford wrote about her young life and their courtship and marriage. It is the sweetest document. I was glad to get to see her grave.

So that was just a small portion of one day of our long weekend celebrating our 20th year of marriage.  I guess I’ll steal Mark’s Facebook photo he took of us in Pontotoc. This is the ruins of the Academy that we’ve watched deteriorate over the years. I guess it could same the same about us.

 

pontotocUS

September 27, 2012

Bluebonnets!

Filed under: Austin,Bluebonnets — Janice @ 9:36 pm

Everyone in my family and my circle of friends knows how I feel about bluebonnets. I go a little bit crazy when it comes to our state flower. That’s why I did my little happy dance this morning when I walked outside and found this in our little garden:

fIrstbluebonnets2013

We have a garden by the front walk and it has flagstone in the middle so you can walk out into the middle of the garden. Most mornings I do walk out into the garden and check out “how my garden grows.” Right now things are healthy because the temperatures have come down and we had a good soaking 3-inch rain about 10 days ago and it is happy. I just didn’t realize how happy until this morning. First I saw spiderworts. That two-bladed plant close to the bottom of the picture is a spiderwort. There were several big ones growing in the flagstones. I stepped in to inspect them and see if that was what they were and then I saw the bluebonnets. Usually I catch them before they start putting out the second set of leaves. Actually (and I had to go look this up, but I used to know it), the first “leaves” aren’t really leaves, they are called cotyledons and they are part of the embryo of the seed and that is why they look completely different. In the case of the bluebonnet, they are rounded and there are two of them. Then the true leave form with their characteristic points and creases and they are easy to spot. These have all obviously sprung up from the rains last weekend.

I have explained the way bluebonnets work to a lot of people who try to plant them in the spring because they bloom in the spring. That doesn’t work though. You have to plant the bluebonnets, like, right now! Or even a month ago so that they are in the ground when these first fall rains come down and they have time to get established and put out some roots and this greenery. People ask if they will freeze in the winter. Maybe they do. I don’t know. But if they do, it doesn’t seem to hurt them, they bounce right back and can still have a beautiful spring. Obviously, I’m no expert and I haven’t studied them in great detail over hard winters. It seems like hard winters are often very dry winters, too, so it might be hard to tell if it was the freezing or the dryness that kept the bluebonnets from blooming.

Bluebonnets are very smart, though. If the conditions are not right for them to bloom and produce and make seed, they won’t. They will stay underground and wait. We had planted bluebonnets and put out bluebonnet plants down here several times with no luck. A few years back Mark bought some seeds at the Wildflower Center of the Wildflower Farm of Fredericksburg and was determined to get some going. He planted them in the fall, but nothing came up in the spring. But it was also a lousy year for bluebonnets every where. But that fall, the bluebonnets began peeking out and we have a great crop the next spring and each year they have been coming back, over and over. We are very careful to let them go completely to seed and let them fling that seed wherever they may go. They can throw their seed up to 50 feet, they say. Fortunately, lots of it still lands right where we had them before, as the picture is shows. I think the bluebonnets like these flagstones because they aren’t going to have a hoe disturb them. Not that hoes often get used in my garden, sadly. In the garden beds themselves, there were plenty of bluebonnets coming up, but there are also lots of grasses that need to be pulled, but now I’m leery of messing with the roots of the bluebonnets.

Mark it down, we are less than 3 months this side of Christmas and the bluebonnets have appeared. Within 3 months the OTHER side of Christmas, we’ll have blooms and springtime in Central Texas.

April 7, 2012

Easter is Here

Filed under: At home,Bluebonnets,Childhood Memories — Janice @ 11:22 pm

I truly don’t know why I’ve been on such a long writer’s block. Whatever.

Easter is here tomorrow and that makes me think of many good Easters I’ve had in my life. In Amarillo, Easter was like Halloween in that, as likely as not, it was too cold to do what you planned to do… hunt Easter eggs. We would wear our light spring dresses and white shoes, but freeze all the way too and from church.

As an adult, a favorite Easter memory was when I lived in Dallas and went home to Canyon for Easter. My best friend Beth joined our family for the day and my sister and her family were there. The boys were about 3 and 2 and were adorable in their little matching clothes hunting Easter eggs. We would hide Easter eggs in plain sight and when I “couldn’t find” an egg laying right in front of me Brandt was a good helper by pointing and saying “Aunt Zan, it’s RIGHT THERE.” Connor mostly sucked on his pacifier and had no idea what the fuss was about.

In Austin, our Easters are often bluebonnet trips into the country. We’ve had plenty of those this year and seen so many beautiful bluebonnet patches. And Mark is off on a trip of his own this weekend so I am home taking care of things that have been shoved aside for the last few weeks while I entertained others, did taxes, did work, or felt crappy. I’ve had a highly successful day and if tomorrow is just as successful, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

March 27, 2011

Our First Bluebonnet Trip of 2011

Filed under: Bluebonnets,Cemeteries — Janice @ 10:40 pm

I stress that this was our FIRST bluebonnet trip this year because I am bound and determined to get more than one.

Mark and I got married in bluebonnet season on purpose in 1993 and took a fabulous honeymoon with bluebonnets along the roadways everywhere from Dallas to Austin to Fredericksburg to Bastrop to Jefferson to Mount Pleasant and back home to Dallas. After that, we took a “bluebonnet trip” each year in the spring to celebrate our anniversary and to see bluebonnets. We had some great trips.

Then we moved to Austin in 1999 and suddenly we were surrounded by bluebonnets on every trip to the grocery and downtown and to work and back. We quit taking bluebonnet trips! Oh, we still occasionally made some trips out to the Hill Country, but we kind of lost some of the specialness of a specified bluebonnet trip.

We started back on that bluebonnet trip path last year with a great Sunday outing on Easter Sunday and we went to LaGrange. We stumbled upon a beautiful cemetery just overgrown with bluebonnets and I discovered that combining three of my favorite things:  Mark, cemeteries, and bluebonnets, into one day is a wonderful thing!

This weekend was Mark’s first days off in 3 weeks. SXSW is just a nightmare in his job and the work didn’t end when the people went home. He had worked all day and into the night every day this week so we planned on running away on Saturday and not answering a phone.

We started the day in the barbecue capitol of Texas:  Lockhart!  We stood in line a while at Smitty’s, our favorite place, and decided we were too hungry to stand in line, so we moved on to Black’s Barbecue. I’ve always liked Black’s because they have real side dishes and real silverware and they even offer barbecue sauce. I find them much more accommodating than the other 2 barbecue joints in town. (oh, btw, I know there is another one, but that place is the WORST and I don’t even count it when I’m thinking about Lockhart and bbq).

After we ate a LOT of brisket, sausage, ribs, and great side dishes, I chatted with Mr. Black a little bit. He’s 85 now and as sweet as can be. I met him when I did a radio lunch down there in 2007. He’s a very outgoing, friendly man. He said he’s turning the business over to his sons and grandsons most of the time now. He was visiting with a grandson that was about to begin working in the business on Monday.

After lunch we made our way toward Smithville and then LaGrange. We stopped by Plum, Texas, where we found the spectacular Indian paintbrushes last year, but there was no field of them, just a few. It might still be a bit early or it might just be a bad year. In LaGrange we went back to the cemetery where we found so many last year and found the same thing there. The best plot still had a lot on it, but they were sparse through most of the cemetery.

So on to Independence, Texas, which was our destination all along. We barely got there with enough daylight in the day. There were lots of people around the pillars that mark the beginnings of Baylor University in Independence. Many were taking pictures in the bluebonnets, including a couple of brides having professional shots done. We bypassed the people when we saw the sign that said “historic cemetery” and an arrow and we drove north until we found a beautiful cemetery and a nice mound of bluebonnets!

We parked and had a great time admiring the stones and mostly the bluebonnets. I always try to take a picture of Mark taking pictures:

We read all the stones and were surprised (spooked?) to discover that two of the graves that were covered in bluebonnets had died on March 26… the day we were visiting. Each in different years. Kind of an odd coincidence.

Mark has the best pictures from our trip, I hope, but I haven’t seen them yet. These are all from my phone (which gave me a heck of a time getting them! I ended up having to email each one to myself.).

Here is one picture of us, bluebonnets, and graves in the heart of Texas Independence on the eve of the 175th anniversary of the Massacre at Goliad. History, bluebonnets, cemeteries, and time alone with my best friend and sweetheart. It was a fabulous day.

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