Bandera County TXGenWeb

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The Daily Review - Hayward California
Sunday, Jun 28, 1964, Page 10

BOB SLOANE - BANDERA, TEX. "Ol' Smokey Wilson is 54, looks a hale 64, and is proud of it.

"I'm just a natural-born old-timer," he says. "Even when I was a kid I was always more interested in the past than anything else. "Smokey" wears what looks like a 50-gallon hat, sports handlebars and sideburns, and knew Pistol Pete (no kin), one of the feared lawmen of the old West who killed 11 bad men and died in bed.

For years Smokey has been known around the Southwest as the man who lived with his family in a letter-authentic covered wagon drawn by a team of oxen (he made the yokes himself), touring fairs and shopping-center openings.

He's settling down here now to become a feature of a new western town-tourist attraction.

NON-CHARACTERS

The woods and hills northwest of San Antonio are full of non-characters like Smokey who like to wallow in the non-old West. This is the dude ranch country of Texas - you know, places with such names as Lonesome Pine and Bar-X, a couple of bunkhouses with non-plumbing but a lot of saddle horses. When the tenderfoots (tenderfeet?) come to town from Chicago and Des Moines, they ain't nothing too good fer them in the way of entertainment. Even a hanging.

A local group known as the Gunslingers stages a kind of rally when a large enough group is expected. They waylay the stagecoach - er, bus on a dark road outside of town, select a likely looking horse thief, and string him up in full view of everyone.

The victim is always the same man, a young electrical supplies salesman from San Antonio, who before our particular eyes danced on air for the 57th time. It's all done with an ingenious shoulder harness.

CITY SLICKERS

Like nearly everyone who hangs around dude ranch country, most of the Bandera band is a collection of city slickers who like to lay it on thick! One handsome, mustachioed blue-jeaned character found leaning over the Purple Cow Bar in the New Frontier Hotel turned out to be the editorial cartoonist for a San Antonio newspaper who is establishing the Western town Ol' Smokey will populate. Others were business and professional men of various persuasions. Most of the ranch owners are amateurs and city folk, with the notable exception of Twin Elm's Frank Anderwald, who had spent many years as foreman of a working ranch.

The legendary Old West really isn't too far removed from the character of Texas, though it's not always as obviously and cheerfully put on as at Bandera. "The Eyes of Texas" is still the only state song for which citizens are expected to rise, like the national anthem. And there is wild country and folklore wherever you go.

Up in northeastern Texas, for example, on the edge of Davy Crockett National Forest (what else did you think they'd call it?), sits the prosperous commercial and lumbering town of Lufkin. Except for a tale of the Old West that could have happened only in Texas, Lufkin today might have the 200 population of nearby Homer instead of its present respectable 20,000.

It seems one E. P. Lufkin was surveying the Homer area for a railroad terminal for the timbering interests.One Saturday night a few of his boys whooped it up not wisely but too well, and wound up in the lockup. Lufkin said he'd be durned if he'd locate a depot in a town where his hoys could be thrown in jail just for getting drunk, so he moved his operation to Lufkin. Sic transit gloria Homer. Just north of Lufkin is Nacogdoches, the oldest settlement in Texas and once a key trading post on the Royal Road, or Old Spanish Trail from Louisiana to San Antonio and Mexico. Here Sam Houston established his shortlived Republic of Fredonia,and the old stone fort which was its capital still stands on the handsome campus of Stephen F. Austin College.

TOWERING FORESTS

Towering pine forests and lake-filled woodlands surround this area, dressing it lushly in foliage not often associated with stereotypes of Texas. North of Nacogdoches (which you can pronounce all right if you forget the "g") is the town of Kilgore, in the heart of one of the richest oil fields in the world. There are more than 1,000 working oil wells in the city limits, many of them downtown. One family has five on its lot, and they just sit around on the porch all day watching themselves make money.

Texas food has come in for a lot of belaboring over the years, but if you take it without a grain of salt, you might develop a taste for barbecue and chili (which originated in San Antonio, not Mexico). Breakfast hams and sausages are as fine as any, and barbecue is not necessarily just beef. Among the charcoal sauteed delicacies are javelina (wild boar) and armadillo, both excellent if properly prepared, and side dishes such as french-fried prickly pear cactus, which tastes like eggplant.

GRATIFYING SUPPLY

Anyway, it's not all barbecue. There is a gratifying supply of Frenchmen and Swiss running around Texas' hostelries and restaurants these days. The Lakeway Inn at Lake Travis, managed by ex-Parisian Pierre Caselli, has an impressive wine list and Tournedos Rossini, among other things on the menu. Our only bad moment witht came when our 10-year-old Jonathan, asked for fried chicken and Pierre insisted he try the Beef Stroganoff. "Tastes like it's made with sour cream," soured Jonathan."