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December 17, 2019
Growing Up In Bandera
By Glenn Clark
Special to the Prophet
If you never went to the meat market back in the day and ordered some hog jowl then it's a pretty sure bet you weren't from around here. That or maybe the three pounds of bulk baloney for a dollar. Both were a staple in the Clark home during my early Bandera days and were readily available at Rhodes Country Shopper.
The specialty of the house was most definitely my dads favorite, sardine gravy and biscuits. He also liked the cornbread in a glass of milk but I still pass on that at every opportunity. I have never been a big cornbread fan. Plain white bread or a flour tortilla will work for me.
It is a very rare occasion when I can get my wife to fix that delicious sardine concoction for me along with a side of fried eggs. "You want to stink up the house?" is her usual reply to my request. It seems it's getting almost impossible to bribe her these days. Old age is setting in or maybe I'm just losing my charm.
I love the reaction I get from the younger folks when I use an old saying or expression on them and they are completely clueless. "You ain't just a’woofin.'" "You need some hair of the dog that bit you.” "Two heads are better than one even if they're cabbage heads.” That's the kind of stuff they don't teach you in school. At times my wife gives me the evil eye when I am passing on to my grandkids some of the things I learned in my early vulnerable life. Tradition has little to do with it, she claims.
The Longhorn Cafe, The Silver Spur, The Cabaret, The Rio Vista and Frontier Hotel are things from my early memories which have run their course and now are becoming fading memories. Their heydays are well documented but are of little interest to lots of folks who now reside here in our town. Much like our gravel streets with just a few street lights and no house numbers, they are a thing of the past.
Unless there is a horse, cattle or cowboy connection it will garner little more than a casual mention during discussions of "the old days" around here now. There seems to be little interest in the things outside of The Cowboy Capital of the World brand when it comes to attracting tourists. I guess my view is a bit prejudiced due to having lived in a time when other things were an important part of our community.
Good, bad, ugly or beautiful we cannot get away from what we were in the past. Bandera has had its days of glory along with times of struggling to survive. All traces of the old mill dam and tailrace were removed years ago and that is a shame. I recall many years ago when they used rotenone to clear the river of undesirable fish. Some good intentions gone awry.
Hopefully we will continue to learn and make better decisions as we go about our Growing Up In Bandera lives. I would like for all the future members of my family to know the complete history of this little town that raised me.
#208 2019
The specialty of the house was most definitely my dads favorite, sardine gravy and biscuits. He also liked the cornbread in a glass of milk but I still pass on that at every opportunity. I have never been a big cornbread fan. Plain white bread or a flour tortilla will work for me.
It is a very rare occasion when I can get my wife to fix that delicious sardine concoction for me along with a side of fried eggs. "You want to stink up the house?" is her usual reply to my request. It seems it's getting almost impossible to bribe her these days. Old age is setting in or maybe I'm just losing my charm.
I love the reaction I get from the younger folks when I use an old saying or expression on them and they are completely clueless. "You ain't just a’woofin.'" "You need some hair of the dog that bit you.” "Two heads are better than one even if they're cabbage heads.” That's the kind of stuff they don't teach you in school. At times my wife gives me the evil eye when I am passing on to my grandkids some of the things I learned in my early vulnerable life. Tradition has little to do with it, she claims.
The Longhorn Cafe, The Silver Spur, The Cabaret, The Rio Vista and Frontier Hotel are things from my early memories which have run their course and now are becoming fading memories. Their heydays are well documented but are of little interest to lots of folks who now reside here in our town. Much like our gravel streets with just a few street lights and no house numbers, they are a thing of the past.
Unless there is a horse, cattle or cowboy connection it will garner little more than a casual mention during discussions of "the old days" around here now. There seems to be little interest in the things outside of The Cowboy Capital of the World brand when it comes to attracting tourists. I guess my view is a bit prejudiced due to having lived in a time when other things were an important part of our community.
Good, bad, ugly or beautiful we cannot get away from what we were in the past. Bandera has had its days of glory along with times of struggling to survive. All traces of the old mill dam and tailrace were removed years ago and that is a shame. I recall many years ago when they used rotenone to clear the river of undesirable fish. Some good intentions gone awry.
Hopefully we will continue to learn and make better decisions as we go about our Growing Up In Bandera lives. I would like for all the future members of my family to know the complete history of this little town that raised me.
#208 2019