Now, the Blue Bonnet Hotel looking toward Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital -- 1956

If you were to climb the Blue Bonnet Hotel and take a photograph of the downtown Kerrville area in 1956, pointing your camera toward the Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital -- this is what you would see.  This photo was taken during the county's centennial by Starr Bryden.
Extra credit: how can I tell this photo was taken around 1956?

Click on image to enlarge

Downtown Kerrville, 1956.  Peterson's, the bus station,
the Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital, and Schreiner's,
plus Lehmann's and J. C. Penney's.

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From Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital to the Blue Bonnet Hotel -- 1956

If you were to climb the hospital and take a photograph of the downtown Kerrville area in 1956, pointing your camera toward the Blue Bonnet Hotel -- this is what you would see.  This photo was taken during the county's centennial by Starr Bryden.

Click on image to enlarge

Downtown Kerrville, 1956.  The Blue Bonnet Hotel behind Schreiner Bank.

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Emilie and Charles: Siblings who made a difference in Kerr County

There are few brother and sister teams who've had as much impact on Kerrville and Kerr County as Emilie and Charles.
Both were born in Riquewihr, France in the 1830s; Emilie in 1836, and her little brother Charles in 1838, and were two of five children born to a prominent dentist and his wife.
The family emigrated to Texas in 1852, traveling from their ancestral home through Paris, on to Le Havre, and across the Atlantic to New Orleans.  There they traveled by ship to Indianola, where they contracted for a mule team and pushed on to San Antonio.
The children were soon on their own, losing their father soon after arriving, and their mother not five years later.  At least three of the siblings ended up in the Texas Hill Country.
One brother, Gustav, "followed the gold fever to California,"  and though he came to the Texas Hill Country for awhile, but ended up going to Central America, where his fate was never learned.  Another brother, Fritz, stayed on in San Antonio, living until 1898.
Of the three children who came to the Texas Hill Country, one died young: Aime was among those murdered at the "Battle of the Nueces" by "Confederate" vigilantes.
Emilie and her brother Charles made their mark here in the Texas Hill Country, and both had long lives.
Charles enjoyed some success as a merchant, rancher and banker.  You'll probably recognize his last name: Schreiner.
Emilie had success as well, and her story is interesting to me.
According to the March 1941 edition of the Frontier Times Magazine, Emilie was confirmed at 14 in the Lutheran church in Riquewhir, she received "the best educational advantages in both French and German."  This refined education would prepare her for her life in the Texas Hill Country and provided a "quiet strength and courage" she would need to meet the challenges of the frontier.
In 1853 Emilie Schreiner married Caspar Real (pronounced 'Ree-all') and moved to a ranch on Martinez Creek, about 10 miles from San Antonio, near the present city of Converse.  That ranch did not prosper -- drought and market conditions were problematic -- and the young couple moved to Turtle Creek, about seven miles south of Kerrville, where they engaged in ranching.
That ranch was successful and prospered, but it took a lot of very hard work.
Their first cabin on Turtle Creek was completed in 1857.  It was "built of logs, chinked with chiseled rocks, and plastered with adobe.
"The long big room with a front porch, and the two small side rooms were warm and were equipped with the limited conveniences of that pioneer period.  The 'big room' contained one window, a roughly hewn cypress floor and a big homey fireplace with two iron hooks on which to hang cooking vessels when needed.  A three-legged stand was kept usually on the hearth near the side on which to put iron pots for boiling food.  Bread was baked in a "skillet and lid."  Mrs. Real frequently baked cookies for the children at Christmas and other special occasions in this skillet or 'Dutch oven' as it is now called.
"One of the small rooms became the Real kitchen as soon as it was possible to buy a cook stove; the other small room was used for a bedroom.  Each of these rooms had only one window of two panes.  The kitchen for several years had only a dirt floor."
All eight of the Real children were taught at home for their "first schooling," but later they attended schools in Comfort, Boerne, and San Antonio.  Four sons attended Southwestern University in Georgetown; two sons went to schools in San Antonio.
The eight children in the born to Caspar and Emilie Real were Walter, a rancher; Emma, who married Herman Stieler of Comfort; Albert, a rancher; Arthur, also a rancher; Julius, who served as a Texas state senator, among other offices, and is the person for whom Real County is named; Robert, also a rancher; Mathilde, who was the wife of Hubert Ingenhuett of Comfort; and Charles, the youngest, who was a rancher who later worked for the State Comptroller's department in Austin.
Julius's daughter married into the Neunhoffer family, and their son Julius served as Kerr County Judge for many years.
So, the well-educated girl with "quiet strength" helped found a family still active in community affairs more than a 156 years later, an impressive legacy indeed.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who received a very tasty surprise this past week: a box of "Dietert Cookies," prepared by Chef Karen of the Dietert Center in Kerrville. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times March 23, 2013.

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Kerrville's Dixie Movie Theater

I love this old clipping showing a great photograph of Kerrville's "Dixie Theater."  This theater was on the north side of the 800 block of Water Street, past the antique mall and toward the corner.

Click on image to enlarge

"Last" bear killed in Kerr County

This photo has been captioned "The Last Bear Killed in Kerr County," but somehow I don't think it's accurate.  Even a city girl like Ms. Carolyn has seen a bear in the woods nearby, so I imagine other bears have also met the same fate as this one.

Click on image to enlarge

The photo was taken by J. E. Grinstead, who was the publisher of the Kerrville Mountain Sun. The photo was captioned in a much later issue of that paper: "This proud group of hunters pose beside the last bear that was killed in Kerr County, and the hunt took place in the summer of 1904.  It seems the bear had developed a fondness for fresh pork, so Bruno Schwethelm rounded up neighbors and chased the animal for over three miles before he was cornered and shot.  Left to right are Henry Karger, Bruno Schwethelm (who shot the bear), Walter Karger, Edgar Doebbler, and Otto Schwethelm.  The picture was taken by J. E. Grinstead beside the Favorite Saloon...."
The Favorite Saloon is now owned by the Rectors, and is the home of Hill Country Living, in the 700 block of Water Street in downtown Kerrville.

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Sidney Baker Street Bridge -- mystery solved!

The photos I posted of the Sidney Baker Street bridge in Kerrville were something of a mystery.  They were in with some photographs taken by Starr Bryden, a pioneer photographer in our area.  The photos looked to be taken around 1975 -- but Bryden died in 1959.  So the mystery was this: who took the photographs?

Sidney Baker Street Bridge, Kerrville, mid-1970s.

Today I received this email:

Hey Joe,

OK, you are probably not going to believe this, but I think that I took those pictures of the Sidney Baker Street Bridge!

When I was a junior at Tivy I took a photography class and got hooked by the camera bug. Perhaps some of Star Bryden rubbed off on me. I knew that the bridge was going to be dismantled, so one day after school I went around and took pictures of it. This would have been in 1975 I'm pretty sure. . In the second picture taken from the sidewalk by the hospital you can see the large orange construction sign to the right of the bridge. It was announcing the dates that the bridge was going to be closed.  In another one from below, you can see an orange crane. They had not started the construction yet, but it was about to start, so I went all around taking pictures of it. I distinctly remember going up to the 7th floor of the hospital and taking a picture from the window of the employees break room. I also remember taking those pictures from below the bridge including the one of the old grand stand that was left over from the ski shows.

In all of my searching through our house in Kerrville since my mother died I have been hoping that I would come across those pictures, but never have. I haven't even seen the negatives. If I am correct, those pictures were taken with a little Kodak 110 camera which used a very narrow film.

Where did you find them? I'm guessing that my mother must have donated them to the library or the historical society sometime in the past 38 years, because I have not seem them since high school.

I'm really not crazy! But when I saw the first picture I thought it looked familiar. Then the more I looked I began to realize that those really looked exactly like the pictures that I took that day.

Thanks a lot and take care.

Steve Meeker

Well, there you go.  Mystery solved!

Kerrville's Sidney Baker Street bridge, part 2

When the Sidney Baker Street bridge in downtown Kerrville was widened in the mid-1970s, it meant the steel arches would be removed.  Someone wanted to preserve the look of the bridge, and so they went all over around the bridge and took a lot of photos -- there are too many for one post, so I published the first set yesterday.
This is the bridge and park as I remember it as a young teen here in Kerrville.

Click on any image to enlarge

Dietert Cookies Delivered!

My last column in the Kerrville Daily Times told a story of Rosalie Dietert who had one of the very first (if not the first) stoves in Kerrville.  Ms. Dietert was quite a cook and many of her most remembered recipes were baked desserts and cookies.  One of the recipes she passed down to her children (and to many in the Kerrville community) was for "Schnecken," a rolled dough pastry kind of like a cinnamon roll, but with sour cream in the batter.  I closed my column with this line: "Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who wouldn't mind a plate of schnecken, or "Dietert" cookies about now."

Well, Tina Woods, the executive director of the Dietert Center, showed the column to the Dietert Center's Chef Karen, who made up a batch, and Tina delivered them today.

THEY ARE WONDERFUL.

Who knew history could be so tasty?  Thanks Chef Karen and Tina Woods!!!

My long-time friend Tina Woods,Executive Director of
Kerrville's Dietert Center, with their gift of "Schnecken" or "Dietert" cookies.

Kerrville's Sidney Baker Street Bridge, part 1

When the Sidney Baker Street bridge in downtown Kerrville was widened in the mid-1970s, it meant the steel arches would be removed.  Someone wanted to preserve the look of the bridge, and so they went all around the bridge and took a lot of photos -- there are too many for one post, so I'll provide the rest tomorrow.
This is the bridge and park as I remember it as a young teen here in Kerrville.

Click on any image to enlarge

More tomorrow.....

Dietert Cookies

A long-time family friend loaned me stack of "Frontier Times" magazines, and I was like a kid in a candy store, spending many happy hours going through each issue.

Schnecken, as pictured in
Wikipedia here.

The magazines were published by J. Marvin Hunter, in Bandera, and are dedicated to Texas history, particularly the early settlement of our state. The motto of the magazine was "Devoted to frontier history, border tragedy, pioneer achievement."
Some Kerrville folks might remember his son, J. Marvin Hunter, Jr., who served on the Kerrville City Council in the 1960s. He was a printer here, and the man from whom my parents bought our printing company.
Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing things I learned from the magazines in this space. Some of the stories provide new (or at least new to me) information about our area; some are humorous; and some are, well, strange.
Let's start with the new information about our area:
I have cited the March, 1941 issue of the "Frontier Times" before, but it's now apparent the source I used abbreviated and condensed the story written by T. U. Taylor, leaving several important things out in so doing.
The story tells a lot about the earliest settlers of Kerrville and focuses on the women in those families. The title of the story was "Heroines of the Hills," and I learned, for the first time, Taylor used this title as the title of a series of articles; the March 1941 issue focused on Kerrville.
In the Kerrville story, brief sketches are offered on the following: Elaine Enderle Schreiner; Rosalie Hess Dietert; Emilie Schreiner Real; Henrietta Lowrance Rees; Harriet Gill Scott; Mary Tatum Burney; and the Tivy sisters, though their first names are not listed.
Of these, the most detailed sketch is of Rosalie Hess Dietert, a German immigrant to Texas who married a fellow immigrant, Christian Dietert, who was a millwright.
The Dietert name should be familiar to modern ears: the Dietert Center was created by one of Christian and Rosalie's descendents, Harry Dietert. Dietert Chapel, which is on the campus of Schreiner University, was a gift of Harry and Alma Dietert to the school.
I've reported here before the first Christmas tree in Kerrville was in the home of Rosalie and Christian Dietert. Their home, I believe, was in the area around One Schreiner Center, in the 800 block of Water Street, which also served as an early Kerrville post office. Though women did not receive appointments in those days, and though Christian Dietert was the appointed postmaster, most of the duties and work of the post office fell to Mrs. Dietert, a job she performed for nearly 15 years.
One thing about the family I have not reported, though, was another first (or near-first) they brought to our community: a stove.
Cooking in those days was much more difficult than now. Rosalie Dietert started housekeeping with a skillet and a small dutch oven, "which was a small round iron pot with three legs and a dented-in lid to hold live coals."  She also had a brass kettle holding about one gallon, for cooking utensils.
"Meat there was always plenty, venison, wild turkey, fish, occasionally bear, and later beef. In the beginning there were practically no vegetables. They made a salad of wild parsley and tea from a variety of the small prairie sage, and greens from the 'lamb's quarters' or 'land squatters.'"
However, "in about 1870 some cook stoves were brought west as far as San Antonio, one of which [Rosalie Dietert] became the proud possessor. No more out-door cooking in all sorts of weather -- a stove and a real oven to bake bread and cakes!  Her recipes were gotten out, and all sorts of good things were made for holidays and birthdays. The favorites were stollen (loaf cake), pfeffer-nusse (spice cookies), and schnecken (a sweet dough rolled out flat and covered with brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins, currants and pecan meats. This was all rolled up, cut into slices, and baked.)"
The recipe became very popular in early Kerrville, and many early local families enjoyed making schnecken, though, among many early families it went by a different name: "Dietert Cookies."
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who wouldn't mind a plate of schnecken, or "Dietert" cookies about now. This column appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times Mar 16, 2013.

Saturday's column: The Town Market

Not my bag. The contents
look way too healthy.

Each week I am tempted to write in this space long soliloquies, talking to myself as much as to you, Gentle Reader, about how things used to be in Kerrville -- "Why back in my day," I'd start, then you could fill in the blank.  And, I'll admit, as I get older this temptation is stronger, perhaps because things here have changed so much from when I was a boy here in the 1960s.
This week I realized some of the important things remain the same.
Time was when one walked down the streets of our "downtown" area, you saw a lot of folks you knew, from passerby to shopkeepers.  Most of the commerce in our community took place in just the few blocks of "downtown," from Jefferson Street to the river, from Tivy Street to Francisco Lemos, but most of the traffic I remember was in the area closest to Earl Garrett and Water streets.
In those days the 600-800 blocks of Water Street, plus the 200 and 300 blocks of Earl Garrett contained many of the businesses people visited at least once a week.  Two banks, both newspapers, barber shops, beauty shops, Ladies' ready to wear, haberdasheries, the book store, two movie theaters, magazine stand, sporting goods, a tobacconist, and an 8-story hotel, all piled into those four blocks, along with our only post office.
Down on just our little block, the 600 block of Water, besides our print shop, was the bus station, the General Motors dealership, a movie theater, a milliner, the Western Union office, a barber, a lawyer, a locker plant, and, later, a retirement home. (Of these, only the print shop remains.)
The downtown area was busy because everything was in the same area.
There wasn't a lot we didn't know about each other, and the weekly newspaper served as a kind of index, usually of things we already knew.
For urban types this lack of "privacy" might have been the main drawback for small-town life. There were times when you couldn't paint your mailbox without hearing a discussion about it the very next week, sometimes among people you didn't really know well, and who didn't even live near you, especially if you chose a non-standard color of paint.
And, when I was a boy, if I did something amiss while in the downtown area, you could be sure my parents had already heard about it by the time I got back to the print shop.
Perhaps I don't miss everything about those days.
This week, though, while dashing into the grocery store to grab something on my way home, it occurred to me many of the things I miss are still here.
At the grocery store you see all sorts of people: rich, poor, young, old.  You see folks who are new to our community, and those who are members of families who were among the earliest settlers here. Everyone needs food, and so one can count on seeing most everyone at one of our grocery stores at least once a week.
I'll confess: I like to go to the grocery store, especially with Ms. Carolyn.  There was a time when these weekly visits to the store were an excuse for some alone time (our children, during their teen years, did not like grocery shopping), and it was often, there among the aisles, we discussed plans and made decisions about our week.
But there is another reason I  like to go there.  It is one of the few places where you get to see members of the community you rarely see, especially if you do something especially daring and go on a day other than your regular shopping day.  That way you get to see the Tuesday people, or the Thursday evening people: for a moment your orbit intersects with their patterned orbit.
It is there you see the artist considering beverages, the elderly couple debating the merits of opposing brands of cereal, little children, both well-behaved and normal.  On one recent trip I saw both a judge and, a few moments later  in a separate aisle, a recent defendant in his court.  I've spied husbands and wives who had no idea the other was also in the store, often carrying the  same things in their separate carts.  Sometimes I tell them, but usually I let them be surprised later.
In the Old World there was often a market in the middle of town where all came and traded.  I suppose, in a small way, grocery stores are something like that today.
Take the time to learn the names of some of those who work at the grocery store, people you're likely to see every week.  You'll be surprised how they react when you know their name and a bit of their story. (The vast number of shoppers never take the time to learn even their name.)
I was surprised to realize how this trip to the grocery store, which we consider a weekly and often expensive chore, can actually make things similar to what they were, long ago, when Kerrville was a much smaller place.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who  is often looking for an item that was once stocked on aisle six, about halfway down, on the right.  It is no longer there.  This column appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times March 9, 2013.

Rare photos of Kerrville's self-propelled rail car -- the '500'

For those who don't remember, Kerrville had rail service until the 1970s.  Passenger service stopped long before -- but in the early part of last century there was a little self-propelled car which shuttled passengers from here to San Antonio.

The '500' car, at the Kerrville depot.
This photograph is fairly well known, and I published it in one of my books.

What a lot of people don't realize is this: there are other photos of the little car, most notably in a publication by J. E. Grinstead.

Grinstead, who published the Kerrville Mountain Sun soon after his arrival here later published magazines and pulp-westerns.  Most of his magazines were plainly meant to "boost" the Kerrville area.  In one issue he published many images of the little '500' car.  I can only imagine the passengers were game to his plan, because the photographs indicate they stopped many times on their journey to San Antonio.

Click on any image to enlarge

The '500' crossing Cibolo Creek.
Note the fellow posing on the rocks in the creek bed.

Traveling through "Spanish Pass."

Crossing the Guadalupe.  This bridge still exists, past Comfort.

Although it's hard to find, the '500' car is in this photo.

The little '500' crossing Cypress Creek Bridge.

Kerrville's 1974 Christmas Parade, Part 2

Wendy McGraw McCurdy -- who was much younger than I though we were both at Tivy High School around the same time -- sent along some photographs of Kerrville's 1974 Christmas Parade, which traveled down Junction Highway and turned onto Water.  I'm hoping some of you readers can help me identify some of the folks pictured.  Thanks, Wendy, for sending these along!

Click on any image to enlarge

Kerrville's 1974 Christmas Parade, Part 1

Wendy McGraw McCurdy -- who was much younger than I though we were both at Tivy High School around the same time -- sent along some photographs of Kerrville's 1974 Christmas Parade, which traveled down Junction Highway and turned onto Water.  I'm hoping some of you readers can help me identify some of the folks pictured.  More tomorrow.

Click on any image to enlarge

A Hippo in Ingram

I am grateful when readers and far-flung friends send me Kerrville and Kerr County history items, and a few months ago a large manila envelope arrived at the print shop which contained several interesting items.
It came from Fred Bernhard, who now lives near Buchanan Dam, who is part of the extensive Kerr County Bernhard family.
I graduated from Tivy with three Bernhards, Julie and her twin cousins Earl and Carvel, and so have been aware of the family for as long as I can remember.  It was always a special treat when the boys brought some of their famous Bernhard's smoked jerky from the family's locker plant between Kerrville and Ingram.
Among the items was a clipping from the San Angelo Standard Times dated September 12, 1976, an article by Jerry Lackey with the headline "What's for Dinner? Hippo you say!"
As a person who has worked with local businesses my entire life, I am often surprised by the resourcefulness of hill country businesses. There are few problems Kerr County business people cannot solve, and often their solutions are both ingenious and eloquent.
Imagine, then, this problem: a customer shows up at your door with a 3,500 pound hippopotamus and requests your company to kill and butcher it.
"A 3,500 pound animal," the news story reads, "was sent to market here Thursday from the Waters Ranch at Utopia.  Following slaughter in Bernhard's, the meat carcass was shipped to Chicago where it will be offered along with other specialty items in northern restaurants."
I have worked in downtown Kerrville for over thirty years and have received many special requests from customers, but never one as "special" as the Bernhards received that day.  I cannot imagine their reaction.
"The hippo has lived on the range of the Waters Ranch for about one year.  Splashing about stock ponds most of the time, the animal seemed quite happy with his West Texas environment, similar in many ways to the streams of Africa from which he came two years ago.
"'We didn't really care about slaughtering the hippo,' explained a ranch official, 'but in the time he has been at the Waters Ranch he has killed 16 head of registered Angus cattle.  Thus, we had to do something.  The Chicago meat market was an answer to our prayers.'"
Yes, I can see how the hippo was a problem.  But the problem was about to be transported, all 3,500 pounds of it, to the Bernhard locker plant.
"Milton Bernhard, a co-owner of the Ingram Locker Plant rushed about the office here Thursday before the animal was to arrive researching ways to kill a hippo.
"'No, I've never killed one before,' he explained. 'Matter of fact, I don't know if I ever saw one in my life.'"
Consider this: in 1976, there was no Internet, no Google, no rapid way to look up hints on how to prepare a hippo carcass, or even how to kill a hippo.  I wonder what resources were available in 1976 to help solve this problem.  The reporter looked up hippopotamus in the World Book Encyclopedia and learned that hippo skin is practically bullet proof.
The hippo arrived at the locker plant still quite alive, meaning the crew was expected not only to butcher the carcass but also to dispatch it.  It took just one shot, thankfully, or there would have been a very upset hippo in Ingram.
"The hardest job the Bernhard staff had to do was moving the large carcass into the slaughter room for skinning and quartering."
The hippo "was huge, thick-skinned and mean looking.  He had a heavy barrel-shaped body set on four short thick legs."
Thanks, Mr. Bernhard, for sending the clipping along.  It's certainly not every day a hippo arrives at a local business's doorstep, but it sounds like your family's crew handled it with aplomb.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who has seen hippos at the zoo. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times March 2, 2013.