I was going through a folder containing all the notes I wrote down on stray bits of paper during soul-sucking day jobs. And I do mean all - the following is obviously dated to 1991, when I had a temp job as ticket cashier for the Splendors of Mexico Exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art, and I have earlier notes with internal evidence connecting them to jobs held earlier than that.
The list itself is enigmatic and probably the result of an exercise in plotting. Before anybody reads this, I wish to make it clear that I don't remember having anything against anybody on this temp job, or even having any contact with the senior curator. I have had jobs during which I plotted the fictional murder of a boss or co-worker as a tension reliever, but I have only pleasant memories of this one. It was a spectacular exhibit, and employees got to walk through it for free!
What - Corpse
Where - Trolley in little-used hall between Exit and Main Hall, behind breakroom
Who - Sr. Curator
How - Cyanide-laced chewing gum
Why - Major spectacular art theft/forgery - cover up or double-cross
When - Monday, Splendors of Mexico
Obviously, anchoring a mystery to a specific exhibit and venue like this would be unwise. What I probably intended to do (insofar as I intended anything; it probably was just an exercise) was plot the story using the geography and schedule of the real art museum, and then use all fictional characters and enough tweaking of the museum to avoid hurt feelings and render me immune to prosecution.
Which is not a bad procedure for writing a puzzle mystery.
I wonder if you could deliver a fatal dose of cyanide in chewing gum, and how you would go about it?
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Idea Garage Sale Interlude: Clio Wants You!
The theoretical person out there in the blogosphere who's been reading all these excessively long posts and anticipating the next one probably thinks she knows what's coming today, more or less, and is wondering which of the tempting side trails I ran across in Bandera I'm going to wander down today. The romantic history of Annie Schickenden and her shawl? The action/adventure/spiritual journey of Policarpo Rodriguez? The time portal in the old house that would overlook the Medina River if the trees weren't in the way? The possibility for a thrilling detective series centering on a small-town museum docent?
Okay, that last one is close.
Tossing ideas out onto the ether for anybody to pick up if they want to is fun, but I'm under no illusion that anyone will ever use them for anything more than a writing exercise, and I thought now would be a good time to take a moment and address underlying processes for the benefit of a particular segment of the writing community.
Unless participation was limited in some way, every writing conference, class, or group I've ever attended, in person or online, has included a few examples of the tentative amateur; the person who is still wondering where ideas come from, who has a sense of a creative urge without any clear idea of what to do with it, and who has at best a vague notion of what constitutes The Writing Life, but is usually sure that there is a standard Writing Life to which they might aspire. They usually assume that they're supposed to be writing novels and that publication is the big shiny goal at the end of the road. They might be very young and experimenting with their self-image, or retired and looking to cultivate neglected talents; either way, they haven't yet grasped the amount of work involved and are usually still looking for the secret formula or the set of rules that will get them what they want.
Some of these people will become perpetual wannabes or drift away to some other hobby because they are interested in the trappings, not in writing itself. Most of the rest will knuckle down and join the mainstream of the profession - award winners, mid-list authors, bestsellers, and a strong substratum of people who, despite all the hard work, talent, dedication, and business savvy anyone could ask of them, never quite get where they want to go. Some will remain lifelong hobby writers, content to evade the agony of the publication search and write poetry for their grandchildren; some will become editors or agents or publicists instead; some will find their niche and set up shop there happily; some will die still floundering.
Of these outcomes, only perpetual wannabeism and floundering are truly bad outcomes; though those among us who produce publishable work, shop the hell out of it, and still can't land a contract may feel that I dismiss the frustration of their situation too easily. (I don't; but am defining this not as an "outcome" but as "process" - a new day may be around the corner for any of us, and that's why we keep stuff in the mail.) So the idea up for sale today is not a story idea per se, but a lifestyle one; a suggestion for those who know they have potential but don't know what it is.
History has a muse. It is as much an art as poetry or fiction; it uses many of the same mental muscles; it requires similar writing skills and benefits from similar creative talents; its roads also lead to publication; and Clio, the muse of history, works and plays well all her sisters. Her raw material is everywhere. Though the academic discipline of history dominates its expression, it has plenty of room for the avocational amateur. J. Marvin Hunter did not work out of a university, but his work is essential for anyone researching his particular area of Texas - like me - and both the museum and the Frontier Times magazine he founded made history accessible to laypeople.
The fact is that many of the urges that lead people into experimenting with writing can be satisfied by working on local history - or on geneology - or on weekend archeology - or on nature study - or on any kind of public outreach. And you stand an excellent chance of doing tangible good in the world by putting some energy into these tasks. A family historian in Germany, Ilse Wurster, found letters from a Texas branch of her family, and the book on which she collaborated with Texas relatives, Die Kettner Briefe/Die Kettner Letters turns out to contain the answers to questions concerning what happened in Fredericksburg during 1864 that I had resigned myself to never getting. Similar gaps might be filled in the history of New York City if anybody ever transcribes that diary. Consider the role played by the geneologist in the drama of Susan Taylor Brown's discovery of her father's second family - a drama which would never have begun if Susan hadn't challenged herself to write poetry in public on her blog, by the way.
You may think there's no such drama lurking in your mundane little town, or that the history of your area is thoroughly understood and has no hidden crannies; but you'd be wrong. Somewhere within fifty miles of you is an untranscribed diary; is a record that will connect two disparate people or events in a network of narrative; is an old person with memories about to be lost to the ages for lack of someone to ask questions; is an artifact or a fossil or a building that needs you to discover its importance. If you don't see these things, it's because you're not looking.
Once you've uncovered a true-life story, you have a lot of options - far more than the authors of fiction. Local history is the quintessential niche market. Depending on the nature of your material, you may see your name attached to a brochure published in association with the local newspaper or to a book with a major house. Certain small presses specialize in local-interest publications, and self-publishing should not be dismissed out of hand. Die Kettner Briefe is a Lulu.com publication, but the San Antonio Central Library has a copy for the Texana room. As a commercial venture it's a mug's game; but money is not the only way to measure success.
Maybe you're positive that this isn't enough for you. Maybe you know in your heart that "novelist" is what you need to be, what you will be - as soon as you find the story that presently eludes you. That's fine. What are you doing to hunt that idea down? Where are you looking? And what are you doing with your liesure time that will encourage it to come find you? If you're not writing anyway, why not volunteer at the old folks' home and encourage them to tell their stories? Why not take on the project the head of the local historical society can't get time for? Where do you think all those historical novels out there come from?
"Not a historical novelist!" You protest. "I want to write fantasy blockbusters!" Then you should be reading them; and you should have noticed how ubiquitous and tiresome the generic medieval fantasy world is, how exciting it feels to pick up a book like Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, or Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife and see something that resembles an American historical backdrop. Maybe you've noticed how much the history and folklore of Britain have informed British fantasy. I'll tell you a secret - your neighborhood has history and folklore too!
Or maybe you want to write a modern detective series. Count up in your head the number of mysteries you've read that incorporated some specialized subculture into their background, and in particular into the character of their detective. Wouldn't an amateur historian or a geneologist make a great amateur sleuth? And how would you write convincingly about that subculture if you weren't a part of it? Isn't there a lot of potential for nitty-gritty crime novels in the sordid scandals of your city's past? What about that story you used to scare each other with in high school, the one about the unsolved murder in that dark and spooky house? Is there any truth to that?
Nobody's going to hand you The Perfect Idea. You'll have to dig for it and be ready to know it when you find it. You may as well do something useful while looking for it.
And if in the process you find that your vocation isn't for writing, but for something else - that's a win for you, too.
Okay, that last one is close.
Tossing ideas out onto the ether for anybody to pick up if they want to is fun, but I'm under no illusion that anyone will ever use them for anything more than a writing exercise, and I thought now would be a good time to take a moment and address underlying processes for the benefit of a particular segment of the writing community.
Unless participation was limited in some way, every writing conference, class, or group I've ever attended, in person or online, has included a few examples of the tentative amateur; the person who is still wondering where ideas come from, who has a sense of a creative urge without any clear idea of what to do with it, and who has at best a vague notion of what constitutes The Writing Life, but is usually sure that there is a standard Writing Life to which they might aspire. They usually assume that they're supposed to be writing novels and that publication is the big shiny goal at the end of the road. They might be very young and experimenting with their self-image, or retired and looking to cultivate neglected talents; either way, they haven't yet grasped the amount of work involved and are usually still looking for the secret formula or the set of rules that will get them what they want.
Some of these people will become perpetual wannabes or drift away to some other hobby because they are interested in the trappings, not in writing itself. Most of the rest will knuckle down and join the mainstream of the profession - award winners, mid-list authors, bestsellers, and a strong substratum of people who, despite all the hard work, talent, dedication, and business savvy anyone could ask of them, never quite get where they want to go. Some will remain lifelong hobby writers, content to evade the agony of the publication search and write poetry for their grandchildren; some will become editors or agents or publicists instead; some will find their niche and set up shop there happily; some will die still floundering.
Of these outcomes, only perpetual wannabeism and floundering are truly bad outcomes; though those among us who produce publishable work, shop the hell out of it, and still can't land a contract may feel that I dismiss the frustration of their situation too easily. (I don't; but am defining this not as an "outcome" but as "process" - a new day may be around the corner for any of us, and that's why we keep stuff in the mail.) So the idea up for sale today is not a story idea per se, but a lifestyle one; a suggestion for those who know they have potential but don't know what it is.
History has a muse. It is as much an art as poetry or fiction; it uses many of the same mental muscles; it requires similar writing skills and benefits from similar creative talents; its roads also lead to publication; and Clio, the muse of history, works and plays well all her sisters. Her raw material is everywhere. Though the academic discipline of history dominates its expression, it has plenty of room for the avocational amateur. J. Marvin Hunter did not work out of a university, but his work is essential for anyone researching his particular area of Texas - like me - and both the museum and the Frontier Times magazine he founded made history accessible to laypeople.
The fact is that many of the urges that lead people into experimenting with writing can be satisfied by working on local history - or on geneology - or on weekend archeology - or on nature study - or on any kind of public outreach. And you stand an excellent chance of doing tangible good in the world by putting some energy into these tasks. A family historian in Germany, Ilse Wurster, found letters from a Texas branch of her family, and the book on which she collaborated with Texas relatives, Die Kettner Briefe/Die Kettner Letters turns out to contain the answers to questions concerning what happened in Fredericksburg during 1864 that I had resigned myself to never getting. Similar gaps might be filled in the history of New York City if anybody ever transcribes that diary. Consider the role played by the geneologist in the drama of Susan Taylor Brown's discovery of her father's second family - a drama which would never have begun if Susan hadn't challenged herself to write poetry in public on her blog, by the way.
You may think there's no such drama lurking in your mundane little town, or that the history of your area is thoroughly understood and has no hidden crannies; but you'd be wrong. Somewhere within fifty miles of you is an untranscribed diary; is a record that will connect two disparate people or events in a network of narrative; is an old person with memories about to be lost to the ages for lack of someone to ask questions; is an artifact or a fossil or a building that needs you to discover its importance. If you don't see these things, it's because you're not looking.
Once you've uncovered a true-life story, you have a lot of options - far more than the authors of fiction. Local history is the quintessential niche market. Depending on the nature of your material, you may see your name attached to a brochure published in association with the local newspaper or to a book with a major house. Certain small presses specialize in local-interest publications, and self-publishing should not be dismissed out of hand. Die Kettner Briefe is a Lulu.com publication, but the San Antonio Central Library has a copy for the Texana room. As a commercial venture it's a mug's game; but money is not the only way to measure success.
Maybe you're positive that this isn't enough for you. Maybe you know in your heart that "novelist" is what you need to be, what you will be - as soon as you find the story that presently eludes you. That's fine. What are you doing to hunt that idea down? Where are you looking? And what are you doing with your liesure time that will encourage it to come find you? If you're not writing anyway, why not volunteer at the old folks' home and encourage them to tell their stories? Why not take on the project the head of the local historical society can't get time for? Where do you think all those historical novels out there come from?
"Not a historical novelist!" You protest. "I want to write fantasy blockbusters!" Then you should be reading them; and you should have noticed how ubiquitous and tiresome the generic medieval fantasy world is, how exciting it feels to pick up a book like Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series, or Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife and see something that resembles an American historical backdrop. Maybe you've noticed how much the history and folklore of Britain have informed British fantasy. I'll tell you a secret - your neighborhood has history and folklore too!
Or maybe you want to write a modern detective series. Count up in your head the number of mysteries you've read that incorporated some specialized subculture into their background, and in particular into the character of their detective. Wouldn't an amateur historian or a geneologist make a great amateur sleuth? And how would you write convincingly about that subculture if you weren't a part of it? Isn't there a lot of potential for nitty-gritty crime novels in the sordid scandals of your city's past? What about that story you used to scare each other with in high school, the one about the unsolved murder in that dark and spooky house? Is there any truth to that?
Nobody's going to hand you The Perfect Idea. You'll have to dig for it and be ready to know it when you find it. You may as well do something useful while looking for it.
And if in the process you find that your vocation isn't for writing, but for something else - that's a win for you, too.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Location Scout #1: Bandera
Mentally stripping away the changes wrought by the passage of time and the activities of humans is something I'm accustomed to doing by now, but there's no denying it's harder to do while driving than at any other time. So I pulled off onto the shoulder a couple of times, to birdwatch and make copious illegible notes (it'll be all right as long as I transcribe them soon enough) on soil characteristics, the succession of wildflowers, the smell of the air, insects and other fauna, and other things that my characters, picking their way down from the hills on horse and possibly camel-back, will have plenty of time to notice. I'll have to take care to remove some features - starlings and dandelions did not overrun the Texas countryside in 1864 - and add in others - the faunal assemblage would have been far more abundant, with butterflies rising at each step, and more diverse, including mustangs, bears, and panthers - but that's easy enough. The climate has also changed, but both 1863/64 and 2009/10 were unusually cold, long winters, and though we haven't had anything like the spring floods that hit the Hill Country and south Texas in late March 1864, I've been through enough floods to extrapolate.
From San Antonio proper to Helotes, the terrain beneath the asphalt and years of brush spread by domestic livestock and fire suppression is all open, rolling hills, at one time covered with rich nutritious mesquite grass and mottes of live oaks. Past Helotes, the Hill Country starts, high sculpted hills with cedar (as we call ash juniper) clinging to thin soil over limestone, cut by frequent creeks. The air, when you get far enough away from the internal combustion engine, has a distinct aroma, partly a generic "country" smell that anyone from Iowa would recognize, but with a spicy undertone that I don't think is the cedar, but might be. The term "spicy" is used by travel writers of the 19th century, too, so whatever generates it, it is native.
A picnic in Bandera's city park on the Medina River rewarded me with several cypresses plenty old enough to have been there when Len would have been. The bridge swallows in Bandera build rough pebbly nests not at all like the firm clay ones under San Antonio bridges, and I didn't see a single heron. Nor did I see any fish in the river, but one of the decaying cypresses had boards nailed on it that could most parsimoniously be explained as a seat for fishermen, and a dead alligator gar was washed up on a sandbank near the bridge, so I expect that was a function of the time of day.
The Frontier Times Museum has the virtues and the defects of the local museum. Founded as it was by J. Marvin Hunter, Bandera County's most dedicated historian and founding editor/publisher of Frontier Times, it is larger and more coherent than a lot of them, with a purpose-built building erected in 1930. History is literally built-in, with the fossil-studded central fireplace sporting a millwheel cemented into its mantelpiece: the very same millwheel that washed out of a mill on the Pedernales, that Mormon leader Lyman Wight saw in a vision and went out to retrieve. Not only that, but an Indian mano or grinding stone is inserted into the axle hole. Everybody in the county who had anything remotely interesting deposited it at the museum when they couldn't keep it anymore, from taxidermied animals to a huge collection of bells, from a comforter spun, dyed (with elderberries; a beautiful blue in a complex check pattern called "Snail Trail and Cat Track"), and woven at home to a shrunken head; from a Civil War era rag doll to a picture of John Wesley Hardin's corpse.
Therein, of course, lies the weakness; despite the general Western theme, a lot of "cabinet of curiosities" stuff (dressed fleas), exotic items, and personal-interest collections with little provenance are included. Not everything is labeled, and some of the labeling is inadequate, with "x number of years ago" and "very old" used instead of dates. The large collection of books is all under glass, which is just as well as most of them are falling apart; but that means if the title isn't clear and there's no label, or you can't tell which book a label refers to, you're out of luck. Still, it was possible to get a fair idea of what sort of books the pioneers of Bandera had available - lots of religious tracts, a tiny Iliad, Burns, McGuffey readers, arithmetic books developed in England and printed in New York, Luther Bibles and King James Bibles, Webster's Dictionary, a French book detailing the names, life stories, and associated flowers of each saint for each day of the year.
I saw first-issue Confederate money (I suspect that second issue money never made it as far as Bandera), shinplasters, and one-cent pieces from the 50s, but no Mexican gold or silver older than 1883. Oh, well, I can find books about that. Amasa Clark's camel-hair pillow is on display; so is the shawl which Annie Schickenden wore when she sang for the King and Queen of Prussia, and brought with her when she came to Texas in 1846. Where else would I see those?
I also brought in my Peterson and compared it to a taxidermy display of the birds of Mason County. (I guess there wasn't a Mason County museum when the person who stuffed these died and his grandchildren had to decide what to do with them; or maybe the taxidermist was a friend of Hunter's. You can't think to ask everything!) Now I know regional names for the lesser goldfinch (Mexican canary or Arkansas goldfinch), Bullock's oriole (Texas oriole), kestrel (blue darter sparrowhawk), and summer tanager (redbird). That Mexican canary answers a long-standing question. Wild-caught "canaries" used to be routinely sold in straw cages San Antonio markets, as pets, and I've always wondered what species this might be. So now I know!
Wonderful opportunities lie in the collection, as the staff will tell you. A diary sits in one case, written by some nameless person in New York in 1835-37. It was bought in an antique store in San Antonio in 1916, where it no doubt landed because it mentions the fall of the Alamo. I asked if it had ever been transcribed, and was told no, but not because they don't want it to be! Transcribing is hard, time-consuming work and volunteers can only do so much. If I ever write a story set in that time period, and no one has gotten to it, I may do it myself; until then, I can't spare the time from the rest of my life. She's hoping to lure a graduate student into the job.
The sole staff member on duty that day, whose name I'm afraid I never asked (she never asked mine either, but I don't think that makes us even because I doubt she's blogging about me), was extremely helpful. She took the rag doll, fragile as it was, out of its case to be photographed, and she knew where "the Slide-off" is - the hill where, do what they would, the shingle-makers who founded the town always lost the top of their load when they took their shingles in to San Antonio to sell. She also gave me directions to the oldest building in town, currently under renovation.
Huffmeyer's Store on Main claims to be the oldest, but it wasn't built until 1874, and a block beyond is 11th street, the actual first street in town. I took a picture of a real estate office which claimed to have been built in 1860 and operated as a home, store, school, and first bank in Bandera (banking was illegal in Texas until Reconstruction; this explains much of our economic history); but the oldest building in town stands at the corner of Cypress and 11th. It's a limestone building with a gallery, once covered with a coat of stucco, and currently in the revealing disarray of restoration. It looks to me as though its two rooms were built at two different times - the limestone blocks are different - and with the stucco mostly worn off and windows glassless you can see, even from the street, how the wooden frames were fitted and the windows arranged to catch the breeze. Across the street is a sharp drop-off into a lot full of trees and cedar waxwings; beyond that lot, I almost immediately came to the tourist cottages on the edge of the park where I picnicked. The builder chose the best spot in town - a view of what would have been the ford of the Medina, but well out of the flood plain. Our Texas summers would have been relieved by the position of the house and gallery relative to the prevailing breeze, while the northers would have been closed out with shutters and the thick stuccoed limestone blocks. Who needs central heat and air?
At the library, a beautiful well-designed building, they told me that the historical marker I'd failed to find as I came into town was Polly's Chapel, and it was well off the main road. I had turned back when I drove for a while on a road that got ever narrower, thinking I'd missed the marker and was heading into somebody's ranch; and they said you did feel that way getting there, and to just keep going. So on the way back I tried again.
If I had known in detail what the route was like, I probably wouldn't have gone; and wouldn't that have been a shame? If you are ever in the Bandera vicinity and want to visit Polly's Chapel, you should turn off at the Historical Marker sign, on Privilege Creek Road. Follow Privilege Creek Road, at 30 MPH or less, through all its many lane-and-a-half windings, being prepared to pull over and creep past any of the people who live back there on their way out. Be polite and wait your turn at the narrow bridge over Privilege Creek - watch for killdeer. Drive right on through the cattle guard at the sign that warns: "Loose livestock" and onto the gravel road. If you don't mind the dust you raise (the slower you go the less dust) this is a beautiful stretch of road, parallelling the creek, which at this point is lined on the opposite bank with steep limestone cliffs. The first fork you come to won't confuse you as it will have a sign saying "Polly's Chapel" pointing straight over the ford.
Yes, you will have to drive through Privilege Creek. Don't do this if the water is at all high! Moby has a low undercarriage, but we got through all right. On the other side you'll soon come to another cattle guard, and right past it there's another sign for the Chapel, pointing you to a two-rut road with a slight grade on one side and cedar and live oak scrub all around. If you meet somebody coming out, one of you will have to back up. That's all there is to it.
But the chapel clearing is beautiful and peaceful (except for the sound of destruction equipment beeping and roaring somewhere - the terrible thing is that the country is so beautiful, everybody wants to live there, but they can't live there without dragging the city after them), and the chapel itself is a tiny gem. Policarpo Rodriguez, one of the most interesting men to ever live in Bandera County, built it himself out of limestone blocks after he got religion of the Protestant kind in 1878. The date on the cornerstone is 1882, too late for me; but that's okay. It's in use today, with electricity, an acoustical tile ceiling, picnic tables, and a garden-shed-sized restroom building out back. Lots of tempting trails lead into the live oak/cedar brush, but I restrained myself and did a single circuit of the clearing. Most of the birds eluded me, as they always do in this sort of terrain; but that's all right. The birds are an excuse to go to places like this. One bird I thought was going to be a mocker showed me a head like a chickadee, then vanished, so that's my big birding mystery for the trip.
I saved one shot in the disposable camera (I'd have a digital one by now if I hadn't driven into that light pole) to take the view from the Slide-Off; but when I got there I didn't think it wise to stop. Another time, perhaps. After all, I might not even use this location.
Next week, if all goes well, I'll scout Medina County.
From San Antonio proper to Helotes, the terrain beneath the asphalt and years of brush spread by domestic livestock and fire suppression is all open, rolling hills, at one time covered with rich nutritious mesquite grass and mottes of live oaks. Past Helotes, the Hill Country starts, high sculpted hills with cedar (as we call ash juniper) clinging to thin soil over limestone, cut by frequent creeks. The air, when you get far enough away from the internal combustion engine, has a distinct aroma, partly a generic "country" smell that anyone from Iowa would recognize, but with a spicy undertone that I don't think is the cedar, but might be. The term "spicy" is used by travel writers of the 19th century, too, so whatever generates it, it is native.
A picnic in Bandera's city park on the Medina River rewarded me with several cypresses plenty old enough to have been there when Len would have been. The bridge swallows in Bandera build rough pebbly nests not at all like the firm clay ones under San Antonio bridges, and I didn't see a single heron. Nor did I see any fish in the river, but one of the decaying cypresses had boards nailed on it that could most parsimoniously be explained as a seat for fishermen, and a dead alligator gar was washed up on a sandbank near the bridge, so I expect that was a function of the time of day.
The Frontier Times Museum has the virtues and the defects of the local museum. Founded as it was by J. Marvin Hunter, Bandera County's most dedicated historian and founding editor/publisher of Frontier Times, it is larger and more coherent than a lot of them, with a purpose-built building erected in 1930. History is literally built-in, with the fossil-studded central fireplace sporting a millwheel cemented into its mantelpiece: the very same millwheel that washed out of a mill on the Pedernales, that Mormon leader Lyman Wight saw in a vision and went out to retrieve. Not only that, but an Indian mano or grinding stone is inserted into the axle hole. Everybody in the county who had anything remotely interesting deposited it at the museum when they couldn't keep it anymore, from taxidermied animals to a huge collection of bells, from a comforter spun, dyed (with elderberries; a beautiful blue in a complex check pattern called "Snail Trail and Cat Track"), and woven at home to a shrunken head; from a Civil War era rag doll to a picture of John Wesley Hardin's corpse.
Therein, of course, lies the weakness; despite the general Western theme, a lot of "cabinet of curiosities" stuff (dressed fleas), exotic items, and personal-interest collections with little provenance are included. Not everything is labeled, and some of the labeling is inadequate, with "x number of years ago" and "very old" used instead of dates. The large collection of books is all under glass, which is just as well as most of them are falling apart; but that means if the title isn't clear and there's no label, or you can't tell which book a label refers to, you're out of luck. Still, it was possible to get a fair idea of what sort of books the pioneers of Bandera had available - lots of religious tracts, a tiny Iliad, Burns, McGuffey readers, arithmetic books developed in England and printed in New York, Luther Bibles and King James Bibles, Webster's Dictionary, a French book detailing the names, life stories, and associated flowers of each saint for each day of the year.
I saw first-issue Confederate money (I suspect that second issue money never made it as far as Bandera), shinplasters, and one-cent pieces from the 50s, but no Mexican gold or silver older than 1883. Oh, well, I can find books about that. Amasa Clark's camel-hair pillow is on display; so is the shawl which Annie Schickenden wore when she sang for the King and Queen of Prussia, and brought with her when she came to Texas in 1846. Where else would I see those?
I also brought in my Peterson and compared it to a taxidermy display of the birds of Mason County. (I guess there wasn't a Mason County museum when the person who stuffed these died and his grandchildren had to decide what to do with them; or maybe the taxidermist was a friend of Hunter's. You can't think to ask everything!) Now I know regional names for the lesser goldfinch (Mexican canary or Arkansas goldfinch), Bullock's oriole (Texas oriole), kestrel (blue darter sparrowhawk), and summer tanager (redbird). That Mexican canary answers a long-standing question. Wild-caught "canaries" used to be routinely sold in straw cages San Antonio markets, as pets, and I've always wondered what species this might be. So now I know!
Wonderful opportunities lie in the collection, as the staff will tell you. A diary sits in one case, written by some nameless person in New York in 1835-37. It was bought in an antique store in San Antonio in 1916, where it no doubt landed because it mentions the fall of the Alamo. I asked if it had ever been transcribed, and was told no, but not because they don't want it to be! Transcribing is hard, time-consuming work and volunteers can only do so much. If I ever write a story set in that time period, and no one has gotten to it, I may do it myself; until then, I can't spare the time from the rest of my life. She's hoping to lure a graduate student into the job.
The sole staff member on duty that day, whose name I'm afraid I never asked (she never asked mine either, but I don't think that makes us even because I doubt she's blogging about me), was extremely helpful. She took the rag doll, fragile as it was, out of its case to be photographed, and she knew where "the Slide-off" is - the hill where, do what they would, the shingle-makers who founded the town always lost the top of their load when they took their shingles in to San Antonio to sell. She also gave me directions to the oldest building in town, currently under renovation.
Huffmeyer's Store on Main claims to be the oldest, but it wasn't built until 1874, and a block beyond is 11th street, the actual first street in town. I took a picture of a real estate office which claimed to have been built in 1860 and operated as a home, store, school, and first bank in Bandera (banking was illegal in Texas until Reconstruction; this explains much of our economic history); but the oldest building in town stands at the corner of Cypress and 11th. It's a limestone building with a gallery, once covered with a coat of stucco, and currently in the revealing disarray of restoration. It looks to me as though its two rooms were built at two different times - the limestone blocks are different - and with the stucco mostly worn off and windows glassless you can see, even from the street, how the wooden frames were fitted and the windows arranged to catch the breeze. Across the street is a sharp drop-off into a lot full of trees and cedar waxwings; beyond that lot, I almost immediately came to the tourist cottages on the edge of the park where I picnicked. The builder chose the best spot in town - a view of what would have been the ford of the Medina, but well out of the flood plain. Our Texas summers would have been relieved by the position of the house and gallery relative to the prevailing breeze, while the northers would have been closed out with shutters and the thick stuccoed limestone blocks. Who needs central heat and air?
At the library, a beautiful well-designed building, they told me that the historical marker I'd failed to find as I came into town was Polly's Chapel, and it was well off the main road. I had turned back when I drove for a while on a road that got ever narrower, thinking I'd missed the marker and was heading into somebody's ranch; and they said you did feel that way getting there, and to just keep going. So on the way back I tried again.
If I had known in detail what the route was like, I probably wouldn't have gone; and wouldn't that have been a shame? If you are ever in the Bandera vicinity and want to visit Polly's Chapel, you should turn off at the Historical Marker sign, on Privilege Creek Road. Follow Privilege Creek Road, at 30 MPH or less, through all its many lane-and-a-half windings, being prepared to pull over and creep past any of the people who live back there on their way out. Be polite and wait your turn at the narrow bridge over Privilege Creek - watch for killdeer. Drive right on through the cattle guard at the sign that warns: "Loose livestock" and onto the gravel road. If you don't mind the dust you raise (the slower you go the less dust) this is a beautiful stretch of road, parallelling the creek, which at this point is lined on the opposite bank with steep limestone cliffs. The first fork you come to won't confuse you as it will have a sign saying "Polly's Chapel" pointing straight over the ford.
Yes, you will have to drive through Privilege Creek. Don't do this if the water is at all high! Moby has a low undercarriage, but we got through all right. On the other side you'll soon come to another cattle guard, and right past it there's another sign for the Chapel, pointing you to a two-rut road with a slight grade on one side and cedar and live oak scrub all around. If you meet somebody coming out, one of you will have to back up. That's all there is to it.
But the chapel clearing is beautiful and peaceful (except for the sound of destruction equipment beeping and roaring somewhere - the terrible thing is that the country is so beautiful, everybody wants to live there, but they can't live there without dragging the city after them), and the chapel itself is a tiny gem. Policarpo Rodriguez, one of the most interesting men to ever live in Bandera County, built it himself out of limestone blocks after he got religion of the Protestant kind in 1878. The date on the cornerstone is 1882, too late for me; but that's okay. It's in use today, with electricity, an acoustical tile ceiling, picnic tables, and a garden-shed-sized restroom building out back. Lots of tempting trails lead into the live oak/cedar brush, but I restrained myself and did a single circuit of the clearing. Most of the birds eluded me, as they always do in this sort of terrain; but that's all right. The birds are an excuse to go to places like this. One bird I thought was going to be a mocker showed me a head like a chickadee, then vanished, so that's my big birding mystery for the trip.
I saved one shot in the disposable camera (I'd have a digital one by now if I hadn't driven into that light pole) to take the view from the Slide-Off; but when I got there I didn't think it wise to stop. Another time, perhaps. After all, I might not even use this location.
Next week, if all goes well, I'll scout Medina County.
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