Wandering Down the Alley

I hadn't been to Artisans' Alley, on Bitters Road just off 281in San Antonio, Texas since I was working a corporate job a couple of years ago. The practice of management was that if the sales team had a really good and profitable month, the sales staff and the administrators who supported them would be treated to lunch and a fine local establishment. On one of these occasions, the choice fell to Bin 555, where we had a quite splendid lunch - alas, since it was the middle of the workday, we had to give a miss to sampling the wines. And a double alas, for Apple Annie's is gone; the place where it was is being renovated to house another restaurant, which will - so they say - open in March or so.

Triple alas - we were there too late for the farmer's market, which is also at the Alley on Saturday mornings, but seeing that it was cold enough to totally freeze the water in one of the patio fountains, we were probably better served by being inside, roaming through what looks like a half-acre of antiques at Back Alley Antiques, full of lovely, lightly aged to well-aged stuff which we couldn't afford. My daughter was entranced by the collection of ladies' hats, especially the concoctions of feathers and fur and a little eye-veil. Yes, there was a time, once, when ladies wore these, along with strings and strings of pearls, white kid gloves, and high-button shoes. The evidence was all around. I discovered that they had reprints of those 1873 birds-eye view maps of San Antonio which were so popular in the 19^th century. My own heart is now set on a copy of the 1873 one for San Antonio, my hasn't San Antonio real estate changed?

When we finally tore ourselves away, and ventured into the cold again, there was a gallery with an invitingly opened door; it turned out they were cleaning up after a leak in a pipe, at Painting with a Twist. Which does offer the artistic experience, and lessons in painting; a sort of wine and cheese evening and a personal art lesson, all in one. The bit of art that I liked best, though, was a one-off sculpture by the manager's sister - a very fashionable rhino, enjoying a relaxing hot bath, with a glass of the good stuff. It really was good stuff, it said so on the bottle label.

At Gardening Galore, my daughter loved the balancing painted bamboo dragonflies - and the gurgle-jugs - a pitcher in the shape of an open-mouthed fish, which gurgles as you pour liquid out of it. The manager works with an artist who does a very sleek and modern version of this traditional Victorian favorite. They also offer a wide variety of hand-painted ceramics, of the sort that I think of as being garden jewelry. They also stock wind-chimes, of the sort that can be heard for miles, as I accidentally brushed against one and practically deafened myself.

On the way out, the daughter dragged me into Ba Da Bling; "Ohhh, pretty! Shiny! Feathery!" - accessories and cloths and costume jewelry, and flip-flop sandals adorned with bunches of grapes. We were greeted at the door by Harley, who came running out from between the racks. Harley did this for everyone coming in through the door at Ba Da Bling. He is a dog who adores people, but I don't think he'd be able to stand the pace, or the constant excitement of working at a bigger retail outlet.

We'll be back in spring - to check out the new restaurant - and to say hi to Harley.

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The Teashop in the Village

Yes, there is a tea-shop in the village; Bracken Village that is. A tea-shop, serving fresh-brewed pots of tea, and scones and all of that, in two Victorian-style rooms and on the veranda of a quaint little house, restored lovingly, and sitting among others of like, around a gazebo in a grove of oak trees, out on Nacogdoches Road, beyond 1604 in San Antonio. Originally it was a farmstead, known as the Wiederstein-Burkhardt home-place, a tiny house and a carriage barn, but over the last decade, other historic houses have been moved in, renovated and put to new use as shops and boutiques, an art studio, a salon/day spa and a gymnasium. There are garden plantings in between the houses; in the spring it all looks as gorgeous as the setting for a Disney movie set in a small American town.  One place, "Country Gatherings" even holds regular classes in hooking old-fashioned woolen rugs, in what was once the hayloft of a quaint old barn.

Some of the houses are tiny - many are ornate, with deep, generous porches. All are historic, and from the local area. Not a few, including the Borgfeld House, which is in the process of reconstruction, are of a peculiar German style of half-timber construction called fachwork. The framework walls of the house, the openings for windows and doorways are made of heavy beams, fitted and braced - and then the interstices filled in with brick, or cut stone. Sometimes this was plastered over, entirely - or in the case of the Borgfeld house, covered with board siding.

There are, at present, two places to eat at Bracken Village - 23 Skadoo, which has Red Hat stuff galore, and does things like soups, salads and sandwiches, and then there is the tea-room, British Sensations, which is in the building which used to house another popular tea-room, Bawdsy Manor. British Sensations also has a stock of imported foods and candies - things like Marmite and the kind of steamed-pudding-inna-can that I remember fondly from a summer spent traveling in England and staying in Youth Hostels. You boil the can in a saucepan full of water for about twenty minutes, then open the can - and yes, this sounds odd, but it was very good. The chocolate puddings were particularly tasty.

The tea-room also offers staple British fare - you know, fish and chips, bangers and mash, shepherd's pie, and that sort of solid and hearty fare. Which when it is bad, is pretty awful - but when it is good, is very, very good - even sublime. We tried out the fish-n-chips, and the shepherd's pie, mostly because we were eating at mid-afternoon, and that was all that was available after the lunch rush; oh, and it was good, too, not interminably held over a steam table or something. The fish was tasty, cooked in a crisp crust, and the chips were fresh, too.  Shepherd's pie can be dreadful, but it also was good; a particularly British variant on meat and potatoes, with the meat pie portion baked with a mashed-potato crust.

And the best part - it's not even all that far away; just up Nacogdoches Road, past the bridge over Salado Creek.

Texas Road Trip - Gonzales

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Just about an hour and fifteen minutes drive from our San Antonio home is the old town of Gonzales. This was the central settlement of the Green DeWitt colony - and the farthest outpost to the west of all those towns settled in the 1820s and 1830s. It is also a link on the Texas Independence Trail, if you start at Schertz and go through Seguin and Cost - but if you take IH-10 East and get off at Luling, then you can sample the fabulous deli and bakery at Buc-ee's before heading south to Gonzales- six of one and half a dozen of the other, I expect. (And yes, the restrooms at Buc-ee's are every bit as fabulous as advertised.)

Gonzales was named after the Mexican governor of Coahuila y Tejas, and laid out in a neat grid of city blocks, each block divided into six lots. This layout is still preserved in present-day Gonzales; including a row across the middle of town set aside for civic purposes. Only one building, the Eggleston House - a dog-trot log cabin with a shake roof - remains to give an idea of what it looked like in 1835 - when Gonzales became Texas's own Lexington.

In September, 1835 the commander of Mexican military forces in Bexar sent a handful of soldiers and a small oxcart, to retrieve a small cannon, which had been issued to the citizens to protect them from Indian raids. The cannon was surplus to military needs, and slightly damaged, but the settlers valued it, and refused to surrender it, even when the small party was followed up by a larger one. The cannon was repaired and mounted on a make-shift gun-carriage. From across the river, the men of Gonzales taunted the Mexican soldiers - "Come and Take It!" was on a banner made from a silk wedding dress. Before the end of the year, Texas was in rebellion. Early in the spring of 1836, a mounted company of Gonzales volunteers joined the defenders of the Alamo - and it was to Gonzales that Sam Houston came to gather militia and volunteers to break that siege. But it was in Gonzales that word came of the fall of the Alamo - and from where Sam Houston's army began retreating into East Texas.  The Runaway Scrape began from Gonzales, as the town was burned on Houston's orders.

When the citizens returned, they rebuilt, and on the same grid pattern - among significant historical buildings is the old jail itself - built of locally manufactured brick - and a fabulous collection of late 19^th century historical homes, clustered around the central squares. The Gonzales county courthouse is another marvelous entry in what seemed to be an ongoing contest among Texas counties in the late 19^th century to build the most ornate courthouse evah! The central square is lined with 19^th century commercial buildings, including one which once was a gentleman's haberdashery, and which now is packed to the rafters with  . . .  well, all sorts of stuff. There may be a dis-articulated dinosaur skeleton, the Holy Grail and Davy Crockett's original coonskin cap, all stashed away in there, somewhere.

What is supposed to be the original "Come and Take It" cannon is now on display in the 1930's WPA Memorial Museum on Smith Street. The nearby Eggleston House is also open to the public - and houses of similar early vintage are also on display at the Gonzales Pioneer Village, just on the edge of town, on US Highway 183.

The Gonzales Inquirer online.

Come all Ye Faithful

As of last weekend, we couldn’t put it off any longer. It was well past time to haul the tubs of ornaments out of the garage, and put up the Christmas tree. My own ornament collection is vast and eccentric. I’ve been celebrating the season on my own, more often than not, since 1977 – and have all the memories of where I acquired them.

During the 1980s, I bought a single box of ornaments from one of the high-end catalogue retailers every year. The paper-mache globes covered with red and green curlicues, the stuffed teddy-bears with little scarves, and the vintage wooden airplanes are from that period. The airplanes looked especially fine, hanging from the ends of the branches, as if they were whirling in some endless tree-shaped dog-fight. The terra-cotta ornaments from Portugal which look like ginger-cookies are from that time, and so are the wooden miniature musical instruments.

I have a handful of Anri flying angels, bought when we passed through Rome on our way to Spain; I drove a bright orange Volvo sedan onto the car-ferry from Patras to Brindisi, and wandered all across Europe, accompanied by my then-four year old daughter.

So did the wooden ornaments cut out of flat scrap of wood and painted to look like a pineapple, the traditional Colonial American symbol of hospitality. All very traditional and conventional . . . and then until we get to the three Enterprise spaceships with their tiny blinking lights. I bought the first of those when we came back to the States, the very year they brought the Star Trek ornaments out. The little angel mouse with a dove in her hands is from Utah: craft shop in the local mall.

Oh, it took all afternoon to set this all up, twine three strings of lights around it, set the poinsettia flowers in all the gaps left by the artificial branches, and hang the total accumulation. But I don’t mind - it’s more than a Christmas tree – it’s a family history, a history that only families know.

All the Tea in India

Believe it or not, there are some food items that my family has a taste for, which just aren’t carried at the San Antonio HEB – bit of a shock to find that out, I know – but it’s true. Our very own local chain grocery store dynamo has a few of our personal food quirks left un-met. Some of those taste preferences were acquired through our eccentric family background and others through long service overseas, and so South Texas HEB can perhaps be forgiven for missing out. Since we have located a series of suitable subs – well, we won’t hold that against them.

The family legend has it that my very English Great-grandmother Alice carried around her own personal stock of tea – and when asking for hot tea in a restaurant, demanded that the staff supply her only with a tea-pot and a kettle of water – and said kettle had better still be bubbling when it was carried to her table. So, yes – tea is one of those absolutes. In my house, tea is made with bubble-boiling water, and loose tea leaves. We take it with milk and sugar, British-fashion, and the stronger the better. As my Liverpudlian Granny Dodie used to say – it should be strong enough to trot a mouse over. (A completely unsanitary and perhaps revolting mental image – but still; a good cuppa must be strong, solid, powerful – the stuff that fueled the building of an empire. Tea bags are for sissies and people too lazy to bother with preparing a good pot of tea.)