Exploring Buda, Texas-Just 45 Minutes North of San Antonio
by Celia Hayes
We didn't spend all of last weekend watching the wienerdogs run; the Buda City park where that event took place was pleasingly located right next to old down-town Buda, so when we had enough of wandering around between pavilions, we walked along the three or four blocks that constitute Buda ... and looked around. It's one of those sweet, small towns which retain enough of their original late 19th century buildings to be quite charming, even if those buildings mostly run along one side of the street ... because the railway runs alongside the other. Buda's town founding fathers set aside a 150-foot wide reserve of land between Main Street and the International and Great Northern railway line. The International and Great Northern may have been the reason for being in the first place, and the trains still rumble through on a regular basis.
Originally, the town was named Du Pre, but on discovering that there was another town with the same name, everyone agreed to call it Buda. Some sources say the name came from a local mispronunciation of Spanish for 'widow', since the Carrington House hotel and restaurant was the major landmark in town and a number of respectable widows worked there as cooks. Then again, it might have been homage to refugees from the failed Hungarian revolt in the mid-1800s, who settled thereabout.
Time was when the trains would stop in Buda, passengers would detrain, hurry across Main Street and have a quick meal in the Carrington House dining room. The Carrington is still here – a splendid Texas-Victorian pile with a metal roof and wide porches and galleries on two floors, but it is not a hotel any more. It's now office space and an antique store. There are several more antique stores along Main, a florist shop where a corner gas station used to be, a number of pleasant-looking restaurants and bistros and the Wildflour Cakery & Boutique, set up in a brand new-built-to-look old building. (Note: the Mexican Vanilla Cupcakes are to die for!)
Some of the older buildings seem to go on nearly forever – and everyone knows when the trains come through. I think I would get used to it, eventually, and I always loved to hear the sound of a distant train at night, but I think that you need to be about half a mile away for the nostalgic effect to work.
One of the shop owners told me of some buildings across the railroad tracks – also new-built-to-look-old, which were supposed to have stores and offices on the ground floor and residential lofts above ... but alas, the prospective tenants found the noise of trains rumbling past at all hours, a few yards away, just a little too much. I was assured, however, that the newer housing developments in Buda are far enough from the rail line that the romantic effect is achieved, rather than the earsplitting one.
I was tempted to no end by one of the antique places, and shelf after shelf of National Geographic magazines from the 1930s and 1940s. When I was a kid, one of our neighbors had a whole collection of them, and I thought they were fascinating. Not the articles so much, but the advertisements, especially the wartime issues. Maybe I will go back and buy a few for old time's sake. Or at least, for some of the Wildflour Cakery's cupcakes.
Let me say up front that we're still a little unsure of how to pronounce 'Buda' – although most of the people that we met there last weekend pronounced it 'B-yu-dah', which is fair enough. For those unfamiliar with the geography of South Texas, it is a once fairly independent and separate little community about an hour's drive north of San Antonio on IH-35, and close enough to Austin that it and the similar little community of Kyle are more or less bedroom slippers to Austin, as Boerne and Bulverde are now bedroom slippers to San Antonio.
We decided to go to support a friend who has a dachshund and who had a vendor booth for his bird feeders and ornamental lanterns, and because the mental vision of galloping wiener dogs was too much cuteness to resist. It seems to have begun as a sort of adjunct to a Lion's Club hotdog roast fund-raiser, and then someone suggested the notion of racing dachshunds as an attention-getting device. The whole thing took off from there, and now Buda has fully embraced the image of being the Wiener Dog Racing Capital of Texas – well, anything is better than slipping into dull suburban anonymity. The 
The event itself takes place in a city park in the older part of town, and in order to keep the traffic and parking situation from getting totally out of hand, the Lions' Club very cleverly set up the parking lot in a huge empty field behind the equally huge Cabela's outlet, just off the highway, and shuttled people to and fro in school-buses, which seemed to come every five minutes or so. Getting to the festival itself was practically painless, although I did feel for those people who were juggling folding chairs, kid-strollers and a dog or two on leashes. Did I mention that this was a totally dog-friendly event?
Why, certainly it was. Although only dachshunds or mostly-dachshunds can run as contestants in the races, other dogs were totally welcome into the venue itself, and even into many of the shops open on Main Street. I think about a third of the people there had dogs with them, my daughter says no, more like half ... but as there were as many attendees who had multiple dogs, so it probably came out pretty much like. And if you didn't arrive with a dog, there were opportunities offered by various dachshund rescue associations to leave with one, if you were so inclined. Dachshunds are jolly little dogs, friendly for the most part – and they made a fine show in the first heats, too. None of them lost interest half-way down the track, although some owners of fine racing wiener dog stock tell us that the racing is something that they really have to be in the mood for doing.
A lot of the vendors had dog and dog-related items; stuffed sock dogs, metal art featuring wiener-dogs, jewelry ... and dog treats, of all kinds. The two creators of 
Woman screaming about the mess in the room. Things are scattered on the carpet.
This latest adventure in home food preparation was my daughter's notion, upon noting that the aisle in our local 
So, following her last big payday, she purchased the kit, a 
Her part-time job for Edible Arrangements is a source of certain kinds of fruit or fruit scraps ... waste not, want not, you know. Anyway I've always loved the descriptions in 
Anyway, it was a natural progression from 
Several markets, actually – beginning with the super-gigantic NEISD – PTA book sale, which is held every year in April at the Blossom Athletic center basketball stadium. This is the nirvana of book sales to a serious aficionado of same, both because of the flat rate involved: 50 cents for softbound, one dollar for hard-bound, no matter what the size or original value of the book involved, and because … well, there is nearly half an acre of books, and all of them roughly organized by category, and I have been able to replace many of the books that my parents had in their house when it 
Very likely that is where my affection for excellent writing, far corners of the earth and exciting history came from. This time, I scored twenty-two books, half of them being copies of the American Heritage magazine when it was published in hardback and without advertisements. I recognized every one of the covers, since they were from 1964-1966. This made a full and heavy box full of books, for which I requested the services of a sturdy youth to carry them out to the Montero. These events are fully staffed by adult, teenage and grade-school age volunteers, it benefits the PTA of the Northside Independent School District here in San Antonio, the range of books on offer is incredible and the prices for them cannot be beaten with a stick. Look for next year’s sale sometime in April, 2013. NEISD is one of the largest school districts in San Antonio. Search for 
From there, my daughter and I headed north to Boerne, for Market Days and a pleasant afternoon going up Main Street and dipping into those variously tempting establishments with goods affordable to the likes of us – especially those antique stores which have pressed glass among the goods. My daughter collects this … but from antique stores is not so much fun as scoring it at yard and estate sales. We went to support a neighbor of ours who makes hanging bird-feeders from plates, and curious ornamented lamps made from bottles filled with glass pebbles … he’s another retiree like me, with an all-consuming interest and a certain degree of skill.
There are a number of interesting new shops along Main Street now; the one which we liked the best was a The Squirrel’s Nest resale shop, at 255 South Main which benefits the Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation center in Kendalia. This is a place which does an absolutely sterling and very valuable job; that is, they’re the folks you call when you find an injured wild critter or bird. You might not know what to do, but they do. And there were some very nice things in the resale shop… Boerne, TX is in the Texas Hill Country. Search online for 
We love market days in Boerne (pronounced ‘Bernie’) – my daughter says it is one of San Antonio’s bedroom slippers, with Bulverde being the other slipper.