Old-time views;
one last nip from Great Auntie Hooter

We bought old postcards of San Antonio at an antique sale a couple of years ago. I went through them the other day and stopped to look at the 1909 postcard of Houston Street in San Antonio. Taken from our great-great-uncle Sam's bank building, the view faces west and within the first block is my great grandfather's Maverick Hotel. There are buggies in the street and a streetcar turns the corner onto Broadway. I bet my ancestors knew those people on the street and could have recognized the buggies and horses. The town was small enough then. Everyone knew each other. Way off to the west is a nice rise of hills which is the West Side. No wonder there is a good view of downtown from there. It is higher up and it got much better breezes back then, too. Unfortunately, the late Stockyards were downwind of the West Side. It was pretty smelly for many years, 112 years to be exact. Now that the yards are demolished, that problem no longer exists.
It is pleasant looking at old photographs and postcards of one's home territory. They show the towns as the real functioning places they once were. I can look at an old postcard of "downtown" Ft. Davis, recognize each building, and remember the store in it and who ran it. The town was a viable area headquarters then, not like present-day Texas towns that are quaintified to death. Of course, the general loss of livestock business has hurt all small towns and they have had to scramble for some kind of income. I just wish all the businesses in town weren't filled with the same way-over-fragrant candles and cute faux antique things that would look silly at home. Why do the shopkeepers have to dress like women following a Conestoga wagon? A town existed through many periods, why not pick from more than one of them?
We enjoy showing people the early family photographs taken of the Maverick Ranch. No one can believe the look of the land or the views. There were hardly any large oak trees, little cedar, and the views were for miles. That was 1907 and the land had not been settled long. Indian depredation kept settlement to the towns and cities and few dared come out far. Here at the Maverick Ranch, the last recorded Indian raid was about 1870 and vivid in the memory of the woman who experienced it as a young girl and thankfully recorded it for my grandmother. There was such a difference in the look of the land because there were grass fires at fairly regular intervals before the late 1800s. That kept the prairies viable and prevented growth of oak savannas. As settlers stopped the wandering buffalo with fences, they also prevented fires from getting loose. Oak savannas began and grew into the oak forests we have today. In some places the sun hardly hits the ground and nothing will grow.
In the early Maverick Ranch days when visitors were expected my grandmother stationed her children to watch the front gate to the road. It was a long winding mile from the house and quite visible. When they spied the car starting down the distant hill, the children would call to Grandma. She would then mix, bake, and have her special cookies cooling before the visitors could get out of the car. If we wanted to do that today, we'd have to install an electric eye on the gate to signal us. There are a just a few trees in between.
Bebe Fenstermaker Great Auntie Hooter must have decided she had advised the kittens all she could. Last week she joined her brother, Scooter, and her best friend, Spuz Ball, but not before sinking a canine into Bebe's finger. Her eyes shone with glee at having pulled off one last fast and unexpected attack. The last of the Laredo roof cats, she will be missed by all very much.
We have made three trips to Fredericksburg to see a bird outside its normal range. It is a Lewis Woodpecker. Rather a large bird, it has raspberry on the face, around the eyes, raspberry cream with a touch of salmon on its breast, and a collar of speckled light grey. On the first trip the bird was located atop an electric pole, where it proceeded to stay so we could get a good look at it. The next trip found the bird perched in a pecan tree, and again we were able to watch it for as long as we wanted. While in Fredericksburg we have also shopped at Homestead Healthy Foods, an organic meat (beef and chicken) market which also carries other organic foods. The Secrist family runs the market. They were the first to have their meat certified organic in Texas. The market is located on Live Oak and well worth a visit.
Plant rescuing continues in order to have enough plants for the Boerne Native Plant Society to sell at the Cibolo Nature Center's Native Plant Sale in April. Rescuing plants from the site on IH-10 has provided all involved with a variety of native species for both the sale and each rescuer's yard. We have seen new tagging on trees, which pressures us to work harder on the site to get as much rescued as possible before the development begins.

Sissy Fenstermaker