I. G. Thetford did what I wanted to do most of my young life in Bandera. He lived on the banks of the Medina River west of town in what we called the river loop area.
His home was a wagon and he rode a horse everywhere he went. If anyone was ever an authentic holdover from our early pioneer days he fit the bill. He was outfitted in every way like the cowboys of the past.
He hired out to local ranchers for whatever work they had available. I recall seeing him working for my uncle Phil Kindla building fence on a few occasions.
Unlike him I’m sure I would have run home for supper every night even as I lived an outdoorsman life. Not that I couldn’t have survived on my own and provided for myself but my momma was a really good cook.
I.G. never had his camp too close to the river banks. At his age I’m sure he had witnessed the rage of the mighty Medina more than once. Oldtimers from back in the day had a sense about things like that involving nature.
As kids we spent the majority of our time on the river in and around the Mayan Ranch Road bridge. Back then we didn’t have a clue that the real name of the road was Schmidtke Road.
As a matter of fact, I couldn’t have told you that our home was on 8th and Pecan Streets either.
“You know where Tom Adamietz lived and kept that cow in the pen out back?”
“We lived just over that rail fence behind him.”
“That’s right! Close to Kaspar Mazurek’s place”.
Recently I saw a post on social media where someone was inquiring about a red light district in Bandera in earlier times. That got me to thinking about lots of things that we knew as teenagers happening around town but we never discussed them in a public forum.
In the circle of friends I ran with we joked and laughed about stuff that was the worst kept secrets in town. A songwriter friend of mine wrote a song not too long ago about one such legendary event that was hidden in plain sight for many years.
Speaking of legends I know of a few that had been verified by some of the local oldtimers. One was about the old jail with the prisoner who was serving time.
He would escape through the roof in the evening after the sheriff went home and then be back in his cell early the next morning. I heard that story from several of my elders including my dad.
Even the jail that was behind the courthouse had some legendary tales attached to it. I can’t speak to the truth of those stories but if a couple of the ones I heard could be verified I think a memorial should have been erected there after it was bulldozed. Or maybe not!!!
If you ever hear a story about a check being written on a tortilla and the local bank honoring that check you can bet money it’s true. Recently during a phone conversation with Jimmy Foster we were discussing the old ways of Bandera and he confirmed he had written that tortilla check to my aunt Smokey Kindla.
Proving once again why I love the oldtimers from Bandera, he shared a story about an emergency loan that was made out the side door of a local bank after hours. Now if you are an older native of Bandera like me I’m sure you will nod your head and smile recalling how things were much different around here back in the day. That’s especially true with the banking business.
Young folks are never going to realize how different this town was in my younger Growing Up In Bandera times. I miss the older people I was around in those earlier times.
A lot of them didn’t really embrace the changes taking place in this town where we lived. I started to have those same feelings myself quite a few years ago. The folks at city hall are becoming way too much involved in our daily lives. I guess that’s what happens when a town becomes a city.
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