Growing Up in Bandera

If you still struggle with saying First Street bridge instead of Silver Spur bridge then you have probably been around here about as long as me. If I tell you to meet me at “The Dollar” you better be headed over to Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar and not one of those many new variety stores popping up all over the county. If I say, “Rhodes Country Shopper Super S Lowes grocery store” there will be oldtimers who laugh and understand but many of you will be scratching your heads.

When searching my brain trying to figure out how to give directions or reference some location around Bandera I find it difficult to refrain from using things known only to the oldtimers around here. Like the curve by Dr. Meador’s office for example. Or the turnoff out there by the Pember place. About a mile past Willie Kalka’s house and many more.

3240 is becoming the new name used for Ridge Route from back in the day. It used to be a gravel road with cattle guards and no fences along side the road so it was sometimes necessary to yield to livestock.

It started there at the Wagon Wheel on the Kerrville highway.

We didn’t call the street we lived on Pecan Street. We just said “our street” and everyone knew what we meant. If you were looking for Dennis Duff you went one block past our house and it was there on the right. Don’t look for it at that location now though. It disappeared years ago just like the Dick Evans place one more block down our street on the same side. For a while I.G. Thetford had the wagon he lived in just past that location.

I don’t recall the highway creek crossings being marked by signs in those earlier days. Unlike today there was no sign to mark Julian Creek there at the Dugosh farm where Richard Dugosh first showed me how to milk a cow. He also got us in trouble with his dad Hubert Dugosh for throwing corn cobs at the hogs. Roy may have had a hand in it too but he was younger so I don’t remember for sure. I never forgot the lecture we got that day and never again in my entire life have I thrown another corn cob at a hog.

Half Circle Courts, City Hotel, Joleta curve, Longhorn Steakhouse and many other landmarks have been lost over the years. Speaking for myself, I think it’s getting pretty boring to give directions using numbers and names of streets. What’s going to become of us oldtimers as we get forgetful and lose our way?

If you see me wandering around town looking lost here in my late Growing Up In Bandera days just remind me that I live around the corner from my childhood friend Charlie Fellows. I can make it from there.