Notes from a Travel Journal . . .

INTO TEXAS HILL COUNTRY

One advantage of living in Texas is that one has an inexhaustible supply of places to visit without getting out of his own state. Though I have lived here all my life, until this trip I had only touched the fringes of that area known as “the Hill Country,” more recently branded (almost literally) “LBJ”. This journey was extra special since Ouida was along. Just the two of us. We left the kids at home to do what they would, and off we went to visit with two different congregations and a number of friends. It was a kind of honeymoon-vacation, which has been the story all along of our 30 years together. Living with Ouida is one grand, continual honeymoon, and since our work together is so exciting, it can be called a vacation just as well.

Some Texans tend to stretch the size of the Hill Country, even to include Austin and San Antonio, but it is properly four relatively small counties, Kimble, Gillespie, Blanco, and Kerr, lying due west and slightly south of Austin. There is a definite change in terrain and climate as one enters, for the altitude is about 2,000 feet and the hills roll like huge ocean waves. The natives are pleased with their cool summer nights without air-conditioning. It is ideal tourist country and there are many who retire there.

We took the time to make our first visit to the LBJ ranch, and we would urge any visitor to our state to do likewise, for they have done it up Texas-style and give one a good ride. Literally. One is escorted up and down the small ranch and back and forth across the Pedernales in a sleek bus, with the voices of both Lady Bird and the late former President describing the scenes and telling the history. You not only see the river where LBJ waded and fished as a boy, but the guest house where the likes of Dean Rusk and Secretary McNamara slept and the grounds where kings of earth have walked. They do it up right, perhaps better than it really is. There is now a sizable state park adjacent to the ranch, with tourist center and memorial building, all monitored and financed publicly. The government even runs cattle on the ranch to preserve the “down home” atmosphere. Lady Bird is still around, of course, and is often seen going and coming, but she is now free of responsibility for the ranch with the government taking care of everything, which seems to be the name of the game these days. She is still protected by the Secret Service.

LBJ does not and did not draw especially high marks by the old timers in the area. Ouida and I made it a point to ask. He hurt himself by seizing a neighbor’s land for the park. The neighbor won a higher price in court, but he still had to give it up, which he did not want to do. The home folk are aware of how the President would talk about his “boyhood home,” but the land that he made that fellow sell was that man’s boyhood home too. But apart from that incident the former President would win no popularity contests in the Hill Country, and the natives would just as soon it not be called “LBJ country,” for they feel that it has glory in its own right.

Fredericksburg, which is about 15 miles west of the ranch, is a quaint little German town that dates back to some of the earliest settlements of the state. It is Lutheran and German Catholic, but we have a lovely little Church of Christ there, which is the only congregation of the Restoration family. We stayed at the Sunday House Motel for two days while we shared with the brethren, a motel that takes its name from the old custom of the German farmers having houses in town, to which they would come for the weekend and for church from their larger spreads out in the hills, and some of these old Sunday houses still stand. It is interesting to walk down the drag of this old town and visit the quaint little businesses, most all run by old German families. We especially enjoyed the smell of various German breads baking, and that aroma drew us to a little shop where we enjoyed cinnamon rolls right out of the oven, prepared the same way as back before the Civil War and even back in Germany.

We enjoyed all the tales of the town’s history and even the brags of how it is the only place in the world to live, which Texans have learned to bear from other Texans. I was intrigued by the old Leutegemeinde, a small building for all faiths, built a century and a half ago. The Lutherans and the Catholics might not have been united, but at least they could share the same building. Their successors have not been so financially prudent, for Fredericksburg, like most towns, has a house for every sect.

John Paden ministers to our congregation there, a church that struggled for many years for survival, and he and his wife Jeanne are precious souls who really love the Lord. And that is what our sessions were about, Jesus, that wonderful person of the Bible that may well be a stranger even to those who wear his name. We had a special session with the sisters, which included more of that elegant German food, and studied together the mission of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. I find that the question, What is the Spirit doing for you now? is one that is almost completely new to our folk. The first response is a kind of What!! But the Fredericksburg congregation is in love and happy in the Lord and united with him and each other.

Farther south in Hondo which is just below the heart of the Hill Country, I addressed the Church of Christ on the mystery of our religion, expanding on the description of the Christ given in that great chant recorded in I Tim. 3:16, which is one of my favorite texts. This is a growing church, well housed, and its minister is Frank Perkins, Jr., a man loved and respected by those who know him. We were there to visit John and Norma Jennings, Norma being the daughter of our beloved Guy Land of Wynnewood Chapel in Dallas. We found Norma rejoicing that her aged father-in-law, of one of the old Hondo families, had recently obeyed Jesus in baptism. John is a successful optometrist, and he and Norma have two of the most beautiful baby girls you would ever expect to see in or out of Texas. Since I performed their wedding ceremony some years ago, I was thankful to find them growing in the Lord and contributing in an important way in the life of the church and the community.

Out from Hondo toward Bandera live our longtime friends, Ralph and Wanda Hancock, who are growing wealthier and wiser on a ranch that grows so much deer that they operate a substantial deer-hunting business. They built blinds over their hundreds of acres, heated for the wintry chills, and Ralph delivers two hunters to each blind from his jeep, and he hopes they’ll still be sober when he picks them up several hours later. If they don’t obey his rules to fire only from a blind and only at a visible deer, he sends them home. He has more business than he wants, and even with an extended deer season there are not enough deer harvested, leaving too many to starve in the winter.

Ralph is the one that got us into the chicken business, and it was only at his insistence (“Mortgage your home if necessary”) that we would have ever had such an adventure. So we always review that strange story when we get together, and he always gets a big bang out of my thanking him for making me rich. The Lord has given Ralph the gift of making money. If one can make money on that rocky soil around Hondo and on its deer that graze it diligently for dear life, I suppose he can make it off anything. Now a rich man, he started out selling hamburgers, Texas-size, of course.

This was definitely one of my most enjoyable and fruitful trips this year, mainly because Ouida was along. She loves people and relates to them so beautifully, and once she has been around for awhile people decide that this world is not such a bad place after all.

We didn’t want to overdo it by returning home through the Hill Country, so we reveled in the luxury of freeways all the way home by way of San Antonio and Austin. But we brought back with us the memory of LBJ’s description of the Pedernales, fresh baked German bread, Sunday houses both old and new, quaint little towns, little congregations that love Jesus, and friends that are more precious than gold. My travels among our folk these days convinces me that we are learning what Gilbert Chesterton was trying to tell the church in his day when he said, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it is that it has been tried and found difficult and abandoned.”—the Editor