Somewhere Between San Antonio and Houston

Halloween 2009 wasn't that interesting for us. So after handing out candy to the kids in the neighborhood while in the back of my truck with Bud Light, we decided to have a laid back evening at a bar that I know well (The Thirsty Turtle). I of course dressed up like a fag (and no I wasn’t prancing around sporting gay pride shirts that say “rainbows are gay” and I wasn’t hitting on men). I sported an Affliction shirt that I will soon return and carried around a double-sided dildo wherever I went. Laura on the other hand decided not to get dressed up even though she did buy herself a brand new Indian outfit this year (like she didn’t already have a wide selection in her closet already). Since we knew that we were going for a long excursion in the morning, we decided to call it an early evening and hit the sack. We got an early start on Sunday, November 1, 2009 and headed out towards the Houston area.

Here we found on a car a quote painted saying, "Fat people are people too." We had just gotten ourselves some Krispy Kreme, so we were happy these girls reassured us we were people too.







The first dance hall that we came upon was Club 21 in Uhland, Texas. The hall is still open as a bar and has Texas Country artists performing on a regular basis. But if anyone decides to visit this small Texas town just for the hell of it, it is literally like a scene from House of Wax. The small shops around the bar/dance hall are all closed down with creepy old signs and weird statues in the windows. It really freaked us the hell out.
An old general store next to Club 21

Our token Redskin posing in front of some historical marker of her people.

Me being a retard and making up a Club 21 gang sign.

This one clearly got the Laura approval for a picture.












A windmill Laura had to pretend was Princess Di in a French tunnel while she played paparazzi.









The scariest place I've ever seen in my life, even in the light.







Brushy Creek is the name for the new album for Josh Abbott so an instaboner obviously happened.








These pics are from a picnic stop near La Grange. Sorry my old age (26 next month) won't allow me to remember what road it was on.












The second dance hall of the day that we came across was Swiss Alp. This was our first encounter with someone that actually owned/worked at the dance halls that weren’t fully operational all the time. Although we didn’t get to go inside the hall, the owners were friendly and thought that we were there to purchase it from them. They told us stories of recent dances that had taken place, and some big names that were coming to play at the venue. In the book it states, “The hall is about to crumble. Marian stated that she’ll probably hate it torn down, and with it a chapter of Texas music history will go down in rubble.” Fortunately for us, we found out this isn’t the case.





These are all Swiss Alp Action.













After traveling down some small Texas country roads, we came upon the small and secluded town of Ammannsville, Texas. It would take a retard to miss the KJT Hall in the middle of the town. The black and white pictures from the book do not do this hall justice. Yes it’s simple and white, but it’s a brilliant and sparkling white with the letters KJT standing out in a bold black. Upon examination up close, yet again we were happy to see that this hall wasn’t going anywhere soon either. Aside from the apparent well kept maintenance of the building itself, there were signs posted on the doors about upcoming county voting that would be taking place at the hall. Down the street was an amazing Catholic church with a cemetary and a pond next to it. Both inside and out of the church were the reason America has better churches than Europe does cathedrals.















A bunch of shots of the hall, the church, and their surroundings.



























The fourth stop of the day brought us to KJT Hall (Lodge #6) in Dubina, Texas. The hall itself looked a lot like the KJT Hall with its white exterior, but inside had a balcony area that Laura snapped a picture of. This hall was interesting, but a couple of things outside the hall made this one memorable. #1: There were still restrooms outside of the hall (outhouses) that had men and women written in Czech (and since I have a tendency to pee a lot I decided I would see if they still work, and they do). #2: While I was peeing, Laura almost got eaten by about 5-6 vultures. She was yelling something about a big bird that was going to kill her as she was walking to the historical marker, and all of a sudden (well I seem to recall this part, she doesn’t, of course) she screams like a little girl cause the other 4-5 vultures were hiding around the corner of the hall and almost took her with them on their take-off. #3: Again, similar to KJT Hall, this hall also had an enormous Catholic Church right down the road from it.








The hall and the church round 2.




















A sweet ass bridge from 1885 and me enjoying my middle name as a street sign.





















Stafford Opera House was our next stop of the day. It took us a while to find this one because all the book told us was that it was in the downtown square in Columbus, and there was no picture of it. I didn’t help that it was a Sunday, and there was absolutely no one around to help us find it. So after I conveniently found a port-a-potty to pee in, we walked around the square until we found it. The Opera House didn’t look any different than the other buildings around it, but there was an old home that was built next to it. Upon reading the historical marker, apparently the same rich cattleman that built the Stafford Opera House built his house right next to it. The purpose for doing this was so that he could just go to the porch upstairs and watch performances next door from his own home. Lazy, or pure genius? You decide.




I wish we could have gone inside, it looked pretty sweet.

















After finally eating lunch at a really good Mexican restaurant right off the highway in Seally, we set off to look for the American Legion Hall. Good thing that Laura is part Injun, because she used her eagle like senses to spot this hall. Too bad it wasn’t one of the cooler ones. We snapped our picture at this one and left.
















In the same town of Seally, our next stop was Liedertafel Fireman’s Hall. To get to this hall, we had to drive down Main Street, which in this small town, was a “real” Main Street. The road was about the size of four actual lanes, but really there was only two, and there was no center stripe. All along the sides of Main Street were old home from either the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, and large trees were growing out over the street. At the end of Main Street past some railroad tracks, we found the hall. Again, we were happy to see that this hall was also well kept, and there were some additions such as a flag pole, benches, a new sign and brick walkway that had names of people that had donated to the hall.


At least the sun wasn't right behind us or anything.
















Peters Hall was probably by far the coolest one that we visited this day. As we pull up, we notice and old beat up Ford parked in the drive with a ragged looking man in mechanic looking outfit on taking a 12 pack from the inside of the hall. Of course we get out (with our book in hand to reassure people that we really aren’t that crazy) and approach the guy. After telling him what we are doing, he gets overly excited and decides to show us inside the hall. It was dark inside, and seemed as though the place hadn’t been used in a while. As the guy turned on the lights, we got a glimpse of the awesomeness that these halls hold inside their plane outer shells. The hardwood floor was the original from 1900, the old wooden rafters were sprouting out from the only grounded support right in the middle of the hall just like a tree, and the table and chairs were neatly put up around the outside of the dance floor. There is only one word that can describe what we saw, amazingness. As he was walking us out, Joseph (that was his name, it was printed on his shirt) jokingly told us that if we wanted to become members, that we could for only $10 a year. We decided later that if we lived in the area, there is no doubt that we would become members. And the last parting gift that Joseph offered us was beer, and of course we took him up on this. We sat on the back of Laura’s tailgate looking at the hall and living the dream.









Pictures in and around the hall. Note the great Lone Star trough. (I'm guessing on the spelling of that bad boy, so if it is wrong, don't judge me.)



We literally passed Millheim Harmonic Verein Hall, stopped in the middle of the street, threw the truck in reverse and pulled into the drive. *Side note: We were able to do this at almost every hall. Most of them were located down back country roads with no one else around. It was a really cool feeling.* To our luck again, there was someone cleaning up inside from the Halloween dance the night before. This time it was an older man, maybe mid 60’s who was very friendly. He goes by the name of Butch. He gave us a little history of the place, showed us the egg cartons on the ceiling, and told us it was about $250 a night plus some small amount per hour to have air conditioning to rent the hall. To our surprise, he offered us a beer too, and while in the kitchen area he showed us the Historical Marker that would be going up next week outside the hall, and he gave me a book from the hall’s centennial celebration. We walked around the hall, said thank you to the kind man and headed on out.








Before I forget, the most memorable quote from the day came from when we were taking pictures by the Millheim sign. The grass was a little tall around the sign, and unlike Laura who was raised on her ranch for the most part, I was raised in the city. Laura could see me hesitating to walk through the rugged terrain, and decided to hurry me up by stating “I had bigger balls than you when I was 5.” Needless to say, this lit a fire under my ass and I posed quickly next to the sign.



















































Cat Springs Agricultural Society Hall was our 10th stop of the day. As we were walking around this hall, we came upon a Chupecabra! Well I thought it was one, Laura just called it a cat (no wonder it is called Cat Springs). Not much else to see at this one, and we were losing daylight due to the time change, so we moved on.




Us avoiding the chupe at all costs and then takin pics of longhorns that made Laura piss herself with excitement.










It took us forever to find Coshatte Hall (damn Savages). The direction in the book are a little wrong, instead of turning right on Waak Road, you will turn right on Smith Road (we believe that the road name was changed). Not much to see around this hall except the families in the double-wides right next door not offering any bbq and the cool Equestrian Center across the road.





Laura paying homage to her people and me mocking them and thanking them for giving the white man syphallis in return for the blankets we offered them.









In the small town of Bellville was Bellville Turnverein Pavilion. The way that the sun was setting really made the greens and off-white of the structure stand out. Too bad there was a group of Mexicans (Scary Mexicans, not like get drunk and be loud and fun Mexicans) next to the building or else we would have stayed longer to check out the whole building.

You'd think with the hurry we were in we would be running by the hall like we were illegals in Del Rio.














Of course the last stop of the day had to be about 40 minutes from our last stop. On our way we saw this cool little Texas store named (Texas Trash and Treasures www.ilovecarmine.com). Adter telling the lady who ran the shop what we were doing she suggested we make a blog, so here it is. I'd like to thank her for the idea although it can be a major pain in the ass at times, because in the long run it will be worth it. Laura seemed to get excited about it, so I decided that we could turn around and go inside. The people that owned the shop were working and told us that the store actually use to be an old saloon built in 1906. After Laura made a small purchase of a really cool old Lone Star bottle that had been compressed to use as wall art (and who my best friend Dave will be very jealous about), we went right down the road to Carmine Dance Hall.





Third times a charm as they say (well in our case this was the third time within 2 hours that this had happened), so as we pulled up, what did we see? That’s right, people cleaning up inside. So once again, we grabbed our book and strolled inside. This time though, the couple seemed a little hesitant to talk to us. After about five minutes of talking, the wife confessed that whenever we walked in carrying our books, she thought that we were some of those crazy religious people who were trying to give away religious books. We were somewhat disappointed to see that the inside of this hall was not as cool as the last two. It was modernized with lower ceilings ands florescent lights all around the place. Despite this, we were still grateful that we were able to go inside, thanked the nice couple for their time, and moseyed our way on home.



A great song to go with the last picture is Goodnight Moon by Jack Ingram.
















Of course it had only been about 3 hours since I had eaten, so we stopped at the local Buc-ees to ask about local pizzerias (and for Laura to get Beaver Nuggets which she had a boner for and I ate most of cause it was so damn good). The lady at the counter (who looked like she lived in a small town all of her life) said that there was a small mom and pop’s pizza place in town, but it was closed. Lucky for us she was wrong and it was open. We discovered that it was B.Y.O.B., so while waiting for our food to be ready, we drove over to the gas station, picked up a six pack of tall boys, and ate some of the best damn pizza we had ever had.



We had about a three hour drive ahead of us, and despite the fact that we had been running around Texas for about 12 hours now, we sang Texas Country all the way home…

(And if you couldn't tell this was written by Laura pretending to be me because I've been too fuckin lazy to write anything as of late. However, I have edited some of it and added my two cents here and there.)