Travel
Gruene Peace
One of the most relaxing destinations in Texas has a famous dance hall, charming inns, fishing, river rafting, and more than a century of history.
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You don’t have to hike very far to experience Gruene—it covers only about twenty acres. Molak and Nalley have put their business office on the second floor of the red brick Mercantile Building, which used to be a saddletree factory. The ground floor is divided among antique consignors who offer the usual array of sixties LPs and campaign buttons but also some choice armoires. Gruene has more than a dozen other antique and small gift shops and the pottery workshop of a subtly impressive stoneware craftsman, Dee Buck.
Across the street is the Gristmill, where my wife and I stopped for Bloody Marys. As Willie Nelson sang “Georgia on My Mind” on tape, we looked at a menu, thought about an appetizer, but wound up ordering a combination of lunch and dinner that might be termed “luncher,” the meal that lasts. In tune with the times, the Gristmill’s fare has lightened up in recent years. But it had been a while since we had had chicken-fried steak, and they do it well, so what the hell: We went for it.
A few hours later, we awoke in the loft from our nap, and it was nightfall. We watched the light and river from the porch and cleaned up and dressed for the evening—to the extent you do that in Gruene. We strolled back to the Gristmill and had a couple of whiskeys as we conversed with a pleasant young bartender. Then we walked a hundred more yards and went inside the saloon to see Omar and the Howlers and Leon Russell at a distance of about fifty feet. Molak and Nalley have made the necessary concessions to New Braunfels’ plumbing and fire codes, but they’ve declined to tinker with the entertainment chemistry. They didn’t try to air-condition Gruene Hall, and they didn’t buy a liquor license; Henry’s sign would have to be revised to say “Beer Here.” The local business ads with three-digit phone numbers remain exactly as the current owners found them.
For shows like this one, people come early to claim the benches of the plank tables, and area cops who moonlight as security guards are always telling others that they either have to stand off to the side or sit down on the floor; ain’t no room for dancin’. That night a young Hispanic man exhibited a bit of attitude in the jostling, but then so did the ruddy-faced cop who hectored us. A guy with a black hat and a hand in the hip pocket of his date’s blue jeans looked at me and winked: “How many cowboys can he whip?”
My wife and I got a breath of air in the wooded beer garden, where some kids were pitching horseshoes. Back inside we found seats on the floor. It was the first time I’d seen Omar. The man can howl, and his guitar is chartreuse. A fellow my age from Houston watched me scribble “Cross between Delta blues and ZZ Top” in my notebook and asked me what I was doing. I explained, and his wife, who looked none too comfy on the splintered floor, stared at me aghast. “You mean you have to stay here?” (Okay. Gruene is not for everybody.)
I’d remembered Leon Russell as a man of fair height, but in fact he’s quite short, and like most of his fans from the sixties and seventies, he has spread out some. His cascade of hair and beard is snowy white now. My wife murmured that he looks like a troll. I’d say Santa Claus with a cowboy hat, if not for the hawklike gaze. He sat down at his piano, then after a curt nod to the crowd, his hands were flying, and the joint was roaring. His son, who has dreadlocks, was the drummer. My gaze kept falling on a pair of rapscallions who looked like they had arrived at middle age by way of the Hell’s Angels, Charles Dickens, and Robinson Crusoe. One supported himself with a cane and honored his hero with sweeping gestures of a top hat. None of Russell’s material was new, but who cares? The old stuff was terrific. “And I hope you understand, I just had to go back to the island . . .”
If we had been inclined to do anything energetic, Sunday would have been the day. Businesses that rent canoes, rafts, and inner tubes are strung along the county road that follows the Guadalupe from New Braunfels’ outskirts to Canyon Lake. Two of the most elaborate, with guided tours arranged as far away as Costa Rica, are Rockin ‘R’ River Rides (run by a Gruene longtimer with the engaging name of Zero Rivers) and the Gruene River Raft Company. But after lunch at the Adobe Verde—a Mexican restaurant in the building that once housed the electric cotton gin—I investigated instead the newest outdoor rage on the Guadalupe. At a well-stocked store called Gruene Outfitters, I looked up Ray Box; when I first knew him, he was a teacher and then a homebuilder in New Braunfels, and one of the familiar crowd at Gruene Hall. Now he’s a retailer, guide, and teacher and booster of Texas fly-fishing.
Anglers have long known about fly casting for warmwater bass and sunfish on the rock-bedded rivers of Central Texas, and saltwater fly-fishing for redfish, trout, and flounder has recently caught on big in the shallows of the Gulf. But Gruene supplies a convenient home base for what Box calls the state’s third season: brown and rainbow trout. The Guadalupe water that comes out from under Canyon Dam is extremely cold, and several years ago the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department began stocking the Rocky Mountain species in the river. The rainbow trout not only adapted; they are thriving and evidently reproducing. They seek deep water as the year warms up—the fishing would be disrupted anyway by the white-water traffic, a season anglers deride mildly as “the tuber hatch”—but during the cool months, fly casting for trout on the Guadalupe impresses even veterans of the sport from Colorado and Montana. In fact, this eight-mile stretch of river has now attracted the Texas chapter of Trout Unlimited, which is the largest in the nation.
Next time I’ll bring my fly rod, but we spent that Sunday reading, talking, dozing in the loft. By late afternoon the village was almost deserted. We had set aside the evening for the most formal dining in Gruene. With the lavish refurbishment that marks the rest of Gruene Mansion Inn, in March 1995 the McCaskills unveiled an American and continental restaurant of Alsatian flavor—and with a good wine list. But first we wandered back over to the beer joint for the free music show. About sixty people occupied the tables. Some of their children whacked balls around the pool table and played tag on the dance floor. Set up against the bar that week was not an ambitious newcomer but Steve Fromholz, a veteran of “the great progressive country scare,” as he terms his heyday in the seventies.
Fromholz realized he didn’t want to topple over some day playing barroom gigs, so when the platinum records failed to materialize, he got himself another trade. He partly makes his living these days as a guide of wilderness white-water treks. But Gruene Hall clearly contains a wealth of memories for him, and his audience of peers was just as awash in nostalgia and fondness for this decrepit, evocative place. He played with the same guitarist who showed up with him fifteen years ago. He wiped his face and mustache with what looked like the same bandanna. He can still sing, and he’s still funny. He got the crowd laughing with a routine about a geriatric mobility aid he wants to market as the Jerry Jeff Walker. A man sent his little boy over to put some money in a large jar positioned on a barstool. The dropped quarters rang loudly, which drew another laugh. “Bless you, child,” said Fromholz, “for giving this old hippie gentleman a tip.”
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