History Lesson 
Old-Fashioned Texas
Our state may be changing at warp speed, but pockets of the past are everywhere—if you just look around. We’ve waltzed at dance halls and skated at roller rinks, sipped homemade root beer and even had our hair cut in search of the places and pleasures on the following pages. So slow down, turn off your cell phone, and come along on a trip to days gone by.
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SODA FOUNTAIN
The hardy little Nederland pharmacy has endured for exactly one hundred years, and its soda fountain is such a local institution that it now takes up almost half the premises and boasts its own name, Nederland Lunch Counter. Outside, the brick mercantile is painted a soft buff with red trim, and the tidy but faded lettering helps the building retain its been-there-forever look. Inside, the centerpiece of the soda fountain is the original counter, elaborately inlaid with tiny square tiles of black, white, tan, orange, and aqua; on the shelves behind it are an ancient cash register (just for display), miscellaneous notes (“Call Shirley with pie count!”), and a collection of dishes including fluted sundae glasses and babies’ tippy cups. The menu is basic cafe fare, but the grill artist ignores standard meal parameters; he’ll cook you eggs or pancakes any time of day, and he cheerfully fixed me a hamburger at ten in the morning (hey, I’d been up since five). Favorite classic treat: a root-beer float. Favorite moment: overhearing the waitress ask another customer, “You want those biscuits regular or grilled?” Sated, I moseyed into the drugstore half for some ibuprofen (hey, I’d been up since five). Besides modern health and beauty items, you’ll spot plenty of evidence of the store’s past, such as an antique oak case with retro medicines like “German powder wafers” and “dentalgia drops.” If you have any questions about the store or Nederland in general, ask pharmacist Kenneth Sheffield, who’s worked there a mere 54 years. Nederland Lunch Counter, 1100 Boston Avenue, Nederland (409-729-3807). A. D.
MENUDO TO GO
“Menudo para los crudos” (“Menudo for hangovers”) goes the old saying, so it’s no surprise that the tripe-and-hominy stew has long been a weekend-only specialty at Mexican restaurants all over the state. In fact, so popular is menudo—even for the headache-free—that many places provide take-out service for families who bring their own containers (and who thus keep their houses free of the strong smell of cooking tripe). In El Paso the original Delicious Mexican Eatery has been dishing up its garlicky, chile-spiked menudo for neighborhood regulars since the mid-seventies. Says manager Velia Apodaca: “People bring in cooking pots, Crock-Pots, all kinds and sizes of pots. We charge by the scoop—two dollars a sixteen-ounce scoop.” The Delicious cooks its menudo all night long, so it’s tender and tasty by morning—just about the time those jackhammers are starting up in your skull. Delicious Mexican Eatery, 3314 Fort Boulevard, El Paso (915-566-1396). A. D.
HOMEMADE PIES
Pie are square, according to some folks; it’s a dessert that will never have the glamour of tiramisu or crème brûlée. But since chuck-wagon cooks and the like rarely had the milk and eggs required for cake baking, pie reigns as the most venerable of Texas sweets. And the choices at Utopia’s temple of pie-ety, the Lost Maples Cafe, would alone explain the town’s optimistic name. For two bucks a slice (a sixth of a pie), you can sample eight kinds, all handmade daily in the cafe’s kitchen: coconut cream, the best-seller; hard-to-find, supersweet buttermilk; two meringue choices, a non-tangy lemon and a creamy chocolate; classic pecan, apple, and cherry; and the crunchy, fudgelike chocolate-pecan. All go well with a hot cuppa joe. The pastry crusts are especially admirable, flaky and hand-fluted. There’s an extensive menu of fried stuff too, if you want an entrée to follow your dessert. The seating includes cedar benches as well as vintage dinettes, and the walls are decked with rusty farm implements and old advertising signs, as is entirely fitting—which your shorts won’t be when you depart. Lost Maples Cafe, Main Street, Utopia (830-966-2221). A. D.
POST OFFICE
The filling station burned down in the eighties, the cafe is now a storage shed, and Freitag’s General Store was sold several years ago to a Houston antiques dealer who stripped the 1880 mercantile to its bones and sold off its character to the highest bidder. But you can still detect a heartbeat in the tiny town of Kenney—at the diminutive post office, relocated from Freitag’s store to the Kenney State Bank building, built in the early 1900’s. Customers don’t have to wait in line—much less take a number—whether they’re buying stamps or picking up a dozen eggs from postmaster Katherine Johnson’s mother’s hens. Locals regularly stop by to drop off used paperbacks, spread the word that they need a deck built, or catch up on gossip with relief postmaster Norma Richter. “We had to build a wheelchair-accessible ramp a couple of years ago,” says Richter, “but hardly anybody uses it. We have one handicapped customer and she just drives up and honks and we go out to the car to take care of her.” U.S. Post Office, 707 Loop 497, Kenney (off Texas Highway 36 between Brenham and Bellville), 979-865-5197. Suzy Banks
VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT BARBECUE
In the tiny town of Shelby, near Brenham, the volunteer fire department has been putting on two annual barbecues, on Memorial Day and Labor Day, since 1958. The May feast benefits the fire department, while the Labor Day event is for the town’s historic dance hall, Harmonie Hall. Usually anywhere from eight hundred to one thousand meal tickets are sold for each one, at $6 a pop. In addition to the beans and other sides donated by local supporters, the barbecue committee generally cooks up eight hundred pounds of beef and an equal amount of pork.
The committee is serious business. “You are either born into it or married into it,” says Brian Powell, who mans the five oak-wood pits with his father-in-law and seven others. The day before the event, the crew seasons the meat (salt, pepper, and spices), then, around one-thirty in the morning, puts it on to cook. About nine hours later they start pulling off the meat, and when the job is done, they head home to clean up for lunch. After the meal—and before a local polka band tunes up for dancing—everyone sits on folding chairs on the covered patio and sips cold beer or soft drinks while an auctioneer rattles off item after item: a stained-glass window, home-baked oatmeal-raisin cookies, a handmade whip. In May, when the proceeds go for necessities ranging from pagers to fire trucks, the most coveted purchase is always a quilt stitched by Lydia “Granny” Weinert. This year’s went for $1,000—but, hey, it’s for a really good cause. Shelby Volunteer Fire Department Barbecue, Harmonie Hall, FM 389 at Voelkel Lane, Shelby (979-836-9625). P. B. M.
AMUSEMENT PARK
In this Disney-Universal-Six Flags World of multimillion-dollar theme parks, it’s nice to know there’s still a family-owned summer place like Wonderland. Fifty years ago Paul and Alethea Roads opened Kiddie Land, as it was then called, in Amarillo’s Thompson Memorial Park. Over the years the couple has expanded the spread into a full-blown amusement park with all the requisite rides and attractions: the Texas Tornado double loop and two other steel coasters as well as a trio of water rides to satisfy the thrill-seekers; tried-and-true standards like bumper cars and a Tilt-A-Whirl; a Midway-style arcade with games of chance and video games; and a kiddie area with a merry-go-round, a miniature train, and cars, boats, and planes that go round and round. Wonderland Park, 2601 Dumas Drive, Thompson Memorial Park (off U.S. 287), Amarillo (806-383-3344, 800-383-4712; wonderlandpark.com). Call for hours; $1.50 to $3 per ride (unlimited passes for most rides $9.95 weeknights, $15.95 weekends). J. N. P.
DOWNTOWN
Hico (pronounced “High-Co”) has a vibrant downtown historic district that’s charmingly free of overcommercialization. Locals still shop at the hardware store and buy jeans at the clothing store, but there’s also plenty for visitors to see and do on the main drag, Pecan Street. The string of limestone buildings, built in the Western territorial style, replaced wooden structures that burned down in 1890.
When the railroad was active, Hico had six hotels, an opera house, a mercantile store, cotton gins, and blacksmith shops. Now most of the downtown businesses deal in rustic antiques and “ranch-style” merchandise. But there’s still a working blacksmith, John Frederick. He turns out mostly ornamental and decorative ironwork like candleholders that he and his wife, Polly, sell in their store, Frederick’s of Hico. Drop by and you’ll likely find him in his workshop at the back of the store, hand-forging his creations on an anvil.
A small museum on Pecan explores whether Ollie L. “Brushy Bill” Roberts, who lived out his final days in Hico and died in 1950, was really the outlaw Billy the Kid, as he claimed. According to a marker near Brushy Bill’s statue a couple of blocks away, Hico residents believed his story “and pray to God for the forgiveness he solemnly asked for.” Hico, intersection of U.S. 281 and Texas Highway 220 (800-361-4426; hico-tx.com). K. J.
CHURCH
From the outside, St. Paul Lutheran is deceptively simple. Built in 1871, with a tall bell tower and thirty-inch-thick sandstone walls covered with white plaster, it rises high above the surrounding green fields in Serbin, a tiny rural community near Giddings that isn’t even on many Texas maps. The unadorned exterior makes the inside even more stunning. The wood-plank ceiling is painted sky blue and hand-stenciled with decorative borders. The chandeliers are the original kerosene lamps converted to electricity. The plain wooden pews and baptismal font are also original, and the huge pipe organ dates to 1904. Unlike most modern churches, St. Paul has two stories with an unusual wraparound balcony and a balcony-level pulpit, where the Reverend Michael Buchhorn preaches his traditional Lutheran service using the old liturgy. At Christmas, Easter, and other major religious festivals, services are held in German as well as English. The church draws members from miles around and boasts a congregation of six hundred people. Many are descendants of the original founders, a group of Slavs called Wends who immigrated to Texas from Saxony and Prussia in the 1850’s. “These are people who value staying together, staying close,” Buchhorn says. “It makes this a special place.” St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1572 County Road 211 (off FM 2239), Serbin (979-366-9650). K. J.
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