As a kid I grew up going to the Texas hill country because my family has a house in the small town of Wimberley, TX, which is located up around Austin and San Antonio. The only problem was that I never really paid attention to my surroundings or to the beautiful landscape the land provided. As I have grown older many of my friends from school have gone off to Texas State, which is very close to Wimberley and my girlfriend lives in New Braunfels, which is also nearby. So needless to say I have made my way to the Texas hill country plenty of times over the past year, and every time I go up there I notice new things and really pay attention to the details of the land. For this paper I decided to write about the trip I took last weekend, where I also got some great pictures of the places I visited. In my last trip I went to Gruene one evening, which is one of the most historical parts of Texas, known for the famous Gruene Hall. Before going this last time I had been to Gruene several times before and enjoyed the great scenery every time, but this time I took the time to look more into it and seemed to enjoy it even more. After looking on the Internet I have also found that Gruene Hall was built in 1878 and is the oldest continually operating dance hall in Texas.

          

  The drive up to the hill country really begins when you get through Houston and Katy and get out of the big city skylines and start seeing some open country. When going on my weekend “vacation” I was traveling by myself, which can get pretty boring considering it is a three hour drive, but as I said before once you get out of the city the real vacation begins and the beautiful land can be seen. Once I get out of the city streets I let the engine open up and set the cruise control do its thing. Music blaring to keep myself from being bored then the site seeing begins. The first part of the drive is rolling hills and then the closer you get to the hill country the bigger the hills and the deeper the valleys. Finally, after several hours of being in the car, I arrive in New Braunfels to my “hotel” better known as my girlfriend’s house. Now the fun begins, we hop in the car and start road tripping’ around the Texas hill country in need of some good scenery. First we head to San Antonio so the girl can do some shopping, and then we head back to Gruene to grab some good grub at the Gristmill, and do some dancing at Gruene Hall. After a full day of adventure, we head home to get a good night of sleep so we can have another full day of adventuring. Next day we wake sleep in until about 10, and then begin the day with a trip to the river in downtown New Braunfels. On the way to the river I noticed lots of great scenery and really cool paintings on these old German buildings. It wasn’t until recently that I put the pieces together and realized that New Braunfels was originally a German town. Eventually we make it down to the river and end up getting in pretty close to the world famous Schliterbaun waterpark. The Comal is the name of the river and it is a man made river fed by a spring, so in a nutshell the water is very cold. Just looking at the water you can tell it is cold, but getting into it is another story. Needless to say it took my breath away getting in, but once I did it was all good.

           

Of course, like all vacations they have to come to an end. But before I left I had to make a trip down river road, which is pretty popular for its great scenery that follows the Guadalupe River. As a kid I can remember riding down river road with my family, windows down thinking it was the coolest thing ever. So of course I had to roll the windows down, and boy wasn’t it great. It was just as I remembered, so much pretty scenery and the scent of the river flowed through the truck along with the sound of rapids as we passed parts of the river where the water was moving fast.

          

  Overall my trip back to the hill country was a great success, bringing back lots of childhood memories and making new ones also. When returning to towns that I visited as a child, I can almost picture it in my head as I did years ago and reminisce on lots of fun times I had as a kid. The only difference that I notice as I go back to the hill country now compared to as a kid is that I notice things in much more detail and take time to appreciate them. Just writing this blog is bringing back memories of my trip and even of my childhood, and overall I am glad I had the opportunity to do it.  

For my second cultural report I decided to go to one of the oldest cemeteries in Liberty County, which also happens to be our families. Before arriving to the cemetery I somewhat could remember what it looked like from a previous I had taken with my grandparents when I was in Texas history in seventh grade because they wanted to show me the historical marker. As we pulled up to the cemetery I noticed that not a lot had changed, the historical marker still stood in the same place, but there was a new covered patio on the right side built for having sermons or gatherings before burials. The cemetery was very well maintained for how old it is, it dates back to the 1800’s with the first burial being in 1852. The first people to start this cemetery were the Abshiers and the Weeds that came from Louisiana in 1843. In June of 1852 the Abshier’s daughter Lucinda Abshier Higginbotham died becoming the first person buried on this plot of land, and from then on it became the Abshier cemetery. The cemetery is located off of a 61, the main road that goes threw Hankamer. It is off the road a little ways through what used to be land owned by the Abshiers, and the cemetery is located in a small plot that is surrounded by trees. It is a relatively small cemetery, but it looks very nice for how old it is. For the most part you can tell which graves are the oldest by the headstones, and where they are located farther in the back. There are no really big monumental headstones, for the most part they are pretty simple and look about the same.

Buried in the cemetery people from many different last names, but they are all some how related either by marriage or blood. Some of the names that are in there are Hankamer, which is where the cemetery is located and I would bet they are part of the family that founded that part of Texas. Another name that is located at the cemetery is Barrow, which is another big name around this part of Texas, especially towards Beach City, Texas and point Barrow. There are also of course many Abshiers, and also Weeds, which are part of the founding family. I didn’t look at every headstone but I only found one baby, which I’m sure there are more but the baby I saw was five days old and part of the Hankamer family.

Along side of how old this place is and how it is all family, there are also several veterans buried in this cemetery. I found it pretty interesting that all of the veterans I saw have the same type of headstone, which was a piece of granite with a bronze plaque on top of it stating what branch they were in, what position they held, and also what wars or wars they were in. The veteran’s headstone that stuck out to me was James W. Cranford because it was well maintained and he was in the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and survived both. It also had an American flag in the ground next to it that was blowing in the wind so I got a pretty good picture of it.

As far as family members that I recognized or knew in the cemetery there were not many. One of them that I did know personally was “Pudzo” Abshier, who was a local farmer that died a few years ago. I don’t know where he got the nickname Pudzo from, but that is what everyone knew him by and it stuck. His headstone I found really neat because he had his family cattle brand located at the top left corner, as did his parents headstone that was located right next to his. 

The other family members that I recognized both dies when I was relatively young, but I had still met them at one point of my life. I found there headstone very unique because they both had their first and middle name and the last name was real big over both of their names. But the thing that I really liked about their headstone was that between their names it said married 70 years, which is an incredible milestone to reach.

Cemeteries are important to our culture because it gives family something to go back and look at when they have kids or even if they want to go see a loved one that was lost. It is very important to out cultural history, and can tell a huge story about the past. Individual graves can tell stories by the designs they have on them, like one that I saw had marsh grass and ducks on it. Just by looking at that grave I could tell that that person was either a duck hunting guide or just loved the sport of duck hunting. Cemeteries as a whole can tell a story by the graves that are located inside them, and the ages of the graves.

For my cultural experience I went to the Baytown Sandwich and Noodle House with my dad, which was my first time that I can recall of trying Thai food. From the outside of the restaurant it doesn’t look like it is going to be very good, and it was not very busy at all, although we did get there around 11. Going into the restaurant I was expecting it to be a lot like Japanese food just from the smell and the looks of the pictures on the walls. When looking through the menu I quickly realized it wasn’t going to be exactly like Japanese food, but they do tend to use lots of noodles or rice in their dishes kind of like at a Japanese restaurant.

Once we got there and the waitress took our order she informed us that they made their eggrolls homemade, so of course we had to try them out. In my mind I was thinking about the eggrolls that you would get at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant, which are completely wrapped in a crispy deep fried shell, and filled with vegetables or meat depending on what kind you get. These eggrolls were not nearly as crispy, and the inside was seen from both ends. They also had a very different taste than ones I have had in the past, and came with their own dipping sauce. They were very tasty to me, and much lighter and less filling that Japanese eggrolls.

After enjoying the mouth-watering eggrolls, I patiently waited on my main course to come out. I ordered a noodle dish that had chicken, shrimp, and been all mixed in with it. Finally, my dish came out and as soon as the waitress put it down in front of me I almost began to salivate from the wonderful smell. The noodles were covered in parsley, and what I believe were leaks, which did not really grab my attention because I am not a huge fan of either of them. Once I carefully moved some of the leaks and parsley out of the way, I began to enjoy this flavorful dish. One of the best parts about it was the delicious sautéed mushroom’s that were mixed in as well. The noodles had a very wet texture but were just filled with flavor and were very good. The sauce that was on the dish kind of reminded me of a teriyaki sauce that we get at Japanese places. The shrimp still had tails on them so that part got a little messy, but as a whole the dish was pretty tasty, and I would not mind going back to eat there sometime in the future.