Here’s hoping you had an enjoyable & commemorative San Jacinto Day on Monday. It’s somewhat short of amazing to this humble scribe that so many Texas folks could be so oblivious to such an important day in the history of our great state, not to mention the effect on our National progression. Anyhow, I’ll try to keep all this in some sort of chronological order, so as not to confuse mine own self.

Olan Tisdale & yrs. Truly made our annual trek on up Texas Hwy. 16 last Thursday past De Leon to get some of this year’s supply of horticultural supplies. Womack’s is an exceptional nursery and might well be the most popular in the State when one thinks of Pecans, Peaches, Plums, Bud & graftwood, and an assortment of berry bushes. Olan picked up his yearly supply of Pecan seedlings, graftwood, a couple of grafting knives, and a couple of Tisdale Apricot trees for Nanette’s back-yard orchard. I picked up a few fruit trees for a neighbor, a few Roseborough Blackberry plants for Lady Z’s back fence, and a bit of Pecan scion wood that J. Byrd & I are a bit short on. Anyhow, true to form, Olan & I are fairly well supplied, if we can only get them in the ground. The lady at Womack’s thought we might be a bit late as most of the trees we picked up were already budding. We admitted being about 3 week’s late, but it doesn’t matter much if one never gets them planted. Some traditions are difficult to overcome.

If you happened to get over anywhere around Llano this past weekend, you might have noticed quite an increase in traffic around all the thorough-fares. The annual Crawfish Open was held Fri.-Sat. up-river in the Llano Park with lots of Cajun cooking, a golf tournament, steer roping, and much music. Our cooking crew boiled upwards of 900 lbs. of Cooper’s sausage, Cajun style, and there was plenty of Crawfish, taters, corn, red beans & rice, Barbecue, & beverage for all attending. Harkey Cuz, John Long, was about the most notable person I saw amongst all the crowd, but some reported that a fellow named Mark Chestnut played as well. Son, Will made it in to help Bubba Barber, J. Timmons & Teaspoon Tony Navarra at the sausage slicing table. Uncle Buck sort of presides over the Beaumont bunch and Kirk Winfree takes care of local arrangements. The whole affair is put on by a couple hundred volunteers, sponsors, and donors to benefit the Llano Special Opportunities Center. This year’s activity also commemorated Mike McPherson, longtime organizer of the event, who had recently passed away.

Having mentioned Monday as being San Jacinto Day, I’ll allude to that a bit more now. Ross McSwain, semi-retired columnist of the San Angelo Standard Times gave it good coverage in “Out Yonder” in Monday’s edition, mentioning that Texas Aggies might be about the main group giving it much homage as we hold our annual Muster on the 21st of April each year, since 1922. McSwain, an ol’ Brady boy, went on to remind us of the eventual significance of that somewhat obscure battle to later development of our Nation, Texas, and the Southwest. If you doubt the importance of the afore-mentioned fight, then you need to consider the effect if Santa Anna had, in fact, been victorious. The early “Fathers” of Texas must have, as several Texas counties were named for some of the heroes of San Jacinto to include Houston, Motley, Lamb, Hale, Stevens, Rusk, Collinsworth, Coleman, Lamar, McCulloch, and Tom Green.

I have Mustered with the A&M Club down at Llano the past several years, having several classmates from that area. They also have a very good fish-fry. Roland Rode heads up the frying group, with Dexter Sagebiel helping filet and meal. Lots of folks bring covered dish sides for the fish, taters, and hush-puppies. John & Patty Kuykendall were on hand; Terry Wootan brought a batch of Apple Cobbler from Cooper’s; and Roy Birk boiled a pot of Pintos. There was plenty of food on hand for the Fifty-two Aggies that gathered on the banks of the Llano.

Several of the farm and ranch folks that were on hand mentioned that they were planning on attending our Annual Pecan Field Day set for Mon., May 5th, down in Mill Pond. It is an extremely worthwhile educational event and we get another fish-fry. Check with the County Agent’s office. Other than that, the Mayor and yrs. Truly will be taking care of our part out around——————Harkeyville!!!!