Rebuilding history

By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung

David Snell is in the process of building history. Well, rebuilding to be exact.

Snell purchased land in New Braunfels and has been working for several months to make the town his home. He said after years of running his business in Houston he is ready to head for the Hill Country. What makes his story stand out is that it is televised.

Snell is in the process of modernizing reclaimed cabin and barn structures from West Virginia that were reassembled on the show “Barnwood Builders” which airs on DIY Network.

The show describes itself as, “Six good-natured West Virginians travel the heartland saving pioneer log cabins and building gorgeous modern homes with reclaimed lumber.”

The show stars Mark Bowe and is currently in its fifth season. Snell’s property was featured in a previous episode in February and featured the cabin that is being built, but it has returned to New Braunfels for the assembly of his nearby barn.

“We worked out this deal where they shipped all this down and they came and put the cabin up and then they went ahead and put the barn up,” Snell said.

He said the process took six to eight months to complete, and that’s just for the structure. The projects still have work being done to bring them up to use. The focus of Sunday’s episode is the barn.

“It’s enormous,” said Sean McCourt, the executive producer of Barnwood Builders. “It is a timber-frame barn and it was hand-hewn. That means it was cut by hand during the pioneer era. I believe this one was from the 1830s and it is this huge barn. What makes it really unique in our world is it has this thing in the center of it called a swing beam, which I had never seen before. All these barns, because they are hand-hewn, are unique. This one is particularly different and really, really beautiful and really, really big.”

Snell said the original idea was for him to have a cabin built on the property, but not just any cabin. As he recalled, he had a print of an old, rustic cabin hanging in his office since the 1980s and wanted to build something like that.

He said he and his wife were watching an episode of Barnwood Builders one night and, at his wife’s suggestion, emailed the team about working together to make his dream a reality.

“Yeah, I sent him an email on a Sunday, and the next day I get this call from West Virginia,” Snell said. “Now, my business does work all around the country. Now, we have some business in West Virginia, so I think it’s a customer and he says it’s Mark Bowe on the phone. Finally, I say, ‘Oh, bullcrap. Someone’s playing a joke on me.’ I didn’t believe he would call me the next day, and he’s the head of the show.

“He’s the main character in the show. And he said, ‘No, I’m serious.’ I said, ‘Who put you up to this?’ I thought it was my buddies playing a joke on me.”

The cabin was the main goal, but eventually, Bowe reached out to him again with an offer for a barn they had taken down.

McCourt said the crew likes to explore the towns they shoot episodes in.

“In this episode, they get cowboy hats made at a local hat maker in New Braunfels,” he said. “I believe it was called High Brehm Hats. And they also visited a 19th-century limestone barn in New Braunfels.”

McCourt said this barn is unlike any barn someone would have found in the 1800s in Texas, and that’s part of what makes it special.

“In New Braunfels, and it’s part of what we go through in the show, the trees didn’t grow tall and straight like they did back on the prairie, so back in the era when these barns were being built in the midwest, in Texas they were building with limestone because that’s what they had,” he said. “And so, what they guys love about that is they visit this barn that is in amazing shape that was built at about the same time as the barns that they usually work with and build.”

For Snell, the television aspect of the project is secondary.

“I didn’t care about the television side of it, but there is a good chance that my grand-kids will get married there and if we’ve got really good friends or family that want to get married, it could be a really good wedding venue,” he said. “But that’s not my goal.”

Snell said he wanted to get a piece of property to call home and take care of.

“I mean, I’ve taken this piece of property and turned it into a golf course,” he said. “Not literally, but it’s very well manicured and I’ve worked diligently for about a year and a half to make this place something really special.”

Local party officials react to bill ending straight-ticket voting

By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung

The days of easily voting for a single party in Texas may be coming to an end. 

Texas House Bill 25 passed through the 85th legislature and was signed by Governor Greg Abbott on June 1, 2017. The bill, now law, eliminates straight-ticket voting on ballots in Texas.  

The bill passed largely along party lines, with Democrats opposed and Republicans in favor of eliminating the voting option.  Belinda Frisk, vice chair for the Comal County Republican Party, said she does not see this change as having a significant impact on local voters. 

Unlike major metropolitan areas like Houston or Dallas, Comal County has a more shallow pool of candidates. Frisk said the change may encourage voters to do more diligent homework on who they are electing.  

“I think that’ s a good thing,” she said. 

According to the Texas Tribune, 64 percent of ballots cast in the 10 largest Texas counties in 2016 used the straight-ticket option. 

Robert Rogers, a candidate to take over the position of chair for the Comal County Democratic Party, said he attributes the partisan pattern of voting on the bill as Republicans worrying about their political futures in the state. 

“The Republicans clearly seem to be making moves to try and improve the chances of maybe not having a landfall in 2018, as we expect,” Rogers said. 

He said Democrats may have an issue with the change as it can be difficult to get voters out to the ballot boxes. 

“We have more registered voters in Comal County that are Democrats than we have Republicans,” he said. “The problem is we have is getting them to turn out.”

The change may not alter campaign strategies for most candidates, but that’ s not to say there won’ t be those affected by it. 

“It seems that the down-ballot candidates, like our judicial candidates, are the ones people are most unfamiliar with,” Frisk said. 

She said these candidates are often the unknowns, so without the option to vote straight-ticket, they may receive fewer votes in the future.  

“I have people who come to me, and I’ m sure come to a lot of folks who are active in the party, and say, ‘ I don’ t know much about these judges,’  particularly in a primary election where you have so many running,” Frisk said. 

Navigating the field of candidates for positions further down in the ballots could cause headaches for voters, but Frisk said the internet is probably the best resource despite its many faults. 

“Where do you begin to do your homework? That’ s a good question,” she said. 

Rogers said the new law only adds another hurdle. The new law will not take effect until September 2020, which gives parties and candidates time to prepare and adjust their strategies.

History and heritage: Cooking, woodworking and crafts galore in NB

By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung

Walking into Folkfest, an accordion in the distance plays as people snap pictures with their smartphones of food prepared in Dutch-ovens by 19th-century reenactors.

Someone wearing lederhosen may walk by, and a Civil War-era cannon is fired before the day is over.

Folkfest is held each year on the grounds of the Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture, which puts the history of both New Braunfels and Texas at the center of attention. The event’s organizers hope to honor and remember the way of life that built a now-bustling New Braunfels. Saturday was the first day, but it continues today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“It’s been great,” Kat Kyle Balmos, chairman of Heritage Society of New Braunfels, said. “We are definitely breaking some records, I think. I can tell by the parking lot and the amount of volunteers we have that are very busy. We’ve added more stations and more food trucks and they are all doing well.”

According to Kathy Nichols, the executive director of the Heritage Society and director at the Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture, Folkfest celebrates more than just German heritage.

“It’s an attempt to bring all different cultures together and to get to see what life was like in the early part of the century,” Nichols said.

Even if the crowds are bigger and the number of vendors and volunteers is larger, Balmos says the event is still what many have come to expect.

“We infused it with just a little bit more energy, but it’s still the same festival, though,” she said. “It’s just maybe adding some different kinds of music, some new vendors, some social media advertising which it really needed. That was something that was just a generational thing.”

Greg and Sarah Webb said they are new to New Braunfels, but they are doing their best to attend every festival held in the town. They attended the event with their two children, Aurora and Cohen.

“Honestly, Sarah and I are into this old-school country stuff where you have live music… When you have this beautiful country setting, you just like to get out and walk around and kind of enjoy the atmosphere. That’s what we were looking for,” Greg Webb said. “We didn’t know what to expect other than it’s going to be pretty and have stuff from the 1800s.”

“I loved the washer — how they washed the clothes with the soap and everything,” Sarah Webb said.

“The blacksmith was pretty cool,” Greg said. “And I’m a huge Dutch-oven fan, and so smelling that dutch-oven cobbler cooking was my favorite.”

Some attend for the history, but other come for the shows. David Lux came to see his granddaughter.

“They had the German Society children singing over there earlier, and our granddaughter is in that, so we came to hear them,” he said.

Lux said the event had attractions for him, such as antiques and the cabinet shop, but also hands-on crafts for the kids.

“They have interesting things,” he said. “Different things for the kids to do, making candles and making pottery and stuff.”

The event is highly reliant on volunteers to keep the whole thing going, and passion plays a big role in getting them to come out each year. Mike Luft was working in the cabinet shop on Saturday, where he showed off how to use antique tools that had been passed down through his family. For him, the event is an opportunity to show children, and even adults, a part of life that may have been lost in the past century.

“We don’t teach it in school,” Luft said, talking about working with the tools. “Some of these parents have no idea with stuff like that and so I’m kind of passionate about it.”

A special addition to Folkfest this year was the antiques section, where visitors could see items that aren’t usually found around town. Lark Mason, who has appeared on the PBS show “Antiques Roadshow” and is in the art auction business, set up an antiques shop in the Kaffee & Art Haus in the back of the property, where he showed off a collection of antiques that aren’t easy to get ahold of. He said he lives between New York City and New Braunfels, but loves how much effort New Braunfels puts into preserving its history.

“We just thought it was terrific and wanted to be a participant and help raise awareness for this group in a small way try to bring in an audience of people that might be a little different from the people that ordinarily come here,” Mason said.

“The fellow that does the chuckwagon, the reinactors… I love the whole thing,” he said. “And I love that they are making these historic structures come alive for people, because they see people using them in a way that is consistent with how they would normally be used.”

2017 marks the 27th Folkfest in New Braunfels, and today is the final day of the weekend-long event.

Peace on the Water

By Alec Woolsey - New Braunfels Monthly

In New Braunfels, there are many traditions that have disappeared in time, only to become embraced once again years later. From Christmas markets to biergartens, the German heritage is strong.

According to Heather Harrison, a friendly canoe race once accompanied the Wurstfest celebration, but it fell out of style after a number of years.

In 2013, two competitive canoers came together and organized a new event, Kanu Rennen, to once again give families and friends an opportunity to dip their feet into the world of paddle sports in a friendly, yet competitive, setting. The name of the event comes from a German translation of “canoe race.”

Kaiser, who became director of the event this year, said the event falls on one of the same weekends as Wurstfest, but that has more to do with canoeing than the festival itself.

“Essentially, how it got started was it was set at the end of the Texas canoe race season and Holly and Heather are both [canoe racing] veterans and wanted to do something at the end of the season that was kind of fun and involved families,” Kaiser said.

Holly Orr and Heather Harrison, both veteran marathon canoe racers, decided to hold the first Kanu Rennen in 2013 as a way to include family and friends.

Canoe racing events in Texas, he said, generally run from January through October, so the beginning of November makes for a convenient time to wrap up the season with a friendly canoe race.

“There used to be a canoe race held in conjunction with Wurstfest a long time ago and that’s what gave me the idea,” Harrison said. “And Holly and I started talking about it, but it’s also a really nice time of the year to have fun on the water. It’s nice and cool.”

Kanu Rennen will be held on November 4 in 2017 at Cypress Bend Park in New Braunfels. It consists of a series of competitions with the requirement that a child be participating in each competing canoe (Kaiser noted it does not necessarily need to be the adult’s own son or daughter).

TAKING TO THE RIVERS

Talk to Heather Harrison long enough and you will figure out where her passion lies.

“To me, being on the river is my respite,” she said. “It’s where I find my peace.”

Growing up on a lake, she said she spent some time on the water, but it wasn’t until her 30s when she really started to find herself in the rivers.

“When I discovered paddling, not until I was 30, did I understand just how great it is to move a vessel on the water myself,” she said.

According to her, it’s almost a reset-switch of sorts for her mind. It’s a peaceful place where she can ignore the problems of the world and focus.

“There’s one book in particular I always reflect on about this, but simply put, it’s said that when you can clear your brain of everything and just do one thing, your brain can actually reset,” she said. “All the different things that we have going on in our brains, when you do one thing and only one thing… that’s why people knit. That’s why people paddle. That’s why people do crossword puzzles.

“You are only thinking about that one thing and it actually helps your brain rest.”

Her way of getting out on the water: ultra-marathon canoe racing. This is a multi-day endurance test that takes canoers hundreds of miles down rivers and through the country.

For David Kaiser, paddling is a new way of seeing the world. Sometimes, even, it’s the only way to see parts of the world.

“You see Texas in a completely different light by paddling across it in a boat,” he said.

To him, canoeing down the Texas rivers means seeing areas and environments that aren’t visible from the highway. Now living in Austin, Kaiser explores the rivers of the Hill Country when he can.

“There’s really no other way to cross the state other than driving,” he said. “You can’t really hike from point to point, but you can paddle the entire state without ever getting out of your boat.”

“It’s one of the few times when you can really get remote in the state.”

Although New Braunfels is known around the state for it’s lazy tubing down the rivers on hot summer days, Harrison said it wasn’t always this way.

“We used to have paddling all the time in New Braunfels, but those have gone by the wayside and now we only have tubes,” she said. “Well, there’s nothing that says we can’t have both.”

KANU RENNEN

Harrison lives in New Braunfels, and she is passionate about getting people out and involved with the rivers.

“I wanted to race in New Braunfels. I have a much larger goal of increasing paddling in the New Braunfels area,” she said. “I used to have a business — New Braunfels Paddle Sports — I love getting people in the water. Stand-up paddle boards, kayaks… things like that.”

Kanu Rennen is a series of events, but they are open to participants of any skill level.

Events include a multi-man race (more than 3 participants in a boat), parent-child, relay, blindfold, backwards paddling and kids only. Each event requires that a child be present in the boat.

Tickets cost $20 per adult and $12 per child, with families capped at $55.

“It doesn’t go towards anything, but we also don’t make any money off of the race,” Kaiser said. “If there is any cash left over, it just funnels into next year’s race. And everyone working it is on a volunteer basis.”

Orr, who stepped away from directing the race to run her business, Paddle with Style, will be bringing equipment for those who need it, but Kaiser asks that participants give him warning before the day of the races so they can prepare.

All of this ties into the mission of Kanu Rennen: to promote river recreation for all ages and experience levels among friends and families by experiencing the freedom of paddling and the thrill of canoe racing.

“It’s a real sport,” Harrison said. “That’s part of why we wanted Kanu Renne to happen. It’s an Olympic sport, canoeing and kayaking both. And there’s several different parts of that, even in the Olympics.”

And that isn’t meant to be intimidating. Harrison just wants to get people out on the water.

“You don’t have to be especially skilled to have fun on the water, and that’s what we enjoy,” she said.

Cecilia Abbott visits Comal County Republicans

By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung

Comal County Republicans served as host to a state celebrity earlier this week, but her visit was more than a simple hello.

The New Braunfels Republican Women’s organization welcomed guest speaker Cecilia Abbott, the first lady of Texas and wife of Gov. Greg Abbott, during its annual potluck supper on Monday, June 19, at Seekatz Opera House. Abbott spoke on matters relating to women, Republicans and Texans in a brief speech during the dinner.

“Along the way, I have met so many Texans like you who are making the future even brighter, and I believe that we are each called to service,” Abbott said to the audience. “And by being here today, you have enthusiastically answered that call.”

The first lady recognized philanthropic efforts from the organization’s attendees, going so far as to say those efforts spoke to a deeper pursuit of hers.

“As first lady, my top priority is promoting service to others, and I am working with all of Texas to bring together the two things I am most passionate about: Texas and philanthropy,” she said. “I like to call it ‘Texanthropy.’”

The New Braunfels Republican Women’s website describes its members as “proud of (their) contributions to the growth and success of the Republican party and strong conservative values in Texas.”

Susan Walker, president of the organization, said in an email she was pleased with how the event turned out.

“From my perspective, this meeting was perfect,” Walker said. “We had a marvelous attendance from not only NBRW members, but we were joined by Alamo City Republican Women, Bulverde Area Republican Women, Canyon Lake Republican Women, Hays County Republican Women, Comal County Republican Party, Republican Club of Comal County and the Texas Federation of Republican Women.”

Walker said several notable public officials from the area were in attendance, including state Sen. Donna Campbell, state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, SBOE Ken Mercer, Third Court of Appeals Justice Cindy Bourland, District Judges Bruce Boyer and Dib Waldrip, Comal County District Attorney Jennifer Tharp and Comal County Tax Collector Cathy Talcott.

Walker said the organization aims to bring speakers to its monthly events who can offer insight and education to its members. Inviting Abbott was something the group had been working on in 2017.

“Early this year, we wrote to Mrs. Abbott and requested she speak at an NBRW meeting that best met her schedule,” she said. “We did mention our June meeting (the potluck) is fun and well-attended and were extremely pleased June 19 was available on her busy schedule.”

Abbott took the opportunity to highlight the accomplishments of women in the workforce, saying that Texas is a leader in the nation for female-led businesses.

“Texas is the best state for business, and women have been great leaders of that success,” she said. “We have the second-highest number of women-owned businesses in America, but we want to be the number one state in the nation for women-owned businesses.”

Abbott also spoke about her husband’s accomplishments and efforts in Austin, as well as ramping up campaign efforts ahead of the approaching 2018 election.

“It’s never too early to gear up for the huge effort to keep Texas red,” Abbott said.

Steins of New Braunfels

By Alec Woolsey - Herald-Zeitung

A recent addition to the Wurstfest grounds can’t be found by the typical attendee. Locked away from the masses is a locker in the Opa-exclusive room. 

This isn’t a normal combination locker, though. No, it’s built in the style of old iron work with small keyed padlock and houses something unique — steins.

Around the Wurstfest grounds, Opas will mix and mingle while accompanied by their personal steins. Steins are unique mugs to help beer keep its temperature, but each one usually comes with a story, according to Jeff Jenkins, a kleine Opa.

He says over the years he has accumulated nearly 50 different steins, each one with a history to go along with it. 

“Wustfest issues one each year and then I had some family when I was growing up that lived in Germany that brought me a bunch of steins,” Jenkins said. “I’ve visited Germany four different times and every time I’m there I always end up bringing one or two home.”

His personal favorite? A personalized stein with his family crest and name hand-painted on the side, which he keeps stored in the locker in the Wurstfest locker.

“The one that’s the neatest, I have a very similar one to Marc [Allen] where when when I did some research on the crest for Jenkins, and then the same artist that painted Marc’s, we ordered some steins from Germany and they hand-painted the crest on there.” he said. “That’s the one I keep at Wurstfest most of the time because I think it’s unique and it’s hand-painted.”

He and Marc Allen, an Opa, were instrumental in getting the locker, also known as the Maßkrugtresor, built and installed at Wurstfest for the Opas to use. 

As Allen tells it, he was on a 10-year anniversary trip with his wife in Germany when a stranger joined them at the table after walking over to a wall of lockers and pulling his personal stein out.

“The tradition of that stein locker, [I learned as] I was talking to that man that sat at our table back in 2006, is that that specific locker belongs to him and his family,” Allen said. “And his specific stein was something that was passed down to him. I think that he was like the third or fourth generation to own that particular stein. So we are talking about a stein that was well over 100 years old. And they put their initials and marks on there to represent who they are.”

The stein lockers are a grid of iron-work with small doors the size of a steins that can be locked with a key. 

Allen said the man he spoke with had the rights to those locker spaces his family had, and they would stay with the family until they let them go.

“They pay this annual fee and that’s their locker and it’s something that they can pass down through generations,” he said.

After introducing the idea of the locker to several other Wurstfest member years later on a trip to Germany, including his father, Allen said the idea started to gain traction but was shelved until 2015. 

“About two years ago, when Tim Zipp was becoming the incoming president, we were talking again about this idea of doing this locker,” he said. “At that point, he kind of assigned me to take over control on getting it done.“

He and Jenkins said they were instrumental in getting the 100-stein locker built and installed, which was opened up to Opas to use.

For Allen, the locker was important because of the intimate relationship he said a stein holds with its owner.

“I think it goes both ways, but most of the time the stein chooses you,” he said. “It’s not like I walked up and said, ‘Hey, that’s my crest on the stein.’ All the other steins I had, they kind of chose me. It’s just like, that’s a cool stein I would like to have. It represents the story of my life as far as time I was over in Sandberg or Munich or Salzburg or wherever it was that I picked up the stein.”

As for his favorite stein, he says it’s his family crest, which was hand-painted by his sister. 

“There’s always a story or something significant behind each person’s stein,” Jenkins said. “That’s what makes it kind of neat. It’s unique to the individual.”