| Some
road trips start out all wrong and then somehow end
up right. That's what happens when Aaron Reed sets out
on Memorial Day weekend to visit a Texas creamery and
tour a legendary brewery. Alas: no ice cream, no tour.
What he finds instead is some old-time hospitality in
a corner of Texas where German, Czech and Mexican traditions
mingle companionably over music and beer. |
As I sit in the shade behind the gas station,
sipping a cold beer, I reflect on a day in which almost
nothing has gone as planned. Blue
Bell Creameries in Brenham -- ice cream central for
all of Texas and a good chunk of the southeastern United
States, too -- is farther away than I remembered, and in
the wrong direction to boot. And, after a late start, we
missed the second of two daily tours at the legendary Spoetzl
Brewery in Shiner. But somehow it has all turned out
OK. In fact, it has been a wonderful, relaxing day full
of pleasant surprises, and it's about to get even better.
But first, let's backtrack.
We've left Austin as refugees from a hellish
workweek, taking just what we can carry in one trip out
the front door. It's late May and the Friday before a long
holiday weekend for most folks, but Tamara and I will both
be working all day Saturday and a chunk of Sunday, too,
so Friday afternoon is our one chance at escape.
We head south on U.S. Highway 183. Just south
of Luling, past the place where Interstate Highway 10 arrows
east to New Orleans, an unassuming two-lane road angles
off to the southwest. Take that right on Park Road 11 (it
will be a right off of U.S. Highway 183 whether you're coming
from Austin, San Antonio or Houston) and within minutes
you're traveling through a twisting tunnel of green.
The swamp in central Texas
Stop, as we did, at Palmetto
State Park headquarters and pay the $3 per person entry
fee, then drive on across the oxbow lake and across the
San Marcos River; then take a left to the historic refectory,
built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
As we pull into the parking area, kill the
engine, and open our doors, we are greeted by birdsong and
the susurration of a high breeze in the treetops. The buzz
of cicadas punctuates the stillness, and in the distance
we can hear the rush of cool, green water.
Whoa. Stepping out and stretching is like a
long exhalation. My heart rate drops 20 beats per minute,
and I can almost feel my blood pressure falling as well.
In just a little over 270 acres, Palmetto State
Park preserves the largest, westernmost stand of dwarf palmetto
(Sabal minor) in the southern United States. Warm,
sulfurous waters form the Ottine Swamp here, and the subtropical
plants thrive. So does Spanish moss, which drapes much of
the high canopy surrounding the lowland bogs. Together they
form a primeval, green gloom that stands in stark contrast
to the surrounding oak-and-mesquite ranch lands.
We hike the palmetto trail loop, careful -
as a large sign warns - to watch for snakes. After marveling
at the sheer greenness of the place, and the profusion of
fan-shaped palm leaves, we splash in the river a bit to
cool off. Then it's back in the car and down Farm-to-Market
Road 2091 to Alternate U.S. Highway 90, and east through
Gonzales.
This is, in more ways than one, the historic
heart of Texas. It was near Gonzales in October 1835 that
the first shot of the Texas
Revolution was fired. With its fertile soil and gentle
terrain, the area proved generous to farmers, and it was
here that many early settlers staked out new lives in a
new world.
A
lot of those settlers -- more here than any other place
in the United States, in fact -- were from Bohemia and Bavaria,
Moravia and Switzerland. A gentle arc traces a path of straight-from-Europe
settlement across a wide swath of fertile, coastal prairie
and gently rolling hills, a farmland dotted with small towns
with names like Waelder, Hocheim, Arneckeville, Westhoff
and Schulenburg. Even in burgs with names that sound less
Teutonic and Slavic -- places like Wharton and El Campo,
La Grange and Fayetteville -- you're still likely to hear
the peculiar, clipped accent of an older man or woman who
grew up speaking at least some Czech or German.
The little brewery in Shiner
One of those old Czech-German towns is our
goal today. Shiner,
Texas, population 2,070, is home to a beer by the same name
crafted at the 99-year-old Spoetzl Brewery. The year I was
first legally allowed to drink, it was distributed only
within a 75-mile radius of the brewery and was much coveted
at my Dallas college. Today it is sold in 38 states and
counting.
We arrive at the brewery's hospitality room
just in time to catch an unscheduled tour for a dozen late-afternoon
visitors. Anne Raab leads us through the modern brew house
with its gleaming copper kettles to the bottling room, where
seemingly infinite lines of brown bottles are filled, capped,
pasteurized, labeled and boxed. I say seemingly infinite,
but what I really mean is nearly half a million every day.
Or, if you prefer, 635 bottles per minute, 462,000 -- give
or take a couple -- every 24 hours.
Almost 90 percent of those bottles are Shiner
Bock, a once-seasonal dark lager that went into production
year-round in 1973. Shiner Blonde is based on Bavarian brewmaster
Kosmos Spoetzl's original recipe (I remember when it was
called "Shiner Premium") and joins several other
varieties in the brewery's lineup. My favorite is Number
97 -- a Bavarian "black lager" that appeared on
the brewery's 97th anniversary, then disappeared to make
way for Number 98, but is back in the full-time lineup by
popular demand.
The brewery was founded in 1909 as the Shiner
Brewing Association by thirsty Czech and German immigrants.
After a few years of disappointing results, they hired Spoetzl,
who purchased the brewery in 1915. With Prohibition, Spoetzl
turned to producing ice and "near beer."
"He didn't change a thing about the recipe,"
Raab tells us. "Instead, he would put it back in the
kettle and boil off the alcohol. Now, I'm told Kosmos was
a forgetful fellow, and sometimes forgot that step."
In 1950, the brewery passed to Spoetzl's daughter
Cecilie, but in the late 1960s, the brewery passed out of
the Spoetzl family. It then changed hands at least three
times before being purchased in 1989 by San Antonio businessman
Carlos Alvarez, who reportedly loved the company's beers
so much he paid about three times its market value. As the
importer of Corona for Texas and the eastern United States,
Alvarez knew a thing or two about marketing and selling
beer -- skills he has brought to bear on Shiner and his
subsequent purchases: BridgePort Brewing Company, in Oregon,
and the maker of Pete's Wicked Ale, in California.
What he hasn't done, Raab says, is tinker with
the recipe or traditions of the "Little Brewery in
Shiner."
Consider: There's no forced retirement at this
brewery (Joe Green holds the record for employment with
63 years service when he retired at age 81); employees pay
about $75 a month for an $800 benefits package; and nepotism
is encouraged, so long as those sons or daughters or cousins
are skilled and hardworking.
Folks are so happy to work here, Raab suggests,
that no one pushes very hard for that common brewery perk:
free beer.
"We'll take the benefits and go out there
and buy the beer the man supports us with," she says.
"Besides, we can go into the hospitality room -- it's
more like a fellowship room -- and visit and drink our four
plastic cups of beer each day just like everyone else. If
you count that up, it's two bottles per person; with my
adult children and everyone else, we probably go through
70 or 80 bottles of beer a week in there."
We head back to the hospitality room, too,
and trade our wooden nickels for cups of beer. There we
meet Jim, a ruddy-faced, retired brewery worker who looks
at least 10 years younger than his professed 71. He says
he has been drinking Shiner beer for more than 50 years.
Today he's celebrating the purchase of a new truck, which
he has been assured is white. Jim is colorblind, something
the woman behind the taps is ribbing him about:
"You remember that time we were sitting
at the bar and you had a pink shirt on?" she asks.
"Shop towel got thrown in with the laundry,"
Jim laughs. "Everything was pink, or at least that's
what y'all tell me."
On the recommendation of several brewery employees,
we map out the rest of our afternoon: first, to the Country
Corner Café (at the corner of Texas Highway 95 and
Alt. U.S. 90) for dinner with my old college buddy Rob --
he's the principal of the 111-year-old K-12 parochial school
here -- and then on a Shiner "pub crawl." That's
the plan, anyhow.
A good place to land
We intend to start the pub crawl at Howard's,
on U.S. Highway 90 on the west side of town, and then work
our way back to Maeker's, a tavern that is also a sausage
factory and package store, and then on to Antiques, Art
& Beer, the local gallery drinking spot. We never make
it past the first stop.
It's here at Howard's that I find myself reflecting
on the day as I sip a cold, draft Shiner. Howard's is a
gas station with nine beer taps separated from shelves of
hunting ammunition by a rack of VHS tapes and DVDs for rent.
There's fresh popcorn and hand-dipped Blue Bell ice cream,
and when the local softball games let out, the place fills
up. Proprietor Howard Gloor built the place in 1984 and
got an on-premises beer license at the very beginning.
"I wanted a place where people could be
casual and could stay and visit," he says. "It
got real popular, so we built this."
"This" is the biergarten out back,
a shady, fenced patio space. One side is paneled with the
side of an old green barn that blew down a while back. Signs
festoon the walls and an artificial Christmas tree stands
next to the door to the store. Howard's wife decorates it
for the season; today it is festooned in red, white and
blue in honor of Memorial Day.
The custom of drinking beer where you buy it
while catching up with neighbors is as old as Texas. Well,
at least as old as ice in Texas. In fact, such places
are called "icehouses" - a term that has outlived
the time when the buildings stored and sold ice as well
as beer.
As more and more folks flow out onto the patio,
Howard introduces us to his friends. Jim stops in to show
off his new truck and have another Shiner. Rob drops by
with his family after his daughter's softball game. We'd
seen her coach earlier and, recognizing the jersey, asked
how the game went. My friend's daughter, he said, had a
great game.
We sit at weathered picnic tables and talk
about the Austin music scene and century-old area dancehalls
and soon people start slipping out and returning with instrument
cases. Howard excuses himself to set up the PA system and
all of a sudden we're being treated to music by half of
Los Kolaches -- the Mexican-German-Czech band united by
Ruben Torres' squeezebox, Marty Shimek's harmonica and Howard's
electric guitar.
Brea Guettner, a local girl with dreams of
the big city -- she's heavily, attractively tattooed and
her hair is shot through with streaks of blue -- joins in
on acoustic bass. One of Marty's sons strums a flame-maple
acoustic guitar and another plays bongos and then -- magically
-- a drum kit that appears out of nowhere. Moms get up to
dance with their toddler children.
"It's the family beer joint," Nancy
Pesek explains. Pesek lives about three blocks away and
has come down to Howard's to meet a friend who lives a couple
of blocks in the other direction.
Tamara has long ago switched to water for the
97-mile drive back to Austin, and I pay the bar tab. Shockingly,
it's only $17 though I've been buying plastic pints of beer
for more than one friend, old and new. The music continues
on for a while after the store lights go out at 11 p.m.,
and then swings to a halt as band members remember they've
worked a full day, and some have played softball and nearly
everyone has plans for the weekend.
We remember that we do, too, though nothing
as unexpectedly delightful as an old-fashioned Texas icehouse
on the edge of Shiner.
Aaron
Reed
May 30, 2008
