HONDO, Texas – During our stay here at the RV park in Hondo, we’ve explored the beauty, culture, and history of the Texas Hill Country and San Antonio, with a side trip to the small enclave of Luckenbach, made famous by Waylon Jennings.
The Hill Country is an area of Texas that rises out of the plains west of Austin and northwest of San Antonio. Yesterday we drove about a hundred miles north to hike for a couple of hours in the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. The rock is a pink granite “batholith” [a giant volcanic rock protruding from deep in the earth’s crust] rising more than 400 feet from the trail head. We hiked to the top and then around it on a sunny, 80-degree day.
As we were planning our trip a few days ago, Elizabeth alerted me that we should get advanced tickets to enter the park because spring break was starting this week. I answered that we probably won’t need to buy entry permits in advance for just a state park, and certainly not on a Monday. But as we approached the nature area, sure enough a sign said no entry without advanced permits. To our relief, the park attendant said they had some extra permits and so we were allowed to join the throngs of families and others enjoying the scramble to the top and view of the surrounding Hill Country. (Guys, listen to your wife.)
We spent the afternoon in Fredericksburg, Texas, a town of 10,000 that reflects its heritage of German immigration. Many of the stores had a German theme, including the Old German Bakery, where we enjoyed post-hike pastries, tea, and coffee. I also spent a couple of hours in the National Museum of the Pacific War, where I learned details of such crucial battles as Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and the Coral Sea, and saw artifacts from those who served. The museum is located in Fredericksburg of all places because it was the birthplace of Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet during World War II.
One small exhibit told the brief story of the war in the Aleutian Islands, where my dad Donald Griswold (1914-2005) served as a captain in a photo lab for three years during the war. Dad had told me the Japanese captured two of the outer islands, Attu and Kiska, in 1942. He recounted how the US landed large forces on Kiska in August 1943, only to find that the Japanese had abandoned the island two weeks earlier under dense fog (a common weather phenomenon in the islands). Of the 35,000 US troops that landed, the exhibit said that 313 were killed or wounded, “mostly from friendly fire, booby traps, and frostbite.” Dad did not consider it the Army’s finest hour of the war!
My brother Harry also reminded me that Dad’s war service had a central Texas connection. In April 1941, his Uncle Clinton Griswold was on the draft board in our hometown of West Salem, Wis., and told my dad he was eligible for the draft and that he would be better off enlisting. After 8 to 9 weeks of basic training and more specialized training in aerial intelligence, he passed through what was then Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, probably in the winter of 1941-42, before he was assigned to service in the Aleutians.
As a post script, Dad had returned to West Salem on leave in the summer of 1945. He was awaiting assignment for more training in Miami, from where he expected to be sent to the East Pacific as part of the planned Operation Downfall to invade and finally defeat Japan. On his 31st birthday, August 6, 1945, he heard the news that we had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. Within days Japan had surrendered and he was soon discharged. The final exhibits at the Museum of the Pacific War said President Truman and his advisors had no hesitation about dropping the bomb—and neither do I.
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After our time in Fredericksburg, we ambled down the road a dozen miles to Luckenbach, Texas, an unincorporated spot on the map that proudly boasts a population of 3. It’s the place Waylon Jennings sings about in his famous country song, “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).” Elizabeth indulged me as I played the song three times that afternoon. At Luckenbach we found a general store and a small outdoor stage with a laid-back crowd listening to a trio on acoustic guitars. We can attest first-hand, as Jennings sings, that, “Out in Luckenbach, Texas ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.“
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Last week Elizabeth and I drove into San Antonio to visit two of the missions—the Alamo and San Jose–along the famous Mission Trail. The San Jose Mission is less well known, but it is beautifully preserved from when the Spanish first built it in the 1700s. We rode our bikes about five miles from the San Jose Mission along the beautiful San Antonio River to the Alamo and the River Walk downtown.
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Love the pictures! Is everyone’s power back on down there now?