VACATION DIARY, PART 2: THREE LIGHTS AND COUNTING
I MISSED THE Knights of Columbus annual Hunters Night Out dinner and gun drawing at the Wimberley VFW. But if I lived here and paid attention to the Winberley View, I wouldn't have had to. A notice of the outing was the first item of the Weekend Digest on Page 1 of the newspaper's Saturday edition (the other one comes out on Wednesdays). While daily newspapers are still struggling with the idea that local news is the most valuable commodity they can offer, weeklies and semiweeklies like the View have long known that the minutia of local life is their bread and butter. Page 1 also tells me that, for the second year in a row, the Scudder Primary School's Halloween party has gotten so big that Danforth Junior High will host it. Of course, it is not called a Halloween party -- it is the second annual Scudder Fall Festival; no place is safe from political correctness. Reading inside, I learn, among other things, that a Wimberley artist's work is going to be in two juried shows in New York, that tickets for the civic club's annual home tour are on sale for $15 and that Ann Rolling of Wimberley has been named woman of the year by the Xi Alpha Beta Chapter of the Beta Sigma Phi Sorority.
THE PAPER doesn't skimp on the big local news, either. The Wimberley school board is interviewing five architectural firms so it can find a company to help it sell a big bond issue -- called bond election here -- to the public. If my brother's reaction is any indication, the prospects do not look good. "They got screwed by whoever built the high school for them, and now they want millions from the public to bail them out." The school system also seems overly fond of a report it commissioned that says growth will be such that two new schools will be needed in 10 years, so naturally they want to raise the money for them now. Total cost: about $45 million. "People are going to the public meetings and standing up and shouting, 'Are you NUTS?' " Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? My brother cares about this issue even though he lives 13 miles outside of Wimberely and isn't even eligible to vote on the bonds. That's what happens when you move to a small town, or even near one. My brother came here from Houston, which is just too big for people to think they can have a meaningful say on what goes on. Here, small decisions affect everybody, so people pay attention.
ANOTHER ISSUE he cares about, also covered by the Wimberley View, is the attempt of an Austin developer to build a $25 million resort adjacent to Jacob's Well, a "natural" historic area that draws a lot of tourists. The Wimberley Valley Watershed Association has issued a statement "expressing concern" about the "environmental impact" the project would have on the preserve. My brother seems to be a little bit cynical on the subject. The watershed association sounds like an official group with a lot of influence, but it is really just a bunch of landowners who live around Jacob's Well and are mostly concerned, my brother believes, about their own property values. But everybody should care about the watershed, because water is a very big deal here. This is is the second year in a row of near-drought conditions. "We all think the counties should offer more of an incentive (i.e., tax break) for rainwater collection systems. That would relieve the pressure on the aquifers and wells." My brother has a well in addition to a rainwater collection system -- his tank holds 10,000 gallons and is full, despite the relative lack of rain, so he hardly ever has to use his well. It saves him a whopping $65 a year on his property taxes.
WIMBERELY IS HAVING some growing pains. it is a nice little town in a picturesque area that a lot of people want to move to, which means it is in danger of becoming a not-so-little town in a picturesque area a lot of people have already moved to. A third traffic light was recently installed in Wimberely, and some of the old-timers are just beside themselves. "Where to they think this is -- San Marcos?" Of course, not everyone has the same opinion on the relative merits of smallness. I know you'll find this hard to believe back in Fort Wayne, but the town fathers are on a bit of an annexation binge. My brother went to see a neighbor yesterday about a gun he wants to buy, and his neighbor was incensed about having been annexed recently. The back of his property is right on the river, and he liked to go there and shoot his guns off. He can't do that now. There is a subdivision right outside town -- lots of senior citizens, its own golf course -- that headed Wimberely off by getting itself incorporated. So now there is what amounts to a neighborhood -- called Wood Creek -- that has its own mayor.
I WANTED TO close today with a photo of a deer or a fox, just to show you that, despite encroaching civilization, this is still the middle of nowhere (with satellite TV and wireless Internet connection, of course; let's not be ridiculous). But wild animals are skittish, and I haven't been able to get close enough for a good shot yet. So I followed Larry and Michelle's cat, Bubba, for a while and got a picture of him peeking out from the covers he had burrowed under. In Indiana or in Texas, cats are always easy. Bubba (or "Bubber," as they say down here) was a stray that made a two-mile circuit of this property and two or three others. My brother and his wife took him to the vet and then took him in after he got bitten by a snake. He acts peculiar on occasion, chasing things that aren't really there and jumping up from where he is and racing to somewhere else for no particular reason. They worry that the snake bite might have left him "not right," but it just seems like normal cat behavior to me.
