Tag: otto koehler

Biannual roundup of your blog-reading habits

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Thanks for once again being so predictably unpredictable in your tastes. While postcards sent “from” and about San Antonio (“San Antonio Song” soundtrack) are still your favorites, you also seem to relish postcards sent “to” San Antonio from places we travel. Oh, and you like food from anywhere.

This list represents the most-read posts during 2016. The numbers in parentheses represent the rankings from six months ago:

  1. Don’t Let Battle Zealots Overrun the Crockett Block, 2016 (1)
  2. The Madarasz Murder Mystery: Might Helen Haunt Brackenridge Park?, 2012 (2)
  3. Postcards from San Antonio a Century Ago, 2016 (6)
  4. Please put this song on Tony’s pony and make it ride away, 2010 (5)
  5. Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Settling into La Biznaga, 2016 (12)
  6. How would you feel about the Alamo with a crewcut?, 2011 (4)
  7. Postcard from Parma, Italy: City’s cuisine living up to its namesake ingredients, 2016
  8. Postcard from Ferrara, Italy: First tastes of Emilia Romagna, 2016
  9. Postcard from Sintra, Portugal: Masonic mysteries surface at Quinta da Regaleira, 2014 (11)
  10. Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Uriarte ensures talavera traditions endure, 2016
  11. Introducing Otto Koehler through a Prohibition politics caper of yesteryear, 2016
  12. Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: Wishing these dining spots were not 600 miles away, 2016

Thanks for dropping by every once in a while. Love hearing your feedback.

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Introducing Otto Koehler through a Prohibition politics caper of yesteryear

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Their voices circled me in the tub today, and I was so happy to hear them again. I was worried they wouldn’t return after being neglected for the past decade.

Last week, I finally hit “send” to submit the draft of a book on the history of the Coker Settlement to the book committee of the Coker Cemetery Association. I have been living with the extended Coker family since Banks Smith first asked me to tell the story of Minnie Tomerlin and Max Voelcker about nine years ago, resulting in Last Farm Standing on Buttermilk Hill.

While the ghosts of more than 600 relatives of the Coker clan managed to haunt my baths enough to squeeze their way into the draft of the Coker book, they didn’t talk much. I wasn’t allowed to put words in their mouths; only hundreds of footnotes at the end of the chapters. Nonfiction rigidly based on historical facts.

But now I have returned to historical fiction, and, frankly, Hedda Burgemeister and Otto Koehler cannot keep their lips zipped.

I considered casting aside the first hundred pages of their story, An Ostrich Plume Hat, I wrote so long ago. One reason is no one has been clamoring for me to finish. My dialogue, despite how freely it spills out to me in the tub, probably only seems convincing to me. Counterpoint: I love listening to them.

The second reason is Joe Holley. His portrayal of Emma (Hedda) Burgemeister for Hotel Emma at Pearl describes her as a tall and blonde femme fatale. Counterpoint: Yes, Hedda shot Otto Koehler, but the nurse did not appear a sexy bombshell in her newspaper photos. The jury found her innocent of murder, and, through the years, I have grown to know her as a complex heroine of my story. I must rise to her defense.

The third reason is Mary Carolyn Hollers George. A serious historian, she is writing a book about Otto Koehler. Nonfiction, with no made-up conversations between the characters. She will surely send hers to press well before mine, if mine goes at all. Her truthful telling will make mine seem so frivolous. Counterpoint: None, except I am keeping myself entertained, and I don’t have to use footnotes.

Anyway, on the afternoon of the final exhausting presidential debate, I thought I would link you to some rowdy prohibition politics that I use to introduce to my version of Otto Koehler. This long-winded story is only for political history junkies. This is about an Austin caper much like the “killer bees” of more recent times. The tale is about 95 percent true, but was this truly Otto’s idea?

The diversion prior to debate will reassure you that politics of the past was often as messy as those clouding this election.

So, here is Chapter Three.

Blogger’s Post Fans Memories of The Flame Room

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David McLemore has a great post on Hot Wells. 

On adventurous evenings, we used to head south to the bar there, named The Flame Room because of the fire that had destroyed much of the former resort.   The woman behind the bar would come “entertain” you by making a tacky, spindly-legged bird marionette dance.   Ahead of fashion trends, the muscular carnival workers who wintered on the grounds sported intimidating tattoos. 

We played shuffleboard*, sat on the circular sofettes, tried to inconspicuously observe the unusual clientele and drank longnecks until forced to make the dreaded trek to the facilities.  While the men’s room was under a huge propeller conveniently adjacent to the bar, the ladies’ room required a journey down a long hallway past opening after opening of the dark ruins of private bathing rooms that certainly seemed haunted.  The sulphur smell from the pool was almost overwhelming.  We always went in pairs, too frightened to try to reach the lone dangling lightbulb at the end of the hall alone.   One night, Annie and I had almost reached our destination when, “Boo!”  That’s all the haggard woman screamed when she jumped out from one of the doorways, but we screamed as though she were a chupacabra.

Another night we came out to find out someone had carelessly crunched the bumper of their pickup through the front grille of our Volvo.  Thinking of the muscular tattooed arms inside that far outnumbered ours, we elected not to go back into The Flame Room and demand to know who hit our car.

The connection of Otto Koehler to Hot Wells David mentions is one of several reasons my novel about the brewer’s murder is called An Ostrich Plume Hat.  An in-depth history of Hot Wells can be found on the Edwards Aquifer website, from which I plucked this card.

Although I would be much too chicken to cross it, I wish a swinging bridge like the original one linking Hot Wells to Mission San Jose could be installed as part of the San Antonio River Improvements Project.

*Help!  It’s not called shuffleboard.  Long raised table-alley that you apply sawdust to and push these sort of pucks down to knock other pucks off the table….?

Note Added on September 17:  Also visit David’s article on Nowcast, a slide show and Charlotte-Anne Lucas’ video.  And more Hot Wells photos.