Features

Kickball is a game where both adults and kids can show off their athletic prowess, and at the Jacob’s Well PTO’s Adult kickball and BBQ cook-off, they did. Kids were just being kids and moms and dads looked like kids, kicking the ball and running around the bases. The tournament had over 120 participants.

The smells of the chicken, ribs, and brisket were perfect for a one of those days that are just perfect temperature-wise. The bouncy house was bouncing, the Velcro wall was Velcro-ing, the kickball was bouncing, and the kids?  They all were having a good time, just being kids on a beautiful, Texas October day. And the best thing, all money raised would go to help JWE.

Finding Dude was not an easy task, or honestly one that the Fields family even thought was likely to happen, after their dog was lost on a drive around Wimberley.

The day was like just about any other. Jerry and Linda Fields were taking a ride around Wimberley as the sun was setting.

“We’ve been doing this for 40 years,” Jerry said. “It started out with our kids and now we ride around with our dog Dude.”

It was a slow roll from their home on River Road through town with Dude in the back of the Jeep. 

“I looked in the rear view mirror and said ‘if that dog isn’t careful he is going to fall out of this Jeep,’ and we were laughing about it,” Jerry said.

When they got back home, the Fields realized that is exactly what happened. Dude was no longer in the Jeep.

Randy Brown, 70, hadn’t always wanted to be a taxidermist. In fact, before he started learning the trade he spent 10 years in the rodeo as a bull-rider. “Wasn’t very good but I had lots of fun, and then I got married and I had to make a living,” he said. 

Following a hunting trip with an uncle in 1970, he wound up working off the cost of getting a deer mounted with a taxidermist in Humble. After six years of learning the trade he set up a studio of his own in town called Brown’s Taxidermy. Eighteen years later his wife, Mickey Brown, bought the Wimberley Feed Store and Brown moved his business to Wimberley and eventually set up Wildlife Images on FM2325 right outside of downtown. 

Inside on the work floor you won’t find just white-tailed deer and other Hill Country specimens but a variety of creatures from Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Asia. 

Fifty-seven degree mornings, pine-scented showers and sky-skimming mountains are reasons enough to lure overcooked Central Texans to New Mexico in the heat of summer. Such inducements, however, were secondary for a group of Wimberley-area artists gathered there recently for a week’s “plein air” painting with their favorite artist and teacher, Lilli Pell.  Wimberley Valley Art League members and other artists included Trudi Allison, Jeanne Balkman, Elaine Hanson Cardenas, Susan Henrichson, Barbara F. Jacobson, Kay Westbrook, Martha Griffith from San Marcos and Concan, and someone familiar to many in Wimberley’s burgeoning arts scene, the Bootiful Wimberley lady herself, Lynn Myers, whose loveable 12-year old Golden Retriever, Sassy, invited impromptu pet portraits by constantly wagging her tail. 

Back then, Wimberley didn’t really have much of an emergency services presence when it came to an ambulance. There was Hays Memorial, but they had the only ambulance that would come out to the Wimberley area. That lagging presence left a void that would tumble to the forefront in November of 1973

“I was the unrestrained passenger in an auto collision on the first corner coming out of Wimberley past the big bridge,” Charles R. Morrison III said. “I went through the windshield and ended up having a ruptured spleen, head trauma and apparently I defibrillated three times.”

Morrison III was just a teenager when the accident occurred. His father, Charles R. Morrison Jr., reached the scene of the crash about the same time that ambulance did.

“The whole town was already there,” Morrison said. 

The sun parted the clouds as representatives of Texas Historical Commission and Hays County Historical Commission joined Wimberley residents for the dedication of a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.  Receiving the honor was the Miss Lillie Dobie’s House, a charming cottage built in 1921 on River Road.

Although all martial arts have a spiritual side to it, to Hapkido, a Korean martial arts, it’s a basic. While it is a very powerful self defense, it is a way to have inner power in all aspects of life. It is both physical and intellectual through discipline. Truth, love and persistence are the key words for this type of self-defense.

Mike Uzuanis has been studying this form for 22 years with Master Chang and is the Head Instructor for Chang’s Hapkido Academy located near the Junction on Ranch Road 12. He brings this way of life in self defense and discipline to Wimberley.

“The way we teach is to take an aggressive dominant personality and mold that personality into a softer and more confident person. We take fear and insecurity and deal with it a different way,” Uzuanis said. “We take all personalities and make them confident and secure and provide love.”

The anticipation of going to school is something that everyone can think back and remember. Some kids with huge smiles on their faces, some a little scared, some happy and some not knowing what to think. Then there are the parents that are glad their children are growing up and others, similar to their children, are a little sad.

Wimberley’s Scudder Primary and Jacob’s Well Elementary students finally did go back in session and all these emotions and more were telegraphed on their faces. 

Moms, dads and grandparents walked hand in hand with the little ones and tried to calm their fears. Entering the school and seeing the smiling faces on the teachers, and then lining up to go to their classrooms, helped a lot to ease the concerns. 

Another summer of freedom is over, and now comes the time to sit and learn.

Each year the Lions Club International offers programs that selected high school students get to travel to foreign lands, stay with a host family and attend Lions camps in that particular country.

This year, those selected told their tales at the Lions Club meeting Aug. 16 about their travels, experiences and what was learned about the host country and other students attending the camps from all over the world. The students had a once in a lifetime experience and learned about the rest of the world. 

With vintage buildings large and small on rolling lawns under majestic oaks, Kevin Fowler’s Rustic Ranch embodies “old Texas charm” for the Wimberley Players annual fundraiser, scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 25, from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Chaired by Al and Jean Sander, the Players’ planning committee quickly adopted the “Best Little Playhouse in Texas” theme. “It’s not only a fun twist on the movie title,”  Al said, “but we’re also celebrating one of the best years ever for the Wimberley Players—many sold out shows, a dozen BroadwayWorld Austin awards and Best Theater in Hays County award by the San Marcos Daily Record.”

At Rustic Ranch, an old-timey dance hall adjoining a festive bar area will be the scene of dining, dancing and a live auction.  Patrons can stroll to the bar and take a “saddle seat” or choose a “boot stool,” with dinner at tables in the dance hall.