The Centennial Wagon

Centennial Wagon Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show

On the banks of Marine Creek, Fort Worth held their first Stock Show in March 1896. That following October, they conducted a second show to coincide with the National Livestock Exchange Convention meeting. The opening ceremonies kicked off on October 12, 1896 with the first Stock Show Parade. Much has change and grown through the years becoming one of the most respected Stock Show and Rodeo's in the world.  To commemorate the centennial in 1996, W.R. "Bob" Watt, Jr who was President and General Manager of the Stock Show wanted to add something special.  A way to share thanks to the many contributors who have over the years supported the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show.

The Stock Show was Bob's life.  A native of Fort Worth, he grew up at the stock show. His father was the President of the Show from 1946 until his death in 1977. After Bob graduated from college receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Husbandry from Oklahoma A & M, now known as Oklahoma State University, he began working the show. While his father

W.R. "Bob" Watt, Jr

remained President of the show, the younger Bob became Secretary and General Manager in 1973.  He assumed the office of President and General Manager in 1978 learning everything about operating a successful show from his father as he followed in his dad's foot steps.

To commemorate the centennial celebration, Bob knew he needed something very special. Something that would reflect on all those supporters who through the years help make Fort Worth the Cowtown it is today marketing Rodeo at its best. That's when Bob contacted Kevin Baker of Heritage Woodcarving  with the task.  After some initial ideas, Kevin was commission to carve a special wagon to commemorate the centennial.

Kevin, who founded Heritage Woodcarving, knew this would not be an easy endeavor.  Kevin has produced some of the most phenomenal architectural elements crafting sophisticated mantles, staircases, ornate wall panels and furniture.  Today, with over 39 years of experience, he took the opportunity to study wood design in Rome, Paris and London returning to Texas with the skills of the intricate European art as he mastered complex cuts where Heritage Wood Carving prides itself  on extraordinary designs.

Starting with photos taken from Exchange Street, home to the Fort Worth Stockyards, Kevin began with photographs of the many long time businesses which have sponsored and supported the stock show. As

Kevin Baker

Kevin drafted many sketches from the photos, his ideas soon came together as if unlocking the cryptex of the Da Vinci Code.  Soon he had a 3D design of what best represent the centennial, Texas and the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show.  

This one item that seem to best display the west, traced towards the horse drawn wagon.  It moved early pioneers across the plains, it carried needed supplies as teamsters moved freight and provided escort to the early soldiers as they protected the new frontier. Even the cowboys driving their herd found the chuck wagon as home on the range.  Like the Stock Show and Rodeo, the wagon truly is an exceptional piece of history.  Deciding a wagon could billboard the many businesses, his next step was to locate a wagon to start with.

Deciding to use the running gear of a Civil War Ammunition Wagon located in an old Fort in Wyoming, Kevin brought the piece to his shop where he began to completely dismantle each piece before restoration. The wheels were sent out to an Amish farm to be fully refurbished.   Using the finest oak and walnut woods, Kevin began crafting his talent carving the side boards. Using his CNC machine to rough cut the designs on the boarding, each piece and area would be finished by hand.  The wagon carriage was built getting new bolsters which would soon house the wagon box.   Hand forging all the iron works to assemble the side boards, flooring, bolsters and box,  the wagon began to take shape. 

After an arduous six months of hand crafting the wagon boards going far from fundamental woodwork, Kevin's master piece of bolection accents and master jointing came to completion. Standing 8 feet tall at the wagon's highest point, 12 feet long and nearly 6 feet wide, the 2,300 pound creation was ready to represent the grand centennial.  

The Centennial Wagon was on exhibit commemorating the 1996 Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show before being donated to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame located at 1720 Gendy Street, Fort Worth, Texas where the wagon is currently displayed. A true master piece, created and built by master woodcarver Kevin Baker of Weatherford, Texas.  Bob Watt Jr retired as President of the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo in 2010 with over 40 years of dedicated service. 

Centennial Wagon Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show

return to cowboy and chuckwagon cooking:
return to recipes: return to Chuck Wagons

Western Swing, Going for the Record

The Ambassador of Western Swing is at it again, and this time with a goal bigger than Texas!  Billy Mata is looking for dancers and sponsors to make a bid for the Guinness World Record for the most couples dancing to the official music of Texas, Western Swing.

On May 4, 2013 the record-breaking attempt will take place at the Ahhalt Dance Hall near Spring branch, Texas.  The historic Dancehall was featured in Texas Monthly magazine in its coverage of the rich tradition of Texas Dance Halls.

Many of the Texas Dance Halls, began with roots to the early european migration into Texas.  Groups like the ODHS (Sons of Hermann) hall, founded by Germans, the SPJST (a Czech fraternal organization) hall, and the Catholic church’s parish hall often provided funding for the social gathering centers which featured Saturday night dances where the whole family could attend for food, entertainment and socializing at the end of the long hard week of work.  

Western Swing is uniquely an American music born out of the tradition of these hard-working folks who gathered on the Saturday night.  Early bands featured a fiddle player, guitar, banjo and the occasional jug band.  In the Depression Era, early names such as Arty Shaw, Benny Goodman and Glen Miller would entertain the large metropolitan cities with Big band Sound, while rural America danced Western Swing to names like Tommy Duncan, Milton Brown, Spade Cooley and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.  Their instruments of cowboy and country-western music blending in European and Mexican polka styles, even some New Orleans jazz and taking their music to the radio where entertaining community dance halls. It was music with the heart of the American Southwest, but soon it became a national, an today a worldwide phenomenon.

The dance steps are mixed influences from early square dances and ballroom steps combine with cultural influence polkas but true Swing dancing finds its roots with the Texas Tommy.  A dance that began in 1910 in the San Fransisco Bay Area. It would later influence the popular Lindy Hop dance steps that originated in Harlem in 1927.  These early forms of swing dancing would  give way to various influences and take root creating new dance steps as the Charleston, Fox Trot, Jig Trot and Jitter Bug which often placed more emphases on footwork, though Western Swing has out survived them in popularity. 

Swing changed the standard tempo of step-step combining crotchets and quavers (quarter notes and eighth notes) that many swing dancers interpret as 'triple steps' and 'steps' — yet also introduces changes in the way these rhythms were played — as a distinct delay or '

relaxed' approach to timing. Once just a fiddle and guitar, bands added electrically amplified instruments. Drums would reinforce a strong backseat of tempo giving a heavier honky tonk beat that would be superimposed onto a polka, waltz, jazz or blues styles music. Western swing's up-beat tempo attracted huge crowds to dance halls, from Texas to California during the 1930's and 40's. Once called folk or hillbilly music until the 1932 hit, "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and Western Swing came to name. Swing became so popular, renown Los Angeles Disc Jockey Al Jarvis held a radio contest for top popular band leaders. The winner would be named "the King of Swing". Unexpectedly, big names like Benny Goodman and Harry James were beaten by Western Swing artist Spade Cooley. Jarvis declared Cooley to be the King of Western Swing. 

As the Federal Government imposed the 1944 war-time nightclub tax, swing began to decline.  Although, the music grew to influenced other genres known as honky-tonk, rockabilly, and country rock.  At the height of swing, Decca Records in 1955 released what "Billboard" called (an ambitious project) issuing seven albums of country dance music featuring a popular arrangement of dancehall favorites. 

While swing music decline to the picking of country western and rock a billy tunes,   Austin, Texas would become a major center point around music of many genres.  As Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings introduce Outlaw Country, Grammy Award winning artists Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel tour the country and release recordings that kept Western Swing alive.  PBS aired the TV show, "Austin City Limits" which often hosted local and known artist of country music.  Many of those artist as many country artist of today continue to play the early sounds of Milton Brown and legendary king of swing, Bob Wills.  Great songs such as "Osage Stomp," "I'm a Ding Dong daddy from Dumas," "San Antonio Rose,"  "Miss Molly," "Roly Poly,"  and "Take Me Back to Tulsa"  are played coast to coast across the country. Today those older songs of Western Swing continue to influenced every form of country music that followed.   In 2011, the Texas Legislature formally declare  Western Swing as the "Official Music of Texas."  

Jordon Riley Sarver learns Western Swing Dance steps from Joel Aaron Gammage

Lockhart, Texas resident Joel Gammage with Texas Hatters, is co-hosting the event with Billy Mata and Mata's manager, Joanne Heston.  Gammage who grew up in Austin, Texas relocated when family decided to move the renown hat business to the rural town of Lockhart, Texas famous for Texas style Barbeque.  

Texas Hatter's, who's customers have included many celebrities from the nations Presidents to movie stars has long been a popular hat business among musicians. Such names like Hank Willianms Jr, Van Zants, Jerry Jeff Walker, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Willie Nelson among them.  When Texas Hatter's moved to the new location in Lockhart, Joel reintroduce Western Swing to the small town becoming involved with the civic community.   Today, he not only masters the nations best hat's but also is heavily involved with music as booking manager for Cedar Hall, Music and Entertainment Coordinator at Imagine Lockhart and the Event Manager at the recent opening of The Chisholm Trail Ballroom.   Gammage along with Teri White from the Broke Spoke nightclub in Austin, Texas will assist teaching the Swing Dance steps before the event starts.   The current Western Swing Dance record was set August 2012 in Grands Rapids, Minnesota consist of  756 swing dancers.  Gammage plans to bring 400 couples together for this event in hopes to break the current record and return Western Swing to Texas.   For information of the upcoming record, check the Billy Mata fan page

 

BOB WILLS and the TEXAS PLAYBOYS

 

 Bob Wills is Still the King

 

Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys

Modern Country Swing Dancing

Greatest Dance Scene of  the Theater

The Evolution of Movie Dance

Texas Folklore

Texas Folklore: by Roger Edison

They say that trees talk as the branches blow in the wind. They sing the songs from yesterday and silence the secrets of each man's sin. Cut upon the trunks of carved barked, Indians and Cowboys both left there mark. Along the many rivers that flow, there rest deep roots the trees will sow. The stories collected deep into their core, as leaves fall, again return, as so the stories of Texas folklore.

photo of Oak Tree, Victoria, Texas  Christmas Eve 2004, photo shared by a dear friend. This was the second miracle snow fall for south Texas which rarely sees snow.  The first time was Christmas Eve 1918 with a mere 0.1 inch fell, but sincerely was not like the snow from 1895 to only be repeated again in 2004, remember this as the year it snow. Once in a lifetime and a first white Christmas for many, including my mother who visit that year. 

Tortilla

Tortilla - in Spanish means "little cake" although, the Tortilla is one of the oldest known foods to the civilized world, dating back to 10,000 BC.  Anthropologist have found in 3000 BC that the Mesoamerican civilizations of the Mayans and the Aztecs did hybridized wild grasses that produce a large nutritious kernels we know as corn. 

Tortillas are made from corn meal (maize) or Wheat flour and used to serve with many different Mexican foods that have influenced Tex-Mex and Southwest cuisine.  Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes in 1519, arrived in what is today, Mexico.  He found the indigenous Mesoamericans natives had a sophisticated and flavorful cuisine based on native fruits, game, cultivated beans and corn and domesticated turkeys.

Traditionally grilled on earthenware utensils, they are used as bread that is often filled or stuffed.  The original Indian method of preparation consisted of kneading the cornmeal dough (masa) on a stone called a metate. Then the masa is shaped into a circle about 8 inches wide and 1/8th  inch thick.  The tortilla has become a common staple for Vaqueros and Cowboys and served with nearly every meal of Mexican, Tex-Mex or Southwest Cuisines:  

Tortilla Recipe: 

Pan De Campo Recipe:

Tortillas - Staple of  Cowboy Cooking

Pete Garcia working dough at King Ranch  photo by Roger Edison

TOP CHEF Saddles up "TEXAS STYLE"

Photo courtesies Traci Davis TnT Ranch

Story By Roger Edison

The BRAVO Culinary hit "Top Chef" is coming to Texas for season nine. Filming in San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, Bravo announced they will be adding two celebrity Chefs to the panel of judges. Emeril Lagasse along with Hugh Acheson will join the table with host, Padma Lakshmi, Chef Tom Colicchio and food critic Gail Simmons.

Chef Hugh Acheson competed during the third season on TOP CHEF MASTERS. He is the Chef and partner of Five and Ten, The National, Gosford Wine, and Empire State South restaurants. Acheson's combination of Southern style cooking mix with European flavors has made him a successful culinary artist.

Emeril is perhaps best known for his Cajun cultural cooking and slamming the "Bam" of spices in his dishes. His long time celebrity status has made him a favorite with Food Network shows, Emeril Live and the Essence of Emeril. Mastering unique Creole, Portuguese, French and Cajun cuisine, Emeril is more than a successful restaurateur and no new comer to the Lone Stat State.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Gary Taylor with Tom Davis arrive with the restored Studebaker Wagon

Cow Camp Cowboy Church

              

Several weeks ago, I heard about a new Christian Ministries in Weatherford, Texas obtaining a restored 1880's era STUDERBAKER wagon. The congregation plans to convert the wagon into a working Chuck Wagon as did Charles Goodnight when he planned the logistics for his first cattle drive.  Goodnight selected a Army surplus supply wagon manufactured by Studerbaker. Then added the pantry that had the fold down table that has become known as the chuck box. The group are members of  Cow Camp Cowboy Church plan to use the wagon for many future gatherings states, Traci Davis, who is a member of the congregation and co-owner of T-N-T Ranch along with her husband Tom Davis.

With such excitement over the wagon, Traci expressed that while this is a beautiful wagon, they are a long ways from a full conversion. A basic wagon will need many items to complete the task. Luke 11: 9 "And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for."  Traci's prayer is merely for the help to outfit this fine restoration so it can be used to bring forth Christian fellowship.  

Items like building the future Chuck box, a boot box, fire box along with adding the bows, canvas cover and such will slowly come into gear. Chuck wagons also had to be outfitted with cookware using cast iron dutch ovens and skillets, Enamelware coffee pots, iron spit and tri pod are just a few items that will be needed to making this into a fully functional Chuck Wagon. Of course, what wagon would not be complete without having the large water barrel and the mounted coffee grinder.

Pastor Frank Johnson is the minister of the Cow Camp Cowboy Church. He has a vision that some may believe is as big as a 10-gallon hat, and rightly so, that vision is to bring the gospel of the Lord to the small town community of Weatherford in a way that people can relate and enjoy through Cowboy Ministries. Their motto is "Gathering Mavericks and making top hands" where his congregation is growing since opening last April.  

Pastor Johnson wants people to see “cowboy” as they drive-by the church. Also have parking attendants greet visitors by horseback, and most of all to have the church function as a haven of rest and fellowship, much as the historic cow camps did during the days of the Texas cattle drives. 

He moved to Weatherford from East Texas with hopes to eventually have more acreage with a Rodeo Arena, bleachers and facilities to host many large scale Cowboy Christian gatherings. However, for now, operating on several acres and the recently restored wagon is an exciting start. 

Pastor Johnson stated, he does not plan to use the wagon in Chuckwagon Cooking Competition, but would like to use it as a spiritual tool. The Chuckwagon not only provided as a kitchen but was home on the range for the working cowboy. 

Other Cowboy Ministries have used the chuckwagons in unique ways. David and Sherry Roberts, owner of Deep Fork Cattle Company in Chandler, Oklahoma along with Arb Lenamon of Fannin, Texas are among several Chuck wagon teams who annually team up for Cowboys for Heroes.  A program assisting wounded military members from Iraq and Afghanistan along with their families held at Brooks Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas.  The Cowboy for Heroes provides a western entertainment day that is a free event for the military members held annual during spring each year.

Other Cowboy Ministries are helping out nation wide, too. Whether traveling to events or at home in their local communities, the Chuck wagon seems to make people feel at home. Perhaps it's the aroma of coffee, a hearty meal or sitting around a camp fire in the western environment that makes folks comfortable. Sometimes, one merely needs to Ask, and you shall receive. We look forward to the progress and completion of the Cow Camp Cowboy Church Chuck Wagon.

If you desire to assist or contribute too Cow Camp Cowboy Church, please contact the Pastor Frank Johnson. Email cowcampcowboychurch@gmail.com or call  817-594-1447.

Wish list: old wind up alarm clock, cast iron cookware, enamelware coffee pot and cookware, Canvas fly, poles, water barrel, coffee grinder, grates, firebox, spits, tri pod, harness and old horse collars, crock, etc

SHEPLERS: "More than a TRUSTED Name"

SHEPLERS

When my son Austin and I walked into the Sheplers store located in San Antonio, Texas, his eyes open wide as he exclaims, "Wow.  Dad, this is some store. It's Huge." He was exactly right as Sheplers is the worlds largest western wear retailer.  They were around long before his generation or even my own.  The business roots date back to 1899 even before the late Harry Shepler was born.  

Harry Shepler grew up in Wichita becoming a ranch owner in Piedmont, Kansas before he bought out J. W. Gibson Harness Shop that was located in Wichita on North Main. He renamed it "Harry Shepler Saddle and Leather Company." Harry and his wife Hazel perhaps never envision the growth of the business, but Harry operated it with fair principals and core values that continue today in the legacy of Harry Shepler.

Troy Texas FunFest Chuck Wagon Cook Off-Competition

The Troy, Texas Chamber of Commerce added an old fashioned Chuck Wagon Cook-Off during Fun Fest 2010 held April 17th. The annual Fun Fest includes having an opening parade lead by horse teams, arts and craft show, tough as nails car show, carnival, and other attractions that build city support also  held last weekend. Like many town festivals, the Fest concluded with its American Fire Work Show.

SECRET RECIPE....

Earlier today, I was trying to get my brother in laws special Barbecue recipe for his southern BBQ Grilled Chicken. It's cooked with a rich smoke flavor where the sauce is darken but never burned. The sauce is truly good too. While I have many others that also are very good, I thought I would share his. However, Barbecue recipes are prized treasure. It's like that saying when you ask someone in the military, "What do you do in the military?" and they respond, "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."  TOP SECRET....well, I suppose these recipes for good BBQ are truly treasures and kept secret.

This week-end I plan to list some of my own special recipes for Barbecue Sauces and talk about areas not only in Texas, but some of the hot spots in the USA. However, my favorite when I didn't cook it, or my brother in law's chicken is cooked in LOCKHART, Texas. The true BBQ capitol of the world. Additionally, my recipe for HOECAKES....also known as Jonny Cakes because the pure Vermont Syrup I received and smoothered them with was more than just mouth watering.

Way of the Chuckwagon

There is a majestic beauty viewing over the massive grazing lands that run from Texas north through the Dakotas reaching into Canada. These plains expanded westward into Colorado meeting the rocky mountains and northwest to the Cascade Mountain Range. Scenic hills covered in tall Buffalo grass that whispers its historic past as one might sit silent reflecting upon the romantic images of the American West. As the wind blows through the wild blades of green stems that still flourish today, the sounds of the cowboys yawp can nearly be heard as they command their livestock on the long cattle-drives. Today, no other item best reflects the images of those cowboys who worked the cattle drives than the “Chuck Wagon”.