The Cost of Upkeep

Give, give, give. Money, time, enthusiasm. Every nonprofit in the county, and the country, wants it. Needs it. It’s hard sometimes, though, to understand where the money goes.

Take, for example, Winedale in northeastern Fayette County, owned by the University of Texas. This collection of mid-nineteenth century buildings and their contents is famed for its annual Shakespeare performances, Christmas Open House, craft demonstrations and tours. And the annual antique quilt exhibition, scheduled this year for February 22-25.

Winedale’s financial support resembles a web, whose strands are woven together by UT’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and its highly professional curatorial and managerial staff.

Funds come from the state legislature, several endowments established to benefit Winedale, the Briscoe Center’s own managerial budget, and fundraising from the Friends of Winedale (FOW). In 2015, FOW, a volunteer non-profit, raised $250,000 at a 45^th anniversary celebration honoring Miss Hogg.

Those funds underwrote the recently completed Lewis-Wagner House renovation, as well as paying for all the architectural and engineering plans required for the upcoming rehabilitation of the McGregor House and two log cabins, one of which collapsed during the severe rain events of last spring and summer. Work on the McGregor House is scheduled to begin in mid-February.

Additional progress is evident, even to the casual passer-by.

The old one-room Winedale community schoolhouse has been restored with the assistance of a targeted grant. Arrivals to the Visitors’ Center are welcomed by the new pollinator garden and fence, a project accomplished with a hands-on effort from the Gideon Lincecum chapter of Master Naturalists. [see photo]

These knowledgeable volunteers have also restored a woodland and wildflower loop, part of the old Arboretum Trail that once wound through the property’s extensive wildlife preserve.

A new site manager has arrived. Toni Mason has extensive credentials in historic preservation and museum work, making her a perfect match to the challenges that await her, including expanded public programming.

FOW expected that the funds they raised in 2015 would go further. And that the work would go more rapidly. They didn’t fully understand how Winedale’s several designations of distinctive historical significance would impose complex requirements. Meeting those high standards requires time and effort much greater than you or I would experience, if by some lottery or other miracle we could pay for work on this scale ourselves.

But the standards are there for good reason. Winedale is like a family treasure, only bigger. Fayette County is rich in treasures relating to our history and culture. Think of the Painted Churches, the Wandke Organ at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Round Top.

Winedale, however, is the only place where we can feel the lives of those who came before us. Appreciate, admire and sympathize with the hardships they surmounted while we stand in front of the fireplace they used.

Why should that matter?

Because we are who we were. The dreams of our forefathers and mothers have become our reality, even as their realities endure today within our lives: The need for food, health, safety; our vulnerability to storms, disease; the love we feel for family.

And, even in our technological distraction, the longing for beauty they expressed in their enduring handwork—carved furniture, intricately stitched quilts, expressively painted ceiling decorations.

Imagine: everything you use made by hand—by you, your mother, your father, your siblings. No Walmart or HEB to run to. No plastic.

A visit to Winedale is time travel we actually experience. And all it requires from us is care.

On August 25 the FOW will hold a Sommerabend Fest, where, “With a Little Help From Our Friends,” they will endeavor to raise $300,000 to continue the renovations. To complete the McGregor House exterior. To restore the two log cabins, which were such a popular destination in years past. And to institute interior work on both McGregor and Wagner Houses.

How can we help? We can become Friends of Winedale (www.friendsofwinedale.org). We can volunteer. Become a docent. (Docent training begins soon.)

Volunteering at Winedale is fun.

And it’s different from most similar opportunities. Because it enrolls us in the ongoing story of a place where memory and time can be touched and felt. In our increasingly virtual, abstracted world, that is a rare opportunity, indeed.

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Babette Fraser Hale is a board member and a former president of FOW.

On Beauty and Profit

What a couple of years it has been in Fayette County. Little Round Top blooms with new ventures, shops, restaurants, cottages visible from county roads. Four miles away the Winedale Complex shines with new polish—much needed restorative work on the stellar Lewis-Wagner House coupled with a new pollinator garden among other landscaping improvements, and more to come, topped by the Sommerabendfest fundraiser next August.

Look at the real estate activity, here. I’ve lost count of the number of realtors and associate realtors busy showing property to prospective buyers.

We, ourselves—LH and I—are beginning our thirty-third year on this small patch of woods and grass, thanking providence for every moment.

Why are we here? Why do the city people keep coming? Keep buying? What’s the attraction?

There is fantasy involved, of course. Some of us grew up in a gentler world of less densely populated cities and family farms. Recapturing a small part of one’s youth is a potent dream. A small town, rural environment, where community is real, tangible, accessible; where neighbors know each other, help each other—this seems more valuable to us every day.

Beauty, too. Our cities separate themselves from nature. Heavy traffic, floods, pollution. Trees die in the oldest neighborhoods, ruined by oversize houses. Finding beauty in the city takes work, effort, time.

Here, however, it’s a given. The rolling countryside between New Ulm and Highway 237, between LaGrange and Old Washington, once resembled places of fabled beauty like Bucks County, PA or the Berkshires of MA.

Every day, as I walk the length of our long, thin house from the bedroom to the kitchen, I see beauty through every window. Light slants through the trees, casts patterns, highlights a brilliant leaf, green or red, depending on the season. Sometimes it’s a sheaf of leaves, a streak of pale grasses in a pasture. Creatures appear, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional chicken snake. Deer move, gray and silent, across our front field.

It is why we’re here, this quiet communion with a place that has been inhabited by Europeans for almost two centuries. But lightly, still, as compared with larger towns, cities.

One thing is certain: None of us, new resident or old have been drawn here by the desire for a shopping mall to obliterate the small scale, neighborly feeling.

We know that the month-long Antique and junk extravaganza that overwhelms the area twice a year brings a welcome infusion of money. The profit to local business benefits all of us, even those who stay far away from Highway 237 while the festivities are underway. Because of it, we have better restaurants, a better selection of comestibles and necessities—even luxuries—in the markets, and so on.

Success, however, quickly slides into excess. Too many tents left behind, too many absentee landowners, too little care for the effect on year-long residents. I remember a conversation with the late Jack Finke, the stonemason/artist whose work contributes so much to the visual atmosphere of Festival Hill. The Finkes have been in our area a long time and Jack deplored the “junky” look along 237 north of the Round Top city limits. This was ten years ago.

He should see it now.

We’ve been lucky that much of the new permanent development has been carried out with understanding of vernacular style. Henkel Square Market, the Compound, Rummel Square—despite being somewhat overcrowded—each contributes to the appeal of the area. (If only some shops didn’t clutter their appeal with junked up porches…)

The gateway into Round Top, however—the much traveled highway 237 between 290 and FM 1291—has been less fortunate. Outside city limits, no entity offers standards and suggestions. Minus those understandings, the ugliness of urban sprawl proliferates.

The Friends of 237, a new local organization, hopes to improve the situation. They’re drawing on the better nature of the vendors who leave the ugliness behind when they go to their homes, often out-of-state, after the shows.

Cooperation, freely given, benefits everyone, because it contributes to keeping the Round Top-Warrenton-Carmine area appealing all year. Businesses cannot survive only on the Antique Show experience. There are ten more months during which people live and work, hoping to preserve the reasons they remain here.

We can help the Friends of 237 in their effort. We can join as a member, as a volunteer. We can contribute our skills, our support. In return, we can get credit for our community spirit, which creates the firm foundation for everything around us. For more information, contact info@friendsofhighway237.org.

Let’s keep our golden goose fat and happy and alive.