It's Festival Time!

As promised, this post is mainly about Yesterfest! This was the first annual festival planned on April 24th by the Downtown Business Alliance of Bastrop, Texas. Sarah poo pooed this festival saying that the first year was always bad at town festivals. Just goes to show you what 24 year olds know. I actually took a lot of ribbing and eye rollling as I described Yesterfest!, trying to whip up some excitement about attending it. I think Drake took me not only to shut me up about it, but also because he couldn't think of anything better to do that Saturday. Sarah, of course, refused to attend.

Here's a quick capsule description of the festival: It was held on Main Street (which was closed and became a pedestrian mall), and there were three 'areas' set up on the street commemorating three eras in Bastrop's history. Admittedly, only one was valid while the other two were something of a stretch. The three eras were: Pioneer Days (this is the valid one), The Jazz Era - featuring Bonnie and Clyde (who came thru Bastrop but didn't rob the bank), and The Rockabilly Era celebrating the music and cars of the 1950's (they had two - see the picture). There were people dressed up in costumes from each era. Best costume in my opinion: the 'salon girls' from the Pioneer days. The costumes were straight out of Gunsmoke, but they looked good. There were gunfights in the street (think spurs, 'duster coats', gunbelts and Colt 44's). The bank was robbed complete with Tommy gun fire. There was a Runaway Scrape foot race, and the Spit Off the Bridge Club offered initiations into their peculiar institution. Plus, you could hula hoop and learn to dance The Stroll.

First, for my non-Texas readers, The Runaway Scrape was when all the women and children of the Texas rebellion families fled before Santa Anna's army in 1835 and 1836. Their husbands, sons and brothers were all part of Houston's army fighting for Texas Independence and thus away from their homes. The "Scrape" was a large caravan of women and children who didn't trust Santa Anna, the Mexican General sent to quell the rebellion, to treat them as non-combatants. After the Massacre at Goliad where he lined up prisoners against a stone wall and shot them with a firing squad, who could blame them?

Spit off the bridge is just nasty. It became a town institution in Bastrop in the 1970's when some group of assine men formed a 'club' so they could spit off the bridge over the Colorado River right outside of downtown. I think beer figured prominently in the club formation. They have a song and a initiation ceremony. Well, you get the picture. I suppose we should all be grateful they didn't think of another body fluid to, shall we say, dribble off the bridge. The only good thing I can say about this activity is they turned over their $5.00 initiation fee to charity.

It was a pleasure to attend Yesterfest!. We've been at festivals where the crowds were so thick you felt like you were leaving a sold out baseball game and walking out of the stadium with 50,000 other people. Sometimes the crowds at festivals are so packed together, that if you jumped into the air, your feet wouldn't come down and the crowd would just sweep you along. Yesterfest! was nothing like that. It was relaxed with plenty of elbow room. There were kids. There were dogs. There was conversation everywhere. People were greeting friends and just having a really good time.

Another nice feature of the festival was that it was obviously a fund raiser for all the non-profit organizations in town. I bought raffle tickets out the wazoo for the Senior Center, Disabled People, Cub Scouts, Boys/Girls Club, and a couple of others I can't even think of at the moment. There were vendors selling everything you can think of. There was food, beer, ice cream, cotton candy, and funnel cakes. What's not to like? It was a great way to spend a lovely April day out in the sunshine watching people having fun. I think the most interesting exhibition was the guy showing his arrowhead collection. It was magnificent, and he had the zeal of the true collector.

The book store on Main Street also had six different authors who had written books that loosely fit in with the festival give small pep talks about their individual books and then signed bought books. I made a point to see Ken Kesselus, a Bastrop native, who I think is a history professor. He's writing a history of Bastrop from 1795 forward. He admitted that it's the Anglo history of Bastrop, so you can't expect anything in it about those pesky Commanche or Mexicans. I did find out that Bastrop is named for the Baron de Bastrop, a close friend and early supporter of Stephen F. Austin (father of Texas). The Baron had just died, so the town was named by Austin as a tribute to his dead friend. The founding of Bastrop was the reason for the second "Little Grant" - a land grant from Mexico that allowed the settlement of 100 Anglo families where the Colorado River crosses the Camino de Real (the only big time road - think interstate - within 1000 miles). Anyway, it's an obvious place for a town - but talk about the middle of nowhere at the time.

That was Yesterfest! I'd recommend it to anyone. I'll leave you with a picture of Maxine's (one of the 40 best cafes in Texas) - where we had lunch while we people watched -

Hooray for Bastrop. Good job everybody.