KERRmputer Bug

Day 10 - May 30

I remember the first time I brought a laptop computer to Kerrville ... though I’m not sure what year that was. I’d bought it second hand from a student of classical lit at UT. I had some assignment I that couldn’t wait until fest was over, so I packed up the laptop and carried it to camp. It had a big rectangular battery pack that popped out for recharging, and would run for about 20 minutes before the low-battery warning started flashing.

I didn’t get much work done that year.

Laptops are much more advanced now. This Macbook is wireless-enabled and can pick up the Internet at several spots in the campground. It’ll run several hours on battery power. Besides, we now have RV spaces here with hookups, and there are electric connections even for tent campers who want to pay for them. I can usually find somebody who will let me plug in to work or recharge my machine.

And when you write under a camp awning in the Hill Country late at night, sometimes insects will crawl across your screen or land on your keyboard. As one did to me two nights ago.

Don’t know what it was exactly. Maybe something in the order Coleoptera. It was narrow, about 3/4” long, a dark shadow on the illuminated keypad. I thought at first it might be a firefly, but it never lit up. It crawled around some, didn’t look too threatening, and I figured I’d flick it off if it got in the way of my typing. Aside from that, I didn’t think much about it. When the words are rolling, I’m good at blocking out distractions.

Not until one of those waking moments in the wee hours of the morning, when odd bits of data float to the top of my consciousness, did I remember the visiting insect. Had I brushed it off? Had it left under its own steam? Or had I closed it up in my laptop and zipped it into the case?

Yesterday got so busy I never fired up the machine at all. When I opened it this morning at Camp Inertia, sure ‘nuff the critter was there: a grayish lump of matter on the keyboard, right about where I had last seen it. It wasn’t exactly smashed, but it looked inanimate. I prodded it gently to see if it was alive. No response. Darn. I should’ve looked before I folded up, been more respectful of life. Oh, well.

“Look!” I said to the folks who were sitting around playing music before breakfast. “A computer bug!” That got a few laughs.

The blob hadn’t moved easily when I prodded it. I figured I’d need a napkin or something to pick it off. I also needed hot water for my tea, so I set the laptop on a chair and wandered over to the stove. When I came back with cup in hand, I was surprised to see the Computer Bug standing up on all six legs, testing the air right and left with jointed antennae. It didn’t look damaged at all, just maybe a little confused.

It made a circuit of the 4 key, rather like a dog that turns around several times before curling up on a mat. It stood there a moment, alive and curious, then unfolded its wings and flew away.

Fajita Thursday

“I guess you’d call this a victory lap,” Javier said just now, sitting in our tipi with a few friends, sipping on a bottle of Jose Cuervo Family Reserve.

He and his crew of volunteers sliced and grilled 100 pounds of meat and passed it out, wrapped in flour tortillas, to a hungry crowd. I think there was a little pico de gallo left in the big enamel pot; the Old Fart’s Kitchen across the way will use it to spice up beans and maybe breakfast tomorrow. Two empty beer kegs are floating in bins of melted ice. Leftover soft drinks languish in the red tubs. Our water cooler is still out by the barbecue pit.

Some say men can’t keep track of anniversaries. Javier can. He’ll tell you, without hesitating, that today’s fajita party was the 31st annual. This tradition has been going on  almost as long as I’ve been attending the festival.

From Hot Jams & Cold Showers, © 2000 Dyanne Fry Cortez

Donations are gratefully accepted, but not required, and he has no system for keeping track of who gave money and who didn’t. He hands out food to all comers as long as it lasts; anyone who doesn’t want to miss out better show up and get in line.

Occasionally someone will offer to bring a side dish. Javier declines, politely but firmly. This isn’t a potluck, he explains. But he has made an exception in recent years for the women of Camp Inertia, who fry up batches of cheese-stuffed jalapenos and pass them out to people waiting in line at the barbecue pit.

Fajita Thursday in 2014 is still not a potluck, but the menu has evolved some since I wrote that. Camp Inertia still makes stuffed jalapenos, and the cooks aren’t all women. Last year, Javier talked the Pedernales Brewing Company in Fredericksburg into being a business sponsor and donating two kegs of their Lobo Negro beer. We had Lobo again today, though it wasn’t all donated. We also have dessert, provided by Justin’s Ice Cream on the River Walk in San Antonio.

This sprung from one of those magical Kerrville encounters: Justin Arecchi came to the festival one year and set up a tent in the Meadow. Fajita Thursday happened more or less at his front door. He was impressed with the extent of the production and the community spirit behind it, and offered to donate some ice cream the following year. His teenage daughter Giovanna dipped and served. She’s the youngest of Justin’s kids, and he told us she had never shown much interest in working at the store -- but she really took to handing out ice cream for free. And Justin did too, I guess, because he shows up with a different flavor every year. Today it was mango. He brought ten gallons. Giovanna, now 20, is still working the ice cream table. When the crowd gathered and the party got under way at 6 p.m., I noticed quite a few of the guests were having dessert first.

Evening in the Meadow

Day 7

Maybe it won’t rain tonight.

There were clouds up there this afternoon. Pretty, fluffy white ones, like a flotilla of ships all aimed in the same direction. They seemed to increase in number as the day progressed; around 5 p.m. some were looking sort of dark on the bottom. But it’s nighttime now, and I’m seeing stars.

Javier spent the day soliciting contributions for his big fajita feed tomorrow. When he got back to camp I made him a sandwich. Dorothy and J.C. Hammond stopped by to peruse an old photo album Javier brought to Kerrville this year. It’s full of old, faded pictures of a festival-sponsored trip to Puerto Vallarta, which happened before I met Javier. He and Dorothy were on that trip. I’m not sure about J.C. or Dan Greenlee, but they had fun looking at the pictures, too.

Now Javier is chilling out with Amazin’ Walter and Laurie, whose tent is just behind our tipi. The air is pleasantly cool; I just traded my summer dress for a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Camp feels pretty lively tonight. People who’ve spent the past few days hiding from the weather are cutting loose. I hear music coming from several directions, along with snatches of conversation from various camps. Somebody must have said something funny at Camp Inertia, which just erupted with howls of laughter. The mud-slick paths that kept me close to camp last night are drying up nicely (caliche will do that if you give it a few hours of sun) and I think it may be safe to go cruising with my bassoon tonight.

I've been attending this festival since 1981. Some things haven't changed at all.

Wild Jams & Warm Showers

Day 6 - May 27

Some aspects of this Folk Festival are comfortably familiar, much as they’ve always been. But here’s one that’s really different. The cold showers by the Kerrtry Store -- the showers that are featured in the title of my book, and appear as background setting or lead character in several chapters -- exist no more.

They’ve been replaced by a new building, located more or less where the camp known as Peckerwood Island used to be. The new shower shed has hot water and concrete floors. The women’s side is divided into two halves; each with a vanity sink and two shower heads. There are dressing areas with benches and rows of hooks on the wall. We also have a sort of anteroom where some gals dry and fix their hair.

The dressing area is open to the sky, like it was in the old shower shed. I like that. But the divided room doesn’t foster quite the same sense of community we had when we were all in one big space together. And hot water? More comfortable, I’ll admit, but it just isn’t the same. Here are some excerpts from the book:

First night ever at the Kerrville Folk Festival
... when I said I wanted to take a few minutes and try the shower behind the Kerrtry Store, he decided I was too compulsive for his taste.
“Those showers are cold, I mean really cold,” he said. “You take one in the heat of the day, not at two in the morning. Believe me, you don’t want to go in there!”
I did. It had been a hot, sweaty afternoon. Night breezes had cooled the air, but I still felt grungy and out of gas. The cold shower took my breath away, but I emerged refreshed, renewed, and definitely wide awake. I’d been tired before; now, I felt as if I could keep going for hours.

Ten years later (or thereabouts)
The act requires some courage. Once inside the roofless shed, you must bare your body in the presence of friends, strangers, rivals, maybe even your ex-husbland’s current wife. Then you step up to one of the overhead nozzles that protrude from the inside wall and, by your own hand, loose the cascade of icy water that will bare your soul. When it hits, you’ll stop fretting over your tan lines, your hysterectomy scar, or the comparative size of your hips and beasts. You’ll speak the name of whatever god you believe in -- perhaps in a whisper, perhaps in a shout -- as you focus on getting your business done and getting out.

I should mention that the new shower shed has one cold-water spigot on the left side, where an old-fashioned Kerrvert can get an ice-cold shower if she really wants one.

Do I use it? Heck, no! Well ... maybe once or twice, on a 105-degree afternoon.

Steve Fromholz Celebration

Day 5 - May 26

I won’t talk about the storm we kerrvived last night, followed by a mid-morning squall that kept us huddled under awnings until nearly noon today. Let’s just say the rain I wrote about yesterday was, by comparison, a mere spring shower.

Anyway, the skies cleared in time for Celebrating Steve Fromholz at Threadgill Theater this evening. And what a show that was!

As I mentioned in Friday’s post, Fromholz died in a hunting accident earlier this year. Today’s tribute was organized by a crew of his old running buddies: Craig Hillis, Craig Toungate, Fletcher Clark, Dan McCrimmon, and I didn’t catch who all else. It featured an all-star cast of Texas folk and outlaw musicians, with guest appearances by Fromholz daughters Darcy and Felicity, They kept it upbeat and full of laughs. Appropriate, I guess, because that’s how Steve mostly was.

As I’ve admitted on past occasions, I knew next to nothing about Texas folk music when I first came to Kerrville. The redneck rock revolution of the 1960s and '70s mostly escaped my notice. Fromholz was among the leading voices of that movement. So were McCrimmon and Mike Williams, along with Gary P. Nunn and Bob Livingston of the Lost Gonzo Band -- all of whom were here tonight.

Sitting in the audience, I felt once more like that babe in the woods: listening to the guys on stage tell stories about how it all began; how they met and watched each others' kids, how they started playing music together. Stories that happened when I was in high school or just getting into college. Everybody did one or two of Fromholz’ songs. I thought I was familiar with his work, but they did quite a few I’d never heard. Segle Fry was here playing banjo; he’s someone I’ve only seen a couple of times and know mostly from folk legends. And I didn’t know Tommy Elskes even knew these other guys.

Return of the Muddow

Day 4 - May 25

From Hot Jams & Cold Showers, © 2000 Dyanne Fry Cortez

Lovely ... are the showers that fall in early morning, after most of the campfires have played themselves out. If they're timed right, such rains can delay the full heat of day, giving campers an extra hour or two to catch up on sleep. This only works, of course, if your shelter is reasonably waterproof. But even if it turns out not to be, there's joy in a rain-washed spring morning. When the sun comes out and dries your gear, the discomforts of the past few hours will shimmer like the memory of a great adventure.
Click here to read the whole piece

We had one of those rains this morning, but I gotta say it was more than a shower. And campers who are trying to dry their gear aren’t getting very far. The sky still threatens at a quarter to noon, and the sun hasn’t been out more than a few minutes at a time.

It started about dawn, just as I made that first run to the outhouse. I heard a light pitter-patter on the canvas and grabbed my rain shell on the way out the door. Coming back down the hill, I observed that our smoke flaps were closed. That was good, because the stuff falling from the sky looked less ephemeral than what we’ve had the last few days.

Javier had been saying it would rain today, that he needed to install our rain pins and the ozan over our bed. He never got around to doing all that yesterday, so we had to scramble. He grabbed the ozan out of our toolbox, throwing aside a few other things I’d put in for safekeeping. He followed up with the plastic cover that goes over the spare bed: drops were already scattering every which way from the pole bundle at the top because we didn’t have the rain pins in. The many-tentacled plastic sheet that he cut to fit over the ozan was tangled, we did a lot of fumbling and grumbling before we got it right. We were too late to pick up the rugs; they’re wet and muddy and we’ll just have to deal with them when things dry up. Corners of the bed got damp, but we found enough dry space to lie down and cocoon until the rain let up. That took quite a while. I think we both went back to sleep.

I wonder if anyone has a rain gauge. I’d be curious to know how much we got. “I’ll bet an inch or more,” said a guy I met by the community sink.

Considering that we weren’t quite prepared, Javier and I did okay. Some camps got hit much worse than we did; the folks just outside our front door had a river running through their tent. But so far, I haven’t seen anyone who looks particularly unhappy. How could they, knowing how badly Texas needs rain?

I’m not kidding myself that this morning’s rain will solve our water problems. But if this festival can summon up the R-word and do anything at all to help alleviate the drought, I’ll gladly put up with a wet pillow and a few soggy socks.

Saturday Morning Rain

Day 3 - May 24

Saturday morning. Breakfast at Camp Inertia. And it’s raining.

Not a downpour, but something that varies from a fine mist to a light rain. It’s after 11 a.m. It’s been raining since I got up. Enough precipitation to form puddles in the seats of canvas chairs left out last night. Enough to turn the very top surface of the caliche into sticky mud. I’m wearing my rain shell over my T-shirt and shorts.

It sprinkled a bit yesterday morning too -- just enough to settle the dust, as we used to say when it rained, reliably, every festival. In recent years, that hasn’t been the case. Texas has been -- still is -- gripped by drought. We’ve lived through a few festivals where it didn’t rain at all. And hot days are hotter than they used to be, or maybe I’m just getting older and don’t take the heat so well.

This year so far, weather has been the way I remember it in the old days. Cool for setting up at Land Rush; nice breezes in the theater after the sun goes down. By midnight, it’s chilly enough to put on a jacket. I’m wearing the same hooded playera I’ve worn at Kerrville for the past 20 years, the red-striped one I "borrowed" from Javier’s closet not long after we moved in together. And I was glad to have a wool blanket last night when I went to bed. Don’t know how long this will last, but it’s lovely.

Today Inertia is serving fresh fruit salad, Little Smokies and French toast made with croissants. How does this compare with Kerrville 14 years ago? I’m not sure. Camp Inertia was well established when Hot Jams & Cold Showers came out. It was there during the years when I worked on the book; Val and Catherine were some of my first readers who kept me going through the process. They always liked feeding people. But the camp has evolved over the years. Their menus have gotten more organized, and the breakfast and dinner crowds have gotten bigger. I didn’t count, but I bet they served 30 folks this morning. There’s a kitchen area, a dining area, and a dishwashing setup that’s worthy of a commercial kitchen.

Spirits of Kerrville

Day 2 - May 23

There’s obviously one big thing that’s different about this year’s Folk Festival. Our founder, Ron Kennedy, is no longer with us.

Rod passed away April 11. He was 84. He was 51 when I spent my first evening at Kerrville; at that point, he’d already been in this gig for ten years. Producer Dalis Allen has organized a memorial concert, scheduled for Saturday night, but there was a brief observance when Main Stage opened last night. Dalis stepped out to introduce those first performers, doing what Rod did night after night for all those years, and broke up.

“I swear I was fine until 10 minutes ago,” she protested through her tears.

I’m sure it feels really different to Dalis. Rod was her mentor. She worked with him for decades in various capacities, eventually taking his place as producer and emcee of this festical. Even then, Rod was usually around somewhere: watching from the VIP seats at stage right or riding a golf cart to Threadgill Theater to make an appearance at the New Folk concerts. Now Dalis casts her eyes at all those places and doesn’t see him.

It feels strange to say this, but to me things don’t feel so different. It feels like Rod is still here. And why not? He built this festival, kept it going through torrential rain and financial drought, made it his mission in life for 30 years and more. Where else would he hang out?

Ghosts are nothing new at Kerrville. Antler Dave passed two years before I ever set foot on this ranch, but his spirit hung around the Energy Tree for years and we still sing his story on closing night. Back in the ‘90s, I played in a washtub band with a guy named Glenn Allen Schulze. He died, but his ghost stopped by to see Javier one festival and they had a conversation in our tipi. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see Glenn. But I could swear I saw the late Malcolm Smith one afternoon at a camp music jam, and heard his Gypsy fiddle.

Merrilu Park wrote a poem about Rod’s final days. She said that as he prepared to move on to the next plane of existence, he had visits from Allen Damron, Tim Henderson, Steve Fromholz and others that have gone before. (Yeah, Fromholz also left us this past year, killed in a hunting accident.) He saw them, talked with them. And when she called the festival office to report that Rod had crossed over, the staff said he’d just been seen on the ranch, “looking fortyish and flirty.”

Even the ones we don’t see are still here. I’m writing this late at night Fat Jack’s Domino Parlor, with Schmidty’s memorial tree over my right shoulder. Rod’s legacy lives on, built on the contributions of all who’ve been with us over the years. And it won’t surprise me at all if he comes to the party now and then.

Here We Are Again!

My name is Dyanne Fry Cortez. Since 1981, I've spent part of every spring at the Kerrville Folk Festival. I wrote down a lot of what happened there, to me and to my fellow musicians and campers. In 2000, I put a bunch of those stories in a book called Hot Jams & Cold Showers. It's my personal memoir, but in a way, it's also the story of a community.

Strange to think it's been fourteen years since that book rolled off the press. It doesn't seem so long. Surely I can't be that much older! But I was thumbing through my book a couple of weeks ago, stopping to read passages here and there, and I saw that time really has gone by. A lot of things have changed since I wrote that book. Still, the Kerrville Festival goes on, hasn't missed a year since it started in 1972, and I still come back to camp and enjoy the music every spring.

So I thought it would be fun to keep a running account of this 43rd festival. I'll quote some excerpts from my book (published last century!) and compare it to how things are today (who knew we'd ever have wireless Internet at the Kerrtry store? I remember when we used to stand in line, 6 or 7 deep, to get three minutes on a pay phone.)

I hope you'll join me on this journey. If you're here at the festival, stop by and give me a hug. If you can't make it, I'll see you online!