MY GIFT TO YOU
by DAWN DONALDSON

...I had been coming out of my hermitage and mingling with my friends all this week. It started out with a venture out to Eckert (near Willow City) to the Knot in the Loop Saloon to hear my friends the Cosmic Dust Fredericksburg, Texas writer reviewDevils sing for some big city record producer folks last Friday. Barbara Maltese and Kevin Higgins of the band had summoned "local color" to come and add moral support.
       I figured that term applied to me. I was colorful even when I was conservative. And I was conservative a long time ago. 
       So there I was last Friday night, sitting on a bar stool drinking a Coke while all my friends danced and drank with their new boyfriends. I got a little vicarious thrill out of all the smiling going on. I can’t help but want good things to happen to these wonderful lady friends of mine.
       I took a turn around the Knot on the Loop, looking at all the eclectic decorating. My favorite observation was the gallery of photographs of Indians and gunfighters: 
       Geronimo (Apache), Two Hatchet (Kiowa), White Belly (Sioux), Lone Elk (Sioux), Many Arrow (Navajo), Utse tah wah tianka (Osage). 
       Wild Bill 1876, Bat Masterson 1883, John Wesley Hardin, Jesse Woodson James 1864, George Maddox of Quantrille’s Raiders, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Real Wild Bunch.  
       Dalton Brothers 1892…dead with their rifles across them. Three Youngers. Texas Rangers 1878. "I am a shootist"…Clay Allison 1878. 
       They watched the Mexican boys playing pool with cool warrior eyes. 
       A book sat atop the old piano, under the Declaration of Independence for the Republic of Texas. "Deuthsche Sprachlehre fur Auslander". German Grammar for the Outsider or something like that. Need a German dictionary. 
       Kokopelli’s portrait hangs right next to James Dean. How apropos.  
       Under the old tools and bottles and antlers and feathers and horseshoes above the stage, the Dust Devils tore it up. They sang all their standards they’d written. Then Barbara had me screaming and wiggling around on that bar stool when she belted out "Been a Long Time (Since I Rock and Rolled). Damn, that woman can sing.
       "Been a long time, been a long time, been a long, lonely, lonely, lonely time." Yes, it has. But I feel my passion through the music, through my friends, through the writing, through the healing work I do. Some people don’t even have that.
       "Everything is not enough, and nothing is too much to bear." 
       I found another of my old friends through Wayne, the owner of the bar. I said I’d probably write a story about the night, especially since it was Wayne’s birthday that night. He gave me an email address to send it to that turned out to be for my old friend from San Marcos college days, Ira Kennedy.
       Ira was already out of school when I worked with him on his underground newspaper "Rumors, Gossip, Lies and Dreams" in the late 1970’s. As close as I recall, we were located upstairs at the club the Too Bitter, which contributed greatly to our missing many deadlines…and to my not exactly remembering the location to this day.
       Ira is a mix of Cherokee/Irish. The Cherokees were open to intermarriage of races, so there are many mixed bloods among them. Ira wrote and illustrated a magazine about Enchanted Rock from nearby Llano a few years ago, but I’d lost touch with him since then. His return was the first of many birthday presents..." 

EXPERIENCE
THE KNOT IN THE LOOP

830-685-3591
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Open at noon Tuesday - Sunday -- sometimes earlier...
'Till midnight -- sometimes earlier.

Check out the Wild West-O-rama & Cowboy Museum
Pool, Jukebox and Sometimes Live Music.
Camping by Request.

What's up with all those dollar bills on the ceiling? And how'd they do that?

Close to all Fredericksburg and Llano deer leases.