Hello to Kerrville

It's now been nine years since I lived in Texas, and another one probably since I visited Kerrville, my favorite place in Texas. I have only good memories of Kerrville.

Kerrville is home to the Kerrville Folk Festival, which is arguably the best folk festival in the US, certainly one of the biggest and longest-running. As a fiddler it was a joy to me to go and saw away with some Austin musicians who just happened to be there. Probably its best asset is that it's not far from Austin, and Austin is a place with way too many musicians, not enough for them to do in terms of well-paying gigs, and good reasons to flee the city (traffic, prices, stress, politics, etc.) which would make a fine musician want to go park in Kerrville for a while.

The Quiet Valley Ranch is not directly on the Guadelope River, and thus was spared from the most devastating impacts of the flood. At the ranch one can find a small core of dedicated people - dedicated to making one good festival once a year in May - and being nice to people the other eleven months of the year. It's a kind of counter-culture stopping-off point, a place for the young and others to find refuge from the mean and dirty world of Texas and the south - and, most amazingly, the swamps of east Texas and the scorching desert of San Antonio turn there, going west, into a hilly country that actually has a few lakes, not to mention the river, so that to some it's the prettiest part of Texas. To me it was, for sure, though I always liked the Panhandle too. But it crossed my mind, and that of others too - if I were to stay in Texas, and retire there, what better place than a hilly, cool place with lots of music all the time and especially once a year?

I never asked them, nor did I even meet the people who are more or less permanent at Quiet Valley. I heard a lot of good things about them - they are widely respected, and really nice - but they wouldn't know me from anyone. Some guy who played some wild fiddle one night in the camping area, and wore an old Texas Tech hat.

I had friends from Illinois, actually, who were devoted to the place, and would go down there every year. It was like that - the people who loved the place, really loved it.

Back to the flood. It turns out, what the ranch has that it can lend to rescuers and cleanup crews is RV hookups. That's what they have and that's what they offer. They of course know people all over Kerr County - know people who died, know people who are searching, know people who know things. They are good neighbors and well connected. To me, it's interesting to see it a little from their persepctive.

Grateful, again, that it is not me or mine that got swept away in that wall of water.