Growing Up in Bandera
Editor’s Note: Growing Up in Bandera is available in book form! Visit the Bulletin’s office or call 830-7963718 for more info.
Most of the advantages of growing up in small town Bandera were obvious. Everything we needed was within walking distance of our home. All of the friends I usually hung out with were no more than five blocks away. All levels of my schooling were just three blocks away from our house. That was both good and not so good. Inclement weather sometimes made those three blocks seem like miles. While attending high school the arrival of a blue norther was pure misery as I traveled on foot taking every shortcut I could.
When walking to St. Joseph Catholic School the only shortcut was through a corn field owned by Tom Adamietz. If he saw me he would tell my dad who pretended to scold me but I know he understood because he grew up in the same part of Bandera. The fence wire surrounding the field was down on the ground and offered no resistance. Lucky for him there were no deer in town like we have today. My usual route home took me down by our baseball field which is now part of the Catholic cemetery and I regularly ended up playing baseball with Angel and Joey Martinez instead of going directly home. I often fibbed to my mom about not hearing her honking the horn on our old truck two blocks away in an attempt to call me home.
Other times Angel would lure me into a game of keepsies where he would win all the marbles I had gotten from doing battle with Tommy Miller and others. As I got a little older I preferred to walk the long way because there were some girls who lived in the neighborhood I could walk with even though their grandfather would often be giving me the evil eye from their front porch.
The Bantex theater was centrally located up on Main Street making it easy to walk to from anywhere in town. It had a concession stand which was accessible through a door on the outside without going into the lobby. It was made closer than the five block distance from home because of all the empty lots back in the day providing shortcuts to get a double dip ice cream cone. My friend and classmate Paula Adams was usually behind the counter in those days.
No story is ever told about being raised in Bandera without a mention of our river. It touched our lives from infancy through adulthood. The river has provided a spot for fishing, swimming, baptisms and all kinds of events through the years. During the summertime families often gathered at Dripping Springs to cool off by splashing around in the water where an untold number of kids have learned to swim since Bandera’s earliest times.
I have traveled around our great state for brief periods of time to find work and other parts of the world thanks to my military service. I can tell you now that there is nothing better out there than what I’ve had while Growing Up In Bandera.