The Proverbial…

A River “Literally” Runs Through It

The Creation of a Legacy

Since the beginning of my ability to remember, there is a place that has held a constant peacefulness and joy. In 1899, prominent architect and contractor of San Antonio, Texas W. N. Hagy and his brother G.W. Hagy Jr., a prominent undertaker in San Antonio, along with a Baptist preacher and deacon went on frequent hunting trips to the East branch of the Frio River at Horse Collar Bend. The trips were a day journey from San Antonio to Sabinal via the Southern Pacific Railroad and an additional day crossing the prairie lands from Sabinal by wagon. Hauling their camping gear for a three week stay on the river, they crossed the Frio at Concan. Arriving late in the evening of the second day, they made camp. Their meals were plentiful from hunting and fishing.

It wasn’t unusual on their trips to find travel difficult due to weather conditions as on one occasion when a blue whistle norther blew up. Making a hasty emergency return to Sabinal in a covered hearse used by a carpet bagger peddling pans and household goods, they returned safely home to San Antonio.

Around 1912, W. N. Hagy started taking his wife and three daughters camping on the Frio River as they now had “autos” by that date. It was still a two day journey. They first camped as a family on the river near Leakey at Baptist Flats which is still being used today as an encampment. The town of Leakey was named for John Leakey. Leakey started a lumber and shingles business selling his product in and around the surrounding territory. Today, Leakey is the county seat of Real County. About twelve miles up on the West Fork of the Frio River out of Leakey, is the present day location of Hagy Camp.

In 1926 by W.N. and G.W., moved the camp site about twelve miles up on the West fork of the Frio River from Leakey when he leased twenty acres from a Mr. G.F Large for $100 a year for ten years. The lease was renewable yearly thereafter for up to 10 years at $150 a year. The land was to be used as a hunting camp. Mr. Large owned approximately 5,600 acres and he raised cattle and goats. The Large family consisted of Mrs. Large and four children, Maude, Edna, George and Gus.

Twenty years later, in 1944 Jack & Grace “Gracie” Woodward Hagy Hale, William Norris’s brother’s daughter, purchased the land from the Large family which included the Hagy’s leased land. Shortly after, in 1947, the Hagy Hunting Camp of nearly twenty something years, was purchased from the Hales by Gene Black, W.N. Hagy’s son-in-law, W. N. Eddins, and Frank B. Scott. It was purchased at the price of  $900 and paid in installments of $150 a year under an agreement of 1/3 undivided interest held by the three parties. That agreement on 1/3 undivided interest was not to be changed without consent of all parties concerned, for the enjoyment of their children and their children.

Finally, a first semi-permanent hunting cabin on the present Hagy Camp site was built by W. N. and his hunting friends. It consisted of a dirt floor with pop up siding that were held up with cedar post. Additional improvements were made over the years. W. N. and Frank Scott enclosed the West side of the hall. Screened in and wooden slats on the roof, the 20”x 24″ hall was now dried in”. Later W. N. and his son-in-law Gene Black prefabricated in San Antonio a more permanent structure and erected it on a concrete slab at the original site.

Kerosene lamps were used at that time as gas lanterns and electrical service was not available. A lazy boy was used to get water from the river using a wire line installed from the top of the bluff to a rock in the river with a bucket tied on a pulley and a rope attached to the bucket. Filling it with water it was hauled up the bluff. This was considerable easier than climbing the bluff. Gene built an icebox that would hold ice so meat and vegetables could be kept cold. Frank Scott built a rock barbecue pit. The same fire pit is still used today, generations later, for cowboy coffee, eggs and barbeque dinners.

For over one hundred years Hagy Camp remained the original cabin from the days of camping and hunting until this year Twenty-Twenty when the old cabin, which had given its all, was torn down and a new cabin built in its place.

By the nineteen-thirties and forties, there were now three individual families from W. N. Hagy’s three daughters marrying.

The families were now the Scotts, Eddins and Black. Hagy Camp was used on a shared basis for a handful of years until each sister had a cabin built for their personal use.

In 1947, Marion Hagy Scott and her husband Frank took possession of Hagy Hall. In 1958, Gene Black and Scott Moore remolded the cabin. Plumbing, kitchen sink, lavatory, toilet with a septic tank and a thousand gallon water tank was installed with store room underneath the tower.

In 1948 Stella Hagy Eddins and her husband Nelson built their cabin on the Camp compound called “Eddins Brough”.

In 1950, Winifred Hagy Black and Gene built the third cabin, “Blacks Cabin”. It was an old 16 X 16 military Quonset hut with an outhouse and was used primarily for sleeping quarters.

The REA electric had become available to Old Rock Springs Road which sent power to the cabins and the installation of water tanks with electric water pumps to all the structures.

By the 1970’s, all of the cabins had refrigeration, air conditioners and electrical appliances. A rotary dial telephone party line was installed at camp in 1970. “Party Line” meaning, a group of people who shared the phone line. Imagine you go to make a call and you hear a conversation of someone else and…and…you had to wait for them to end their call before yours could be dialed.

Yes, you have to wait to place a call and yes, you just heard their whole conversation.

Today, we hardly think twice about the privacy and ease of placing a call using a cell phone. The experience of a “shared” phone line in your local communitie, well lets just say town gossip was common.

In 1968 Winifred & Gene Black rebuilt and improved Blacks Cabin installing windows that had been in the John Frost home on Callaghan Road that W. N. had built in 1914. Store rooms, water tank, pump, hot water heater and a Ben Franklin stove purchased by the Woten family, added even more conveniences. Blacks Cabin was finally finished. Gene built an additional 10’x12’ sleeping quarter with a bathroom. A painted sign hung above the outside door. It said “Gene and Don’s Dog” house. Dog house meaning when they were in Dutch with their wives. Years later, my dads name Don was painted over as mom and dad divorced.

Today’s Legacy

I’m not sure if those who have gone before me ever realized what they set into motion for the future generations of this family. A small parcel of land with a big legacy, secured by a lease and then purchase under the old Spanish Land Grant of 1899 has brought so much joy to scores of successors from this one man, William Norris Hagy.

So what is the legacy this land has given us? The first thing I think of is my ancestors. Swiss and German in ancestry, I have traced the Hagy family tree back to my 13th great-grandfather, Joseph Hagi or Hegi in 1461 in Zurich, Switzerland and then somewhere in the 1700’s a Johan Jacob Hage, my 5^th great-grandfather, arrives in the US from Elsenz, Heilbronn, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany into Lancaster, Pennsylvania. W. N. father, George W. Hagy made his way into Texas in the early to later 1800’s. No date is noted for his Texas arrival. However, W. N. was born in Texas in January, 27, 1870 shortly before his father died in Independence, Texas at age 55. DNA test have confirmed this regional ancestry link.

Fast forward to the early years of the 1960’s. My trips to Camp was very different from W.N and G.W’s. Leaving San Antonio for Leakey in my Grandparents Studebaker, our summer trips were, well, hot. Swamp coolers were used in our grandparents home with limited results due to Texas humidity. It would cool the house down by about 10 degrees leaving you warm, soggy and uncomfortable. Cars at this time were not any better as they had no air-conditioning. Rolling down the windows or cracking the rear vent window only made it worse as the wind blowing through the car seemed like the devil’s breath. Your sweaty legs stuck to the seats. Door panels were metal and hotter than heck. 

Leaving San Antonio for the Hill Country and the cold waters of the Frio River was our relief from the city heat. Our travel time was about three hours plus or minus potty breaks.

Arriving in Leakey we always stopped at Brice’s Market for provisions. Bailing out of the Studebaker, we were red checked with our clothes sticking to us like a second skin. My brother Chawn and I would run into Brice’s store and head for the candy aisle. The worn wooden floor would squeak beneath our feet as we searched for a sweet treat that would get us on to camp. Mr. Brice with his soiled white butchers apron was predictably in the back cutting up meat. Chawn and I would grab our treats and then sit on Mr. Brice’s steps outside gobbling down an ice cream as it dribbled down our faces while waiting for our grandparents. What bliss!

Our block of ice in tow, wrapped in a burlap bag and groceries for a week, we headed on to Camp. We turned off the highway onto Old Rock Springs road which at that time was a dirt road and used mostly by the local mail truck. A few others passed Hagy Camo on to their way to private ranches along the river and up to Prade Ranch via the early settlers river wagon route. The limestone bed of the West branch passed through the ranch. At one time it was maintained as a road connecting Leakey with State Highway 41 and Rocksprings. Thus the name “Old Rock Springs Road”. The Texas Hill Country Highway system we know today wasn’t created until 1919. Poor at best and limited in their destination and connections, small town communities in the Hill Country were not easily reached. Few had cars, most had horse drawn wagons. Before Highway 336 was built in the 1950’s, the only way to get to Leakey or Prade Ranch was the Old Rock Springs Road. Entering through the Prade Ranch gate and onto Prade Ranch Road, was as not a traditional road but a river bed. The Prade Ranch road today is now overgrown with cedar trees and gravel. The old dilapidated Prade gate has been abandoned and is no longer in use.

Highway 336 now sends travelers on safe paved highway to Rocksprings and on to other Texas destinations. Old Rock Springs was a busy road back then. It still runs in front of our property as a private road and ends at the old Prade Ranch gate. It is a quite road now. My Aunt Stella would be happy. The road traffic made for lots of dust in the old days of the road. Prade Ranch closed down it’s Guest Ranch business in 1964 and locked it’s gate. I was fortunate as a young child before 1964 to get to actually make the trip through Prade Ranch gate up the river to the Ranch. Indian pictographs, dinosaur tracks and old river bed wagon wheel ruts were part of the one and only adventure to Prade Ranch.

So, now the “counting” game started for my brother and I as we were on the hunt for how many deer, turkey and squirls we could count. The land that is now Deer Rock Ranch and Rancho Real back then was a private ranch. Other than the Ranch foreman’s home and a few old abandoned log homes such as the Large families ancestorial log home where today only the fireplace stands, there was little else in people or structures and even less between Leakey and the Old Rock Springs Road.

An old rock school was built around the end of the 1880’s that serviced school children in the “rural” area off the main highway until the Leakey’s donated land for a new school in town in 1890. The old school was abandoned decades ago with only it’s rock footings left today. If you know where it once stood, it’s foundation is still there. I have since struggled with the name of the family who was the ranch foreman of the land that today is Rancho Real. Sometimes the name of “French or Casey” pronounced Causey, comes to mind but I’m not sure. The name has escaped me I’m afraid, forever.

Our counting game always ended with the deer numbered in the hundreds with an abundance of turkey, javelina hogs as well as Russian boars. Grandfather hated the hogs and the Nutrias as they were dangerous and destructive to the river.

The Hill Country land looked very different when I was a child and even more so when my Grandmother was a young woman in the 1920’s. There was little cedar. The cedar has in my lifetime become a scourge along with other non-indigenous species of land plants and water plants. This hills were simply rocky with oak trees. Oak trees free of ball moss. We’d finally arrive at camp, unload and open up the cabin. The cabin always smelled of fresh cut cedar due to the cedar disks grandmother left thrown under beds to keep the bugs and mice away. It didn’t keep either one away.  

Our summer at Camp was busy with river activity. The river was cool running over our feet with the “stinky” river silt squishing up between our toes. The sounds and smell of the river will forever be with me. An afternoon hike to Englishman’s Well was rewarded with a swim. The well was originally a part of the original A. Auld Ranch.  Seining for Red horse minnows, which were in great abundance, were easily scooped up by our net for fishing. Tad poles and baby frogs hopped around the bank. Fishing was good with fried fish dinners of sun perch, catfish and bass along with crawfish. The coons were happy with our decarded left overs and ate well those Fish Fry nights. They’d hiss and fuss as Chawn and I watched them through the screened windows.

Sitting in the river in inner tubes, dragon flies would gently land on us displaying their summer colors. There were always grandaddy log legged spiders by the gazillions undulating in mass in the caves below our cabin. Snakes, scorpions and the scary Red Devils were daily encounters. The scorpions could be heard at night crawling and scratching along the ceiling above us. Seconds later you’d hear and feel the dreaded thump onto your bed and know you had an unwanted bed mate.

The summer nights in the cabins were yellow in color. Literally. Yellow colored light bulbs were used to ward off the flying bugs. Before going to bed the sheets would be stripped to check for bed bugs, kissing bugs and scorpions. We’d go to bed wet, turn on fans for the relief from the summer heat and our summer sun burns. Sea and Ski was our only available sunscreen of the day and it provided little protection from the sun. Sun burns were common.

At night, the adults played Canasta and drank their bourbon and branch all done in a haze of cigarette smoke until the wee hours of the morning. As kids, cousins, we were left to our own fun. We’d wrestle armadillos by the tail as they would dig into their broughs, chase after fireflies with mason jars as they light up the night, peel the bark off of the cedar trees and roll up the bark in toilet paper. While this might be misconstrued as a bit of hazing towards the younger cousins who were not indoctrinated to the joys of smoking a cedar bark cigarette, the poor dummy who bought into the historical chance to smoke the thing was our entertainment for the evening as they turned green right in front of our eyes. You only did it once. 

Those brave enough to make the run from one cabin to the next without a flash light was considered really brave and even more so if done barefoot! It wasn’t the bugs we were afraid of it was the dreaded sticker burs. In the fall, if one was lucky enough, the river would come alive when thousands Monarch butterflies. Floating past us, on an invisible cloud of air they made their way to Mexico. One year, with tears running down my face, they gently floated past me by the thousands. The night air on the Fourth of July on the river was filled with the smell of burnt fireworks and sparklers. Brisket, mom’s hand churned homemade honey ice cream, watermelon seed spit-in contest. The summer heat and sunburns were cooled by a dip in the Frio River. It was our life on the river.

In the winter, if again, you were one of the lucky ones and got a once in a lifetime experience, you’d get to see a thick covering of snow on the ground. Thick ice on the fringes of the river bank would freeze allowing us to walk on the river. Cedar trees would explode from within with a loud bang as the temperature dropped even colder. Only once have I been blessed to see snow at camp. That winter we laid in our beds covered in mounds of blankets. Clothed in multiple socks, pj’s, sweaters, Grandfather Black, shuffling in his robe and house slippers, through the night stoked the Ben Franklin stove to a cherry red glow to keep us as warm as possible. I can not give a written visual of that stove and the obiance of its light through the nite but it was beautiful. It was cold enough in our cabin that winter, we could see the exhale of our breath. Dogs were welcomed in bed that night.

My first crush in life came early and was at camp. I was around 10 or 11 maybe. Our refrigerator quit working and grandfather found someone out of Leakey to come and fix the fridge. Our help arrived on horseback. A handsome knight in shining armor. Beautiful silver hair under a cowboy hat, boots and the bluest eyes I had ever seen. He was probably in his 50’s but never mind, I was smitten. He fixed our fridge and went on his way. He never knew he set the bar for me, a little girl, on what I would define years later as handsome and years later, I married an older, handsome, silver haired man.

Today, the walls at camp are full of the sounds of the voices of my ancestors.

Aunt Marion’s raspy voice, purple hair and her Cruella Deville appearance scared the fool out of me as a child. Years later I found her to be a cool Aunt. Uncle Nelson, a horse man, with a slow Texas draw but a fast foot on his gas petal, drove the hill country curves at 80 miles an hour while pulling a horse trailer…one handed. He was the complete “Texas” package from his western hat and bola, cowboy boots and a long tall lanky walk. Aunt Stella the picture of “teacher-hood” and the very best maker of rice and tapioca pudding.

My Grandmother Black, Webster Dictionary’s (or Google for those of you too young to know Mr. Webster) definition of a Lady, was beautifully slender yet steadfast, her gray eyes cocked at an angle, cigarettes in hand, hose rolled down to her ankles she’d stand under the camp “cedar tree-house fort” ready to catch me if I fell. My middle of the night “outhouse” potty protector, flash light in hand ready to kill any wild animal or monster who go in the way of me and the outhouse. Truth be told she probably was just as scared as I was but never showed it. Grandfather Black, the quiet man who never raised his voice…well maybe once when Chawn’s pop gun I was playing with went off and popped him in the butt. I can’t say I really ever knew the man that he was…

One of the many responsible for the Legacy of this wonderful place.

Now, I am a grandmother. The seasons of my life are like the seasons at camp. From my first dip in the Frio River as an infant to my ashes that will one day be set free in the river, I’ve been tied to it and it to me. The hope of leaving a legacy is not a behavior of choice but a human behavior that is what our DNA demands. We don’t just think of leaving a legacy but need to leave one and in doing so it comforts us and helps us feel like we mattered while here on earth. It begins at our birth and while we end upon our death our life story, the things we loved, our ideas, and what we valued in our life can in our minds, go on.

What will my Legacy be? Who knows. I can’t even guess as my observation about myself is not how others see me as. But, I would hope that a part of it will be tied to Camp and the river. The river that has run through all of our lives now for generations. I only hope I have been a bit “eccentric” too and will leave a legacy behind that is as rich as the one I have received. I have taken time to understand my past which has been basic to a good understanding of my present  “self”. My one and only wish of what I wish I had done differently in this life is…I wish I had not walked so many miles in someone else’s shoes. Instead, I wish I had been braver to have walked more in my own shoes.

I learned, many years after my Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles were gone, that when they were young, they would all go skinny dipping in the river by moon light. Together! My grandmother did what! Boy, did I have her…them, wrong. But, go ahead and underestimate me, her Granddaughter, because that will be fun!  She probably would have smiled and cocked her gray eyes at me in approval as she did so many times, if she had known that her Granddaughter went skinning dipping at Waimea Falls, with boys…in the daylight.

A bourbon and branch would be lovely just about now…

Writings from Gene Allen Black and Granddaughter Cynthia Black Jorrie