USA Trip - Part 6 - Fredericksburg TX

Having eaten with Ryan we set off into Texas Hill country, again the satnav was set to the town of Fredericksburg and we knew that we still had to find the Best Western that I had booked on the internet before leaving England. I had checked out a lot of hotels in Fredericksburg and I was, mistakenly it turned out, confident that this hotel was on Main Street. The town is mainly the long Main Street with perhaps two or three roads of houses going back parallel from it on either side. We cruised the avenue but never saw the Best Western sign, having been quite confident previously I was less sure of myself now. We parked and I sorted through the Texas guide book and found hotels in Fredericksburg – having phoned the hotel we were quickly able to find it. The good news was that it was very well appointed; the less good news was it was too far from the town centre to walk.
Fredericksburg was basically my idea, I had read that it was an early German settlement in Texas and the influence remained; it was to be a pleasant break from the Tex-Mex cuisine which we enjoy. Strangely it is also the home of the National Museum of the Pacific War; I had noticed this but it was only when we returned to the town centre having checked in and eaten our pancakes – heated in the microwave – that we discovered why. The town is the birthplace of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. His family had established the major hotel in the town which had grown rather bizarrely over the years into a strangely turreted mansion. This building now houses the museum and is due to be fully re-opened by ex-president Bush in December. The exhibits covering the war in the pacific in the building were closed but we had time to see and enjoy the Admiral Nimitz Museum and the Japanese Garden of Peace before following directions out of the house and gardens to The Pacific Combat Zone which has hourly guided tours.
Texas hill country has little in common with the battle for individual pacific islands but to do the combat zone credit we found ourselves transported to that barbaric struggle. The young lady who gave us the tour was perhaps just a little too enthusiastic about all the nastiness on both sides but she did get her message across. Our tour started on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and moved onto a dock with a genuine PT boat moored at it. I was able to impress Julia by remembering that JFK served on PT109 in World War II. We emerged from the building into a beach landing onto jungle covered island. There were tanks from both sides; a landing craft but most striking were the bunkers and pill boxes. These were designed to cover each other with interlocking fire making the area approaching them a killing zone. Much of the island fighting came almost to a hand to hand level with massive casualties on both sides. The ruthlessness of the allied forces was at least party brought about by the commonly held belief that the Japanese would never surrender or allow themselves to be taken alive.
The whole exhibit brought home the savagery of the combat and many feel that the dropping of the atomic bombs saved lives in the longer term. To get the prospective of the time there follows an extract from my father’s autobiography:
Even after V.E. day in 1945, we were still talking about transferring every available man to the Far East for 'as many flaming years’ as it took to finish off the Japanese. Then the atom bomb reduced those years to days and it was all over.
It is interesting to note that all the heart-searching about this is a post-war peace-time product. At the time nobody questioned the use of the bomb any more than they would have queried the use of a bigger and better gun or a heavier tank. The fact that most of its victims were civilians made no particular impact either. We were hardened to civilian casualties of aerial bombing on both sides, even where this included unfortunates in occupied territories, let alone the hated Japanese..
With hindsight and fuller information it seems likely that the Japanese would have collapsed fairly quickly anyway, but their reputation at the time did not encourage any such hopes. The Americans had suffered enormous casualties in taking comparatively small islands and the cost of invading Japan was certain to be far more. Moreover, thousands of Allied prisoners-of-war were dying by inches all the time the war continued. Even today, it seems likely that Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more Japanese lives than they destroyed and undoubtedly saved many thousands of our own. At the time the question was never asked, because these were acts of war against the enemy and war makes nations callous, none more so than the British.
After this grim experience we moved on down the road, literally as well as figuratively, to the Pioneer Museum. Here, in a plot of land the size of a football field, there stands eight differing buildings, some on this their original site but others transplanted to illustrate the progression of housing over the years. As Julia and I drove across Texas we often remarked on the distances in terms of a day’s ride on horseback – the large ranches had line shacks where the cowboys checking their herd could stay overnight or longer. Here we found a practical result of these same distances.
The Weber Sunday House served as a place to eat and rest when the Weber family made the seven-mile trip to town for shopping and church. This type of structure is unique to the Fredericksburg area. As roads and vehicles improved, the Sunday Houses fell into disuse. There was no bedroom in this particular example.
There were other buildings but to list just three seems enough. The 1880s Walton-Smith Log Cabin was the family home of John and Nancy Walton and their three children. After John’s death, Nancy married John Smith and they added to the house as needed. When it was rediscovered in the 1980s, the original cabin had been totally encased by additions to the house. In 1985, it was moved and rebuilt at the Museum. The White Oak School recalls the time when most Texas school children attended one-room country schools. The interior is furnished with wooden desks and teaching aids from this earlier era. Charles Feller, a former student at the school, and his wife donated the White Oak School to the Museum. The Arhelger Bathhouse stood behind the Arhelger Barbershop on East Main Street. Between 1910 and 1930, dusty travelers frequently stopped in for a haircut, shave and a hot, sudsy bath. The bathhouse has been part of the Pioneer Museum since 1995.
The fittings in the various houses varied in age and I can remember some of the kitchen utensils being in use by my more elderly relatives on visits to Newcastle during my childhood.
The Kammlah House began in 1849 as a one-room structure, but grew through the years with the addition of three kitchens, a cellar, a stone patio, bedrooms and living areas. When the Historical Society purchased the Kammlah property in 1955, four generations of Kammlahs had lived in the house. A barn and smokehouse are part of the original property owned and run by the family. In this barn there was a huge collection of different types of barbed wire, all neatly mounted on timber boards. I fully accept that barbed wire changed the face of the West and tipped the balance towards the homesteader/farmer against the rancher but making collections of the stuff seem to redefine boring!
We wandered back down main street to our car and returned to the hotel, entering through the reception area we noted the huge long-horn steer that had tried with partial success to break into the building through the wall just above the fireplace, the notice decorated with a Colt 45 pistol which reads ominously “We don’t call 911!” and yes a smaller but still impressive collection of barbed wires!
Later we took advice from the, possibly armed, older gentleman on reception about where to eat and were pleased that we followed his advice. We ate at Auslanders which is strangely described as German, Mexican and Greek but we took the German options, Julia had veal while I chose spicy pork and cheese sausage it was very enjoyable. Our choice of table gave us good views of the other customers, but the rotating fan above us produced a strange strobe light effect which I found off-putting. We had no success identifying the relationships of many of the parties dining together. There was one large family group which occupied, if that’s a good choice of word relating to a German restaurant, several tables but came together for group photos before leaving – it was impossible to see any likenesses or indeed any other similarities between any members of the group. It was as if there was some lottery going on outside that grouped people together on a random basis.
The large wall opposite us was festooned with cuckoo clocks and the other three walls had all been similarly attacked by deer and cattle which had only managed to force their heads through the walls, some miraculously had exactly coincided with wooded shields – am I overdoing this joke?
We returned to the hotel, settled into beds sufficient to sleep basketball teams and enjoyed a great night’s sleep. We had a fairly early start the following day after the free buffet breakfast, where incidentally there was no requirement to lubricate the waffle-maker, which produced waffles in the shape of Texas. We were now on the way to San Antonio.