An era of preserving and promoting the free, pioneering spirit of Texas has just about passed. It is inextricably linked to some characters, to special places and to a brand of music described as “outlaw country.”

Two Texas musiciansinger songwriter types typified the “outlaw” genre — Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson — but only one, Nelson, is still around.

As for special places, Jennings and Nelson combined to record a song, written by Jennings, that told of a “town” and an attitude all rolled into one in Luckenbach, Texas.

Everyone knows there is no shortage of characters in the Lone Star state, and the list might start with the two country stars, Waylon and Willie, but extends, via Luckenbach, to Ace Reid and Hondo Crouch.

Crouch gets credit for resurrecting Luckenbach, a real town that had dwindled to a run-down dance hall, a country store and a post office in the 1960s. As the “Texas story” goes, Hondo wanted a place to stop and have a beer on his way between properties he owned, so he bought Luckenbach. He began to promote it as a place to relax and forget about the worries of the rat race, a theme enhanced by the song.

Typical of the atmosphere and attitude of Luckenbach and its minions was my first exposure to its “promotion” in 1972. At a convention in Kerrville, the opening night’s reception was at Ace Reid’s ranch and the luncheon speaker the next day was listed as Hondo Crouch, president, Luckenbach Chamber of Commerce. Both men have passed on, Crouch in 1976 and Reid in 2002.

For the uninitiated, Reid gained fame as the “cowboy cartoonist,” whose earthy characters, human and animal, were not just lean but skinny and poor. Even though Reid is gone, his cartoons live on as he apparently drew thousands that weren’t published prior to his demise. His widow and son still market the cartoons, mostly to community newspapers. However, as in times past, the general public can have his work on their walls via the wellknown Ace Reid Cowpokes Calendar.

But, back to the 1972 reception at Reid’s ranch. His hillside home had a huge carport, open at each end, that attached to the house on one side and his studio on the other. Reid’s studio straddled a creek and had floor-to-ceiling windows on both the up-thehill and down-the-hill sides where the cartoonist sat and gazed at the Hill Country beauty as he drew.

The reception took place under the carport and, as Yankees might imagine and Texans know, featured barbecue and beer.

After the carport crowd became elbow to elbow, people gazed down the hill at the homestead’s gate at a very interesting sight. A man was walking up the driveway toward the carport. He had a full white beard and shoulder-length white hair. He was dressed in jeans, scruffy boots, a red bandanna around his neck and a full length “buffalo coat.” And, you just knew you could smell him. The strange man wandered into the reception crowd, looking askance at people as he walked and giving little, herky-jerky motions. As some guests said, he “was daft.”

Well, he might’ve been a little crazy. It was Hondo and this was his and Ace’s way of pulling the guests’ legs.

True to their free-thinking Texas ways, the reception entertainment (in addition to Hondo and Ace) was a Native American woman — Dolly Golightly — who played guitar and sang. Some of her songs were recorded and played on country radio stations later.

The next day Reid formally introduced Crouch at the convention luncheon as Luckenbach Chamber of Commerce president and, as they say, the rest is history.

A Luckenbach state of mind became popular and Willie and Waylon and The Boys imbedded that mood in people’s minds.

Luckenbach still has the dance hall and store and there are dances and musical entertainment there almost every day of the week.

Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher. He can be reached by email at wwebb@wildblue. net.