Taken from an article in the Luckenbach Moon

Everybody's Somebody
By Becky Crouch Barrales

Tales of Sisterdale, Now and Then
(Conversation with a cowboy guru, Ramond Kuhlmann)

Sisterdale, south of Luckenbach on FM 1376, has always held a nostalgic enchantment for me.  It is impressive knowing that the "Freethinker" Germans (Freier Verein) settled there in 1848, before Comfort.  It became known as a sanitarium for the sick, who healed by the fresh water cures written about by Dr. Kapp.  How worldly it is for its founder Nicholas Zink to have built roads in Greece from 1821 - 1829 before coming to Texas.  How interesting that curious Latin students trek to the cemetery where they can read headstones in Latin, proof that the intellectual Germans read and spoke the dead language of Latin.  And how hard it must have been for my grandmother, Dora Neunhoffer Stieler, to get her horse and buggy hitched by 4 am and travel from Stieler Hill in Comfort down to teach school in Sisterdale every day.  It was 1929 at Sisterdale that my grandfather Adolf Stieler worked sheep, goats, and cattle on his Block Creek Ranch (where brother Juan now lives).  Hondo and Raymond Kuhlmann were Adolf's working partners.  They also leased all the neighboring ranches, all the way to Blanco.  So at the Home Ranch in Comfort I always head names of leased ranches like the Wenzel, the Manchaca, the Section, the 320, the Franklin, the Esperanza.

Sister Creek Ranch is a new neighbor to my brother's Block Creek now.  Beth and Bruce Johnson from Dallas bought 700 acres and within only one year realized their dream of building a horse center with boarding facilities, and rocky trail rides on smooth-stepping Tennessee Walkers.  Bruce and Beth are "Luckenbach Regulars", and in a short time have earned the membership of "the locals" as they love to gather often on the big log under the big oaks with other Regulars.  They lived out of an RV for a year while they built their little "town", Kickback Flats.  We were all amazed that they 1.) completed it and 2.) that everything is new.

On May 3rd they celebrated their grand opening.  The ticket into the gate was a bag of litter picked up off FM1376.  Part country club manicure and part natural landscape, tall sycamores quaked their leaves over man-made dams and rack waterfalls that even Disney would envy for a theme park.  Wide-open fields of coastal war edged by the tamed creek, no longer a trickle but a thigh high wading pool.  We were towed to headquarters by an air-conditioned tractor pulling a flatbed of hay bales.  Regulars Gordon, CW, and Butch climbed on board with Oscar and me, guitars in hand.  Four wranglers on horseback escorted us to the main station.  One, named Wayno (Bueno without the b), had a white horse and beard to match.  New white plastic panels fenced in horses.  No barbed wire here.

We were greeted by our hosts who, like all their helpers, were wearing blue bandanas and cream-colored Wrangler shirts with the embroidered ranch logo.  Our eyes pooped out at everything wonderful, the 100' x 250' arena floored with rubber chips, making it easy on horses' feet.  The impeccable new horse barn for four was crowned with Bruce and Beth's apartment.  The nest of buildings included a covered round pen, two bed and breakfast Guest Houses complete with Pottery Barn quilts, an office, and an air-conditioned bar - with pool tables and TV.

At 2:30 we all gathered around the arena to see the Guadalupe County True Women's drill team present the Colors.  Blacks, appaloosa, buckskin, chestnut sped around the arena sporting saddle blankets in hot colors, dittoed by their riders' wildrags.  I spotted 85-year-old Ramond Kuhlmann observing from his wheeled walker perch.  My mother had brought him from the nursing home for this event.  After all, this brand new stuff was on land he knew like the backs of his arthritic hands.  Time moves and things change.  But there sat a true cowboy guru who'd been through hard scrabbles.

From where Raymond sat you could see to the south of us the Block Creek's Thunder Mountain. It's the highest elevation in the whole area, nostalgic to both Juan and Raymond.  I wondered what Raymond was thinking.  Although he's lost his hearing he has a memory like a computer.  For example, during the 8 year drought of the Fifties he told me that on April 1, 1955, Henry Howel, weatherman for WOAL, reported no rain.  "Hondo and I walked our horses across a dry Big Sandy River.  When we returned with goats we had to swim them and our horses across."

How land is gained and lost holds intriguing stories.  If you want to stick with me, hang on.  It took Raymond and Juan 30 min6ttes to explain the politics of the land we were sitting on now.  It's my bad memory that will probably relay it in error.  In the Fifties Hondo and Raymond leased neighboring land to the Block Creek called the Wenzel and the Manchaca.  Years ago Manchaca, a Mexican laborer, came from Sierra Blanca, Texas to work on the Wenzel ranch.  Old man Wenzel had on daughter, Fina, paralyzed in a wheel chair.  Wenzel left his 3200-acre ranch to his crippled child.  Manchaca and Fina eventually married.  Emmie Wenzel and cousins claimed that when Manchaca died the land had to go back to Wenzel heirs.  But that was not true.

When Hondo and Raymond tried to buy 300 acres from the Manchacas a Boerne judge advised them against it until the records got cleared up.  This bought time for Cadena, a security guard claiming to be a Texas Ranger, to try to lease the Manchaca.  However, he sneakily deeded the Section and the 320 to himself.  Manchaca, thinking it was a lease, signed the deeds.  Manchaca hired a lawyer, got his land back, but the lawyer charged him more than the land was worth.  So he hired lawyers to fight the lawyer.  Meanwhile, Emmie took her case to her case to the State Supreme Court and lost.  The land reverted back to the 4 Manchaca children who ended up with only 1700 acres after the lawyers were paid.  Part of what the Johnson's have now is the mere 170 acres the 2 Manchaca sisters ended up with.  In spite of coyotes, eagles, lawyers, and screwworm we've learned to survive.

We feasted on catfish and hush puppies at tables spread under shady trees.  Sitting at our table was Lee Roy Knueper, 85-year-old Sisterdale native.  I asked him when was the latest date he plowed his fields with horses.  He said 1946.  Raymond said they put up telephone lines at the Block Creek in 1955.  But every time there was lightning and thunder the lines died.  I enjoyed talking to these old timers who got to know intimately or cruelly every acre around here.  Although we were surrounded by luxury and pleasure, all things new and clean, good food, music, and company, Raymond's eerie story og the Mexican eagles haunted me.  At this moment it seemed to me that the rocky hardships of the past are now top-coated with the soft rubber chips of the present to ease and speed up our journey.

It was in the late Sixties at the Block Creek.  Raymond had just marked 250 kid goats.  Marked means castrating and cutting notches in their ears.  Muttons got a "half crop" on the right ear and nannies got a "swallow fork under bit" on the left.  Days later, crossing the Divide, he saw from a distance an eagle swoop down and come up with a kid goat.  At about 200 feet up the eagle would drop the goat to kill it and dive down again to retrieve it. Raymond followed.  Upon opening a gap he smelled something.  He followed his nose in 4 directions but couldn't find anything...until he looked up.  Draped on the bare limbs of the live oaks were 200 of his 250 kid goats with their eyes pecked out - all killed by the Mexican eagles.

"They only came in May and then return to Mexico," Raymond said.  I asked him if he'd ever killed any.  Only one he said.  He watched every night where one would land on a point, a bluff or ridge between canyons.  "I waited 'til midnight, took a dog and gun.  It was a clear night and you can see a form in a leafless tree.  They won't leave their tree at night.  That's the only way you can approach one."  the eagles are still here but they don't flock to one place due to lack of large herds of sheep and goats.  They feed on rabbits now, Raymond explained.  "I almost knocked one out of the claws of a heavy-laden eagle with my hand, but he dripped it right by my horse."

Well-watered and fed the crowd of about 200 guests were asked to move over to the Sister Creek Ranch bar where The Cosmic Dust Devils were stirring up some stormy Music.  Raymond rolled his walker over to the loud atmosphere and sat stoically with his hearing aid on overload.  Thunder Mountain loomed in the silent distance under the quiet haze over the Block Creek.

"I don't want my ashes put on Thunder Mountain anymore," "Raymond confided.  "Too much commotion.  I carry my memories with me.  I could get up the east side of Thunder Mountain with a 4-wheel drive.  But I liked the south side.  It's hard to get up it even on a horse."  Raymond concluded.

I'd top Thunder Mountain at 5:30am. I could see the whole world from up there.  All the neighbors - Hubert Smith, Eucker, Bill Whitworth, Manchaca.  Since you didn't talk to your neighbors much, about all I could do to check on them was to see when they got up in the morning by watching when the smoke came outa their chimneys.  Everyone cooked with wood back then." 

Becky Crouch Barrales
Writter

P.S. "Still is still movin' for me." - a song Willie Nelson sings