Kolache Festival

We drove into Caldwell this morning, for their annual Kolache Festival. Being that the Hill Country was founded by so many Germans and Czecks, the area is known for the delicious handmade kolaches. We had kolache bakeries in Clear Lake and Houston, but the dough there wasn't anything like what we tasted today. I told my husband it was like the difference between Wonder Bread (Clear Lake kolaches) and handmade European bread (the Hill Country).

We left home very early, thinking we'd get a head-start on the crowds there. No such luck. There were as many people walking the closed-to-traffic streets of Caldwell as we have seen at any number of festivals in Clear Lake and Houston. The town of Caldwell has less than 4,000 people in it..... surely there were all there early this morning, along with hundreds of others that had driven there just for the kolaches. (Kolaches are made from a sweet dough, either filled with fruits or meats and cheese..... they're palm-sized, about the size of a northern-made jelly doughnut.)

The streets were filled with vendors selling everything from soup to nuts, from flip-flops to western boots, from western-design onesies for babies to feathered hats for the ladies of the Red Hat Society. Food vendors were there also, with homemade sausages, funnel cakes, kettle corn (I resisted the temptation of that), and everything else that could be fried in oil and put on a stick or into a red & white checkered paper container. There was also a Kolache-Eating Contest..... but we got there early, and didn't want to wait around in the heat and sun to watch a bunch of people stuffing kolaches into their mouths. By the time we had walked around the town square just once, the temperature felt as if it was surely over 100 degrees.

The lines for the kolache vendors were very long, winding around the square like the lines at a DisneyLand ride. Every bakery had different fillings in their kolaches, all kinds of fruits, meats, cheeses. My husband tried one of the ham and cheese..... I had one filled with apple. Delicious.... and the dough..... a nice thick sweet dough that reminded me of the breads that my grandmother used to bake at Easter. We bought a dozen of the fruit-filled kolaches and they're already in the freezer downstairs so they don't call out my name every morning. We will save them for company....... just a minute or two in a hot oven and they will taste like they were just baked.

We didn't stay as long as we thought we would in Caldwell. It was just too blessed hot for walking around looking at what the vendors were selling when I knew we wouldn't be buying anything. No vendors selling old books, and nothing else appealed to either of us. We've lived in this state long enough to have seen every type of Texas craft imaginable.

Instead of coming back home, we drove up to College Station. My husband had two books to return to Half-Price Bookstore up there, so that's where we headed. Of course, we can't go in there just to return..... I had to look around, especially at their "Old and Interesting" shelves, which is my favorite spot in that store. I found two old volumes of Steinbeck, two that I didn't already have. Then I looked on the clearance shelves.... and there was a beautiful red-cloth covered copy of Wharton's "Age of Innocence." One of my all-time favorite books... I already have a hardcover, which I've read three times. But this little red book..... with a red ribbon bookmark, and gold edges to the pages.... so small that it fits in my hand..... small enough to tuck into my purse when we travel. I always bring along a book that I've already read when we travel, so if I don't get to finish it on the trip, it doesn't matter.... plus I always buy books from wherever we go anyway. That little red book called my name and came home with me. (A lot more satisfying than the kettle corn that was calling out to me at the Kolache Festival.)

Before we left College Station, we tried a new bookstore that our neighbor had told us about. We found it easily-- it was certainly big enough not to miss...... I think the building was once a grocery store, given its size and lay-out. My husband called this particular shop "the poor man's Barnes & Noble." They were playing music that was horrible...... the shelving was cheap and poorly set up.... they had a cardboard box (huge one) in front of the store with books just tossed into it, selling for $2.99 each. What book-loving person tosses books willy-nilly into a cardboard box? (And does anyone even say willy-nilly these days?)

The books at this store were all brand new. Totally without character. Punched out of printing presses like so many cheap sugar cookies that are counted by machine and flipped into a little box that says "Mother's Cookies" or some such nonsense. (No one's mother ever touched that kind of cookie, believe me.) They did have a clearance shelf in that store, and that's where I looked. They had used books on that shelf. And how did I know they were used? Because they put a huge green and white USED sticker on the spine of those books... and not the kind of sticker that you can easily peel off. Who in their right mind does that to a book?!

We spent about ten minutes in that bookstore, which was about nine minutes too long. As soon as we walked into that place, I knew it wasn't the bookstore for us, especially for me. When I walk into a bookshop, I want to be able to know right away that I'm in a bookstore, not a converted grocery store filled with horizontal shelves.

Older books are lovely to hold, heavier in your hands, and a good vintage hardcover will last the rest of your life, and then some. These cheap softcover books with the dab of glue on the spines will last for maybe three readings, and that's if you take care not to bend the spine back too much. The vintage hardcovers have much softer paper of a higher quality, and when you turn a page, you know you have turned a page.... it's not like a feather in the wind that has virtually little substance.

We probably won't go into that mega bookstore again. Our neighbor will probably ask if we tried it....... we'll think of something to say. We sure did...... they didn't have what we were looking for..... but thank you for mentioning it to us. I told my husband that this particular neighbor isn't a reader. I've been in their house...... the only books in sight were a few cookbooks in the kitchen. So I guess that's what we have to remember.... don't go to bookstores recommended by people who don't read.