Harry Graeters’ Round Top
STRANGE EVENTS SHAKE TOWNSPEOPLE
OUTLAW SPURS TATTOOED MAN - GYPSIES VISIT TOWN - CAR BECOMES BIPLANE - WOMAN SINGS TO MOON - HORSES SPOOKED - BUGGY UPSET - CONVICT TOSSES PEBBLES
Giddings - He was born on April 25th, 1902 just off what we now call the "Square" on Austin street. At the age of two, he moved into his great grandfather’s house . He says it looked a lot like the Schiege house at the Round Top Inn...the reason...his great grandfather built them both. His family owned the entire block that now holds the log cabins and the big live oak on the corner of Round Top Road and Hwy-237.
In 1908, when he was six, his great-grandfather’s house burned to the ground. His family moved in with his grandparents. He attended school in Round Top . His remarkable memory and colorful stories about Round Top in the first twenty-five years of the century bring it to life for the listener.
"I quit in the eighth grade...I worked in every grocery store...there were three of them at that time... in 1917 I worked in a gin and when ginning season was over, I went to work at that store that is now the Round Top General Store. It had a dance hall on top. Henry Dipple owned that store. Then from there, Henry Dipple moved to where the real estate office is now. We had three stores, four saloons and three outlaws in Round Top. They wore six shooters all the time. Round Top used to be a rough town. I was five or six years old and I walked up and down that street barefooted and sit up there all day long in town. Those old steps (at the General Store) are still there. The saloons were open ‘till two o’clock Saturday nights. They were the best professional businessmen (the residents) when they were sober ...they were real nice...but when they were drunk, they were Hell! I never had no trouble..they give me nickels and quarters and said "Here, get yourself some ice cream."
My grandpa made chairs from 1888 to when he died in 1912. He made chairs that long. Then in 1922, I started. I sold the chairs for $2.25 apiece, rawhide bottom chairs. My daughter paid $150 for some six or eight years ago.
When I worked in the store, on Saturday evening, I worked ‘till one in the morning. The farmers didn’t take time to come to town in the day time. They come at night. They brought their turkeys, their chickens, their eggs, butter and cream and everthing like that. We worked on Saturday night at all three of those stores buyin’ that stuff and sellin’ to ‘em. They didn’t have to buy much ‘cause they raised everthing. The only thing they had to buy was sugar and coffee and they traded it for the produce they had. Gingham, calico...I sold all them clothes...all that material... things they couldn’t make.
Tell me that story about the medicine show.
The show started at 7:30 at night. In those days, their was hackberry trees all around Round Top, all around the square. There was a saloon on the corner where that cannon is sittin’ there now, Gus Bender’s saloon. A show put up a tent right there. At that time, it was customary anybody that uses the Square pays a dollar and the town marshall has to collect it. This outlaw just happened to be the the town marshall. In prohibition times, he made whiskey. So he come up there to this Austrian (who ran the medicine show) who had rattlesnakes tattooed all over his chest and arms and everything.
Alright, he was sellin’ this medicine and the marshall walked up to him...he didn’t have his gun on or anything... and this man says "What the hell do you want shorty?"
He (the marshall) was not a very big man. He says "It is customary in the town of Round Top to pay one dollar for use of the square."
The medicine show man said "I ain’t gonna give you no damned dollar."
The marshall walked up to him and said "What did you say?" He had to look up at him. They got to scufflin’ and (the marshall) got on bottom but he was a cattle man and he had on spurs. The man was choking him and all (the Marshall) did was... (Spurring motions). That was it. That blood come spurtin’ out. I never learned what happened to him.
Tell me more about the outlaws.
Well, all three of ‘em... was big businessmen...one had a store and a gin in Walhalla. He put the bridge up at Rocky Creek when he was County Commissioner. He was a good man, but he was a six shooter man when he was drunk. At two o’clock they had to go down that road to go home. We lived right on that road, right across from that big rock house (Bauer-Schuddemagen house) and they come down there, hoopin’ and hollerin’ and shootin’ those six shooters until they got to the bridge.
My mother told me "Son, come in this other room here. Those bullets goin’ Zim! Zoom! over the house." They shot up in the air but them bullets gotta come down too.
If you met them when they were sober they were real nice people. I wouldn’t call ‘em Christians or nothin’ like that. They kept the churches up ...but they didn’t go to church.
Well, the gypsies used to come to Round Top and camp right there where they had two big pecan trees and we could see them from our house. An when they came to town they wore a big black dress with a big pocket on it and they made good tables. My momma bought one of ‘em. ..for one dollar. They used that willow. But we watched ‘em. Don’t let ‘em go in the kitchen or all around the house. They pick up anything and it goes in that pocket there.
Old man Dipple (Who owned Dipple’s Store) send his son down there on a bicycle to get me and he says "Son, I want you to watch the gypsies. I’m gonna go work in the garden a little bit and when they come in there, you call me."
Now that brings up another story. In 1925, I made an airplane out of a 1918 Model T. It was for the Fourth of July. You know where the old Schiege house is. One of them boys helped me but he’s dead now. They’re all dead. They’re all dead! Anyway he helped me. We called him Hamster. That’s a German nickname.
We worked two weeks on that thing. Anyway, first of all we had to take the body off. I had a pickup made of it. See in those days you couldn’t buy no pickup. I wasn’t out yet.so you had to make one yourself. It took two days to take it all off. Then we set it in the barn. Then we had to go down to Cummins Creek and cut some willow cause you can bend it cause we had to make a tail and the edges. See the idea was to have it the three patriotic colors, red, white and blue. Now we had some bunting that we rolled out all the way to the end. Then there was a wind guide(ailerons), which we pulled with a string and made it go up and down. My mother made the United States flag. I had to go to La Grange to get a permit cause it was against the law to make a flag. So we had that all fixed on it. The only place to sit was on the gas tank. At the blacksmith shop Mr. Richter took a 1 inch rod and flattened out one side and then we had some 3/8" oak and we made the propeller and we fastened it to the radiator and we got Willie Sachs to come up there with the torch and welded it on there so it would turn when the car ran.
Now when we were in the parade we couldn’t run that thing because the wind was too high...nobody could stand that suction back through there. I told Hamster "Well we can’t run this." So we just stopped it ever once in a while when people wanted to see it run and started it up. We won second prize...but I was glad that was over with. It was a lot of trouble.
Now Henry Pochman an me were buddies together. We used to make telephones with cigar boxes. Old man Schiege would give us cigar boxes and Mrs. Pochman, she was a seamstress and she had a lot of thread, all kinds of thread. I used to make my gill nets out of number 8 thread. So he got the spool of thread an we stretched that thread from one live oak to the other one and made a telephone. He was up at that rock house an I was down where they lived...an we could hear each other talk. We were 8 or 9 years old. He was the smartest boy in Round Top. In those days, Round Top didn’t go past the eight grade so he went to La Grange to the ninth grade. He was a real smarty.
(Dr. Pochman, who later went on to be a university president left papers at Sam Houston State University that are one of the primary sources for Round Top history.)
Johnney Knutzen and I used to go hunt possums. Possums in those days were worth $3.50 apiece and I had two real good hunting dogs. We hunted the area all around Round Top then we finally went through the Carmine area. We come back with nine possums one time and one coon. Johnney had a good coon dog. My dog wouldn’t tree a coon. He treed possums. We each one had special dogs. He had his coon dog an I had my possum dog.
Now I was a big fisherman. I hung around the creek most of the time but I can’t swim. Lot of people think that’s odd...raised on a creek and can’t swim. There was Long hole and Shaw’s Creek hole. I like to drown in that Shaw’s Creek hole. I was choppin’ corn in April, workin’ by myself down there in the bottom workin’ for another man an I had this horse that had a U.S. stamp, an old army horse. I used to have an old paint horse that I could dive down off that bank and he would swim across but this ol’ army horse he’d fall down in there and turn over and wouldn’t swim or nothin’.
I had on boots and spurs and a shotgun tied off behind the saddle and I couldn’t do nothin. Well they had a twelve inch rain up in Giddings an all that water come down Cummins Creek to Shaw’s hole and I went down there and I thought he would swim across so I spurred him and he jumped in but he didn’t want to and he just stopped and rolled right over and threw me off. Lucky I grabbed that root.
Old man Pochman was the Sunday school teacher. Ever Christmas we used to have to get up there and take a bow and make a speech. I used to pump that organ. The church had 3 deacons. One of their sons sat right beside me. I was workin’ several days ahead so what does this boy do...he gets in my desk and copied it off. He didn’t trouble to do it himself. Alright, it was the deacon’s son. Years later a man in town ordered a shotgun. This same boy was the mail carrier...there went the shotgun. Later, the man that ordered the gun went fishing with this man that carried the mail...this same boy...and he had a new shotgun with him...an I was sittin’ right on the steps of Von Minden’s store (Now the Round Top General Store) when they arrested him. Them steps is over a hundred years old...all the gravel comin’ out.
She was a smart woman but she was in love with Dr. ____ and she couldn’t get over that he married (another) girl. They went together a year and he turned right around and married that ____ girl...just a sudden marraige...and it went to her head. My momma and her were pretty good friends. She had a little store in Round Top and I used to buy school supplies, pencils and chalk and stuff like that. Well you couldn’t clear your throat around her or she’d think you were doing it to spite her and she’d get mad.
Well, just down the street, two old people had a stucco house down there (Bauer-Shuddemaggen House) and they had a son. She hated that son.
They could hear what we were talkin’ about and we could hear what they were talkin’ about. (His parents house was across the street.) So about 9 o’clock at night, the son comes home. She comes walkin’ up and down there and cussin’ (the son), usin’ bad language.. She comes walkin’ back and forth down there. Well he had a telephone, one of the first phones in Round Top, and he calls Mr. Schiege. who was the Justice of the Peace, the Squire. So, he come up there an we could hear everthing, cussin’ an everthing.He says "____, what are you doin’ up here?" and she starts to cussin’ him, "...an you’re another Son of !&$%!!."
So they got two other boys and they got ahold of her and carried her up to the court house. She was a big woman an she was a cussin’ and everthing. She was ready for bed and she had on flannel underwear and the wind was blowin’ and her legs were up in the air. That was the funny part.
Before she got that way, she got my daddy to fix a fence and my daddy was diggin’ a post hole and he hit somethin’ down there and it was an old watch. It was Dr. _____’s old watch. She had buried it when he got married.
When the moon was full, she used to walk the streets in the dark and sing to the moon.
The courthouse burned down in 1924. I was workin’ in a lumber yard on November 12th. When I come home Saturday night, momma told me...and in 1925, they built this new one.
That was way back yonder, over a hundred years ago...the old Zuelke house, great, great grandpa Zuelke’s house. That’s the old Round Top house. It’s out that Shelby road past Rocky Creek. It had a round top on it.
Bender’s saloon was right where that cannon sits on the square.
See Old Man G____ had a tin shop right there where the Klumps cafe is now. He worked there makin’ tin cisterns and sold all kinds of stoves and kitchen utensils...a real store. She (his wife) wanted to move to town and he didn’t want to.
It was in the month of June. Mrs. G____ had two daughters and she didn’t want to live out there (two miles from town). She thought she was smart but I called her dangerous. She sewed some pockets inside her girl’s dresses. They were both in my school. They picked up little rocks and put them in their pockets when nobody was lookin’.
Then there was a crazy man who got out of Austin. He got out. Whether he was in the area nobody knows but they suspected that. So somebody was throwin’ rocks at window panes, knockin’ ‘em out. There was a big field there and it was June so the corn was just toppin’. So they thought maybe he was hidin’ in that corn and they cut all that corn down. Oh God, it was a mess. It was goin’ on for a week. My daddy took a shotgun. Everbody took their shotguns. The law come from La Grange and stayed out there...goin’ on two or three nights. Somebody caught her. She (the daughters) was throwin’ rocks and knockin’ out window panes.
At the Schiege place,...there is a little child there buried at that place...that would have been my cousin...the cigar maker’s child, the first they had. Right there ...they called it the Hoppe House (the guest house at the Round Top Inn). Old Schiege was a comical fellow. (The Schiege Cigar factory was the first of its kind in Texas and is on the grounds of the Round Top Inn) He had long beard and he had about nine kids. He didn’t work much. He’d sit on the corner of the porch and raise cain. Those kids never did enough.
He’d yell "What did Hamster do today? What did Henrick do today." He’d go into the field and plow one row and get all sweaty, then walk into town and show off. I could smell him when he come cause he was smokin’ a cigar. He didn’t work. He had a son Snoogie and he was the same way...he didn’t work, but he got rich one time in the oil business and moved to Fayetteville.
But old Schiege was smart. He had a room all full of books.
On Christmas night, we (Harry and four friends) used to get the buggies and upset them but not on Halloween. That was on Christmas night. We’d turned one over and the man said to us "...Boys, I was a boy once and I did the same thing." Now that kind of person we didn’t like to bother because we didn’t get no kick out of them.
Now the business people even went out, the blacksmith all of them...we all went out and turned over a whole cotton house, down the other side of Cummins Creek.
The reason they did that is that he didn’t trade in Round Top. He traded in Warrenton so they all had it in for him. I was just a kid so I went with ‘em.
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