Tuesday, May 23, 2006

JWH Days in Comanche, Texas

On Saturday, Kman and I drove to the little Texas town of Comanche for the second annual John Wesley Hardin Days celebration. You can read more about it in a post I wrote last year and this is the link for the current JWH Comanche Celebration website.

Comanche is a typical small-town Texas community, where everyone greets each other by their first name and follows it up with a giant-sized hug. I observed this time and time again, from a big full-arm "howdy" wave across the courthouse square, to passerbys crowding the sidewalk for a group hug - a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.

While visiting the quaint stores around the square, Kman would strike up a conversation with the shopkeeper and patrons - people who knew his grandparents (on both sides), or his aunts and cousins. One lady remarked she still had Mama Edna's favorite china casserole dish (Mama Edna being Kman's grandmother).

Comanche is only 2 hours away by automobile, but years away in lifestyles. Made it hard to come back to the Metro-mess.

Corner where the old Jack Wright Saloon was and the site of Hardin's killing of Brown County Sheriff Charles Webb in 1874. Hardin escaped but a lynch mob killed his brother, Joe, who had never been guilty of anything criminal. I am fairly sure this is not the original building for the saloon, but it is the same corner. I do love the old architecture that Comanche citizens have managed to preserve around the square.


Comanche Chief Newspaper offices


Texas Goodies for sale


Fleming Oak - read about it here



Old Cora - read about it here


Comanche Courthouse in 1875