Was there in ‘73 for the first Luckenbach worlds fair. Had a cannon shoot! Amazingly no one was killed!!! Considering the amount of booze and drugs floating around! I was on crew of 3" Ordinance rifle.

So, Bob, you must have met Hondo Crouch. He had just died when I started going down there after being tipped off about the place by a sweet young thing I met in Kerrville.His poem, “Luekenbach Moon “ ...with him reciting it, was on a cassette or eight track I had at one time. Might have been a JJW album. I read some of the columns he wrote as .......cedarhacker.

THE LUCKENBACH MOON
Hondo Crouch

Nuthin' much happened in Luckenbach this month,

'Cept the potato chip man came by.

Then there was the moon.

We try to tell folks who come by here to look at our town

What a big, mean moon we have

But nobody'll believe it.

And last night it showed off.

The greatest ever.

It just hung there, darin' you to look at it,

Makin' silhouettes into things and things came alive.

It even shined plumb to the bottom of the canyon,

Under bluffs and plopped dark doughnuts 'round the bottom of
trees on top of the mountain.

A kind of moon that makes haunted houses uglier

And ugly girls prettier.

And little animals see farther and feel closer together.

Brave weeds even rose up to look 'round for lawn mowers.

Grandpa sat up in bed and said, "What's that?"

And the hair on Grandma's legs stood on end, he said.

On moonbrite nites like this, big eyed deer

Tiptoe into larger openings and they can dance better 'cause they can see where the rocks are at.

Their prancin' gets fancier and freer because they know mans
not there to darnpen the dance.

This kind of moonshine makes you crazy if you sleep in it,

they say

But I think you're crazy not to try it.

Momma even slept with the baby to protect it and I

Flounced in bed even in a thick rock house.

And when I went outside to see what was the matter

Somethin' scared cold chills up my back.

Everything was standin' at attention over new shadows.

Then what was that that moved?

Probably just a Nuthin'.

You know, a big full moon like ours is kinda like a person:

It needs help to show off, and last nite

All the clouds stayed home on purpose

to create a great solo.

We can't stand an encore!

It takes too much out of you.

Those who saw the moon said they could smell it.

One said it tasted like sin.

The quietness at the parkside road was deafenin'

And the little single couple sittin' there touched

the backs of their hands together.

` `Scare Me ! ' '

We've been tellin' strangers who come to Luckenbach

`Bout our Moon,

But I know they won't believe that

We have such a big moon

For such a small town.

Willie had never been there prior to the song.

Have to admit i've never been there.

I might have had a burger or two at Alamo Springs Cafe over the years! Watching the bats come out of the tunnel next door is cool.

There once was a time when the Alamo Springs Cafe wasn't there yet, nor that whole acreage homesite development, there was an actual surviving commune up that dirt road past the railway tunnel. Used to be you would head north out of Luckenbach, hang a left on the old Grapetown Road and then hang a left again at the "T" junction at the Old San Antonio Road. A cool ride, past the Grapetown Shuetzen Verein and with a couple of sudden dips steep enough to catch air on, even two-up.

Then on the left after you passed an old German stone farmhouse or two there was the open gravel area where ya parked to watch the bats come out. You could sit with your legs swinging on the top of the actual cut leading up to the tunnel. First a few scattered bats, then the rustle of hundreds of thousands along with a bat wing-generated breeze like from an electric fan except it positively reeked of ammonia (how nobody got airborne rabies I dunno). They would spiral up out of the cut, you were right at the edge of the swarming bats which looked unreal, like movie special effects, you could reach out and touch one.

Always there were one or two pale (or albino I dunno) bats visible in the horde at any given moment that you could follow in their upward spiral, once clear of the cut the whole bat swarm rose up like a cloud of smoke blowing in the breeze, a long line of bats steadily climbing. Look to the north and you'd see the bat swarm from the other end of the tunnel maybe 100 yards away on private land.

This was up until about 1990, at that time the State took over the tunnel, and then the heavyset, stern-looking short-haired women in Park Service uniforms arrived, making everyone stay away from near the railroad cut and sit on a set of bleachers about 25 yards back and telling everyone to be quiet lest they disturb the bats.

After that I quit stopping at the bat tunnel.

Where's Texas?

(how nobody got airborne rabies I dunno).

Maybe because it ain't possible.

Rabies is NOT transmitted through the blood, urine, or feces of an infected animal, nor is it spread airborne through the open environment.

http://www.911wildlife.com/animals/common-misconceptions-about-rabies/

As long as you stay out of bat caves....

https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/195/8/1144/816583

Aerosol transmission has been implied in 4 reports of human rabies cases and documented in experimental work with animals. In all instances when aerosol transmission was cited as the route of human infection, more plausible explanations may exist. In the 2 cases involving spelunkers working in Frio Cave there were notations of direct contact between the spelunkers and the bats, although no documented bites were reported..... Constantine documented aerosol transmission of rabies virus to experimental animals in Frio Cave. This Texas cave, which is home to 110 million bats, was the location where 2 humans were believed to have contracted rabies via aerosol. Constantine was able to demonstrate transmission of rabies virus to animals housed in cages that excluded all but cave atmosphere. Rabies virus was isolated from samples collected via air condensation techniques that were used to monitor the atmosphere in this cave.


A well-known concern among spelunkers and cave researchers here in Texas. IIRC the researchers routinely get rabies shots beforehand, I dunno about the spelunkers.