The Chronicles of Luna City: Chronicles of Luna City, #1

By Celia Hayes and Jeanne Hayden

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,453, not counting a fugitive former celebrity chef…

Where the high school football team is called the Mighty Fighting Moths … and their yearly Homecoming game is under some strange and irregular curse.

Which was once meant to be a stop on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad, but which was derailed by True Love …

Where half the townsfolk has the surname of Gonzalez or Gonzales, they’re all related and descended from the holder of the original Spanish land grant… but no one has ever been able to figure out whether his name ended in an ‘s’ or a ‘z’, due to illegible handwriting on the original paperwork …

Where the last two members of a Sixties hippy nudist commune still still keep the faith with peace, love, and organic vegetables at the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm …

And a historic marker on Town Square marks the spot where a local bootlegger was nearly hung in 1926 for (among a long list of offenses against the laws of God and Man) impersonating a nun.

Luna City, where eccentricity is just a part of every-day life. Drop in for a visit – you might never want to leave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Hayes
• Release date: Jul 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536560671

Celia Hayes

Celia Hayes works as a restorer and lives in Naples. Between one restoration and another, she loves to write. Don't Marry Thomas Clark reached #1 in the Amazon Italian Ebook chart.

Book preview

The

Chronicles

of Luna City

A Comic Diversion

By

Celia Hayes

& Jeanne Hayden

––––––––

GA Logo - Long version

San Antonio, 2015

Copyright © 2015 Celia D. Hayes & Jeanne Hayden

ISBN-13 978-0-9897822-5-8

ISBN-10 0-89782255

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

––––––––

Geron & Associates

A Division of Watercress Press.

2015

Cover design by Alex of 3iii’s Graphic Studios

Chapter heading illustrations are derived from photographs taken by the authors in various locations.

The

Chronicles

of Luna City

Contents

Dedications & Acknowledgements

An Introduction to Luna City

The End of the Road

The Gonzalez/Gonzales Clan

Sunrise at the Age of Aquarius

Welcome to Luna City: Town Square

A Free Man in Paris – or Luna City

Mills Farm

Making It Do

Home of the Mighty Fighting Moths

Café Audition

A (Very) Brief History of Luna City

Homecoming Curse Avoidance

Interlude – From the Daily Mail UK

By the Rocket’s Red Glare

Luna City In the News – Part One

Hunting Season Weekend

Samantha Sammi Colquhoun

Strenuous Relaxation

Day of the Dead

A Very Luna Christmas

Luna City in the News – Part Two

The Dinner Party – The First Plan

Up Close and Personal, with Phillip Noel-Barrett – People Magazine, January, 2015

The Dinner Party – Evolving with Sook

A Small Town Treasure: Stein’s Wild West Roundup

The Trouble with Los Maldonados

Charley Mills, Unexpurgated

The Battling B’s

Quinceanera

Decisions, Decisions

Dedications & Acknowledgements

To my family, to the memory of my grandfather, to our mentor in publishing, Alice Geron, Barbara York, and Joann Alvey; to the US Marine Corps; to my fellow veterans, and to all the people I haven’t met, yet – this book is most fondly dedicated.

– Jeanne K. Hayden

This set of scribbles is dedicated likewise to those residents of towns in Texas where we have been warmly welcomed over the past seven years of doing book events; Fredericksburg, Boerne, Beeville, Goliad, Gonzalez, Comfort, Richmond, Junction and Harper, to Giddings, Llano and Lockhart, New Braunfels and Kerrville. In all of those places, we have met wonderful people, and heard or read such amusing accounts of local events and characters. When we began to speculate one evening after watching yet another episode of the TV series Northern Exposure, what a town like Cecily, Alaska, would be if set in South Texas, we were able quite readily to come up with characters and stories out of our own fond experiences of those small towns.  There is a little bit of Luna City in all of us, and in those small towns which remain our inspiration.

Celia Hayes,

San Antonio, 2015

An Introduction to Luna City

The little town of Luna City is not a city at all, as most people understand these things. It is a small Texas town grown from a single stone house built by an immigrant Bohemian stonemason in 1857, at a place where an old road between San Antonio, Beeville, and points south forded a shallow stretch of river. The railway was supposed to come through where Luna City was planned to be – and the city fathers confidently expected it to become the county seat. Alas, when Dr. Stephen Wyler’s Aunt Bessie eloped with a smooth-talking engineer on the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway, her father – who owned much of the land in the district – was furious. The railway, he stormed, was an invitation to vice and debauchery of every kind, a threat to the virtue of young women and girls – and so he saw that it never came to Luna City; although there had been a generous space allotted in early plans of Luna City for the usual magnificent Beaux Arts-style county courthouse in the square at the center of town. That expectation also came to naught; the county seat stayed in Karnesville, and since then, Luna City has made very little effort to attract the casual tourist.

Travelers on the farm-to-market road going north or south will pass by the Tip-Top Ice House, Grocery and Gas, perhaps note the four-square house of limestone blocks owned by the last descendant of Arthur Wells McAllister – the surveyor who first drew up the plat of Luna City in 1876, and drive on. They might also note the metal towers, ladders and chutes of Bodie Feed & Seed Supply, looming on the distant horizon – but definitely will miss the disintegrating sign advertising the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm. Anyone looking for that establishment already knows where it is ... and that clothing there is optional. Jess Abernathy, who does the finances for Sefton and Judy Grant has mentioned to them now and again, that they ought to get a new sign or have the old one repainted and repaired, but Sefton and Judy aren’t into the realities of advertising and commerce in this ... or really, any age. This exasperates Jess, but then she is the fifth generation of a Luna family with commerce bred into their bones and blood; her father and grandfather run Abernathy Hardware, housed for all this century, every decade of the previous and fifteen years of the one before that in a looming Victorian commercial building on Town Square with a cornice which looks as if it is about to topple over onto the sidewalk below.

Sefton and Judy arrived sometime in the summer of 1968 in a colorful cavalcade of carefree spirits intending to establish a communal farm; forty-five years later, they are the only members of it who remain. Odd as it may seem at first or even second glance, they are valued members of the community. They set up in Town Square every other Saturday morning, under the biggest of the oak trees, and sell produce – which are sometimes a slow-seller, because in Luna City, most residents have a vegetable garden themselves – but also eggs, honey, home-made goat-milk cheeses, herbs, and hand-made soap. The Grant’s vegetable patch has the advantage of deep and rich soil on the bank of the river, and generous applications of well-cured compost seasoned with goat-manure.  A single disintegrating Airstream trailer is still parked there in the field which is supposed to be the campground, a relic of the past. Sometimes a relatively broke or undiscriminating traveler rents it for a couple of days or weeks; the Englishman who manages the Luna City Café and Coffee lives there now. Only a few residents of Luna City refer scornfully to the Grant place as Hippie Hollow. Mrs. Sook Walcott is one of these; if Jess Abernathy has commerce in her bones and blood, Sook Walcott has all that, tempered with the acid of pure acquisitive capitalism. The Grants are liked, and Sook Walcott is not ... more about that, later. 

The tea room and thrift shop housed in the front room of the old McAllister house is open only two days a week which discourages casual visitors, but not anyone who knows Miss Leticia McAllister; the last woman in this part of the world who always wears a hat and gloves when she leaves the house, not just for early Sunday services at the Luna City First Methodist Church. The formidable Leticia McAllister – known as Miss Letty, even during those decades when she taught first grade in the Luna City Elementary school – is notoriously impatient, especially of anything reputed to be humorous. On the occasion of the centenary of Luna City, Miss Letty and her older brother, Doctor Douglas McAllister (the doctorate was in history, which he taught at a private university in San Antonio) compiled a commemorative volume of local history, gleaned from the memories of the oldest residents; scandals, shenanigans both political and sexual, the last gunfight in Luna City (which happened in front of the Luna Café and Coffee) old feuds and new, controversies over every imaginable small-town issue – it’s all there in A Brief History of Luna City, Texas, published privately in San Antonio, 1976, price $18.25 plus sales tax. The Luna Café & Coffee still has a small and dusty stack of them behind the cash register counter – although the manager/chef at the Luna Café & Coffee has no idea of what they are or what to do with them. Where he comes from, a hundred years is practically yesterday. Miss Letty’s erratically-open tea room also has a couple of boxes in inventory. Dr. McAllister, whose puckish sense of humor was not appreciated by his sister, was dissuaded from titling it A Hundred Years of Lunacy in South Texas on the very fair grounds that other places possessed a history every bit as scandalous, and that it would somehow encourage local residents to be called Lunatics, rather than Lunaites ... and that simply would not do at all.

Luna City, you will gather from this short introduction, does not precisely discourage visitors, but neither does it welcome them effusively. Luna-tes prefer to take a quiet measure of such visitors who do venture into the heart of downtown, and treat them with exquisite Texas courtesy. Those who choose to remain longer than a quiet stroll around the square or stop for a lunch at the Luna Café & Coffee – never doubt their welcome. If they fall under the spell and stay, within four or five years, they are as established and respected as any of the original Luna-ite families; McAllisters, Gonzalez-with-a-z and Gonzales-with-an-s, Abernathy-who runs-the-hardware-store, Wyler-of-the-Lazy W Ranch, the Bodies of the feed mill and all the rest. Lunaites have no urge or need to disdain relative newcomers. They know exactly who they are and do not need proving it to anyone.

The End of the Road

It was Berto Gonzales who brought the Englishman to Luna City – the year that Berto was in his freshman year at Palo Alto on San Antonio’s south side and driving a luxury town car at night for his uncle Tony. Uncle Tony Gonzales lived in Elmendorf, but ran his business based in San Antonio, and Berto was living with Uncle Tony’s family while he attended college. Berto was one of the bookish Gonzaleses, but had no objection to driving for Uncle Tony, who was both a third-cousin once removed, and married to Berto’s Aunt Lucy.

You get to meet all kindsa people, Uncle Tony was fond of expounding. I drove Bryant Gumbel, once ... and Spurs players? All the time; I got Tony Parkers’ autograph, even.

On one particular summer evening around six PM, Berto got a call in the town car from Uncle Tony’s dispatch office. Got a pick-up at Stinson – half an hour. It’s a special – he’ll be waiting for you out in front.

Cool, said Berto. Is it a celebrity? Where’s the pick-up to go?  Stinson was the old airport on the South Side which served mostly corporate and private aircraft; a quieter, less frenetic place. And if the pick-up was someone famous, that would give him something to brag about on Monday morning. Dropping down to Mission Road was a snap compared to fighting heavy rush-hour traffic around San Antonio International on a Friday. Stinson was nearly out into the country on the edge of Espada Park.

He’ll tell you when you get there, the dispatcher replied.

Berto nearly gave up in dismay when he pulled into one of the parking spaces in front of the brand-spanking new little terminal. There was no one out on the sidewalk who looked like a passenger – and there was already another town car pulled in. After ten minutes there still wasn’t any sign of a pick-up. Out beyond the terminal building and row of hangars and warehouses which lined that side of Mission Road was the ramp and a pair of runways. The airport was separated from Mission Road by nothing more imposing than some chain-link fences hung with any number of threatening signs. Presently, a silver and blue Gulfstream dropped low on approach and touched down with a roar.  It flashed past the terminal, came around at the end, and taxied up to the terminal, being lost to sight but not hearing. Berto opened the door and got out of the car, wilting briefly in the blast of heat after the coolness of the air-conditioned car. The driver of the other car was already out, standing in front of his car with a sign in his hand – Wilson written in block letters in felt-tip. The other driver acknowledged him with a brief nod.

Busy day, he commented and Berto sighed.

Sooner here than SA International.

That’s for certain, the other driver grunted. Another small jet dropped down from the blue sky – a Learjet with a t-tail and wings which turned sharply upwards at the very tips.

Looks like my fare, Berto observed. No, passenger pick-up at Stinson did not usually take long. The Lear rolled down the ramp with an ear-piercing shriek from its engines and vanished behind the terminal. Three minutes, four minutes ... a single person appeared from the glass doors leading out to the apron of paving, interspersed with raised beds and patches of grass which formed the forecourt. Berto watched his pick-up approach – a young man carrying a small overnight bag in one hand and a half-empty bottle in the other.

Oh-oh, the other driver remarked, with considerable sympathy, as the man seemed to pause, look in their direction and focus with an effort. "You got yourself a drunk, it looks like. Sooner you than me, hijito."

I hope he don’t barf on Uncle Tony’s upholstery, ‘cause he will kill me. Berto watched his fare approach; a young man, with dark straight hair cut short, as if he were going out for football this season. His clothes were wrinkled as if he had slept in them for a week. He staggered over to the bicycle rack set out by the flagpole and the handicapped parking. On his way, he dropped the bottle into the hedge. Then, clutching the bicycle rack for support, he began throwing up.

Looks like he got that taken care of already, the other driver remarked. He held up the Wilson sign as a knot of people appeared in the terminal doorway. "Good luck, hijito ... you wanna couple plastic bags? I got some in the trunk, just for this kind of thing."

Yeah, sure. Berto’s fare made one last heave, straightened himself from the bicycle rack, and approached the two town cars, walking as carefully as if he were on eggshells.

I say, chaps, He spoke carefully, enunciating every word – oh, yes; English. He talked like some of those characters on those PBS programs that Aunt Lucy was so fond of. I only needed the one car... I am, as you may observe, traveling very light.

If you aren’t Wilson, then he’s all yours. The other driver jerked his thumb at Berto, adding in a low tone, I’ll get you those items I mentioned.

Alas, I am not Wilson, the fare admitted, sounding rather sad about that. But rather – Richard Astor-Hall, or what remains of him. Have you heard of me?

I gotta say that I haven’t, Berto replied, disappointed. He had so been hoping for a celebrity on this pick-up. Unexpectedly this seemed to cheer Mr. Astor-Hall. Berto opened the passenger door and asked, Where am I supposed to take you, Mr. Hall?

Mr. Astor-Hall drew himself up to his full height and tossed his overnight bag into the front passenger seat. He fished into his pants pocket, drew out a roll of bills the size of which Berto had never seen before, not even at Uncle Jesus’ garage, where many of the old customers preferred paying in cash and pressed it into Berto’s hand.

As far from here as that will take me, he said grandly and passed out cold.

Berto caught him one-handed as he sagged and directed Mr. Astor-Hall’s unconscious body into the back seat of the town car.  The other driver shook his head, in sympathy, as he helped Berto tuck in Mr. Astor-Hall’s legs and close the door.

"Turn his head sideways, so he won’t choke on it if he’s sick again. What are you gonna do with him? That’s one heck of a roll, hijito – enough to take him a good long way."

Three – four hundred bucks, Berto hastily counted out the fifties and twenties, then folded them away, deep in thought. Meanwhile, the other driver’s fare gathered around, busy with getting their expensive luggage stowed away. A Friday evening, an unlimited expense account – and Uncle Tony would understand.

We’re going home to Luna, Berto said out loud to his unconscious passenger, as he backed out of the parking place, and turned south, towards Presa Street, and the road towards Luna City. Mr. Astor-Hall snored comfortably in the back seat – if he had no particular place in mind, then Luna City would do as well as any.

At about the time Berto was coming up to Floresville a cellphone rang, rang insistently from deep inside Mr. Astor-Hall’s little bag. Berto let it go, let it ring several times, but whoever was calling didn’t want to give up. Finally, he pulled over into the Whattaburger parking lot and fished the phone out of the bottom of the bag, underneath some clothes and two unopened bottles of Cristal; a Blackberry with a black and red plaid bandanna wrapped around it. Berto hastily untangled phone from bandanna. The ID of the caller said only Morty.

Hello? Berto said, tentatively