If you live in Houston, March is the month when you have to accumulate positive feelings towards the city by watching reports of snow storms in more northerly locations and then stepping outside to look at the azalea blooms. It is no accident that festivities, such as the rodeo take place in March.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) The rodeo kicks off with a downtown parade reminiscent of the Calgary Stampede, except that it takes place 4 months earlier, and the lack of participants from local Indian tribes (there is only one Indian reservation in all of Texas) is matched by a large turnout of black cowboys. The key to the Houston parade is the large number of riders who actually ride in from outlying towns, often several days on horseback, thus re-enacting the first such event about 100 years ago.

A week later, after we heard constant wailing of fire engine sirens I finally decided to go and see what was going on. Rather than a large fire or a huge multi vehicle accident it was the St. Patrick parade which was taking place virtually in our backyard on the FM1960 road. The 7 lane street was completely closed and a long procession of simple floats, fire engines and decorated cars slowly drove by throwing out New Orleans style beads, candy, hats and assorted other junk. The whole affair, in spite of its considerable size, had a small time feel about it and provided lot of free entertainment.

The next weekend, while most people were organizing Easter egg hunts, we headed out on a hunt of our own – a sausage hunt. Recently Kumiko visited a quilt show in a small town west of Houston – La Grange. There, while having lunch in the local butcher shop cum restaurant she noticed a sign advertising liver sausage. Given the fact that La Grange was settled primarily by German and Czech (Moravian) immigrants, we felt there was a chance that these may be the traditional liver pork sausages which are almost impossible to find outside of central Europe and headed out to investigate. The area was settled by Czech and German immigrants around the middle of the 19th century. Apparently the first batch of Czech settlers arrived via Hamburg, Liverpool and New Orleans and only about half of them made it to Galveston. After they made it to the La Fayette county, some of them apparently felt that the land and climate were too forbidding and decided to look for a better spot in Iowa. It is a little mind-boggling that after this kind of journey they did not have enough and decided (I imagine they must have walked) to cross most of the United States. I do not think they realized how far it was going to be. While in La Grange (which incidentally is named after the native village of General Lafayette after whom the county is named) we visited a small state park on the grounds of the Kreische brewery. Kreische was a German stone mason, arrived in 1849 and died after an accident in 1882. The park contains a large, beautifully constructed stone house and remnants of a large brewery he built to take advantage of water sourced from a creek on his property. The time span of 31 years and the fact that when he started he was breaking virgin ground, probably quarying and shaping every piece of stone by his own hands, gives one a tangible idea of how much the first generation immigrants were able to achieve. (By the way, the picture on the left is NOT his house but a county courthouse. However, if you click on it you will see the remnants of the brewery.)

And, by the way, our visit to the meat market was only partially successful. They had no more liver sausage left, they make them on Tuesdays and with Easter and all they were sold out. But from talking to the shop people about how they make them the trail seems promising. I have their phone number now and next time we will call ahead.