Castroville Texas, pop. 3674

My mom and dad retired to Castroville, a town that is about 20 miles West of San Antonio. Because they are super friendly, well my dad is super friendly, my mom is friendly in a feisty way, they have made some really great friends in their next door neighbors. They did this with beer. My dad and Gerry are big beer drinkers and they spend a good chunk of their day drinking beer under an oak tree that they have dubbed the beer garden. While they do this, they plot against my mom and Brenda (I am not sure if they plot as much as make fun of, but my mom assures me that they are plotting).

This weekend we went to Castroville to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Brenda organized the whole thing and our team was Toni's tigers. It would be hard for me to summarize Castroville in one post, but here goes it:

My mom was telling me about a bank robbery that happened where the robbers get-away car was a model-t. The scoundrels crashed it into a semi. The commotion caused the two cops who work for CPD (not to be confused with the cracker-jack Conroe PD) who were eating at the taqueria to run out the door at the same time. They were so fat their asses got stuck in the door so they had to radio the constable. But he drives a little camero and already had someone in the car so he had to call the dog catcher. She told me this story along with Brenda who was correcting her on the parts she got confused. When she got to the dog catcher part I said "really?" and she said "No, of course not, but that is what everyone is saying." Apparently one of the main forms of entertainment in Castroville is going to the coffee shop and telling yarns about how stupid and fat the cops are and these yarns get woven all across town.

The other form of entertainment/oral history is the hatred of anyone from Hondo, a town about 20 miles west of Castroville.

Brenda: "this relay is the only time people from Castroville, Hondo and Divine get along."

Me: "really, because of football?"

Brenda: "well, that and because Castroville used to be the county seat, but the people from Hondo came and stole it."

Me: "but didn't that happen like 100 years ago?"

Brenda: "yeah, we're still mad about it."

These pictures are of our relay team and the senile old lady who PASSED MY MOM on the survivor's lap. She thought I was cheering her on. And I was, I totally was.