Every book I read about Texas music history mentions Garner and the dancing pavilion.

It's a long way from where I grew up, but I was wondering if any of yall have memories or stories about the place.

Thanks, I'll hang up and listen.

John Wayne filmed several scenes from his Alamo movie there, the Rio Frio played the Rio Bravo as I recall and he bid farewell to Flaca on the banks of the Frio too.

Was there when Garner was still alive. (never saw him in Uvalde or park ) At park roller skaters put on an act - not bad! That's it .

Walked into a ground floor office on the square - no one in - letters and money on top of desk - still impressed they were so trusting !

We had a family tradition of camping at Garner every Labor Day in the 90s, exploring during the day, the hanging out at the river, putt putt and dancing at night. For a shy introvert it was terrifying, but no dance floor scares me now. Went back a few years ago and the dance still goes on, though I preferred the park when it was a hidden enclave and not a cross between Disney World and Houston's Memorial Park Picnic Loop on a holiday.

An old thread on the subject

Our church has a week long youth camp each summer at HEB's camp facility and one of the highlights of the week is taking them to the nightly dance at Garner. It's fund and laid back, though the kids, especially the young ladies, take it pretty seriously going by how "dressed" up they get vs. how they dress the rest of the week.

I would say it is definitely one of the things that adds to Garner State Park's mystique and I hope they never stop doing it.

aalan94 said:

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If you're interested in political history and how the democrats became a bunch of radical leftists and the Republicans were able to move in and find fertile ground, read up on John Nance Garner.

The standard liberal answer is that the "shift" of parties was just based on Southerners angry over Civil Rights. But long before Civil Rights became an issue, the Democratic Party had an internal earthquake that fractured it, setting up fertile ground for the shift. John Nance Garner of Uvalde, Texas, was at the center of it.

Garner was Roosevelt's first VP and broke with him on the more liberal aspects of the New Deal, court packing, etc. He and Alan Shivers, who was the Texas Lt. Governor and then Governor in the years after FDR's death, created a conservative party-within-the party in Texas. Other such movements were happening across the country. The civil rights issue added fuel to the fire, but it was a fire that was already burning.

Garner quit the VP slot in 1941 and retired to his house in Uvalde, but was still active behind the scenes in the party. He was a close advisor of Harry Truman and helped the latter become what I think is the best Democratic President who ever served in the modern era. Garner and Shivers prefered to work for change within the party (Shivers was nominated for governor by BOTH the Democratic and Republican parties in 1952), but they created a passionate wing fighting for conservative values that started to fragment in later years after the Democrats elected Ralph Yarborough to the Senate and then moved left during the Vietnam War. Garner laid a lot of those seeds.

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Aalan,
Growing up, I always heard you couldn't tell a Blue Dog from a Republican. Very common in local elections in Texas because no one could get elected running labeled a Republican. I am also thinking of John Connally. Reagan's election pretty much set them free. Reason Texas is so deeply blue now. Am I correct?

That thread must be on premium board, I can't open it.

Thanks for all the replies. I was feeling left out and non-Texanish by not knowing anything about this place. One book even described it as a park "outside of Houston," which led me to googling and looking for more information because that's waaaaaaay outside of Houston.

It's from the Aggies Only board.

Quote:

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Growing up, I always heard you couldn't tell a Blue Dog from a Republican. Very common in local elections in Texas because no one could get elected running labeled a Republican. I am also thinking of John Connally. Reagan's election pretty much set them free. Reason Texas is so deeply blue now. Am I correct?

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Well, not exactly. Of course, this is a change in time, so the answer in 1928, when Texas voted for the GOP for the first time, is not the same as 1952 (the second time) or 1972 onward.

Often overlooked in the history of the so-called "flip" of the South is the changing economic landscape. Think of "Song of the South" by Alabama. I'm sure those guys all vote Republican today, but their lyrics in the dying days of Southern Democracy were:

Quote:

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Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a gonna save us all

Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat
They oughta get a rich man to vote like that

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There's actually some really good history preserved here. The south was rural and impoverished, but as commerce, industry and prosperity moved in, that changed the south dramatically, and was very instrumental in flipping the South. As that happened, the blue dog democrats and Republicans were close, as you say on social issues, but still widely apart on economic issues. The people moving into the GOP were the suburbanites, the children of poor farmers, who had moved to Dallas, Houston, etc. and were finding their way into the American dream. The GOP had always been the party of economics and "rich men" but also to a degree, the party of ASPIRING RICH MEN, which is why middle class people who are not wealthy, embrace things like trickle down economics and free markets. They see (rightfully in my opinion) a sense of hope in that economic mindset, whereas Democratic economics only says you're poor and they're rich and provides the only solution as taking from one and giving to another.

The poor southerners were still vastly different from the GOP folks, even though they were religious, etc. but as more and more of them moved out and up, economically (and some of the farmers remaining benefited from reduced competition and world markets opening up to become wealthy, rather than poor farmers), they began to embrace GOP, as opposed to Blue Dog, mindsets. The Democratic Party still appealed to some, but that began to fade as they became more liberal, and the poor farmer mentality (which was certainly not Reaganomic when it came to things like subsidies) could not overcome the conservative social (and in regards to the cold war, political) mentality.

Thanks Aalan!

Really interesting stuff!

I loved that park growing up. First place I learned to dance. All of my best memories are on the Frio.

The summer of my junior year of HS, my buddy and I got jobs in a souvenir shop on the river and lived with his cousin who was in college. Best summer of my youth.