Published in 2011, the late John Eddie Vogt’s book, Witches, Bitches, and Other Small Town Folks, brings to life the quirky, unforgettable, and entertaining tales of growing up and living in Kendall County from the 1930s through the 1960s. Thanks to the gracious permission of his family, The Kendall Gentleman is honored to share excerpts from his book for your enjoyment.
H.O. Adler owned the biggest store in town (where Bergmann Lumber Company is today). It was a general merchandise store where you could buy anything from soup to dynamite.
H.O. was a Scoutmaster of Troop 102. The troop was founded in 1922 or 1923. H.O. was the Scoutmaster until the mid-40s when he had a stroke and had to give it up. Bernard Cartwright took the troop over for a couple of years and then I became Scoutmaster for quite a few years. Troop 102 is still going strong in Boerne.
During the war (WWII) the Boy Scouts were very active in the war effort. H.O. had a vacant warehouse he let us use for storage. We would spend every Saturday with our red express wagons gathering up paper, bacon grease, old razor blades, tin foil, scrap iron, old tires, and anything else for our boys in the service. I still have a little pin for gathering 1,000 pounds of paper.
Several different times some of us guys would take off down the railroad tracks from Boerne to Van Raub and gather up the railroad spikes that were laying along the track and bring them in for the war effort. Lordy, lordy did they ever get heavy before we got them back to town.
I could almost write a whole book on just Scout Troop 102.
Publisher’s Note: The H.O. Adler building today is the home of Tusculum Brewing Company, one of our original partners at The Kendall Gentleman.
More from John Eddie Vogt: H.O. Adler’s store was one block of the same downtown JEV’s father worked, the setting of Felipe and the Schwarz Field. For the storefront JEV ran himself, read Good Ol’ Santa, the mechanical Santa he bought for his window in 1954.
