INTRODUCTION

By Msgr. Larry J. Droll

Which came first—the festival or the parish? Or church?

None of the above. First came God, who in his infinite love for all his people became
a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Christ animates the hearts of
the people of God throughout history.

And so it was God who began to inspire the Catholics living on the Lipan Flats
around Wall to start talking about a parish. During 1940, they met with Msgr. Francis
Pokluda to formulate plans. This led to discussions with the bishop and to negotiations
for property.

Then came the festival! A Thanksgiving festival was held at the Wall School to
generate funds for the parish. The proceeds totaled $1,763.00. The story of this event
and of all the Fall Festivals since then is beautifully told in the article by Rick Smith.

Then came the church building. Ground was broken on February 24, 1941. Local
parishioners joined the contractors in constructing the church. With great joy, the church
was blessed on the Feast of St. Ambrose, December 7, 1941. The day is forever tinged in
sadness, however, as the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor was announced. This
church building continues to serve as the gathering place for the parishioners of St.
Ambrose.

And then came the parish. The official decree establishing St. Ambrose as a parish
was signed by Most Rev. Laurence J. FitzSimon, Bishop of Amarillo, on January 31,
1942. The geographical boundaries of the parish had been established; Msgr. Pokluda
was appointed the first pastor.

The gathering of the community to celebrate the Eucharist is the most important
activity of any parish; part of the worship includes the offerings given during Mass. But
the major social and fundraising event that has supported the parish through the years has
been the Fall Festival. It is an opportunity for all the parishioners to work side by side
and have a great time doing so. And the money raised has provided for the ministry and the
buildings of the parish.

The number of plates of turkey and dressing, sausage and all the trimmings has
multiplied from several hundred the first year to about 4,300 during the past few years.
Festival proceeds have grown form the $1,763.00 at the 1940 festival to grossing
$100,000.00 lately. The formula has remained the same; a great meal, an auction of
cotton and merchandise, games for the children. The key to success is the generosity of
the parishioners and guests who come to the Fall Festival, now held annually on the third
Sunday of October.

It should be noted that since Holy Family Mission was established in Mereta, the
members of the mission congregation also participate in and benefit from the Fall
Festival. In fact, one-fifth of the proceeds are used at Holy Family, which helps support
the mission as a dynamic and influential part of the Mereta community.

This booklet presents a history of the Fall Festival, in the context of the growth of
the parish in terms of its parishioners, ministry and physical plant. I want to thank all who
contributed to these wonderful recalling memories by their sharing their stories and
pictures. Our parish is especially grateful to Rick Smith, the author of the text, and to
Brenda Lehr, the coordinator of the project.

As pastor, I would like to make my own the words written by Father Jerome Vitek,
who served in the parish during the drought years of the 1950’s:

It is gratifying to see the parishioners working together as they do
on the occasion of our parish festivals. It gives us a spirit
of cooperation and a spirit of belonging.

The purpose of our festival this year is to obtain funds for improvements in the
parish, and if possible to build up a reserve in the parish funds. None of us knows what is
ahead of us, and the drought that we experienced in the year past should motivate us to
have a surplus for just such emergencies. The improvements, as all can see, are varied
and many. Some of these were discussed in the church committee meeting and they will
be considered in the order of necessity, e.g., first things first.

We can spiritualize this work and our donations by making our efforts an act of
thanksgiving to Almighty God for the blessings received during the past year. We must
not let up on our zeal.

We have always done well in the past and with the cooperation of all the
parishioners, we can and will do as well this year.

In conclusion, dear parishioners, we exhort you to give this project your full support.
We can rightfully be proud of the affairs we have had in the past, and there is no doubt in
our mind that we will be proud of the forthcoming one. Make your contribution of cotton
as soon as possible. We have a parish plant, of which people can be proud. This was made
possible through the efforts and sacrifices of those who comprised this parish from
the beginning to the present day. Not many of our rural parishes have accomplished so
much in so few years. This is a sign of love for God and His Church, for we are willing to
give and sacrifice in proportion to our love. May God bless your efforts and may he
shower upon you and yours His divine blessings.

HISTORY OF ST.AMBROSE FALL FESTIVAL

Written by: Rick Smith, San Angelo Standard-Times

“We started thinking about putting on a festival.” Alma Hirt once wrote. “We started
small….”

That first festival, in the fall of 1940, was small compared to today’s huge
celebration. But just as small stones create a foundation for a soaring cathedral, it
formed a base for all festivals to follow.

In the beginning, the festival was known as the Thanksgiving Picnic and was held in
November in a stone building called “the Auditorium.” (The building, used as a
community hall by all the town’s churches, was constructed by the Works Progress
Administration project in 1938. It’s now used by the school.)

That first festival may have been small, but it’s purpose was hugely ambitious: to
help raise money for the building of a Catholic Church at Wall.

A newspaper article in the San Angelo Standard-Times announced the first event:
“Dinner is to be served at noon and supper commencing at 5 p.m. Nov. 21. Homemade
sausage, chicken, turkey and vegetables and desserts of all kinds will make this a day of
feasting. There is to be an auction of cotton and other items at 2 p.m. with the money
coming from these sources to be utilized in the building program. Games and other
amusement are scheduled for the afternoon. The Pelzel Orchestra is to play.”

Msgr. Francis Pokluda helped form the parish – and the festival.

“He was the originator,” Cordula Wilde said. “It was his idea.”

The parish members planned the festivals, she said, “but he was there to see that
everything worked out all right.”

“When there was a little friction, he would be the negotiator,” Gloria Schwartz said.

“He would be the one to smooth it all over, and everything would be just fine,”
Cordula Wilde added.

How small was the first festival?

So small that the church members cooked the food in their own kitchens and served
it using their own pots and pans, bowls and silverware. So small that if they ran out of
something – salt or sugar or what not – during the serving, the church members “would
just run home and get it.”

What Florine Strube Gray remembers most about the first picnic “was that our
mother, Mathilda Strube, had us help her take practically all of the kitchen tools –
platters, plates, bowls, sugar and creamers, pitchers, cups, glasses, etc. – down to the
auditorium to be used for the dinner.” (The next year, they rented utensils from
Schumann Hardware Store in Rowena.)

From the beginning, everyone pitched in to make the festival a success.

The men of the newly formed parish “built the tables and benches used for the
dinner,” Florine Gray said. “The tables were boards on 2x4 saw horses. The benches were
smaller saw horses made with 2x4s with 1x12s for seating.”

Women brought sheets from home to use as table clothes, said Cordula Wilde. “And
we brought flowers from home and put them on the tables for decoration,” she said.

“I remember we had the flowers in fruit jars,” Geraldine Halfmann said. “Those were
our vases on the table.”

The church women prepared the food. They peeled potatoes, and then boiled them in
outdoor kettles on the south side of the hall. They brought dressing and turkeys they had
cooked at home, then sliced the turkeys just before the feast.

“Everyone raised their own turkeys, and you butchered them at home and you did
them up,” Gloria Schwartz said. “No one went to the grocery store and bought one.”

The young people served as waiters and waitresses. For many of the teen-agers, that
didn’t seem such a bad deal. CordulaWilde remembers that when she was 16 she was
assigned to help prepare the mashed potatoes – a job she hated.

“I couldn’t imagine a worse job than peeling potatoes, but I peeled potatoes because
that’s what Mama said I was supposed to do.”

But not for long.

“When I went into the building I saw a lot of nice guys from the base in there eating
dinner and I thought, `Fiddle dee dee. Why should I peel potatoes back here? ` So I went
in there and helped serve, wait on the tables.”

Young married couples were the backbone of the volunteer work crews.

“Most of us were young couples with babies, but that didn’t stop us from working,”
Geraldine Halfmann remembered. “Besides preparing the food, we washed dishes all day
long just as fast as we could. We used them over and over.”

Mothers kept their young babies close to them while they worked. Cora Dierschke
kept her babies in a cardboard box underneath the counter.

Older children amused themselves, either with the festival’s games or by inventing
their own in the big rock building. ``The kids would crawl in and out of the windows all
night long, but everybody had a good time, “Geraldine said. ``Those days were very
relaxed and safe. We could let the children play around the hall. There was no danger of
any child being taken. We just didn’t even think about that in those days.”

Organized games at early festivals included Bingo and a fishing pond for the children
with tickets that cost 5 cents. The plastic fish would swim in a round tub, Geraldine said,
adding, ``Sometimes we even had a square tub which was fancier than a round tub.” She
said the younger women ran the games and took care of the “fancy stand,” which had
homemade items like aprons and lacy doilies for sale.

Then as now, the auction worked as the festival’s major money-raiser.

“In the early days they had a little pig maybe to sell or somebody brought a puppy or
a horse or something, and the rest was cotton,” Erwin Schwartz said. But it was “mostly
cotton at first,” he said.

The tradition of auctioning a bale of cotton donated by parishioners began at the very
first festival.

“Some people brought 200 pounds, some people brought three, four, or five, and
then a few would donate a whole bale. If you felt like you could, you did. If you didn’t
you brought whatever you could,” Cordula Wilde said. “Then they combined all this
cotton together until they had enough for bales. And the gins always ginned it free.”
About nine bales were auctioned at the first festival, Gilbert Strube said.

Gilbert’s father, A.W. Strube Sr., worked as auctioneer at the first festivals, using a
megaphone to shout out bids. “He would get so hoarse that he always kept a lemon handy
to suck on to soothe his throat,” Florine Gray said.

Later, the cotton collections and sales were separated from the other auction items
and Calvin Pelzel began helping with the auctions. Calvin said he was very nervous before
climbing onto the auction trailer to work his first festival auction in the 1950s. “I had
never auctioneered before,” he said. “Also, I was a bit timid, but I decided to get up there
and do the best I could. I made many mistakes, but the people laughed and went right on
bidding.”

Calvin said the festival had its largest cotton year in 1992 with 83 bales auctioned.

“We continue to strive to beat this all-time record,” he said.

Two other important festival traditions have evolved over the years.

In the early years of the festival, sausage making involved butchering beef and hogs
as well as making the sausage. Gilbert remembers that the work originally took place in
what was called the car shed at the Strube farm. The original meat grinder was powered
through an attachment to the rear wheel of a Model A Ford. Later, the work was moved
to Mack Halfmann’s farm, and Mary Jane Halfmann Mikulik remembers, “we had to
clean that barn up before they started making sausage. Every year that was a big job for
us kids to have it all cleaned up. We had to wash down the walls and clean it all up.” The
Miles Locker Plant now handles the butchering, but festival workers still grind the meat
and make the sausage.

Another tradition is the all-night dressing-making vigil. Before 1970, church
members made pans of dressing at home. Starting in 1970, in order to follow a more
uniform recipe, the dressing was made at church.

A little red wagon became a symbol of the process. Gloria Schwartz said she
brought the wagon from home in order to carry heavy metal pans of dressing from the
building where the mixture was blended to the building where it was cooked.

“I went and got my red wagon and others brought their red wagons,” Gloria Schwartz
said. “ After that, every year until we got all the ovens and everything in one building, we
had to use our red wagons to move those metal pans.”

The dressing making and wagons gave birth to a favorite festival story. The parish
priest traditionally supplied the dressing cookers with a fifth or two of whiskey “so they
could make it through the night,” Erwin Schwartz said.

One night, Ernest Braden and Erwin Wilde were cooking. “Well, they sipped a little hard and they ran out of it,” Erwin Schwartz said. One man piled into the red wagon and the other pulled it to the rectory. At about 3:30 in the morning.

"They rang the doorbell, and, somehow, he got them another bottle of wiskey, and they went back over there, to cooking," Erwin Schwartz said. “Now, that was in the younger days,” he added.

The two created another tradition when they pried a piece of tin loose from the
smokehouse and “borrowed” some festival sausage and cooked it for breakfast after a
long night of making dressing.

“It was fun, I’ll tell you, if you could stand the pain of all-night working and then
come the next day and work some more,” Erwin Schwartz said.

Marjorie Kellermeier, chairman of the dressing committee for 21 years, said it’s
still fun. “We never have trouble getting anybody to come on and work all night with us
because we do have fun and the night goes quick,” she said. “We still have sausage for
breakfast. We’ve still got the fifths. We don’t have the red wagons.”

The festival that started so small so many years ago has grown and changed greatly.
Though it now includes only one meal instead of the original two, it feeds many, many
more people (the first festival served about 350 pounds of sausage. Nowadays, at least
6,000 pounds are served.) The festival also produces much more money for church
projects (from less than $2,000 that first year to grossing $100,000 nowadays.)

The “brick hall” with its modern kitchen and serving facilities replaced the
auditorium and its makeshift sheds and tables and benches. In the 1960s paper plates
replaced the china from home. The date was moved from November to the third Sunday
of October, and the “picnic” forever became known as the Fall Festival.

But some things never change.

“The theory was that on our Picnic Day everybody worked for one goal,” Erwin
Schwartz said.

They still do. Everyone helps.

“You stop and think,” Cordula Wilde said. “This was (started) 60 years ago, and all
these people volunteered. They didn’t say, 'Oh, I’m too old` or, `I’m too tired'. They just
volunteered and did it. And that same idea has stayed with this community all these
years….”

Geraldine Halfmann summed up the spirit of the early festivals this way: “we
probably didn’t raise that much money with the auctions having turkey’s and rabbits and
some cotton, but every year it was a wonderful day for fellowship with everyone who came from near and far – and some as far as 30 miles away,” she said.

“To this day, we are still having a wonderful time on that day.”