The first time Buck Winn laid eyes on Kim Tinney, the old fella was shuffling barefoot along the Blanco River, a burlap sack writhing with rattlesnakes slung over his shoulder.
Buck had heard the tales – everyone in Wimberley had – but meeting the man faceto- face was something else entirely. And just like that they became friends.
Folks said he was part coyote. He could disappear into the cedar breaks for weeks, living off fish, rabbit, or whatever luck provided. His two-third’s-length jeans and weathered sandals, or more often bare feet, marked him as something wild – a man untamed.
Snakebit Tinney hollered as he walked, his voice echoing over the limestone cliffs.
Some folks said he did it to announce his coming, others reckoned it was just his way of speaking to the land that had been his only true companion.
He lived in a shack on the Wimberley side of Devils Backbone. Rumor was he had earned his nickname by being bit by a rattlesnake when he was a child. Somehow young Master Tinney survived the bite and might have subsequently become immune to snake venom because he claimed to have been bitten many times over the years.
Kim didn’t need much in this world. He had the river, the woods and the solitude he preferred. In the summer, he caught rattlesnakes, selling them live in San Marcos forfifty cents a pound, walking the twenty miles with that wriggling sack over his back.
“Everything’s got its place,” he told Buck once, dropping a rattlesnake carefully into the sack. “Even the things folks don’t like.”
He did prefer a solitary life, but Snakebit Tinney was not a hermit. Although his trips into town were mainly subsistence-related, he seemed to have a nervous fascination with communities and the people who inhabited them. Despite his private nature, he was one of the more lucid folks in the town square. His proclamations were accompanied by excessive gesticulations that attracted small groups of people to safe distances. He said what he felt needed to be said for the greater good of the community.
Since he lived closer to nature than most of his neighbors, Snakebit Tinney was one of the first people in the valley to notice water flowing in previously dry creek beds.
Water had returned to the valley because there had been a concerted effort to cut down cedar trees during the First World War.
The wood was partially burned to make charcoal that was used in gas masks for our fighting men in Europe. Cedars drink up most of the rainfall before it can sink down deeper into the soil, and it took a while after the cedars were removed for the aquifers and natural wells to refill and overflow into the dry creek beds. Snakebit Tinney had been watching that miracle evolve long enough to be sure he was not mistaken, and new freshwater sources in the valley was big news that needed to be shared.
His life had overlapped two centuries, 1861 to 1944, but eventually, at age eightythree, his hollering voice fell silent. But artist Buck Winn wouldn’t let his friend slip into the earth without something to mark his place. He gathered strong cedar sticks and fashioned them into a grave marker, spelling out the name and dates of the man who had lived by his own rules.
If you listen close, when the wind moves through the cypress, you just might hear a holler, rolling through the hills, calling Snakebit Tinney home.
Jim McJunkin has been a photographer for over 50 years and has been involved in a number of art and photography shows around the country. He has work in the permanent collection at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, Illinois, and has authored several photography related books. Jim and his wife Beth have lived in Wimberley for 20 years.
Don Minnick is a clinical psychologist and organizational consultant and the author of books linked to business and the arts. He has found a home in the creative and culture- rich Wimberley valley. He is a Board Member of Wimberley Arts.org.
