LEARNING TO BE A LOCAL

You can’t say you’re from Wimberley until you’ve spent too much time waiting in Market Days traffic. The Wimberley View’s newest staff reporter has checked that item off the Wimberley Must-Do list. Read about his experience as he learns what Market Days is like and then make a suggestion on what he should take up next. This is the first of a multi-part series helping Colton McWilliams learn to be a local.

Hello Wimberley.

My name is Colton McWilliams, and I’m the new staff reporter here for the Wimberley View newspaper.

I’m starting a series of articles where I go around the community of Wimberley and experience some of the events that make the citizens of Wimberley love this town.

My first experience was going to the famous Wimberley Market Days.

But before I go into my trip about Market Days, let me tell you about myself.

I was raised in a little town of Cross Plains, which is just 42 minutes away from Abilene.

I was a four sport athlete in high school where I played football, basketball, baseball and track.

After high school, I attended Texas A&M at Galveston before transferring to Texas State where I eventually found myself at the Wimberley View as the sports writer before taking the full time position of staff reporter.

When I first heard about Wimberley Market Days, I was immediately intrigued. I heard from some of the locals that it was the second largest flea market in the state behind the famous Canton Trade Days.

Now, I’ve been to Canton Trade Days, and that market is a place all by itself given the size and variety of objects that are sold there.

So I was kind of relieved that Wimberley Market Days wasn’t quite as big or hectic and that it was confined to a designated space instead of spread out all over town.

However, I made the big mistake of not realizing how big Wimberley Market Days was, which unfortunately for me, I had to find out the hard way.

Seeing the line just to get to the parking lot stretch all the way past the HEB and Wimberley Ace Hardware was a big shock to me and made me realize just how big of a deal this event is.

So after finally finding a parking spot, and taking quite a long walk, I met up with Wimberley Lions Club President Cade Wright.

As Wright showed me around, our first trip was to the concession stand.

This is where I met the people who make Markets Days the event it is today.

“These are run 100% by volunteers,” Wright said. “Any profit we get after the cost of the goods goes back to the community.”

It was there I met one of the volunteers who was volunteering for the StarLight Symphony in his 14th year.

By volunteering his time with the Star Light Symphony, he is helping the Lions Club, which gives a grant to the symphony to cover the costs of their musical events. The same can be said for students who volunteer as the Lions Club gives multiple scholarships every year to help local students pay for college tuition.

That part really struck me.

Even though Market Days is a very big event that attracts many people from across the state, it is also a way for the Lions Club to give back to the community. Over 50 years, that has resulted in more than $4 million in donations.

After leaving the concession stand, or rather being kicked out so the volunteers could keep the lines moving, we went to visit with Frank Curtis, the Voice of the Lions Clubs, and later past-president Patrick Cox. Both gave me the history of Wimberley Market Days.

“Market Days started in 1965,” Patrick Cox said. “It was originally started by the Chamber of Commerce. Market Days started off as a small neighborly type market, and when the Lions Club started in 1969 the Chamber and the Lions came to an agreement where the Lions would administer and operate Market Days with the funds being raised from Market Days for the club to be spent on designated charities and organizations that the Lions Club supported.”

As Cox and Curtis explained, it was really fascinating to learn about how Market Days started. It began on the Wimberley Square with just 60 vendors before moving to its current location and with now nearly 500 vendors.

“We now have roughly 23 acres out here,” Curtis said. “We have about 500 booths, and we don’t have a way to count (the crowd) because it’s free admission but we think we had 10,000-12,000 people last Saturday.”

After my conversation, I decided to walk around and fully experience Market Days.

I tried my best to walk around the entire property to have a feel of how big the big place was and it was just as everyone described it.

There were so many vendors and a variety of items being sold from jewelry, rocks, paintings, knives, Longhorn horns, to clothes.

My favorite booth was run by Carol Lohn who owns Tru-Tex Antique Prints and travels across the state during market season.

Here Mrs. Lohn sold Antique Prints that varied from Tex Kist Citrus Label, to a rodeo poster of the Texas Cowboy Reunion in Stamford, Texas to Old Southwest Conference football programs.

“We’ve been doing this in our family for nearly 50 years,” Lohn said. “My Aunt and Uncle started and me and my husband took it over 25 plus years ago.. We work with the Department of Agriculture, and we’ve been contacted by the Texas Historical Commission. So we just love doing this. I had to retire after 50 years of teaching, so I could enjoy this a little bit more.”

Towards the end of my journey through Market Days, I found myself in the booth of Les Chapman who owns Ridgewood Blades.

Chapman, who is from Abilene, went over the process with me on how he creates his knives.

“The blades themselves come from Lawrenceville, Georgia,” Chapman said. “There’s a gentleman that I served with whose family has been doing this for five generations. I’ll take the cutouts from him, and I got another friend in Livingston, Montana who handle material from bone, horn and wood. I’ll buy that from him and assemble them in Abilene.”

After a long and exhausting day of walking and exploring, I can truly say this was one of the best experiences of a market day I have ever had. I can’t wait for the first weekend in March to come, when the next Market Day will be held.

Only this time I’ll be prepared to find a better parking spot.

If you have a suggestion on what Colton should do next, email [email protected].