OLNEY HAY
February 9th, 2010 @ 17:37
Posted by: Charlie Whipple
A Story of Guajillo Honey
In the mid 80’s there was a big real estate bust in Texas. All types of real estate—houses, apartments, office buildings, even farms and ranches—fell victim to foreclosure. I had a real estate brokers license and over several years sold a number of ranches that lenders had taken back.
One of these ranches was on the Guadlupe River in the Hill Country. It sold for around a million dollars and the buyer spent additional money fixing up the 19th century German stone house located on the ranch. So, I was sort of surprised one day when he phoned to say, “Charlie, I would like to buy a hunting ranch in south Texas, maybe around Pearsall. I can spend up to a million on it, but it needs to have good mineral rights.”
Needless to say, I was soon on my way to Pearsall, south of San Antonio. It was mid-summer, and as I neared town, workers in the fields were loading trucks with watermelons. When I got off the highway on my way to the county courthouse I passed by a house with a sign in front that read, “Honey For Sale”. I drove on by. But after going a few blocks I started thinking, “I wonder if that could mean Guajillo (pronounced “wah-hee-ya”) honey? In this part of the country Guajillo honey is prized. It is the best there is. I have a boyhood memory of eating Guajillo honey thickened by December cold right out of a one gallon can on a deer lease camp in south Texas. Guajillo honey is hard to come by, certainly not at a supermarket. So I thought, “I had better check this out, just in case.”
I turned the car around and headed back. The house was on a corner. The sign was homemade with the words scrawled on the wood with red paint that had oxidized. I noticed the grass in the front yard was so high that it almost covered the sidewalk. It was obvious that nobody ever used the sidewalk so I turned the car onto the side street, parked and walked to the back entrance. There was an empty cat food can next to the screen door, but no other sign of life. Next to the door were two doorbell buttons. I pushed one. I could hear a faint ring. But after waiting a minute and without getting a response I pressed the other button. This time the resulting ring was as loud as a foghorn. But still no response from anyone. Just as I started to turn to leave I noticed a movement in the dim recesses of the house. Directly, an old man came to the door.
I said, “I saw your sign out front and wondered if you have Guajillo honey.” “Where are you from!” he demanded. I had to think for a second. With that kind of greeting the wrong answer such as “New York City” might result in a shotgun making its appearance. I thought, “I can’t lie and say that I’m from around here because he probably knows everybody in town.” So I finally admitted to being from San Antonio. “In that case”, he said, “You’ll have to pay retail. If you were from around here I’d sell it to you wholesale.” He didn’t say one way or the other if he had Guajillo honey.
He came out and motioned for me to follow him. I noticed he wore a hearing aid back of each ear, hence the klaxon doorbell. Aside from that he seemed to have no infirmaties and walked erect as a drill sergeant.
We entered a low ceilinged building back of the house. Inside were rows of black 50 gallon drums of honey. On one side of the room where the wall met the ceiling was a swarm of honeybees. The swarm looked about six inches thick and six feet long. Bees were soon wandering around in my hair and on my shirt. I thought, “I’m not going to bother them and they probably won’t bother me.” He apparently noticed and said, “Feller got stung to death here last year.” I didn’t know if he meant here in this room or here in Pearsall.
Then he said, “Do you know where Olney is?” I didn’t, but it sounded for some reason to me that it was southeast of Dallas. So, I said, “I think it’s southeast of Dallas.” He didn’t say “that’s right” but I figured we might be having a one way conversation due to his hearing problem. “Well”, he continued, “the land around Olney produces the best hay in the country and everybody knows it. Consequently, farmers from other areas when they come to sell their hay say it’s Olney hay, though it’s not. That’s the way it is with Guajillo honey. Everybody says they have Guajillo honey when they don’t. But my honey is real Guajillo honey. That’s because this is the only area in the world where Guajillo grows and nowhere else. How much would you like?” I said two bottles. With that he quickly produced two quart size bottles (though I had been thinking in terms of pints) and started filling them up from a spigot in one of those 50 gallon
drums.
“Are you from Olney?”, I asked. He said, “Yes, I moved down here in 1906.” I thought, “My gosh, how old is he!” So I asked. “103”, he replied. I had heard that beekeepers often live to ripe old ages because the venom from bee stings keeps their immune systems revved up. “Do you get stung very often?”, I asked. “Only about once a month”, he said. “It’s usually when I do something like remove a tray from a hive and accidently mash a bee with my thumb.”
He finished filling the bottles, and said, “Since you are a good fellow you get the wholesale price.” It was about the price of a pint bottle at the supermarket. I told him I enjoyed meeting him, thanked him for the honey and left.
I drove on down to the courthouse to look for any ranch foreclosures and to go through the deed records. While I was there I asked the county clerk, “Do you know Mr. Arnold?” “Yes.” “Is he really 103?.” “Yes, the town celebrated his 100th birthday three years ago.” “Does he drive that Merry Miler RV parked in his backyard?” “Yes”, she said, “I frequently see him around town. We also have another beekeeper in town, Mrs. Youngblood. She’s 97.”
Well, I never did find a suitable ranch for my client. The main problem was the mineral rights. Everything I came across had been sold a number of times and each time the seller had retained a portion of the mineral rights so there was not much left for a buyer.
When summer was over that year, maybe September or October, a feature article appeared in the San Antonio paper that a big oil company had perfected a method of horizontal drilling. Using this method they had brought in a huge oil well near Pearsall. As a result a minor boom was going on. The sleepy country courthouse where I had the deed records vault pretty much to myself a couple of months earlier now had a line of oil landmen and lawyers that extended out the door and down the front steps. And the county clerk would only let five in at a time.
My client, unknown to me, had a friend at the oil company. Need I say more?
I intended to get back down there and get more Guajillo honey from Mr. Arnold but I never did. Several years later an article was in the paper that Mr. Arnold was in the hospital for the first time in his life. On the morning he was to be discharged the nurse asked him if he wanted to shower. He said, “No, I’m going home today.” When she checked on him a little later, he had passed away.
Recently, when I started to write this story, I thought, “I’m going to get out my Texas map and see just where Olney is.” Well, I wasn’t far off, but instead of being southeast of Dallas as I had guessed, it’s northwest of Fort Worth. But in Texas what’s a few hundred miles?
February 9th, 2010 21:26
What a nice story, Charlie. You have the gift.
February 10th, 2010 14:40
Indeed. Thanks, Charlie, that was wonderful.