Palo Alto College

Dot Ferguson Hatfield is one of Medina’s local character’s. She is seventy-five years old and has lived in Medina since the age of twelve. She married her high school sweetheart, W.O Hatfield Jr. The Hatfield family has been in Medina since 1907. They owned and managed the Hatfield Store in Medina for many years. In 1978, Dot opened Hatfield Realty and has been running it ever since. Her husband and son have also joined her in the business. Dot is a professional writer. She writes for True West and Texas Highways. Dot has been elemental in conserving Medina’s history. She has written several books on Medina’s history. We used her writings’ as a source for much of our research on this project. This is an interview about Medina, Texas with Dot Hatfield, Monica Cochran, and Tasia Baur on September 24, 2005.

Monica: Would you please give us a brief background about you?

Dot: I came to Medina when I was about twelve years old. I’ve been here ever since. I went to school here and married my high-school sweetheart. I only went to get a better education in some fields. My husband is a school teacher here and a coach. He was also county judge for 8 years. I not only got to nose around and find out what happened at school, but I got to find out what happened in politics, too. It was fun. After he got out of being county judge, I opened the real estate company here. He joined me. It’s been ever since 1978 that we’ve done that. I also have my son in the real estate business with me. My daughter is the curator of the museum in Bandera, at the Frontier Times. She has a couple of degrees in History and Research.

Monica: You’ve lived here since you were twelve, you said you married your sweetheart, but why did you choose to stay here? Why did your family move here?

Dot: We moved here when the war was on. My daddy was a block warden. Do you know what a block warden was? In San Antonio, they had the city blocked off in sections. He walked along there in the evenings and ensured there were no lights on. They had blacks-outs because they thought they might get bombed sometime. I liked to tag along behind him and talk to him a little bit. We would see that all the shades were down and that there were no lights on in the neighborhood. I was just a young, impressionable kid. I said, “Dad, what if they bomb us?” He said, “They very well could. I think we’d better leave this place.” He retired and we moved to Medina. We found some friends that had a little place up here. We bought it on the river. He worked as a carpenter. Mother was a housewife. I went to school here. I had to get accustomed to Medina, it was different. I came from San Antonio. It was a lot smaller school and a lot different community. Once I got used to it, I was going to stay no matter who I had to marry. I was going to find somebody right here who would have me, so I could stay.

Tasia: How many generations of your family have lived here?

Dot: My husband’s family is the oldest. They were here since 1907.There are six generations.

Monica: How would you describe Medina as a community?

Dot: Well, it’s a changing community. If I told you about the Medina when I was growing up, it wouldn’t be the Medina you see today with the same people or anything. I would describe it as being a friendly place. If you want to get along in Medina you can, if you don’t, you don’t have to. I think it’s friendly.

Tasia: Do you want to tell us about the money-making crops of your time?

Dot: Not only has the people changed, but the way people have made a living has changed dramatically. Right now, you have tourism and hunting. That’s about it. We don’t have big crops anymore, we don’t have people farming much anymore. A long time ago, this was cotton country. All these little fields along the river had good rich soil, so they planted cotton. We got a boll weevil attack. The government said, “ No more cotton would be grown here.” That’s what happened to the cotton business. Then we had sheep and goats. The sheep came in from Spain and the goats came in from Ankara. They were angora goats from Turkey. They made another crop, when cotton began to fail. The property here adapted itself well to those animals. After awhile, it wasn’t economically feasible. All of the mohair wool that we produced, most of it went to France to be milled then it was brought back as the product. We used to have big warehouses with big rolls of wool and mohair. They sent it out to be milled and then sent it back to us. That crop also played out. It has never been a big cattle production place. Agriculture played out, that’s what I was going to tell you. There were little, small farms with crops that you harvested, like corn. We had a lot more migratory birds in this area at that time because they came in to clean the fields. Now, no one farms anymore or raises those crops. What’s become of everything? It’s still stable, the land is still there. We’re now charging for people to walk around, hunt, to look at the scenery, and to camp out. The whole economy has changed.

Monica: Why do you think that early settlers came to Medina? What were they looking for? What did they like?

Dot: A couple of things were happening with the settlers. Most of the people who settled this area were southerners. They were being displaced, almost like today. It’s water now, but it was the Civil War then. The land was cheap, for some of them, it was even free if you homesteaded. It was a cheap place to go. You could get away and try again. Medina was not open because the Indians had a stronghold here. They would take your scalp off, if you came up in here. They frequently did kill settlers that came in here. It really kept progress down. It wasn’t until the 1860’s, 70’s, and 80’s that Medina got settled .

Tasia: Can you tell us about the early religions? How they have changed?

Dot: Yes, they have changed some. We never had a Catholic community here. The Catholic community was in Bandera, who had Polish settlers. They were almost Catholic, to a word. We had a Baptist contingency. We had Methodist South, which it was called in those days. We had Latter Day Saints, which are no longer active here. We had a lot of Latter Day Saints. We had a lot of Latter Day Saints Elders in the church. They were not the Mormons that live in Utah. They were reorganized. They had broken off in a church dispute in 1800. Some of them came here. In Texas, they called themselves reorganized. The ones that we knew, were not the Mormons of today. They had a very strong contingency of the Latter Day Saints. They began to move away and join other religions. There is no longer a Latter Day Saints Church here. There is a Church of Christ. It was here the same time in the 1880’s, when the Methodist Church came and the Baptist Church came. There are no Catholic Churches. There are no Jehovah’s Witness’ . They had open meetings, where they’d meet out on the riverbank. They’d cut some trees and make an arbor. Sometimes, they’d bring their piano from home on the wagon. They did sing a lot. They liked to sing that was a great joy to them. What did they have to listen to? They had no radios, no TV’s, so that was a joy to sing. If you had someone with a good voice that could lead. Well boy, they’d fall into it. I think the biggest church of the time was the Church of Christ because they had the children’s sermon there. All of the children went to church back then. I would say that was the biggest. The Baptist’s and Methodist’s were probably about the same, 100 hundred or more. Ms. Gallant knows all about the churches.

Monica: What are the main obstacles that the early settlers faced? What were they fighting against or having to overcome?

Dot: I think lack of money. You see, imagine what would happen to you today if every piece of money that you owned or had hidden, could not be used because money had changed. What would you do for money? They had, I’ve heard trunk loads of confederate money. They didn’t have any ready cash that was the main problem they faced. One old man, I read a record he wrote. “I just traded six hundred acres, for a horse, a saddle, and a rifle.” It was more important for him to have something to ride and maybe a chance to eat than to own six hundred acres. Land was cheap. Like my uncle told me, “If land’s a penny an acre, but you can’t get a hold of a penny, what good is it?” That was basically the economics.

Tasia: Do you want to tell us about the delays in Medina? Why it took so long for people to start settling here, besides the Indians?

Dot: The Indians and lack of money that we talked about. It wasn’t easy to live here because of the space between here and getting somewhere. The roads were not paved. They were rocky and horrible. You had to go through the creeks and up the mountains. It was not an easy place to live. A lot of these people came from the deep south, where it was easy to live. They were astounded at how hard it was to get from one place to another; even to visit, go to a church service, or anything. Transportation was terrible. I think that held it back. After they got cars, the roads were still gravel, just mud. They paved them in about the thirties. You get adventuresome when you have a way to get out of a place.

Monica: Was there a specific person or group of people, who helped Medina survive as a community?

Dot: No, not that I would pinpoint anyone, but I would say this, everybody who survived worked together. I think that was it. They didn’t have anything to do, let’s face it, so they got together had horse races and foot races. They ran right down the street here, that’s where they ran foot races. They challenged each other to just a race. There was nothing to do, so that was exciting. They said one old man won a race because his stomach was bigger than the other one’s.

Monica: Have there ever been any racial issues in Medina? Has it always just been the same race?

Dot: Yeah, there never have been any racial issues in Medina. Medina wasn’t a slave holding community. In fact, most everybody had lost there slaves. When they came here, they didn’t have slaves. There weren’t any black people here, in the community to even speak of. There was a black school in Bandera. There was a black community because they came in to pick the cotton, so when the cotton left, they left. You go where you can make a living. We just didn’t have any black people, it wasn’t that it was prejudice. We just didn’t have black people that were going to school, but now there are black students here from the Children’s Home.

Tasia: What kinds of things do you like about living in a small town?

Dot: Well, you realize that you are talking to a redneck. I like knowing that when I walk down the street somebody’s going to say “HI”.I like that. I like walking into the store to get a coke and not having to lock my car up or my house every time I walk around the block. I like the fact that even though we’ve changed, we’ve still maintained the core things that are most important and the new kids are learning the core things. Ms. Gallant spends a lot of her time and money getting these class reunions together every year. We’ve got one coming up in October. She likes encouraging them to come back and see if they put down any roots here. A lot of the kids from the Children’s Home come back and some we never see again. I think it calls you back. Mr. Lovelace used to sell real estate in Bandera. He called himself “Old Papa Bullfrog”. Old Papa Bullfrog said, “If you ever come into this area and drink out of this river, you’re going to come back someday.”

Monica: Have you ever heard any stories that significantly impact the town?

Dot: There’s nothing really that comes to my mind except to say that oral history was all that we had because no one wrote anything down. They would tell each other about somebody’s physical prowess or their ability to shoot straight. One woman’s ability to cook better than the other’s. It was very simple things. Not any particular story, except to say, “Well, you remember that time?” One man told me, “I had built my fireplace. I had put a tarpaulin that’s what they called a canvas in those days, over it to keep the air out until I could get my fireplace built. I heard something in the night going in and scratching. I got up and went around the house to look and it was a big old bear.” That kind of story! Those kinds of things got told, they weren’t monumental. They didn’t change history. They did formulate a local history. I remember how Mr. Seco told me, he got tired one day while out hunting. On a beautiful fall day, he lay down in a pile of colorful leaves to take a nap. All of the sudden he felt as though he was being spied upon. You get out in the woods sometimes, you have that feeling. He opened one eye real slowly and he sees a yellow eye looking right down into his. It’s a mountain lion. He lays very still and doesn’t move. The mountain lion sniffs up and down him and takes off real quick. He decided he better not stay there. He took a log, covers it with leaves, and got behind a stump. Here comes mama lion with two baby lions. They just ran and pounced on the leaves.

Monica: She was using him to teach those babies how to hunt?

Dot: Yeah, how to hunt. He remembered how impressed he was with that intelligence. Just small stories like that.

Monica: Can you think of any unusual events or unusual stories?

Dot: Well, we are subject to floods. Floods always change things. People get killed and their animals get washed away. Floods were always a major thing to talk about. Most of the old-timers remember the date that a flood came in Medina. Pardon me, what was the question again?

Monica: Was there any unusual events?

Dot: We used to have rodeos. The men would take canvas and make the boundary of the rodeo. There weren’t any fences. It was out in somebody’s pasture, so they’d put that up. Everybody could get on this side and watch the rodeo. We had a lot of dances. One of the old gentlemen told me they would make the floor out of something they planed. It was fairly smooth. They would take the floor and carry it someplace, wherever they were going to have a dance. They would put the floor down, in somebody’s pasture. They would dance the splinters off it. They would bring a piano if somebody had one, lots of guitars, a few fiddles, and maybe a harmonica. I don’t recall anyone having an accordion and no wind instruments, that came later when they had a band. Ms. Gallant even started researching the little bands the town used to have. The picture of the town with a band, she didn’t show you that? Everybody in town who could play anything and wanted to learn, did play something. They had plenty of gatherings for that. They had preaching and baptism’s in the river. I think when little babies were born, there was always some lady making a quilt for the baby. They also had quilting. You could find out what was happening in a quilt.

Tasia: What are some of the important places to visit when you come to Medina?

Dot: The catalyst in Medina, of course is the river. Everybody likes to swim, canoe, kayak, swim around, get in an inner tube and float. There are people who like to fish a little bit, but it’s not about the fishing as much as it used to be. The reason is a dam system that blocks the fish from coming up. They used to swim up stream, there was some sort of season. My husband used to catch a lot of big fish. I’m talking 80 or 90 pound catfish. They’re not here anymore because there’s no way for them to get here and they don’t live long enough to get that old anymore. Somebody will catch them. There’s horseback riding. There are places where you can rent a horse. Now, one of the most popular things in the area is motorcycling. They come in here by the hundreds. It’s interesting to me that they are from all walks. Some of them are young people, wealthy people, all kinds of people. I met a doctor the other day on a HOT machine. I said, “ Hey man, where’d you get that machine?” He started talking and he said, “Actually, I’m a doctor and I do this to get away from my practice.” He said, “ Honey, don’t tell anybody about this area, keep it a secret. I love it here.” We do have a lot of those things. We have a new ranch, about ten miles up, between Medina and Kerrville called the Coyote Ranch. It’s a big resort. We’re talking about a nice resort. People can drive in and spend the night. You might want to take a look at it. They have log cabins for rent. They have safari tents patterned after Africa. They have a village of those that you can rent. It’s different. See that’s the way tourism brings people in. They like to see this area and have a good time. It’s not a good place to make a living. You have to either make your money somewhere else and come in with it or be satisfied with what you can get.

Tasia: Do you ever go to the Apple Festival?

Dot: Yes, I started the Apple Festival. I got the idea for it. Mr. Adams family was raising apples and had the country store. We both started the Apple Festival.

Monica: Tell us about it? What kind of apples do you have?

Dot: This year we didn’t have it on my property. We had it down at Mr. Adams’ Apple Field. I would rather you talk to him about what kinds of apples. There are several varieties. He’s an expert and I’m not. There’s all kinds of apples and they taste good. The longer a fruit stays on the tree with the sun on it, it gets sweeter. The longer it stays hot, you’re getting the sweetness back in your apples. The first year we concentrated on food and companionship. We had people who volunteered to sing, play, dance, and tell stories. Simple things. After a couple of years, it got complex and commercial. Some of the people here who really donated a lot of time and effort to it were getting older. Things have changed, so they hired more services. It sort of lost its homespun quality.

Tasia: The people that run it, are they volunteers or hired?

Dot: It used to be all volunteers, now its about half-in-half. We have historical enactors come, in their costumes, and camp out on the river at night. They shoot their guns. We have black powder contests. We have story telling. We have bagpipers. I got my friends out of San Antonio to come up. We had great bag piping. It was just whatever you decided to do. Scottish people have what is called a Kaeli, Kaeli is an extemporaneous meeting of people. You would get up, if the mood struck you and sing a song or read poetry. It was just an open field. We started the Kaeli. We patterned it after a Kaeli that I went to in North Carolina. You might hear some group over here singing. You might hear people telling tales. It was really very homespun. It didn’t cost a lot of money to run it and we made a lot. We invested it back in our community. Scholarships for our students and other endeavors like that. I think it was and still is a lot of fun. A lot of people found out about the town of Medina, who had no idea there was a town here. Its sort of off the path. They like to come and they have a good time. We had people here who are very good at cooking the apples, so we had apple pies growing out our ears. We had a contest called Apple Anything, you could make anything out of apples and enter it in the contest. Prizes were hefty. They were anything like $100.00 to $500.00 each. There was a lot of people who got interested in cooking something that was really unique. We had these hotshot chefs come out from one of those French restaurants. They would choose. They were very good judges of good food. They would usually auction off the winners and that would go to a charity, like the volunteer fire department.

Monica: Is that what made you think of it? Were you just trying to find a money-making scheme or was it just something you thought would be fun to do?

Dot: I just thought it would be entertaining. It started off that way. It kind of got out of hand because it got commercial. I have not always liked that because it’s like every other festival that you’ve ever been to.

Tasia: How did you get the name Apple Capital?

Dot: My son did that. He talked to the governor at that time. He said, “ Give us a declaration, make us the Apple Capital.” He gave us a declaration and put it in the legal form. There weren’t any apples growing here until Mr. Adams started the industry. We became a sister city to Medina, Ohio. We exchanged keys to the cities. We had all kinds of cool things until my husband had a heart attack. I had to back off from community things. Once I got out of it, we lost our contact. The new people didn’t keep that up. A lovely bunch of people they were, we talked on the phone a lot. In fact, we had one man come down here and open the festival for us. He was from Ohio. We had something we were trying to develop. I wouldn’t say it failed, but I wouldn’t say it succeeded to the degree I wanted it to.

Monica: How would you describe the town of Medina in the present?

Dot: I think it’s asleep and I think it will wake up. I don’t know what the catalyst will be, but there will be one.

Monica: What do you see for the future of Medina?

Dot: There may not be one, on the other hand it may be great. None of us know, what’s in the future. We may strike oil here, uranium, or something that nobody’s even thought of that will be a big money-making thing that would change the whole face of the community. I would say that as long as it’s carefully monitored by the people themselves, it will be a nice place to live if nothing else. We have a new place out here at the edge of town, we call it Orchard Park. It’s been divided up into acreage of nice homes with restrictions. We brought a lot people in here that would maybe stay here.

Monica: Why do you think that Medina has survived as a town?

Dot: I think the spirit of it, more than anything else. I think the cohesiveness of the people. If somebody’s sick people are there, and if a house burns down people bring stuff. More like the old pioneer ways, but they’re playing out. One of the reasons that Medina is not going to grow past what it is now is because of the water. We have a river on this side and a drainage river on the other side. The available space for having a town is basically, what you see is what you get. You get much closer to the river, you get washed off. You can’t go that way because the school is there. The community I told you about, Orchard Park, was the last flood free available space. I don’t think it will grow much bigger, but I do have a dream that it will grow prettier. What I meant is that it will have some taste to it.

Tasia: Would you like to tell us what you do? What are some of your favorite things to do in Medina?

Dot: I’m a writer. I write articles for True West and Texas Highways, things like that. I talk to people and find out things. There are a lot of organizations like the Garden Club that you can belong too. Basically, I’m retired and my husband is retired too. We just sort of enjoy ourselves.

Monica: How has technology affected Medina? (in a positive or negative way) Sometimes a town will grow up because the railroad came through or sometimes a town will die town because the highway bypassed it. Has there been anything like that, that has impacted Medina?

Dot: No, there has not. The reason I think is because there wasn’t somebody here that pushed it. We’ve had Mr. Adams close to it with his apples growing here. We had Collins of Texas, they made handbags. It was quite an industry at one time. It wasn’t technology. Here in town, the school and this library. They have technology that we haven’t dreamed of. They’re all tuned into it, even though they’re here in a small place. They’re going to get on the computer and go out and learn things. We have one young man, I’m very proud of. He was one of our valedictorians. He’s very high in technology and travels all over the world. He organizes different outsourcing projects. He might come to Medina with some sort of technical thing. You don’t really have to be rooted in one place like you used too.

Tasia: Would you say there’s more elderly people that live in Medina than younger people because of the class sizes in Medina School?

Dot: Yeah, I think that’s true. There’s another reason, if you’re young enough to have children, you generally have to be able to make a good living. That means you’re not going to stay here. There’s not that many jobs. When they get their kids pretty good size, they might stay here and graduate then they’re gone. That’s a minus, but that’s society. It’s a very mobile society. It’s a very economic society. There are more older to middle age people in the community than there are younger people.

Tasia: Have you got any big offers for Walmart or HEB in the area?

Dot: No, the reason for that is there’s not a population to support it. We’re twenty-five miles from Walmart, HEB. What you do now is plan on your car to get you over there. You don’t want to build another one.

Monica: If there was one thing you’d want the future generations of Medina to know about the community, what would it be?

Dot: Regardless, of what I might think about it or want them to do, each generation gets there own shot at it.

Monica: If someone wanted to move to Medina, what reason would you give them to come here?

Dot: Low crime rate, beautiful and fairly good year round weather, no traffic. There’s not even a stoplight. No jail, no lawyers, no doctors, no dentists. I was trying to get the tax-free bracket for our festival. The lady asked, “Why do you think you need a tax-free bracket?” I told her, “no lawyers, no doctors.” It got very quiet on the phone and she said, “ What do you have? You’re asking me to charge no taxes to have a community thing, but what do you have to support it?” That’s when we did get tax-free status, meeting all the criteria. How much longer it’ll be that, I can’t tell you. A new idea and somebody who wants to go for it. I think somebody with a dream. I don’t necessarily think that needs to be a young person. A dream is a dream. There may be all kinds of things that I can’t think of. When I was growing up here, there was no television and no computers. There wasn’t any technology. If you learned anything, you had to learn it from a book. We read a lot and even wrote things down for fun. I never had a big dream growing up. I just felt that I’d been placed here for a reason of some sort, but it didn’t gel from in here until I thought I like the people and I’ll just tell their stories. That’s when it began to mean something to me as special. Anybody can have, any point of view.

Tasia: Is there anything we haven’t asked you that you think we should know about Medina?

Dot: I don’t know, we’ve about exhausted poor Medina. I think to be careful, no matter what part of the country you live in. Be careful of the environment and your fellow travelers which is your animals: your butterflies, your birds, and your plants. So we become an entity, not by ourselves as human beings, but so that we become a part of the whole structure of the universe. I don’t think you can mistreat one area and not have it affect all other areas.