Svacina Project

Earlier this month, cousins and aunts and uncles from my mother's side of the family met in Hallettsville at my grandparents' house (who are both deceased) for what we hope will be the first annual Kallus Reunion and Chili Cook Off. My grandparents were Texas Czechs 100%; both of their fathers were actually born in Moravia. But steaming, spicy chili runs deep in the veins of their descendants, supporting the "Texas" half of us being Texas Czech. I spent many weekends in junior high and high school at cook offs around South Central Texas. My father and the team he was a part of (which included friends and my Uncle Johnny Kallus) won many chili contests, but also barbecue, beans, sauce, and "wild card" contests. My father and his team even represented Texas at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1996, hauling their huge barrel barbecue pit all the way to the National Mall in Washington D.C. to do cooking demonstrations. The chili recipe his team (Bull H...

I've recently been looking through Sean N. Gallup's wonderful book Journeys into Czech-Moravian Texas  (Texas A&M University Press, 1998) at the same time I've been looking through photos I took of my mom's last months. She passed away in January of this year. On page 83 of the book, Gallup has a poignant photo of small boy only a few years younger than my youngest son (at left). In the text under the photo, Gallup wrote "Trey [Ging] will likely never learn to speak more than a few words of Czech, and though the culture may remain evident in the values that guide him later in life, one can only wonder if he will retain his sense of connection to a Texas-Czech ethnic and personal identity." These words were in my head as I looked at photos from my mom's last Thanksgiving dinner. My family and my sister-in-law's family joined at the home of my brother and his wife in Houston. There was absolutely nothing Czech about our meal, I'll say right up ...