13 Years at Harley's

Harley's Country Store and Beer Garden celebrated thirteen years of business this year. The honky Tonk opened on Sadie Hawkin's Day 2004. The legendary John "Harley" Nolan opened the business with his wife, Sylvia who continues to operate it today along with her daughter Calida and her husband Jim.

This Texas Honky Tonk is open seven days a week, but it is Saturday and Sunday when people flock there for the music and the home-style BBQ. Bushriders Dave play mostly  60-70 music on Saturday and Wildcat Thicket play mostly country on Sunday.  But don't be surprised if you come on a Wednesday and hear picking from the jam session going on in the bar or a Friday afternoon when you might catch Rande Hall in his keyboard in the dancehall.



Out in Bayview Texas away from the big towns and cities sitting on the third resacca on the left as you come down Shafer Road off Ted Hunt with the gate wide open inviting in cars, motor cycles, pickup trucks, bicycles and even horses is this very unique Texas treasure. There are birds, dogs, and plenty of country sounds.

Willie Nelson

Rascal


Bonnie

There is lots of seating. You can sit around the bar and talk with the locals about anything from politics to the answers in Jeoardy. Or there is the dancehall with its long wooden tables that invite you to meet new friends. Outside there is a deck to the north with picnic tables and a raised deck on the south where you can sit on a comfy cushion or an Adirondack chair.



Saturday and Sunday you can find Jim at the three grills fixing up chicken, pork and sometimes even some wild pig or other fresh catch for the BBQ. Sylvia makes big pan of beans. Everyone is welcome to bring a dish to share so each week there is plenty to sample all for a donation .



Beer can be bought by the bucket, the pitcher or the glass.  Wine and set-ups are also for sale. 

If the walls could talk, the tales would start back 13 years ago when this former city dump was turned into a country store and beer garden. Flash forward to crowds in the hundreds coming by to enjoy a cool one, dance and meet up with friends. Everyone waits to see Willie Nelson stop by one day, but in the meanwhile there has been Nashville 's Tom Buller, and Luckenbach 's ShAnnie play on the stage, to name two of many.

A crowd came to Harley's "and a few of our friends",  we listened to some amazing music by Wildcat Thicket and relaxed along the resacca.

Van-Go presented Sylvia and Rande, and Calida and Jim the traditional beer bucket as we have done for the last 13 years.  
We also had a painting of John commissioned by David MacIntosh and presented them with it; it is now hanging in the bar with Willie Nelson looking up at it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Houston Fest Galax, VA

Image
We arrived in Galax, VA and stopped at our friend, Harold's. He was just putting the finishing touches on a cake he made for his nephew.  Harold is great in the kitchen! Brenda arrived!  We had a nice meet and greet. We went to the school across the street with Brenda and Harold and met Linda who likes hugs. Each day the three of them and others from the community volunteer to prepare backpacks of food items for children who otherwise would good the weekend hungry. They have fund raisers to get money and purchase food items that children can manage for breakfast and lunch.  They also get donations.  There is a man in Florida that heard about their need for food so ships items from Amazon.com for them to distribute. They get everything organized then run an assembly line to package items. The bags are then sent to the classrooms where the teachers put them in the children's backpacks so that no one is called to any attention. Time to head to Houston Fest whose mission is to hon
Read more

Navy Buddies

Image
Today is a good day to drive! We drove across Amarillo, TX to visit with Will's Navy buddy, Ron.  We found him in the same park we had met him in about ten years ago. These two men met fifty years ago aboard The USS Platte.  ( Platte  made almost yearly deployments to the western  Pacific Ocean  from 1960 to 1968, including extensive operations in  Vietnamese  waters and refueling the  USS  Enterprise  (CVN-65)  task group off Korea during the  Pueblo incident . Platte served with the Pacific Fleet into 1970. She was sold for scrapping on 14 May 1971.)   Ron suggested La Fiesta Grande for an early dinner, a great Mexican place.  It was fun listening to the stories all starting with, "Do you remember...." We dropped Ron back off at home and met Don, a neighbor. See you again somewhere sometime, Ron. Okay, so check out these drinks that were delivered to the next table!
Read more

Our Own Palm Tree

Image
December 15, 2007 We woke parked at the Walmart; we have a nice spot we like way off to one side where we face a little lawn and have our own palm tree. Not many people park in this area because it is farther to walk into the store; at night a few other overnighters park in the lot, but they park up with the trucks so we pretty much have this area to ourselves. From there we drove to Victor Park, a community park with tennis courts, picnic area and fields for sports. The restrooms were locked, but no biggie as we have our own facilities. Will started up the generator and worked on a letter to the Chevy Guy in New Brunswick he has been formulating in his mind ever since we left Canada. The Roadtrek just stopped one day and we had to have it towed and lucky for us it was to a Chevy repair garage. We had our fuel tank fixed and they cut the fill tube. Roadtrek had designed a specialty one they didn’t have so they just jury rigged one. Fixed they said; we paid the bill of over a thousand d
Read more