JULY/AUGUST 2009

The Last Roundup

by Butch Baker

All of us at Lone Star Land Cruisers were working our tails off preparing for the 6th Annual Lone Star Cruiser Roundup when we received possibly the worst and most shocking news any of us could have imagined. Randy Kruse called to give me advance warning that the man who owns Katemcy Rocks had passed away and his son had cancelled the Kruse’s lease. As news of this started bouncing across the Internet, my phone would not be quiet as friends called from all over, needing to hear it in person. Outrage and disbelief seemed to be the order of the day.

We quickly became resigned to the news and resolved that, if in fact this was to be the last Roundup, we would go out in style. T-shirts and decals were long since finalized and ordered so it was too late to make any changes to them. The John D. Hale Band was booked, we had a great raffle shaping up and the weather was looking fantastic…. Mr. Brisket was booked to throw down the BBQ for us…. We had a kids raffle planned for the first time in Roundup history…. Registration was ahead of any prior year so maybe we could pull this off.

Then a very special moment happened when I got a call from Marlin Czajkowski. It seems as if our mutual friends, Chris Miller and Georg Esterer, had contacted him, convincing him he had to be in attendance. Marlin was returning from time visiting relatives in Florida and had a stopover in Dallas on the Tuesday prior to the event. His inquiry to me was for car rental, lodging, etc. My reply? “Marlin, what is your flight and time? Lone Star will handle the rest once you get on the ground in Texas.”

As I was going through my checklist and attending to all the last minute details, I pondered as to the five-year history of the Lone Star Cruiser Roundup and how it came to be the event it is….

The core group of LSLC members that originally planned and made the first Roundup happen were and still are a tight knit family. We had traveled in a caravan to GSMTR ’01, Cruise Moab ’02 and BHCC ’03.We had held our own club run, ICBM (I Cruised Barnwell Mountain), annually. I heard rumors we had even garnered a reputation as ner-do-wells and hooligans… with a callous disregard for rules and authority…. No formal charges were ever brought forth but the Lone Star party tent was the place to be at many of these events. We knew how to have a good time but how do you translate that into an event?

We just got lucky, I reckon. From the start, we decided we would run the Roundup like a party, not like an event… and it worked. The Kruse family quickly became a big part of the LSLC family with Ma and Pa Kruse adopting all of us as kids and grandkids. Randy told us that the Roundup changed the way they ran the park, from a place guys came for the weekend to a place a family came for the weekend. It was LSLC that first hired professional top-notch music for entertainment after the raffle and Randy Kruse and Shane Chapman then built a covered stage for just this reason.

I’ll always recall fondly having Tony Twiddy, Todd Kaderabek and all the TLCA officers at the first one. This seemed to validate our event to have them attend. My youngest daughter got engaged and we announced it at the first Roundup. One of the recurring remarks from attendees was, “I arrived knowing nobody but felt like everybody there was an old friend within moments.”

This year, I arrived at K-Rocks on Tuesday, loaded down with all the stuff I seem to wind up carrying every year. My team was not due in until Wednesday and Randy and I settled in and reminisced about the past 5 years. I found myself in a subdued, melancholy mood and this would linger for most of the event.

We went through the usual routine of stuffing driver bags and organizing raffle items and soon registration opened. Our old friends from the west coast arrived along with the Mississippi gang and soon the place was the usual blur of activity. Trail rides commenced as planned and BK Cruiser began his daily ritual of flopping his Pig. Georg Esterer put on a show on Baby Huey’s Crack— and one very lucky dog escaped death during a rollover by landing in a crevice, under the rig, just large enough for a Lab to survive.

John D. Hale and the band came in on Thursday, just to hang out and do some trail riding. They unhooked the trailer, announced they would be back soon, had to go see John’s brother in the next county. A couple of hours later, the van rolled into camp, everyone unloaded and Chris had a serious look on his face. Now if you know any musicians, they don’t often look serious….

“John’s in jail.”

“OK guys, good one. Ha ha, he stayed at his brother’s, right?”

“No, Butch, we’re serious. John is in jail.”