DISAPPEARING TEXAS Dim the lights Number of Texas dance halls is dwindling, but some keep two-stepping Editor's Note This is one in an occasional series exploring the places and traditions that are fading as Texas goes through tremendous change. Somewhere in Texas tonight, someone is dancing across a hardwood floor. The two-step is as much a part of our state identity as cattle drives and Friday night football. For generations, Texans have danced at little halls from Galveston to Lubbock and just about everywhere in between. But time is threatening the Texas dance hall with extinction. Less than half of the state’s old halls are still in use. Many of those that survive have had to change how they operate or suffer, drying up like the small towns they stand in. A hall that used to bring in 400 people a night may attract only 50 today, said Deb Fleming, president of Texas Dance Hall Preservation Inc. “A dance hall to us isn’t a honky-tonk where you go to drink beer,” Fleming said. “It’s where you go for community.” The stories of three halls — Tom Sefcik Hall in Seaton, Gruene Hall in New Braunfels and Cherry Spring Dance Hall north of Fredericksburg — show how the state of the old Texas dance hall tradition is precarious at best.


Alice Sulak, nee Sefcik, sat behind the bar on the ground floor of the hall her father built. Dozens of couples stomped and scooted around the dance floor upstairs as Czech music floated down through the thin floor. “The name of it is ‘When It’s Polka Time in Texas,’” she said of the tune. When it’s polka time in Texas, The world is a brighter place. The beautiful Czech music, Puts a smile on every face. "When It's Polka Time in Texas" Alice doesn’t get upstairs as much as she used to. She’s got a bad back that makes the climb up the thin, steep stairwell at Tom Sefcik Hall, about 9 miles east of Temple, harder than it once was. She speaks in a soft voice with a Texas accent that still has a hint of the old country. She pronounces her own name “El-iss Shoo-laak Sef-chick.” “Must be a lot of people dancing, because you can hear them shooph, shooph, shooph across the floor,” she said, looking to the ceiling. “With them whoopin’ it up, hollerin’, they must be having a good time.” The regulars say coming here for the Sunday night dance every week is like going to church. They get to see family and friends while dancing traditional polkas and waltzes late into the night. Alice’s father and mother built the place in 1923. She has lived her entire life in the house next door, and has been in charge of the dance hall since 1970. She played saxophone in a polka band for 45 years, but her back gave out a while back and she had to give it up. “It ain’t no fun, the arthritis,” she said. “I think I made too many trips up and down this bar for too many years.” Alice has a group of helpers now who pitch in selling tickets and serving beers, including her son Kenny Sulak, who tends bar downstairs. He said traditional Czech halls have become victims of a changing demographic. Younger people just aren’t very interested in waltzing to the music their parents and grandparents enjoyed. Slideshow: Sights from Tom Sefcik Hall Owner Alice Sulak, 84, poses for a photo behind the bar of Tom Sefcik Hall in Temple. Her parents, Tom and Tracy Sefcik, built the dance hall and bar in 1923, and Sulak still lives next door. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) The first floor bar at Tom Sefcik Hall. Alice Sulak spends most of her time downstairs behind the bar, where she can hear every stop and slide from the dancers upstairs. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Couples dance on a Sunday in November. Tom Sefick Hall has traditional Czech dances every Sunday night, where local musicians play everything from Hank Williams tunes to Czech-language polkas. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Anne-Marie Dufour and Gary Stewart of Rockport take a spin on the Sefcik Hall dance floor. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Steep, crooked stairs make it hard for some customers — and even owner Alice Sulak — to reach Sefcik Hall's second-story dance floor. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Bud Harger of the band Texas Tradition plays the slide guitar. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Hand-painted advertising signs are on display around the rafters of Tom Sefcik Hall. Many of the vintage signs advertise Temple companies that have long gone out of business, but owner Alice Sulak has no intention of replacing them. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) Ann and Jerry Berg of Salado dance cheek-to-cheek at Sefcik Hall. Many regulars make the drive to Seaton from all over Texas for the Sunday night sessions. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) The hall hasn’t changed, Kenny Sulak said. “What’s changed is the people in the pictures are gone now.” The dance hall on the second story is lit by strings of multicolored Christmas lights draped low over the floor. Tables and chairs circle the floor, with signs reserving seats for regulars. Couples spin around, boots slipping across the hardwood with a soft chh-chh on each beat. The crowd at Sefcik Hall is decidedly older, with white hair and wrinkled hands the norm. Some couples are under 50, but they’re few and far between. “The younger people don’t follow the Czech custom anymore,” said Herbert Lovell. “I hate the way it’s changing; the Czech people are losing their customs.” Most of the dancers here learned to polka and waltz as children. For Czech immigrants, learning the traditional dances was part of keeping in touch with the old country. They’re the ones who built the halls and kept the dance hall tradition alive in Texas for generations. Lovell, of Waco, has been coming here for years. He said he remembers the old halls being packed every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. Now, they’re lucky if there’s one dance a month. “This is like a time warp up here,” he said. “But everything has to come to an end sooner or later. Can’t go on forever.”


It was almost showtime, and James McMurtry had walked off somewhere. The Americana singer-songwriter was playing a Saturday-night set at Gruene Hall, a music venue just off the Guadalupe River northeast of San Antonio. He likes to get focused before performing, and there isn’t much of a backstage at Gruene. Using a 137-year-old barn as an internationally known music venue comes with those kinds of problems. The only “green room” is a small area full of audio equipment and instrument boxes just outside the men’s restroom. Advertised as “The Oldest Dance Hall in Texas,” Gruene Hall isn’t just a historic dance hall, it’s iconic. It has made appearances on live records, as album art and in big-screen movies and TV reality shows. The tables are scratched, the photos faded, the tin beer signs rusted and the floor worn and warped. The age is part of Gruene’s commercial appeal, which, thanks to investors, has saved this northern corner of New Braunfels. “We’re lucky we’re not in the middle of nowhere like some of these old halls,” said Pat Molak, owner of Gruene Hall. “It’s part of the fabric of Texas. … It’s the real deal.” Molak bought the old dance hall in 1975, at the peak of the Outlaw Country movement. He developed the hall as a historic landmark, keeping the walls and worn-down floor intact. He also started booking big-name acts, turning the old hall into the major concert venue it is today. Slideshow: Sights from Gruene Hall John Thorton and Michelle Hildebrand, both of San Marcos, share a kiss near the bar at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels. Couples have been coming to dance at the hall for nearly 140 years. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) A "Welcome Cowboys" sign is displayed above the bar. The hall was built in 1878 as a saloon for local farmers and is believed to be one of the oldest dance halls in Texas. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) A man wearing a cowboy hat walks under portraits of musicians who have performed at Gruene Hall. When Pat Molak bought the hall in 1975, he ushered in a new era of top-flight performers from George Strait to Jerry Lee Lewis. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) To the frustration of some bands, Gruene Hall's men's restroom is located backstage, where artists gather before their shows. That frustration led owners to add a “Willie Door,” a crawl space in the back wall that let Willie Nelson enter and exit without getting mobbed. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) A spectator taps his boot near a collection of Lone Star Beer bottles on the floor in front of the stage. Gruene Hall doesn’t serve liquor or beer on tap, but sells bottles of Shiner, Lone Star and other domestic brews. (Ashley Landis/Staff photographer) “We’re not philanthropists. Good news, bad news, we’re here to make a profit,” Molak said. “It’s a business and we run it as a business, but we love the music.” Gruene’s audiences reflect a trend among today’s dance hall patrons: Fewer people dance. Most shows at Gruene are more like concerts than dances. People stand near the stage, beers in hand. “Kids will stand in front of the stage with their cellphones,” Fleming, the preservationist, said. “They don’t do the traditional music. … It’s more about a social activity than it is for music and dancing.” Shane Roch, a manager at Gruene Hall, said he gets complaints when traditional acts like Asleep At The Wheel come through and customers don’t have room to dance. He has to tell them to come back on a weekday, when crowds are smaller and there’s more room to spin. “Even if they’re not coming to see an oompah band,” Roch said, “they get a modern take on the tradition.” But when McMurtry kicked off with “Choctaw Bingo,” his meth- and moonshine-fueled, toe-tapping romp, the crowds instinctively moved to the floor and partnered up. “Got some movement going, that’s a good thing,” McMurtry said during a break between verses. “That’s a good thing because we’re just getting to the good part.” People spun and shook across the dance floor. Hair flipped, bodies dipped, boots stomped and arms waved. “Music is kinetic,” McMurtry said after the show. “If they’re moving, you’re getting it across.”

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