Mystery stones may be relics from Civil War

I’m hoping you might have some information on what appears to be an old bridge at the University of the Incarnate Word. It is across a tributary to the San Antonio River, parallel to Hildebrand Avenue, and located near a trail that UIW recently created called St. Brigid’s Path. Perhaps it’s an old mill or well and not a bridge, but it does cross the stream bed and consists of numerous cut-limestone rocks.

Your question and the photograph you included were sent to the Headwaters at Incarnate Word, a nature sanctuary adjacent to but not part of UIW. Executive Director Pamela Ball confirms that the photo was taken in the Headwaters sanctuary along Brigid’s Path.

“The stones are believed to be the ruins of an old mill,” Ball said. “Although there has been much speculation about the nature of the mill, previous research and inquiries have not resulted in any details that can be corroborated.”

The San Antonio River and its tributaries were the site of various mills in the 18th and 19th centuries, taking advantage of water power to grind corn and flour.

The collection of hewn rocks is mentioned in “Archaeological Assessment of the Southern Portion of the Olmos Basin, Bexar County, Texas,” by Anne Fox, based on a 1975 survey, but the author casts some doubt on its original purpose: “While this structure has been traditionally called a mill,” the report says, “it is rather small for such a structure, and the stream on which it is situated appears to be one of the smallest in the basin in terms of size and flow of water.”

These ruins might have “some connection with the Confederate tannery operation” that made shoes and saddles for the Confederate army from a location in what’s now Brackenridge Park, she wrote. Unfortunately, “no artifacts of any kind were found in the area.”

Anyone who has further information about the rock ruins may contact this column.

MEMORY LANES: Reader Herbert Bludeau, 81, of Boerne wrote about his experience of Tip’s Bowling Lanes (covered here April 26), where Kelly AFB workers and the Belgian-American community met to bowl, eat and drink beer for nearly 20 years.

“From 1944 to 1951, my family lived on Kirk Place, which is just off Frio City Road where Tip’s Place was located,” Bludeau wrote. “My mother and stepfather used to frequent Tip’s to bowl and socialize and ran Tip’s Cafe for a year or so when they were furloughed from their jobs at Kelly AFB. My sister worked in the cafe, too. We bowled there, and I began at age 10 in 1948, to set pins.

“Our family knew (Tip’s owners) Louie and Aggie

Vander Poorten very well. They were very fine people, and Louie gave me my first job.” Pinsetters — before Tip’s went automatic in 1957 —were paid 7 cents per line (game). “If you could handle two lanes,” Bludeau said, “you could make good money for a 10-year-old. Many times, I would set pins until 2 a.m. and then ride my bicycle down Frio City Road home and go to school (at St. John Berchmans Catholic School) the next day.”

SHUTDOWN SUMMER: Readers wrote to share personal reflections on family and overcoming adversity in response to a May 10 column about the polio epidemic of 1946, with reflections on family.

The photo of polio patients in treatment at the

Robert B. Green Hospital hit home with Susan Lisk — the girl in the iron lung, a mechanical respirator for paralyzed patients, was her halfsister. “She lived a full life and had children and grandchildren before she died at age 78,” Lisk wrote. “When she got tired, she had a slight limp and in her later years talked about how post-polio syndrome prevented her from some physical activities.” The photo “was a bit of a shock to see, but it makes me appreciate her even more.”

Lisk, who was born in 1946, doesn’t remember that year’s epidemic but knew “the years of restrictions that followed — maybe not legislated, but there nonetheless — on swimming pools, playing outside in the heat of the day and probably others I was too young to be aware of, before the first trials of vaccine and then the full-scale inoculations and the switch to the oral vaccine. Whole neighborhoods lined up at schools to get the doses needed.”

Grace Neie was only a year old when her mother, then 23, was infected with the polio virus. “Mom was in an iron lung for 18 months and survived, though completely paralyzed for her remaining 15 years,” Neie wrote. “After Mom was stricken, our family moved to my grandparents’ farm.”

Once she was able to breathe on her own, “Mom came home to the farm, where my maternal grandmother, her daughters and Dad cared for her in all ways.” Comparing the midcentury scourge of polio with the present COVID-19 pandemic, Neie said, “It is important that we recall our inner strengths — perhaps instilled in us by our mothers — and stay the course to overcome whatever new challenges arise.”

Leon Ginsberg was a student at Highland Park Elementary in 1946. “Polio epidemics came in waves. The schools were closed, as were parks, swimming pools and movie theaters. Stores were not all closed except for the children’s departments, which reflected the way polio was understood from its other name, ‘infantile paralysis.’ There were scorecards on polio cases including deaths in each morning’s newspaper.

“I remember my grandfather, Papa, then about age 70, not wanting me to go out because, he said in the little English we shared with one another, public health experts called for the avoidance of crowds, much as we are being admonished now.”

Kept at home in 1946, young Ginsberg rode out the summer safely at home reading comic books, including Classics Illustrated. Now 84, he’s still reading a lot as a retired academic, defending against the current pandemic by staying at home in Columbia, S.C.

PAULA ALLEN