Sunday afternoons meant softball, swimming
Wilson County News, August 25, 2010
BY Julia Castro
Apple Pie and Salsa

 

Not long ago, I wrote about how my family got together almost every Sunday at my parents' home. Of course, I was talking about a span of many years. Naturally, there were Sundays when the kids were growing up that we attended other functions.

 

Sometime during the years that Henry ran Castro Falstaff, he sponsored a men's softball team in the summer. We would go to the games on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes they played on a field on the Fred Juarez property. Sometimes the games were out of town.

 

The name of the team was the Falstaff Falcons. Recently I found a shirt that I had tucked away in a drawer, and I remembered those Sunday afternoon games. Mostly I enjoyed watching the fans, more than the game itself. There was one woman who could out-talk anybody there — man or woman. Her name was Belén. There wasn't any remark thrown at her that she wouldn't come back with a smarter quip. "No la dejaban callada."

 

Henry remembers a couple of the players. One of them was Belén's son. We wonder how many of those players are still around. Henry and I would love to hear from them.

 

Another Sunday afternoon activity was taking the kids to Starcke Park in Seguin to go swimming. There was no pool around here, except for the one at the exclusive country club. I have never seen it myself, but some of our boys got chased away from there once. They never went back.

 

With so many kids, it was hard to keep an eye on all of them at the same time. I never learned to swim, so sometimes I would just watch them from the side of the pool.

 

Once, I couldn't see Sara, and I started to panic. I started yelling at the other kids, "Sara! Where's Sara?" Then I felt her tugging at my hand. She had been standing next to me the whole time. Oh, the sustos that a mother goes through.
 

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The significance of a trophy
Wilson County News, July 04, 2012
Apple Pie and Salsa
By Julia Castro
 

I had thought it had only been about a year since I wrote about the Falstaff Falcons, but after going through my binder, I found that it was actually August of 2010. After the article was published, my sons asked me why I had not mentioned all the trophies the Falcons had won. Of course! How could I have forgotten all the trophies that filled the shelves on two walls of Henry's little office at the warehouse? Henry says that they were all either first- or second-place trophies. Since the team existed for several years, there were different players through the years.

 

Some time after my story came out, there was a knock at our front door. It was my friend, María Barrera (not to be mistaken for Mary Barrera from Head Start), holding an 8-by-10 picture in a frame. It was one of the teams. She wanted to share it with us. Her husband Robert "Boy" also played with the Falcons, but is not in this group. I told her I would do a follow-up on the story. It has taken me almost two years.

 

After Henry turned over the warehouse to his brother, Reynaldo, he stored the trophies at the Flieller warehouse on B Street, at Sonny's invitation.

 

Eventually, the better trophies were donated to the Little League organization. They would clean them up and replace the inscriptions before awarding them. Henry took some home and put them in the casita that we had out back. Leonard remembers that once when a group of Boy Scouts from San Antonio came to camp out at the pasture that Henry was leasing on the Blake property, our boys and their cousins formed a team and played a game of baseball against the Scouts. Our boys' team won, but Henry still gave a trophy to the other team. Leonard says they didn't think it was fair. But it was a nice gesture on Henry's part. He was trying to instill good sportsmanship in the Castro boys.

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COURTESY/ Wilson County News 2010 & 2012