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On any weekend in Texas, Czech polka music enlivens dance halls and drinking establishments as well as outdoor church picnics and festivals. The songs heard at these venues are the living music of an ethnic community created by immigrants who started arriving in Central Texas in the mid-nineteenth century from what is now the Czech Republic. Today, the members of this community speak English but their songs are still sung in Czech.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence as the saying goes. The Bohemians, Moravians and Silesians of Central Europe in mid-1800s were a giving culture, however after years of giving your sons to the military service, some returning to help on the farm, some not; years of giving most of your crops to the royalty; giving what little land, IF you owned any, to the royalty as a result of taxation; many of the families, who later be known as Czechs, were looking for a change of scenery. They were tired of giving.

While perusing old Texas newspapers looking for information about dance halls, one comes across a lot of interesting, although sometimes extraneous information. One piece seen over and over in the newspapers in several the counties was the “free wedding dance.” Admittedly, I had heard of it before; but I really didn’t know much about the practice. It’s a practice that is hard to imagine happening in modern times.