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San Antonio's cultural experience museum..
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Chinese Texans: Bowles Hub Bowles' Story Hub Bowles, the fifth son in father Hub Bowles's family, was born in Uvalde on October 13, 1882, a Friday. Friends later said this birth date did not endow young Hub with unusually bad luck but certainly made possible a long list of creative experiences, such as being the first on the scene to any shooting, fight, celebration, or picnic in town—nearly always. And he could think up a lot on his own. Later in life he related his experiences, including his and a friend's dealings with a Chinese laundryman in Uvalde, probably around 1892. "We kids used to go over to the old Chinaman's laundry on Camp Street and talk to him, of a day. His name was Lee. We liked the old fellow, and he taught us to talk a little Chinese, such as counting; but some nights, we would tie dead cats on his door and sneak away. "One night we had made our rounds and tied a dead cat on his door and had got clean up to the Sewell and Estes saloon when we looked around, and that old Chinaman was right behind us with a knife as long as your arm and coming right at us. We darted through that saloon with that old Chink right behind us, but we finally out-dodged him. That broke us from calling on him any more." A local storyteller later suggested that Mr. Lee was just carrying out his own joke and stopped in the bar for a drink, having fully accomplished his purposes. Source: One recounting of this story, the above quotation, is from Florence Fenley's Oldtimers of Southwest Texas , in the "Son of Oldtimer, Hub Bowles" chapter, largely autobiography dictated by an older man remembering his experiences as a child. The book was published by Hornby Press of Uvalde in 1957. The later "local storyteller" requests anonymity, thinks there was a Chinese laundry in town at the time, confirms that young boys did find creative uses for dead cats on occasion, and was interviewed by John L. Davis in 1976 (Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio).
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