For longtime golfers, the reopening of Starcke Park Golf Course means more than just a return to the greens.
As the Barbarossa Trough grew into a modern Texas destination, it never lost the spirit of the old bar that came before it.
Through community and faith, local men are finding support in the struggles many are taught to face alone.
10 GOLF FOR "LUNCH"
For longtime golfers, the reopening of Starcke Park Golf Course means more than just a return to the greens.
16 THE OLD TROUGH, STILL STANDING
As the Barbarossa Trough grew into a modern Texas destination, it never lost the spirit of the old bar that came before it.
22 THE JOURNEY BECOMES THE STORY
Through illness, recovery, family life and publishing, one author continued to choose purpose over defeat.
26 BUILDING BROTHERHOOD
Through community and faith, local men are finding support in the struggles many are taught to face alone.
32 THE TALLOW TREATMENT
Old-school ingredients meet modern grooming in a beard butter recipe built for softness, moisture and hold.
36 FACES OF SEGUIN
Submitted photos from our readers.
38 SAVE THE DATE
See what events are coming up.
Photo by Rushton Skinner
Longtime golfer Armando “Lunch” Rangel takes a swing with the same steady focus and love for the game that have made him a familiar face on the course for years.
Vol. 13, No. 1
SEGUIN MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED TWELVE TIMES A YEAR BY THE SEGUIN GAZETTE.
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Elizabeth Engelhardt
MAGAZINE EDITOR / CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Desiree Gerland
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HAVE STORY IDEAS? LET US KNOW! seguinmagazine@seguingazette.com
Putting together a Men’s Edition is an interesting experience when you realize most men would probably rather wrestle a raccoon than sit down and explain their feelings for a magazine article.
And honestly, that’s part of what makes these stories interesting.
So much of this issue ended up revolving around the things people do instead of the things they say. Golf. Old bars. Beard butter made from beef tallow for reasons I’m still not entirely sure I understand. Men gathering in churches, at barstools, on golf courses, and around routines they’ve probably repeated for years without thinking twice about it.
Somewhere in all of that are stories about discipline, survival, friendship, purpose, and people simply trying to enjoy the life they’ve built. There’s also something very Seguin about it all.
The familiar places. The nicknames that somehow become more recognizable than actual names. The stories that get retold every few years like nobody’s heard them before. The way people here stay connected to the places and routines that shaped them.
And somehow, between all of that, this issue came together into something that feels equal parts thoughtful, strange, nostalgic and undeniably local.
Desiree Gerland Magazine Editor
desiree.gerland@seguingazette.com
Furniture
Interior
Custom
Seguin
Patriotic
July 3rd
Fireworks
PARK GOLF COURSE MEANS MORE THAN JUST A RETURN TO THE GREENS.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY RUSHTON SKINNER
Since 1938, Seguin’s golf course at Starcke Park has been the home course for generations of golfers, fostering early PGA Tour talent with the likes of W. A. “Lefty” Stackhouse and Shelly Mayfield.
For many more lifelong golfers hailing from Seguin, the course has provided an escape on weekends or a place to unwind after work. Some introduced their children to the game there, creating another generation of golfers who grew up around Starcke Park.
Armando “Lunch” Rangel is one of them.
His given name is Armando Rangel but friends call him “Lunch,” a nickname he said has followed him since childhood.
“It was just a nickname that my family gave me when I was a kid,” he said. “Just in the kitchen all the time.”
At 61 years old, Rangel has lived his entire life in Seguin and spent more than half of it playing the city course.
Over that time, he has seen both the course and the city change.
Starcke expanded from nine holes to 18, and Seguin grew around it.
“I mean I’ve seen it grow,” Rangel said. “I said I was 61; seen stuff go up and, like, ‘man, when they put that there?’”
Rangel did not play the game when the course was still nine holes, but he remembers driving through the park and watching the golfers there in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“I saw it when it was a ninehole — I just seen it, I didn’t really play it yet,” Rangel said. “I used to come drive around — all them older gentlemen, Mexicanos, they were all betting, so they were headed for the parking lot.”
Reminiscing on his early memories of the course culture, Rangel laughed as he described what he overheard at the time.
“You could hear ‘em just talking noise to each other, you know? ‘You owe me this, you owe me 10, you owe me five,’ like, ‘why they keep yelling at each other?’” he said. “Because come to think of it, they would always bet 5-10 bucks. That was probably, I want to say, maybe [the] ’80s?”
With a similarly humorous tone, Rangel explained why he didn’t get into the game until later in life.
“Of course, growing up when I was going through high school, junior high, I couldn’t afford to play. People were like — well I’m not gonna say people — but a minority of the Mexicans were like, ‘Man, you can’t afford to play that game. [That game] is high-dollar, man. You gotta be a white dude to play that game,’ you know? But that’s just the way it was back then,” he said.
Once the game got its hooks into him, however, Rangel said it did not take much to keep him coming back.
“When I got in it, it just… it takes that one good shot you hit. It’s an addiction after that, man. It is just addicting after that. ‘Oh man, I can hit it like that.’”
Rangel has worked painting cars for Shannafelt Auto Co. longer than
he has played golf. Once he started playing regularly, Starcke became part of his routine after work.
“Coming to play after work, they would call it an ‘emergency nine,’” he said. “‘Hey, let’s go play an emergency nine,’ you know? So we’d leave from work and everybody would meet up here so we could play before we got home. That’s how I got to play.”
A few years after Rangel started playing, his daughter started asking to come along.
“Well, like I was telling you, we were with the Pan Am, and we’d go play Sunday mornings, and finally, she got old enough to ask, ‘Man, where you going?’” he said. “I said, ‘We’re gonna go play golf.’ One day, she said, ‘I want to play. I wanna go.’ So that’s when it started.”
Rangel said Gabby started playing in the sixth grade. He got her a set of junior clubs and from there, as he put it, “the rest is history.”
Fast forward to the present day and Gabby Rangel is Starcke’s first female golf pro. Standing outside the art deco-style pro shop behind the No. 1 tee box, the resemblance between the two is clear.
During a visit to the course in April, Lunch pointed out some of the changes to the greens.
“The undulations on the greens are just different,” he said. “They’re not gonna make it easy on ‘em.”
Asked how it felt to be back out on the freshly sodded Bermuda grass, Rangel did not hesitate.
“I’d rather be doing this than anything else. Why work, dude?” he said. “I worked all my life and just to… come out and sit around here and hit a golf ball? There’s nothing wrong with that, man.”
For Lunch, Starcke Park has been part of life in Seguin for decades. With the course set to reopen, it may not take long to spot Lunch again. His blue truck and “LUNCH” vanity plate have a way of giving him away.
THE BARBAROSSA TROUGH GREW INTO A MODERN
IT NEVER LOST THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD BAR THAT CAME BEFORE IT.
TSTORY BY ALEX LOWE PHOTOS BY ALEX LOWE AND COURTESY OF CODY REIMER
he Barbarossa Trough has seen its share of changes in more than a century of existence. It originated as a general store built by German immigrant Conrad Baese somewhere around the year 1869. It became a saloon in 1915 and adopted the name “The Barbarossa Trough” in 1967 and morphing into a rural, rustic dive bar.
When one approaches this solitary outpost in the middle of empty fields set far off from any main roads, there is a feeling of being transported back to a time when the West was wild. One can imagine horse-drawn carriages and wagons traversing dusty, dirt roads, with world-weary wanderers in search of an out-of-the-way watering hole. It is almost as if it doesn’t belong here. In
fact, it wasn’t always here in its current location at 8901 Barbarossa Road.
For much of its long history, the building was located about a mile away next to what is currently the Barbarossa Bowling Club, one of the last remaining spots where one can partake in nine-pin bowling, once wildly popular in Germany and across Europe. By the time the Barbarossa Trough passed the century mark, it had fallen into disuse, closing in 2017. Seemingly destined for a visit from a bulldozer, one local man stepped in to save the day.
“My father and I used to go there every Monday night,” said Cody Reimer. “There was a poker tournament, legal, and we would pull in there and have cold beers with Alvin, the previous owner. This was around the year 2012.
So, we just used to go in there, strategize and enjoy ourselves. My dad passed away in 2020. I just had such fond memories of the place and being there with my father. Then about three years ago, I got a call that the building might be for sale. So, I called the owner and made him an offer for more than the property was worth. At that time, it was a shack that had been shut down for eight years and did not look like it had previously. It was being used for storage and there was a cat living in it.”
Once Reimer made the offer, the prior owner needed one condition met before he would accept. The building had to be moved off the owner’s property to a new location.
“The owner lived on the property at the time,” Reimer said. “And his wife did not want a bar on the property. I don’t blame her. The owner told me that the good news was that he would accept the offer, but the bad news was that it would have to be moved somewhere else. Then he told me he had 12 acres about a mile down the street and that he would sell that to me along with the bar and I could move it there. So that was how that happened.”
The purchase was completed in August 2023, leaving Reimer with the challenge of moving the building to its new location. One might expect moving a building that was well over a hundred years old to be challenging. But it was accomplished with relative ease, Reimer said.
“This thing was built right,” he said. “I mean, the other pieces that were added on were in bad shape, but the main bar was solid. Nothing moved. The biggest problem wasn’t structural. It was just so heavy. Once we got it up on the trailer, it wasn’t all that bad. It was on the road for a total of maybe 10 minutes.”
Since reopening the Barbarossa Trough, Reimer has expanded it beyond its humble, compact structure. Inside, the bar area remains faithful to its history, but Reimer has turned it into a much larger complex with an outdoor deck, bar, playground and a stage for musical acts to perform.
“The original was just the bar area, the bathroom and the office area. That was all,” he said.
The location has become a popular spot for artists looking to film music videos. Dierks Bentley, Parker McCollum and Randy Rogers have filmed music videos there. Clay Walker appeared there for a private event.
The Barbarossa Trough of today is a family-friendly spot where people can go to enjoy food, drink and entertainment. But in its earlier incarnation, it was more of a men’s spot to go, have a few drinks and swap stories.
“During the week, especially,” Reimer said, “you’d go in there and it would be just a few guys, most likely friends of Alvin’s, who came in there to have a drink and spend time with their buddies. You might have a wife or two show up but mostly it was a hangout for guys. There was no playground or anything like that — very much an old saloon style vibe to it.”
Now the Barbarossa Trough caters to a broader client base. On a recent Saturday night, the place was filled with families enjoying music by the Gabe Galvan Band on the outdoor stage as kids played on the playground. Inside, the vibe was very much old school as families sat at tables enjoying meals and drinks. Others played in the arcade room.
Carlos Hernandez and Mikey DeLeone from New Braunfels fit the description as they played a game of pool together.
“It is a pretty laid-back vibe in here,” said DeLeone. “We’ve been coming here for a few months now. We were looking for a place to play pool that is outside the city. This place is kind of set out here in a nice location. We just kind of found it.”
That is the way they like it at the Barbarossa Trough.
“We just depend on word of mouth,” said Reimer, a former banker and construction worker. “We are kind of set out here in the middle of the cornfields and we don’t do a whole lot of advertising. We have a web page and we are on Facebook but mostly we are just looking to grow organically.”
TSTORY BY GRIM GILBREATH PHOTOS COURTESY OF QUINTON TAYLOR-GARCIA
he first thing people notice about Quinton Taylor-Garcia is not the long résumé, the military career or even the growing collection of published books. It is the energy. The kind that makes someone lean forward when they talk, laugh easily and somehow make complete strangers feel like old friends within five minutes.
That warmth was hard-earned.
Born in Trinidad and adopted at 9 years old, Taylor-Garcia’s journey eventually brought him to Virginia, where he was raised and where the foundation for his future began to take shape. Over the next two decades, he would serve in both the United States Marine Corps and later the United States Army, building a life centered on discipline, service and perseverance.
But life had plans far more complicated than military drills and morning formations.
Taylor-Garcia was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disorder that causes weakness in voluntary muscles. For many people, the diagnosis would have been enough to force life into park. Taylor-Garcia, however, treated it more like an unexpected detour frustrating, exhausting and absolutely not stopping the trip.
Then came cancer.
Doctors removed a staggering 20-pound tumor from his leg, a sentence that sounds less like a medical procedure and more like something out of a survival movie. Through it all, Taylor-Garcia kept moving forward with the kind of stubborn optimism that has become central to who he is.
Instead of allowing his illness to define him, he decided to write about it.
His book, “The Last Sunset: Journey with Myasthenia Gravis,” was born from the desire to bring awareness to
a disease that often lives in the shadows. What started as one story soon became many. Today, Taylor-Garcia has published more than 30 works ranging from poetry and short stories to fiction, nonfiction and activity books.
“Do a brain dump on paper and it will come together after,” he said with the ease of someone who has learned not to overcomplicate creativity.
That mindset has carried him far. Taylor-Garcia was named a finalist for Author of the Year by the International Impact Book Awards and went on to establish Bamboo Village Publishing, helping create opportunities for writers and storytellers while continuing to expand his own body of work.
And somehow, writing is only part of the story.
Taylor-Garcia has also spent 20 years working in cybersecurity, a passion sparked by an airport security guard who once took the time to explain surveillance systems to a curious 9-year-old boy. That small interaction stayed with him for decades — proof that kindness, especially toward children, has a funny way of echoing through someone’s life.
At home, Taylor-Garcia and his wife, Anh Taylor-Garcia, have built a beautifully busy life together with seven children, two grandchildren and two godchildren. Somewhere between family life, cybersecurity and publishing books, he has also managed to keep his sense of humor intact — which may honestly be his most impressive accomplishment.
His advice for aspiring writers reflects the same resilience that shaped his life.
“Continue to fail. That’s how you continue to learn,” he said.
And perhaps that is what makes Quinton Taylor-Garcia’s story resonate so deeply. It is not simply a story about survival. It is about choosing joy anyway. Choosing purpose anyway. Choosing to keep writing new chapters, even after life hands you a few you never asked for.
“The journey is sometimes more important than the destination,” he said.
For Taylor-Garcia, the journey itself has become the inspiration.
THROUGH COMMUNITY AND FAITH, LOCAL MEN ARE FINDING SUPPORT IN THE STRUGGLES MANY ARE TAUGHT TO FACE ALONE.
BSTORY BY BIANCA RAWLINGS
PHOTOS BY VICTORIA GAYTAN
efore Tom Crick ever led a men’s ministry in Seguin, he spent decades as the kind of man such a ministry might be built for. As an aerospace electrical engineer with more than 22 years in senior management across high-tech industries globally, Crick was, by most measures, successful. He was also, he said, an atheist.
“I was an atheist from the time I was 15 until I was 40,” Crick said. “I wasn’t a pastor all my life.”
Today, Crick serves as a pastor at Crossroads Church on West U.S. Highway 90, where he is building what he describes as a full men’s ministry — something much more than a monthly breakfast or a weekly meetup.
“It goes way beyond a men’s group,” Crick said. “It’s the whole men’s ministry.”
The shift from engineer to pastor
didn’t happen overnight. It began in the mid-1990s when Crick was on a corporate transfer to Fort Worth and found himself drawn to a small church of about 60 people. He noticed something different in a handful of the men there — men who were present with their families, who seemed at peace, who had something he couldn’t immediately name.
“I saw this one guy and I thought, boy, he’s got something,” Crick said.
That man, he learned, was a former pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. When Crick visited his home, there wasn’t a single piece of memorabilia on the walls, only crosses and pictures of Christ.
“I said, whatever that is, I probably need it,” Crick said.
Those men spent the next several years walking alongside him without judgment, without pressure. One
traveled with him regularly for work and answered every question Crick brought him.
“He would just say, ‘That’s really interesting,’” Crick said. “He never belittled me. He just walked with me for about three years.”
It was in that group that Crick accepted Christ. He went on to spend 20 years at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California — the congregation built by Pastor Rick Warren that was once the largest church in America — where he built the men’s ministry and co-authored a foundational book on the subject, “Sleeping Giant,” published by Lifeway in 2008. He has since served churches across the country as an executive pastor and consultant. Now, at Crossroads, he is doing what he has spent a career doing: getting men into community.
“Men become men in the company of other men,” Crick said. “When you get men in community, they have the chance to share with one another in a safe place where they may even have some God connections with someone who has a similar kind of struggle.”
He points to five areas he said men universally share: leading their families, dealing with temptation, cultivating healthy male friendships, navigating male-female relationships and resisting what he calls the pull of culture — a long list of what he described as “isms,” including materialism, individualism and hedonism.
“What’s happening to a man who’s a cultural man as opposed to a guy who’s chasing after a Christlike life?” Crick said. “That’s dealing with all the isms.”
At Crossroads, the men’s ministry is structured around a clear pathway: Get in, get healthy, get strong, get going.
“Get in means getting connected with the community of guys where they can reveal, be transparent and authentic, and really deal with the real stuff,” Crick said. “Then you can really get them healthy.”
The entry point is a men’s gathering held the first Saturday of every month at the church, where a $5 breakfast is available. From there, men are connected to weekly small groups offered at various times and locations across the area.
“There’s really no excuse not to get into a men’s group,” Crick said.
In early June, the ministry will host a Beast Feast, an outdoor gathering where men bring their own meat, the church provides sides, and the evening includes a short message and intentional table activities designed to encourage connection. Crick said seasoned group leaders will be placed at tables to help newcomers find their footing. A men’s conference is also planned for November, focused on spiritual growth and identity.
“We’re raising up men who are really godly men who can take on leadership mantles,” Crick said, “so that we no longer have those men who are just causing more chaos in society, but taking a whole different direction.”
He is careful to distinguish that kind of transformation from simple behavior modification. A man can attend a breakfast, hear a message and go home unchanged, Crick said. That’s not what he’s after.
“We’re addressing the lifestyle and the identity of a man in Christ, not just the behavior,” Crick said. “Behavior is the outgrowth of who he thinks he is and who he thinks he belongs to.”
He returns often to the model he sees in the way Jesus moved through the world.
“Jesus walked with them,” Crick said. “Guys followed him down the road. Every now and then, they’d sit on a bunch of rocks and he’d speak to them. But he walked with them. He just said come and see.”
Since launching the men’s gathering at Crossroads, attendance has grown from eight men to nearly 50. Crick said the growth is encouraging, but the work is personal — one man at a time.
As a surprise to no one, I often think about experiments and new kinds of food to make between articles. Recently, I’ve been on a huge kick with beef tallow. It’s such an amazing resource to have in the kitchen. As most of you probably know, beef tallow is rendered fat from cattle that is typically filtered and purified. It has a consistency similar to coconut oil, an extremely slight beefy odor, and is just chock full of all kinds of vitamins and minerals. Cooking with it is close to using bacon fat or the aforementioned coconut oil, but it really seems to round out flavors better along with being better for you. I’ve also been baking
with it. It’s a great substitute for butter or shortening in cookie recipes as well. For this month's edition, I wanted to make something that men can use daily to not only help but improve life. Then I had a thought. I use beard care products every day. I cannot stress how important it is to use oils and butters daily for not only a healthy and soft beard, but for better skin as well. With all of the naturally occurring vitamins in beef tallow, it’s awesome for your skin, and with a few extra, simple ingredients, we can make something great for the hair as well. I hope y’all get a lot of great use out of this simple but effective beard butter recipe.
- INGREDIENTS -
¾ cup beef tallow
¼ cup shea butter
2 fl. oz jojoba or argon oil
2 oz bee’s wax
¼ fl. oz each of preferred scented essential oils (I used tea tree and cedar)
1: In a pan, over low heat, mix all ingredients except for the essential oils. Get all the ingredients melted completely until you have a clear, homogeneous mixture. Transfer the mixture to a stainless bowl and add your scented oils.
2: Using a whisk, mix constantly as the butter cools. This allows for the butter to set soft instead of becoming a hard block and keeps it easier to use. The mixture will slowly turn white and thicken as it cools.
3: Once the butter has reached the consistency of a thick caramel, it’s ready to be transferred to a jar. This beard butter will keep at room temperature indefinitely. I keep it in my cabinet with my other oils.
I use this for my own beard every day and have definitely noticed a huge difference in softness. Even from commercial brands, this seems so much better, especially for the skin. Not only can you use it for yourself, but it also makes a great gift for friends and family. So, go wild and introduce everyone you know to this awesome recipe!
For five consecutive Sunday evenings in June, bands and music groups will take center stage in the Central Park bandstand. Performances will include a mix of music with a final patriotic concert that salutes veterans and active military. Concerts begin at 7 p.m. JUNE 7 - Comal Community Band (Instrumental),
JUNE 14 - Los Souldees (Tejano), JUNE 21 - Elevate (Classic Rock & Blues), JUNE 28 - MusicFoYaSoul (R&B, Old School Funk), JULY 5 - San Antonio Symphonic Band (Instrumental).
Location: Central Park, 201 S. Austin St.
TEXAS A&M CHEMISTRY ROADSHOW: NINTH – 10:30 AM - 12 PM
This summer, GVEC is excited to partner with Marion Independent School District to welcome back this engaging and interactive presentation. Designed for students in third through 12th grade, as well as adult learners, making it a fun and educational summer activity for all ages. Community members are encouraged to attend and share the event with family, friends and local organizations. For additional information, visit Texas A&M Chemistry Roadshow or contact Kasie Tankersley at ktankersley@gvec.org.
Location: Marion Primary School Campus Cafeteria, 306 S. Cunningham St., Marion
FATHER'S DAY CANDLE-MAKING CLASS: THIRTEENTH – 1 - 3 PM
Celebrate Father’s Day with a hands-on candle-making class where you’ll create a one-of-a-kind keepsake just for Dad. Choose his favorite scents, from warm, woodsy notes to bold, bourbon-inspired fragrances and design a candle he’ll actually love. Make something meaningful, share a fun experience and give a gift that lasts. Reserve your spot and create a memorable treasure for your dad!
Location: Blue Lotus Winery, 5151 FM 20
THIRD THURSDAY: EIGHTEENTH – 10 AM - 8 PM
Enjoy food, music and shopping. We’re all open until 8 p.m. and offering great deals and fun. Find shop and restaurant specials galore throughout downtown. Location: Central Park, 201 S. Austin St. - JULY -
SEGUIN CRAFT BEER FEST: THIRD – 5 - 8 PM
The second annual Seguin Chamber Craft Beer & Wine Fest is where you'll explore a wide selection of unique brews and carefully curated wines from regional makers, delicious eats and community spirit. Whether you're a craft connoisseur or just curious, there’s something for everyone at this exciting new event. The event will be held indoors. Early bird tickets are available until June 15. VIP tickets and general admission tickets are sold online and at the door. Visit www.seguinchamber.com/events for more info.
Location: Seguin Coliseum, 950 S. Austin St.
