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Aerospace field of dreams
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Duad-M staff
Quad-M employees display some of the devices they have built for use in space, including hardware to hold and deploy small cube satellites. From left are machinist Michael Morrelli, CEO Tyler Holden, president Gina Reat, production manager Chris Moore, machinist John Velazquez, shop foreman Bob Picard, vice president of engineering Alex Kuehn and engineer Mandy Hiett. Photo courtesy Quad-M

In an unassuming building amid farmland near McDade, the small manufacturing company Quad-M is creating high-flying systems for use in space

By Melissa Segrest

The rural landscape about a mile west of the community of McDade cradles an unlikely business. The aerospace engineering and manufacturing firm Quad-M has turned its little piece of northern Bastrop County countryside into a field of outer space dreams.

There’s no sign outside the company’s nearly windowless, cream-colored metal building on narrow Old Highway 20, just a stone’s throw from traffic hurtling along U.S. 290. Farm buildings dot the landscape. On a recent workday, a couple of Chevy Silverados and low-key SUVs sat in the small caliche parking lot. There are no flashy sports cars here.

Thanks to Victor Dube, McDade students made, watched launch of their own cube satellites »
More aerospace businesses in the Bluebonnet region »

 

The 8,000-square-foot facility looks as if it could house farm equipment, not high-tech machinery. But you can’t judge a cutting-edge space company by its terrestrial shell.

What starts here ends up 250 miles or higher above the Earth. 

Inside the building, Quad-M’s team of nine full-time engineers, machinists and other skilled employees create devices for out-of-this-world experiences. They design, manufacture, test and assemble systems that hold, then eject, very small satellites into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station or from rockets, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and spacecraft such as Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus. Its in-demand aerospace systems have deployed more than 300 cube satellites, or CubeSats, on more than 20 launches. 

The company’s inventive devices have helped speed the pace of pushing these multifaceted mini-satellites into space. Quad-M is a 21st century ideas-into-space-delivery business.

The smallest one-unit CubeSat is about 4 inches square, weighs only a few pounds and can sit in the palm of your hand. Quad-M’s hardware and devices vary in shape and size to hold different-sized CubeSats. A typical Quad-M dispenser holds 3-unit satellites — a few inches longer than a loaf of bread. The biggest CubeSat dispenser the company built can hold a 16-unit satellite. 

cube sat dispenser
Quad-M designed and built the systems that deploy cube satellites from the International Space Station in 2015, at left. The company’s system has deployed more than 300 small satellites from the space station. Photo courtesy NASA

CubeSats aren’t the only payload Quad-M’s systems can shoot into space: employees are currently fabricating a deployment system for a device weighing over 1,600 pounds. 

Cube satellites are used by research students, scientists, governments or private companies for communication, technology testing, research and Earth observation. The small satellites study the planet for a multitude of reasons: to monitor weather patterns, measure solar flares, assess disasters like floods or fires, plan roads or maritime transportation lanes, examine environmental concerns, and strengthen military defenses and border security.  

Commercial users deploy CubeSats for tasks as varied as studying parking lot activity at stores and helping farmers with their planting. Two CubeSats were sent by NASA to soar above Mars in 2018.

Commercial needs for the small satellites — which are exponentially less expensive to build and launch than their earlier counterparts, some of which weighed in at more than a ton — have created a growing and lucrative field. 

Most of Quad-M’s aerospace competitors are big companies with equally big budgets. But bigger isn’t always better. In fact, it can be slower, more expensive, less flexible and not as innovative. And Quad-M — now employee-owned — continues to innovate, fueled by the vision and drive of its late founder, McDade native Victor Dube. 

 

Tyler & Victor
Tyler Holden, left, and Quad-M founder Victor Dube in 2018 in Dulles, Va., at the Orbital ATK facility. They were checking the fit of their first Slingshot bracket, the golden structure behind them, on the front of the Cygnus spacecraft. The Slingshot, built by Quad-M, is used to deploy cube satellites into orbit. Orbital ATK, which produced the Cygnus spacecraft, was later purchased by Northrop Grumman.

Dube was born in Elgin in 1941 and grew up in a log cabin on a cattle farm. At Elgin High School, one counselor told him he was “not college material.” Despite that pessimistic prediction, Dube earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Marquette University in Wisconsin.

In 1972, he started working at Austin-based Tracor, a defense electronics contractor. There, Dube helped develop countermeasure defense systems for aircraft and missiles. After Tracor, he founded Quad-M in 1989 and first tried his hand at building superchargers that could quickly add extra horsepower to vehicles. 

The name Quad-M was probably a reference to the four manufacturing machines the company had in its early days, said Bob Picard, who started working with Dube in 1990 and now is the company’s shop foreman.

Dube dreamed of developing aerospace technology and made that shift at Quad-M in 2012.  

The company’s big space breakthrough came in 2014. Dube worked with Mike Johnson, co-founder of Nanoracks, a service provider for space missions, to design and build the first commercially operated device to deploy cube satellites from the International Space Station. That system, which is still in use, has launched more than 300 CubeSats from the crewed space station orbiting 250 miles above the Earth. 

When propelled into space from a metal chute, the satellites resemble long shoeboxes, dwarfed by the massive station.           

You can watch a video of a 2014 deployment in action on YouTube, at 
bit.ly/3mz6zxU.

From that beginning, Dube and his team created a variety of systems to shoot satellites into space. 

Working in conjunction with Johnson’s next company, SEOPS, Quad-M created the Slingshot system to attach to the front of a Cygnus cargo spacecraft. After separating from the space station, Cygnus can travel another 80 miles higher in orbit before ejecting CubeSats. That extra distance helps the satellites stay in orbit longer. 

Dube and his co-workers even patented a new type of leaf spring that can fold flat to eject satellites with plenty of force. They also did miscellaneous non-aerospace manufacturing when time allowed.   

While at Quad-M, Dube found time to instill interest in rocket science with a few far-reaching projects for McDade ISD students. (See story, Page 23.)

Victor Dube in the 1970s
Above, Victor Dube, the founder of Quad-M, in the 1970s when he worked at Tracor, the defense electronics contractor in Austin. Photos courtesy Judith Dube

Dube died at 80 on Jan. 24, 2022. His wife of 56 years, Judith Dube is a retired teacher and still lives in the McDade area. Their three children have had accomplished careers: Mark Dube is a mechanical engineer at BAE in Austin (formerly Tracor), Shawn Dube is an electrical engineer at Dell and Michal Dube, who worked as operations manager for Quad-M for several years. There are 10 grandchildren.  


“Victor's guidance, kind nature and formidable engineering abilities were outstanding examples to follow for anyone lucky enough to work with him,” said Tyler Holden, who joined the company in 2014 and became Quad-M’s CEO in 2022. “It was an absolute privilege to learn from him for so long, and I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the chance.”

Holden, 36, of Bastrop, is originally from Maine. He credits the encouragement of a high school teacher for his initial exploration of 3-D computer-aided design. With a bachelor’s degree in electromechanical engineering from Vermont Tech and some work at a big company under his belt, he came to Texas looking for a job in the aerospace industry. 

He liked Victor Dube, Quad-M’s size and the fact the company had its own machine shop. “You learn a lot about design from the machinists and an experienced engineer like Victor,” he said.

Alex Kuehn is the company’s 28-year-old vice president of engineering. She grew up in Wisconsin, studied aerospace engineering in Arizona, built prototype aircraft in Minnesota and worked briefly at a small rocket propulsion company in Utah before talking to Dube in 2018. “I knew the opportunity to work on stuff that would go to space was too good to pass up. So I packed up my life and moved to Texas.” 

Tyler Holden
CEO Tyler Holden with some components made at Quad-M: the model of a 3-unit cube satellite and one for the smallest ‘CubeSat,’ a lightweight 4-inch by 4-inch device. The models are the same size and weight as the functional satellites and are used for testing. Sarah Beal photo

Today, she focuses on product design and analysis, business development of Quad-M and helping establish the new Xterra line of aerospace products.

She, too, spoke of Dube’s impact on the company and the industry.

“Victor was an innovator, a dreamer and an exceptional engineer, but most importantly, he was a great person who took care of people,” Kuehn said. “By the time Victor passed away, he was largely responsible for deploying more satellites than any other single individual we’re aware of.” 

Gina Reat of Giddings, Quad-M’s president, has worked there seven years. “If it’s not engineering or machining, it’s my job,” she said, “which means accounting, purchasing, receivables, human resources, janitor and whatever else needs doing.” 

“When Victor passed away we were all devastated. Not only did we lose our boss, but a leader, friend, father figure and encourager,” Reat said. But Quad-M employees kept going. “That’s when we realized the importance of the legacy Victor left us. We are still in business because he created a culture of training and teamwork.”

Alex Kuehn
 Alex Kuehn, Quad-M’s vice president of engineering, shows the way the company’s patented ‘leaf spring’ device can fold down to eject satellites into space. Sarah Beal photo

Bob Picard of McDade, shop foreman and quality manager, started working with Dube in 1990. “I’ve done every job in the shop: training new employees, programming, setting up and running all the machines,” he said. Chris Moore of Bastrop, the production manager, started in 1996. 

There are two other machinists, and a new engineer started last year. As of late April, Quad-M had a job opening for another engineer. 

In addition, a small number of contractors bring specialized skills in software, aerospace, mechanical or electrical engineering to Quad-M’s components.

Inside Quad-M, projects usually start in the engineers’ room. Each works in front of multiple screens, converting what may begin as a sketch of a rough concept into detailed 3D renderings of components. 

The action then moves to the 4,000-square-foot machine shop, where machinists operate four computer-programmed milling machines and two lathes that precisely control the shaping and shaving of aluminum or stainless steel pieces destined for space. 

The shop’s white floor suggests laboratory cleanliness, while barrels of metal filings are a reminder that this work is as tough as it is sophisticated. Several employees who operate the machines learned to manage the production processes under Dube’s watchful eyes. 

Precision is essential, so a measuring machine compares finished pieces to engineers’ requirements. Some features must be accurate to within .0005 of an inch. A fine human hair, by contrast, is about .0015 of an inch. 

The final in-house steps for hardware happen in the assembly area, which grew to 3,000 square feet in 2019. There, employees scrutinize finished pieces, some of which have just returned from outside vendors after receiving specialized coatings to reduce friction or damage from space travel. Hardware and parts are cleaned and assembly begins. 

Inside Quad-M
Quad-M’s 4,000-square-foot machine shop, computer-programmed milling machines and lathes turn pieces of aluminum or stainless steel into hardware for space. Sarah Beal photo
Exterior of Quad-M
The exterior of Quad-M’s unassuming workplace near McDade.

Sensors and cameras allow employees to test how a satellite will move or tilt when it flies out of a dispenser. Quad-M employees take their hardware to facilities in Austin, Houston, Dallas or California to undergo testing for launch readiness. That includes tests to withstand extreme vibration and sudden rapid acceleration or deceleration. “The force of, say, a car smashing into a wall, or more. It can be pretty aggressive,” Kuehn said.

Now, new cutting-edge components are being created under the brand of Xterra, Quad-M’s recently formed parent company. Xterra has four patents pending on new aerospace products, Kuehn said.   

More potential customers are reaching out to Quad-M as its reputation grows. 

Chris Moore
Production manager Chris Moore does the complex work of programming one of the company’s machines. Sarah Beal photo

For now, though, the company will stay tucked away on Old Highway 20. There’s still some room to expand in the metal building, although eventually a new, larger facility will probably be needed. 

Holden and Kuehn hope the company will continue to grow, but not too fast.

The group maintains Dube’s vision, that a smaller team is better. Jobs they finish in months would take years for bigger companies to complete, they say. “We’re probably the smallest company that does this,” Holden said.

“There are times we’re working on stuff and we say ‘Gosh, I wish Victor were here to see this,’ ” Kuehn said. “I think he would be proud of what we’re doing now.

“On some level he wanted to show the aerospace industry what we could do. That we have all these capabilities.”

Being part of the space industry was exciting for Dube and his team. Whenever they had the chance, employees would gather to watch live video of their equipment shoot satellites into space. 

 

Astronauts Christina Koch, left, and Jessica Meir
Astronauts Christina Koch, left, and Jessica Meir on the International Space Station after completing the 2019 installation of the Slingshot satellite dispenser system. The system was created by Quad-M and SEOPS, a service provider for space missions. The two astronauts made history in 2019 by making the first all-female spacewalk, outside the International Space Station. Photo courtesy NASA

Today is a time of big ideas about the evolution of space exploration. The Artemis program includes plans to return humans to the moon in 2025, using NASA’s Orion spaceship and Space X’s massive Starship, which is the most powerful rocket ever to fly. A planned permanent base on the moon would set the stage for humans’ first mission to Mars. 

Quad-M’s employees think about the possibility of sending devices far enough out to orbit the moon, Mars and maybe even Venus. “I’ve always wanted to set altitude records,” Holden said. 

Do aerospace engineers dream of going into space? 

“Is it always in the back of my mind? Yeah,” Kuehn said.

“Yeah, I do,” Holden said. “I wouldn’t think twice about it. My wife would probably yell at me, but, yes.”

No one recalls Victor Dube saying he would like to go into space. He was a practical man whose vision was for the world to discover the aerospace breakthroughs taking place in the building off Old Highway 20.  

That’s how he probably wanted Quad-M to continue: Onward and upward.

***

Thanks to Victor Dube, McDade students made, watched launch of their own cube satellites


By Melissa Segrest

Victor Dube, the founder of Quad-M, loved his hometown of McDade and its very small school district of about 330 students.

He wanted to give students a taste of creating something for outer space, just like the engineers and machinists were doing at his company. So he helped them build cube satellites, one of which was later ferried by a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station, for launch into low-Earth orbit — a school project for the cosmos.

“The first year he went to the McDade school to recruit students, the high school students didn’t want to give up their summer,” said Judith Dube, Victor’s wife. “So the middle school students took part.”

Colby Miller was 9 when he started working on the project in 2018. “When Colby wanted to go back to school in the summer, I had to wonder what he was up to,” said Joey Miller, Colby’s father and a member of the McDade ISD School Board. “When he told me they were building a satellite, I said ‘Don’t get me in trouble here.’ ”

Colby and eight other students — all in middle school — worked through that summer and into the school year designing and assembling two cube satellites.

Dube showed the students how to use computer-aided design software to develop specifications. He took them to the Quad-M facility to show them how the small satellite components are made.

Using their schematics, the company’s machinists and others helped the students create two reflector-covered, simple-but-functional CubeSats, as they are called in the aeronautics industry.

Because Quad-M makes devices that deploy CubeSats into space, when Dube learned that one of its dispensers scheduled for an orbital flight wasn’t full, he got one of the students’ CubeSats on board.

McDade residents raised money to help the students and their parents travel to Florida’s Cape Canaveral to see their creation launch in December 2018. It was a cloud-nine field trip.

When the high schoolers learned what the middle school students had built, they wanted in on the spaceflight action. So Dube repeated the program, allowing three interested high school students to build their own CubeSat and travel to Florida to see its launch. Dube died in January 2022 at 80.

“Assembling the satellite was a cool experience — seeing it all come together with everyone,” Colby Miller said. Now he is 14, and more interested in playing basketball and being a teenager, his father said,  “but he’s also interested in architecture now, in designing and building something.”

Students from McDade ISD
Students from McDade ISD traveled to Florida in 2018 to watch a cube satellite they helped create launch on a SpaceX rocket that carried it to the International Space Station. The special school project was the brainchild of Quad-M founder Victor Dube, who worked with the students. The students and two chaperones flank astronaut Anna Lee Fisher (in blue), who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1984. From left are Tristan Ledlie, Colby Miller, Michael Pruett, James Dube, Jessica Dube (the two are Victor and Judith Dube’s grandchildren), Kelsey Dube, parent Carolyn Mitchell, Juliana Alejo, Jocelyn Howard, parent Barbara Marchbanks and Josh Dube. Photo by Amanda Miller

More aerospace businesses in the Bluebonnet region

By Alyssa Meinke

QUAD-M ISN’T the only company in the Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative service area with aerospace-related missions. Within a 100-mile radius of the small McDade-area business are three other space technology companies.

X-Bow Systems Inc., which makes solid rocket motors and defense technologies, announced earlier this year the opening of a rocket manufacturing campus 4 miles north of Luling in Caldwell County. 

x-Bow rocket
X-Bow tests its Bolt rocket at New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range in July 2022. The company is building a testing and manufacturing facility near Luling in Caldwell County. Photo courtesy of X-Bow Systems

The campus is being built on a portion of land that was previously Caldwell County Carter Memorial Airport. The company also plans to use land nearby on FM 2984. X-Bow has announced it plans to invest $25 million to develop 150 acres on which it will build, manufacture and test rockets on the properties. The company also promises the facility will bring dozens of jobs to the area.

Development of the Caldwell County facility began last year and is expected to be finished in the next two years. The site is already in use with a completed hangar and multiple rocket test pads. Using 3D-printed materials, X-Bow creates solid-fuel rocket motors and launch vehicles for national defense labs and a U.S. Department of Defense agency. Solid rocket engines are used as boosters to launch satellites or other objects on orbital and suborbital flights. The company also manufactures propellants and motors, and offers launch services. 

The New Mexico-based company, founded in 2016, touts its innovative, cost-effective products. It also has facilities in Alabama, California, Colorado and Washington, D.C. 

Another aerospace industry manufacturer that has operated in the Bluebonnet region for decades is HDL Research Lab in Brenham, in Washington County. The company, which manufactures electronics for converting power voltage for use in military defense aerospace applications, was founded in 1973 by Heinz D. Lichtenberg. Its products are used in radars, digital instrument panels, guidance systems and electronic warfare systems. The Brenham-based business worked with NASA to supply products for NASA’s Lidar In-Space Technology Experiment, which studied Earth’s atmosphere and global climate, and was launched in space in September 1994. Since then, it is focused primarily on products for aircraft and spacecraft for the Department of Defense. 

The company is now run by Lichtenberg’s son, Kai Lichtenberg, and employs more than 130 people in its 88,000-square-foot facility, where staff design and manufacture its products, a mile north of downtown Brenham. 

The third aerospace industry business in the Bluebonnet region is SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.), the well-known rocket manufacturer/launcher and satellite communications company owned by Elon Musk. According to a job posting and comments from a SpaceX representative at a public meeting, SpaceX plans to use its Bastrop County-based facility to manufacture equipment for Starlink, its affiliated satellite-based broadband internet system.

In an unassuming building amid farmland near McDade, the small manufacturing company Quad-M is creating high-flying systems for use in space.

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In an unassuming building amid farmland near McDade, the small manufacturing company Quad-M is creating high-flying systems for use in space; plus, other aerospace companies in the region
More than 600 Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative members and guests filled The Silos on 77 event center...
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Everybody's happy: Welcome to another polka weekend
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Mollie B band
Mollie B and SqueezeBox with Ted Lange, right, is an award-winning, popular polka band that tours the nation, making regular stops in Texas during their winter 2023 tour.

Immigrants brought polka to Texas generations ago, and the beat goes on. Devotees of all ages still swirl around dance floors across the Bluebonnet region

By Clayton Stromberger

It’s early on a Friday night in Fayette County, and the grassy parking lot of the Round Top Rifle Hall is already full. This evening’s special event is sold out: a four-hour show by Mollie B and SqueezeBox, an Ohio-based polka band, in the middle of its much-anticipated annual winter tour through the polka hot spots of Texas. Inside the 141-year-old hall — lovingly cared for by members of the Round Top Schützen Verein, or shooting society, formed by the community’s German immigrants in 1873 — recorded polka music plays over the loudspeakers, and folks chat, greet friends and take their reserved spots at the tables lining the wooden dance floor. 

The crowd is a mix of local residents, polka lovers from communities near and far, old-timers serenely surveying the scene and families with young children. Schützen Verein members sell cold Shiner Bock longnecks at the far end of the hall for $3 (cash only), and a dinner waits to be served during a break. 

 Then the four-member band takes the stage. After a few words of greeting, it’s time for the polka party to begin. The unmistakable sound of a push-button accordion kicks in with a cheery whoosh of bellows-driven air, and two voices singing in close harmony — bandleader Mollie Busta Lange and husband Ted Lange — glide above the brisk drumbeat and bouncy bass line:

Let’s … dance … the polka …

Twirling around the floor

We’ll all clap our hands
    and we’ll shout for more

Doing the party polka …

The best dancers are up first, hopping eagerly out of the hall’s metal folding chairs and hitting the floor with gusto. Within seconds their feet move in perfect sync: one-two-three … one-two-three … one-two-three... 

Others follow their lead, and the hall becomes a swirl of movement. Older couples who’ve danced together since they were first courting take hands and begin working their way slowly around the floor – the knees may not move like they used to, but the steps are instinctive after so many years, so many dances. A dad in cowboy boots dances sweetly with his young daughter, while a mom and her young son spin around the floor, inventing their own steps as they go. A grandfather smiles as he dances with his granddaughter. Weaving between the dancers, Michael Sacks — one of the event organizers — shakes some sawdust from a can onto the floor, seeking just the right amount to provide glide.

Gary McKee
Gary E. McKee
of Fayetteville is a polka expert and editor of Texas Polka News.

“Everybody’s happy!” said polka expert and Texas Polka News editor, photographer and chief correspondent Gary E. McKee of Fayetteville, watching with approval from near the stage. “Everybody.”

Every weekend is a polka weekend in the Bluebonnet region, if you know where to look. 

Somewhere in these parts, on any given Friday night to Sunday afternoon, the sounds and melodies carried across the ocean from Central and Eastern Europe generations ago are ringing out — perhaps from the stage of an old SPJST or American Legion dance hall, or at a wedding anniversary celebration or even from a kitchen radio tuned to a weekly polka show. Wherever polka plays, you can be sure someone within earshot reaches for a dance partner.

“It’s a lively music,” said polka legend Alfred Vrazel, a resident of Buckholts in Milam County who played in his own polka band for decades. His weekly radio show has beamed polka into parts of the Bluebonnet region from KMIL-FM in Cameron since 1955. “Happy music for happy people,” he said.

The Texas polka culture began with the Czechs, Germans and Poles who immigrated to Texas in the 19th and early 20th century, bringing their music and favorite dances — and sometimes even their musical instruments — with them. Historians debate the origins of polka, but many believe the dance, which may have evolved as a fast version of a waltz, came to life in a village in Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. By the 1840s polka was one of the hottest dances in Europe and “polkamania” hit the big ballrooms of Paris. 

“Polka was big in parts of Texas in the first half of the 1900s through the 1970s,” McKee, 69, said. “It was the culture, it was the old country, it was the sound their families grew up with in Central Europe. The Czech language, for example, was spoken quite frequently as a first language up until the 1950s. When I was growing up in Schulenburg, some of my friends spoke German or Czech until they got to grade school.”

Polka’s rise in areas of Texas was mirrored by its growing fan base in the Midwest, especially Chicago, which is associated with Polish-style polka, and Cleveland, home base of Slovenian polka star Frankie Yankovic, “America’s Polka King.” Yankovic had a string of hits in the late 1940s. Polka is the official state dance of Wisconsin, and “Beer Barrel Polka” is still performed in the seventh inning stretch at Milwaukee Brewers’ baseball games, in addition to the traditional “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Dujka brothers
Dujka Brothers, Mark and John, from left, play at Blase’s Hall near Hallettsville in March. The Dujkas formed their band in 1986 and they have performed at hundreds of events. The pair have also appeared at some of the most popular festivals in Texas. Photos courtesy of Gary McKee

There was a time when, in certain pockets of this part of Central Texas, you could hear a polka band several times a week, McKee said. “In my database I have over 4,200 dancing events from 1900 to 1980 for Fayette County,” he added. 

The legendary bands of the time — such as the Baca’s Band and Orchestra of Fayetteville, formed in 1892 — would play up to 300 gigs a year in the 1930s, “but they never had to go more than 30 miles,” McKee said. The concept of the weekend didn’t yet exist in that mostly agricultural era. Farms required hard work seven days a week, so dances and weddings were often on weeknights or Sunday afternoons. 

The names of the great bands from that heyday of Texas polka are still spoken with affection and reverence in this area: along with the Baca’s Band, you often hear of Lee Roy Matocha (“The Fayetteville Flash”), Vrazels’ Polka Band from Buckholts, the Joe Patek Orchestra from Shiner, the City Polka Boys from Houston, the Leo Majek Orchestra from Cameron, the Hi-Toppers Orchestra from New Braunfels, and the list goes on. That was when polka was king.

Even Willie Nelson started out in a polka band, getting his first gig at age 10 playing guitar with the John Rejcek Bohemian Polka Band at beer halls around West, north of Nelson’s hometown of Abbott.

Competition from television and the rise of Sunday afternoon sports on TV began to put a dent in polka’s popularity in the 1960s, McKee said. And of course every generation seeks its own music. In the 1920s, young people were drawn to jazz and swing, and later it was rock ’n’ roll or country and western as the hot new thing. In the disco era it became trendy to hire DJs for dances, reducing the demand for live bands. 

Baca's Band
Frank Baca started Baca’s Band and Orchestra, shown below in the 1920s. The band eventually included all of his 13 children. The Baca family band, from Fayetteville, became Texas’ most popular Czech orchestra.
Photo courtesy Polka Lovers Club of Texas Museum

But polka has weathered all those cultural changes and survived, mostly thanks to those who love to play this music, or dance to it or just listen to it. They are determined not to let it slip away.

“It’s not fading, it’s changing,” Gene Hackemack of Burton said as he watched Mollie B and SqueezeBox swing into another jaunty number. Hackemack has played the accordion in polka bands for many years, and once famously helped wake up the astronauts on the space shuttle in 1995 with a live performance of “Beer Barrel Polka,” earning him a plaque from NASA commending the “first polka in space.” 

Hackemack grew up in Burton in Washington County — “I’m a fifth-generation Texan and I still speak German,” he said proudly — and remembers the family listening to polka together when he was young. “We sat around this little radio and listened to KWHI in
Brenham, the ‘Polka Party Hour.’ ” The dance hall bands today have to dip into a variety of musical genres to reach a more diverse audience, he said. “They’re mixing it with a lot of Texas country music.”

Those who love to polka don’t mind driving a while to get to a dance. 

“It just brings the whole family together,” said Raymie Kana of Columbus, who wore her “Polka On!” button to the Mollie B show. “It’s like going back to the old days, when you brought your kids out on a Friday night. You don’t see that at a country and western or rock ’n’ roll show.” 

Kana grew up going to dances as a little girl, and, in a ritual familiar to many in the crowd, her parents made a pallet under the table so she could fall asleep as the dancing went into the wee hours. She and her husband go to polka dances several times a month, anywhere from Eagle Lake in Colorado County to Hallettsville, Shiner and Moravia in Lavaca County. This was her “eighth or ninth” time to see Mollie B and her band on tour. 

“I love to polka, love to waltz,” Kana said. “My husband doesn’t dance, but he lets me dance, so it’s all good.” 

Alfred Vrazel recalled that while he played in Vrazels’ Polka Band with his brothers and cousins, “we never made much money, but we made a lot of friends. We were very close to our audience. It wasn’t, and still isn’t, uncommon for people to drive hundreds of miles to a polka dance.” 

Paula Amsler and Louis Stewart, Jr
Paula Amsler and Louis Stewart, Jr., met while dancing at the National Polka Fest in Ennis in 2021. Amsler said it feels like a Cinderella story every time they dance together. On this night, their bright red shirts are standouts on the Round Top dance floor. 

Dance partners Louis Stewart Jr. and Paula Amsler drove to Round Top from Moulton in Lavaca County and Kingwood in Harris County, respectively, to see Mollie B. They had also driven to Hallettsville the night before to see the band play there. “We keep track of our steps and miles,” grinned Stewart Jr. displaying his fitness-tracking watch. “Last night we did 23,000 steps and 12 miles of dancing!”

Amsler added: “I love polka because it’s such a high-energy, fun dance. You’ll see a lot of two- and three-year-olds just bouncing to the music. If you can count to three, you can do it.”

Brad Kieschnick and Megan Hughey from Cat Spring in Austin County — one of the younger couples on the dance floor, at ages 46 and 31, respectively — had also been at the Hallettsville show the night before. “It brings us a lot of happiness and joy,” Kieschnick said. “I wish more people our age would be interested in this kind of dancing. We’re trying to keep it alive.”

Ebrom family
Katelyn and Jeff Ebrom from Poth, left, dance with their children, Annie, 2, and Chandler, 5, at the same show in Round Top's Rifle Hall.

Some polka weekends in the Bluebonnet region are bigger than others, especially if it’s time for a community festival such as Maifest in Brenham, the Kolache Fest in Caldwell or one of several annual celebrations at the Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Center in La Grange. Those events usually feature several polka bands. Then there is the church picnic season, from spring to late summer. Polka lovers say these gatherings at small historic churches throughout the area are some of the best opportunities in this region to hear and dance to Texas’ Czech-influenced polka music. 

There are also two museums in the region for those who want to learn more about the history of polka in Texas. (See list, below.)

The more you dive into the world of polka, the more you discover how deeply the music is woven into the fabric of many area communities. In Giddings in Lee County, Spencer Schneider is city manager and has been a drummer in several polka-focused bands, including the Central Texas Sounds from Fayetteville and the Ellinger Combo, a well-loved band formed in the community of that name in Fayette County in the 1960s. Schneider started playing music as a young man in Giddings in 1975, focusing on country and rock, but he gradually worked his way back to polka, he said.

“My roots in music, because of my dad, was always listening to as much polka music as possible,” Schneider said. “When he listened to the radio, it was always set to polka music, so that’s what you listened to also.”

Twenty miles to the south in La Grange, Mark Hermes, a Hallettsville native and director of the Texas Czech Heritage and Culture Center, is also in a polka band — the Czechaholics. The band plays 40 or so shows a year. 

“That’s what we grew up on,” Hermes said. “It’s our heritage, it’s something we love to play, we love the sound. You can’t listen to it and be upset. And if we don’t do it, who will?”

 The folks who grew up in the glory days of Texas polka may be getting older, but they don’t show it on the dance floor. At the Mollie B show, Betty and Ronny Sacks — who opened Round Top Mercantile in 1984 — beamed as they waltzed and polkaed their way around the hall. “I grew up dancing from ‘this high,’ ” said Betty Sacks, holding her hand just a few feet off the ground. “I learned to dance with my mom and dad. Dancing is just a form of having fun and enjoying life.” 

“German aerobics!,” chimed in Ronny Sacks, who grew up going to dances at Rifle Hall.

Today’s polka bands tend to mix in waltzes. “The polka crowd is getting older, and you can’t play ten polkas in a row. The waltzes are a bit easier for them,” said Mark Dujka of the Dujka Brothers polka band, which he formed in 1986 with his brother John. The brothers grew up on a farm in the blackland prairie region of Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston. They play various instruments, backed by a bass and drum track laid down by the Dujkas themselves. John Dujka lives near Brenham now, and Mark Dujka still lives in Fort Bend County. 

The polka tradition is passed along note by note, step by step. In pockets of the Bluebonnet area, it plays on, buoyed by the hope that a new generation will pick up the accordion when the time comes.

“My brother and I grew up going to the community festivals and church picnics and heard a lot of the old bands play,” said John Dujka, who is a music professor at Blinn College in Brenham. “Before all the TV and other competing media, what did people do? They went to dances and celebrated life. 

“That’s the thing that keeps us engaged in it. We enjoy seeing our friends, and the music brings back fond memories of our youth as well, of our grandparents, of other bands before us. It’s a tradition that we’re trying to keep going.” 

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Lively conjunto music’s roots in immigrants’ polka

More than a century ago, in the days before widespread radio broadcasts, Mexican and Mexican-American musicians in South and Central Texas first began to hear an irresistible new sound pouring out of dance halls in communities formed by Czech and German immigrants.

Narciso Martinez
Narciso Martinez, born in 1911, grew up in La Paloma, Texas. Known as the father of conjunto music and ‘The Hurricane of the Valley,’ he was a hit in the 1950s in Tejano dance halls across the southwest and a popular recording artist. He died at 80.
Photo courtesy The Arhoolie Foundation

The upbeat rhythm of polka music, played on a diatonic button accordion — where one side of buttons plays the melody, the other the bass chords — caught the ears of these creative folk artists, who were then inspired to introduce the European instrument into their traditional Mexican ensembles of guitar, violin, contra-bass, and a “ranch drum,” often made of goatskin. 

Eventually the six-string guitar was replaced by the thumping bass beat of the 12-string bajo sexto guitar, and out of this fusion emerged a new sound that came to be known as norteño, for Northern Mexico, or conjunto, which means “musical group” in Spanish. Like jazz or the blues, conjunto is a unique and durable musical form born in the United States, and in this case primarily in Texas. 

In parts of South Texas, according to polka writer and historian Gary E. McKee, Czech and Mexican immigrants working as farm laborers “bonded together over music, borrowing each other’s sound and rhythms.”

The upbeat feeling of polka found a similar expression in this new form.

Conjunto surged in popularity beginning in the 1930s — the same time polka was hot in Texas — with the release of popular records by Narciso Martinez, known as the
“Father of Conjunto,” and Santiago Jimenez, the father of conjunto legend and Grammy Award winner Flaco Jimenez.

The music’s enduring impact in Texas can be heard May 17-21 in San Antonio, when the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center hosts the 41st annual Tejano Conjunto Music Festival.

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5 fun facts about polka

1. Polka was so popular in the late 1800s in Europe that the prefix ‘polka’ was added to product names to make them more desirable. One familiar example? The fabric pattern of identically sized, close-together filled circles known as “polka dots.” 

2. According to the Handbook of Texas online, both the Poles and the Czechs at various times have claimed credit for being the originators of polka dancing. The Czech word pulka means “half-step,” which fits with the 2/4 time of a polka dance; in Polish, polka translates as “Polish woman.” 

3. The accordion, integral to a polka band, is part of the wind instruments family and was invented in 1822 by Friedrich Buschmann in Germany. 

4. The longest-running polka festival in Texas is the National Polka Festival, which began in 1967 in Ennis, south of Dallas. It is still held there every Memorial Day weekend. 

5. The first Grammy Award for Best Polka Recording went to Frankie Yankovic in 1986. The award category was retired in 2009 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, to the disappointment of polka lovers. Polka music now falls under the Grammy categories of folk or world music.

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See Texas polka history at two museums in the region

Polka Lovers Club of Texas Museum, La Grange

275 W. Fairgrounds Road, La Grange (next to the Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Center); open during Texas Czech Heritage and Cultural Center events at the Fayette County Fairgrounds or by appointment. Visit plctm.com; email Gary Bucek at info@plctm.com or call 713-252-2162; admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Texas Polka Music Museum, Schulenburg

The museum, 712 Lyons Ave. in Schulenburg, has recordings of polka music, listings for DJs and bands, and exhibits of instruments, photos and costumes; 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Thursday, Friday & Saturday, call 979-743-4752 or visit texaspolkamuseum.com; admission is free, but donations are welcome.

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Tune in to a polka radio show

Alfred Vrazel
Alfred Vrazel, a retired member of his family's polka band, has hosted his namesake polka show on KMIL-FM
in Cameron since 1955.

Polka radio shows are still going strong, and there are several you can hear in or near the Bluebonnet region. Some you can hear live online at the stations’ websites. The shows include: 

• Alfred Vrazel’s Polka Show (on the air since 1955): KMIL 105.1 FM, Cameron, 12:15-2:30 p.m. Sunday

• Larry’s Polka Time with Larry Sodek: KLVG 1570 AM, La Grange, 12:45-2 p.m. Monday-Saturday, on both KVLG-AM and KBUK 104.9 FM noon-4 p.m. Sunday

• Texas Polka Time with Mark Stanley: KWHI 1280 AM, Brenham, 9-10 a.m. Saturday

• Czech Polka Time with Ronnie Horčica: KAGC 1510 AM, Bryan, 10:05-11 a.m. Saturday, 4:05-5 p.m. Sunday

• Saturday Morning Dance Time with John Dujka: KULP 1390 AM & 106.7 FM, El Campo, 10 a.m.-noon Saturday

• Michael Craig’s Polka Show: KRXT 98.5 FM, Rockdale, 11 a.m.-noon Monday-Friday, 1:15-6 p.m. Sunday

• Czech Melody Time with Thomas Durnin: KOOP 91.7 FM, Austin, 7-8 p.m. Wednesday

Find listings of other Texas polka radio shows in the weekly Polka Weekend email newsletter (subscribe at polkabeat.com) or at the Texas Polka Music Museum website, texaspolkamuseum.com (click on “Polka DJs.”)

 

Get more polka into your life

Polka news• The monthly magazine Texas Polka News, at right, has updates on musicians, history, events and activities in the Central Texas region and around the state; digital subscription is $27 a year; print and digital is $32 a year. Go to texaspolkanews.com and click on “Subscribe.”

• Sign up for the free weekly Polka Weekend email newsletter to learn where polka is planned. Go to polkabeat.com, click on “Newsletter,” then click on “Join our free email mailing list.” Fill out the online form and click “Sign Up.”

Immigrants brought polka to Texas generations ago, and the beat goes on. Devotees of all ages still swirl around dance floors across the Bluebonnet region

Card Teaser
On any given Friday night to Sunday afternoon, the sounds and melodies are ringing throughout the Bluebonnet region
Media contacts

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Please contact:

Will Holford
Manager of Public Affairs
512-332-7955
will.holford@bluebonnet.coop

Alyssa Meinke
Manager of Marketing & Communications 
512-332-7918
alyssa.meinke@bluebonnet.coop

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