Just a year ago the annual Dickens on the Strand was carried out amid a ruined and gutted downtown Galveston, a defiant statement of the city’s commitment to a comeback. Yesterday that comeback was clear, and with all the fine lords and ladies shoulder to shoulder with rakish pirates and coal dust-smeared ragamuffins, the floodwaters were but a poignant memory.
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Top hats and bustles were de rigeur throughout the historic district. From a British jokester and juggler on Old Galveston Square to a costume contest judged by Galveston’s own “Queen Victoria,” bagpipes on the Tall Ship Elissa and camel and elephant and pony rides over on 21st Street, the festivities had a decidedly 18th century British feel.
Traditional Texas festival fare was generously sprinkled with European offerings like Scandanavian glogg (warm spiced red wine) and Scottish eggs (wrapped in sausage and fried), candied apples and cakes and breads and pastries.
Jack King surveyed the crowd from behind the colorful taffy collection at the back of La King’s Confectionary, which has become an institution on the Strand after 33 years. Like most of the 19th Century buildings in this historic district, his had to be completely gutted and rebuilt, from the floors to the staircases. The place has an old-timey feel, though, and it’s hard to imagine these pine-wood floors and wrought-iron railings are anything but old.
King reminsiced about his first Dickens on the Strand back in 1976, just three years after the festival had begun. “That year it was so cold the doors froze shut,” he said. This year the chill in the air was just enough to lend an air of festivity, but the confectionary was filled with revelers seeking warmth and a cup of hot chocolate, a candied apple or a sample of his handcrafted candies.
This year the festival filled 10 square blocks including Ship’s Mechanic Row and Strand streets, home to one of the country’s largest collections of iron-front commercial buildings. Those ornate ironworks were already showing their age, however, when Hurricane Ike sped up the deterioration with its salty waters. This year Galveston made the Most Endangered Places list of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and fundraising efforts for restoration projects like the 1878 First National Bank Building are underway. For more information about that project, see The Galveston Arts Center website, and for Galveston’s historic preservation efforts in general, see the Galveston Historical Foundation.
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