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Nearly five months after deadly July flooding, families in the Sandy Creek area of Travis County are still dealing with the cleanup and recovery of their properties and their lives. We’ll hear the story of one family that’s approaching a Thanksgiving that looks very different from years past.
Plus: A roundup of UT sports ahead of Friday’s football showdown against the Aggies, and some Thanksgiving recommendations from the ATX TV Festival team.
The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:09] As Thanksgiving approaches nearly five months after the devastating flooding in central Texas in the hill country, families in the Sandy Creek area of Travis County are still dealing with the cleanup and recovery of their properties and their lives. We’re gonna hear the story of one family approaching the holiday that looks very different from years past. That story’s coming up next on today’s show. Thank you for tuning in.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:31] The Austin Signal is a production of K UT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:36] And lots of things tend to slow down around the holidays, but sports aren’t one of those things. We’re gonna get a roundup of what’s happening with Longhorn Athletics this week ahead of Friday’s Lone Star Football Showdown against the Aggies and some Thanksgiving recommendations from the ATX TV festival team. That is coming up next, and it’s right here on Austin Signal. Howdy out there, this is Austin Signal. Thank you for making us part of your day. It is Wednesday, November 26th, the day before Thanksgiving. You know, we say it often, I do anyway, because we cannot say it enough. We are unbelievably thankful to you for listening and for supporting KUT and KUTX. You make shows like this one, Austin Signal, possible every single day here on our airwaves. So thank you for that support and a thank you for being here with us today. This is Austin Signal. We are glad to have you. It has been nearly five months since deadly storms and severe flash flooding swept through the Hill Country and Central Texas, wreaking havoc in areas like Sandy Creek up in northwestern Travis County. But residents there are still in cleanup and recovery mode. KUT’s Kailey Hunt caught up with one family ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Kailey Hunt [00:02:02] Home looks drastically different nowadays for Ashley Willis. She and her family own Asher Acres, a small farm located on the banks of Sandy Creek. Her neighborhood was among the hardest hit during the deadly floods that swept across central Texas on July fourth weekend. Nearly two hundred homes in northwestern Travis County were damaged or destroyed, including Willis’s. We are currently
Ashley Willis [00:02:27] in campers back on the farm, trying our best to rebuild. We are using actually the slab foundation that used to be our brewery building as our community patio. We’ve made it kind of cute. They’re pink flamingos because campers and it’s very on brand.
Kailey Hunt [00:02:40] Willis says she and her family just barely managed to survive the floodwaters that ravaged Sandy Creek during the early morning hours of july fifth. Here’s her mother, Brandy Gerstner, talking about the experience at a recent rally in front of the Texas Governor’s Mansion.
Ashley Willis [00:02:56] My husband had to push me out the door screaming, get to the greenhouse, Brandy, the house is going. I was
Kailey Hunt [00:03:04] Terrified. Gerstner remembers telling her daughter goodbye and that she loved her before making her way to safety in the greenhouse.
Ashley Willis [00:03:12] Only feet away, separated by rushing flood waters, feeling helpless, and that that was the end of us all.
Kailey Hunt [00:03:21] The family survived, but it wasn’t until later that morning that the true horror of the situation sank in, Gersner says.
Ashley Willis [00:03:28] As the sun rose, it was at that time that we realized that my sister home and everyone on the other side of the creek was gone. Only piles of mutilated debris was left.
Kailey Hunt [00:03:41] Gerstner says she and her family took turns calling 911 until their phone batteries died. At some point she says an operator was able to confirm that a woman matching her sister’s description was at a local hospital. Gerstner’s sister had somehow miraculously survived. It’s now been nearly five months since the disaster hit, but Ashley Willis says she and her family, as well as most of the neighborhood, are still in full recovery mode. If you
Ashley Willis [00:04:10] Look at the property, like just overlooking the vastness of it, it looks great. The big debris is gone. The problem is when you look down at the earth, it is so filthy.
Kailey Hunt [00:04:19] With trash. If you look at the creek bed today, you’ll notice pieces of broken glass, bits of countertop, toys and other personal belongings that were swept away by the flood waters. That’s where people like Sara Ashworth come in. I caught up with her over the phone while she was working in the creek bed. Ashworth, who’s originally from Liverpool, England, and lives in nearby Jonestown, has been on the ground helping people in Sandy Creek since the initial days after the flood. A former nurse, Ashworth now serves as a volunteer field manager with the Austin Disaster Relief Network.
Sara Ashworth [00:04:55] What I’m doing as the field manager for them is really trying to concentrate on those who have had total loss or major loss. That means that they have lost their home or they have considerable damage to their home and they’ve had to be
Kailey Hunt [00:05:13] Ashworth has organized several volunteer cleanups in Sandy Creek. She says the work has never been more important, especially as cold winter weather approaches. Seeing these people in
Sara Ashworth [00:05:26] with leaking roofs and next time the rain comes and plumbing that doesn’t work or electrics, you know, some of these RVs are really old too. So it’s it’s just such a struggle to see them lose everything, lose family members too, and still have to to think of how
Kailey Hunt [00:05:46] They’re going to manage rebuilding. Nearly five months later, Ashworth is determined to continue the work. I know there’s many disasters in the world.
Sara Ashworth [00:05:55] That’s what’s quite scary for these people, is they know that help will disappear. So I think.
Kailey Hunt [00:06:02] That’s why I’ve kept showing up. That means a lot to Ashley Willis, who Ashworth has struck up a friendship with. Willis, who normally hosts Thanksgiving on the farm, says she and her family will be joining Ashworth and her husband at their home for the holiday this year. She says they plan to bring their famous bacon-wrapped turkey legs.
Ashley Willis [00:06:22] ‘Cause that’s our usual go-to for Thanksgiving. And some side dishes, and they’re gonna provide the space and we’re gonna do our best to pretend that this isn’t our life.
Kailey Hunt [00:06:31] And despite all of the loss and the pain she has endured this past year, Willis knows exactly what she’s thankful for this holiday season.
Ashley Willis [00:06:40] I still have all of my family. Not everyone out here was so lucky. Yeah, we lost everything, but it was just stuff, you know. I’m just really thankful that my family is still alive.
Kailey Hunt [00:06:48] I’m Kayleigh Hunt in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:57] You are listening to Austin Signal here on Listener Powered Public Radio. Thank you for being here with us. Well, the holidays tend to usually mean things slow down. Not so much the case with sports. Lots going on this week with Longhorn Athletics. Here to talk about some of what’s happening as K U T program Director Jimmy Maas. Howdy, Jimmy. Howdy, how are you? I’m doing great. I am glad that you’re here with us. Obviously the we’ve got the big Texas Longhorn, Texas AM Aggie football game on Friday. But there was some news this week with the Texas women’s soccer team. What happened there?
Jimmy Maas [00:07:31] Yeah, some smaller things occurring, but still kind of some ripple effects. So Texas fired its longtime soccer coach on Monday, Ange Kelly. She had been with Texas for 14 seasons. And this is a person who just won an SEC title a year ago, won a Big Twelve tournament title the year before, and won the Big Twelve regular season title the year before. And now granted, this season was quite terrible for the Texas team. They did not do well, they didn’t even qualify for the SEC’s SEC soccer tournament. So you know, the question is is how much leash do you get? And apparently that has been answered by Christophani. And you get you get none. Yeah, it’s you’re only as good as your most recent soccer.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:18] Season. And I believe you said the the soccer SEC championship was the Texas’s first conference championship.
Jimmy Maas [00:08:23] The Texas women’s soccer team was the first SEC championship of a of several that they won last year. The volleyball volleyball team did not quite make there, the football team didn’t make it there, but the the soccer team gave Texas its first SEC trophy and apparently not good enough for one year later. Now, granted, Crystal Connie has said in the past that he wants team or coaches to be striving for national titles and conference championships. I f it seems like to the until this season, Ange Kelly met that bar. She was everything that you would want on paper, a four time NCAA champion as a player at North Carolina. You know, buddies with Mia Hamm and Christine Lilly, like you know, Royal. In soccer. And then she went on to take on the Tennessee program at twenty-eight. Led them to three SEC regular season titles and like five conference tournaments, something like that. Anyway, a lot of pedigree there, that apparently was just not good enough. And now Delcania set this bar at this level, and that may be a message to other coaches as well that that perhaps you know, that as a as an example, last night in the SEC volleyball tournament, first one this year, at least it’s been revived. I don’t know when the last SEC volleyball tournament was. Yeah. But they have revived this tournament and Texas was in the championship game against Kit Kentucky. Texas is number three in the nation, Kentucky’s number one. Texas has only lost two games on the season, one to AM and one to Kentucky. Now they’ve lost three on the year, two to Kentucky after that loss. No one is suggesting that Jared Elliott is in the same hot seat hot seat, but the bar is clear, and now we’re two seasons into the SEC. A very successful volleyball program, generally speaking, but no conference championships and they’re still on the path to maybe if they win the NCAA tournament. But you know, there’s there’s a lot of work to be done.
Jerry Quijano [00:10:22] Well, th those sound like pretty big shoes to fill for the women’s soccer team. You mentioned that they are bringing in an an accomplished leader though. Who tell us more?
Jimmy Maas [00:10:29] Her name is Marguerite Alzaza Bates. She now goes by Marguerite Bates. She married Michael Bates, another soccer player. Some of some years ago. They have a child and everything. But anyway, anyway, her whole marital history. There we go. Yes. No, but she she was a an assistant coach at Stanford, then she became the head coach at UCLA and she won the national championship like immediately. That got my my own child plays soccer. That got her attention. We were just at the UCLA soccer camp last summer. You know, so this move was a bit of a surprise. She won the Pac twelve title, conference tournament title last season. Not as great a season this sea this year, but you know, the pedigree is there and you know, Texas is in decent hands. It’s I’m I’m not suggesting that like they’re he they’re just turning the keys over to somebody that has no idea what they’re doing. But she’s you know. The younger, newer, more exciting.
Jerry Quijano [00:11:28] All right, that is K U T program Director Jimmy Maas. Sitting down here with us to talk a little Texas athletics this week. Jimmy, thank you for your time. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in to Austin Signal. We got some Texas music history coming your way. That’s after a break. This is Austin Signal. This is Austin Signal. Welcome back. Texas has a vast and varied jazz music history. Who better to tell us about a man who helped build that history than Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University?
Jason Mellard [00:12:22] This week in Texas Music History, a key Billy Holiday and Benny Goodman collaborator gets his start in central Texas. On November 24, 1912, pianist and composer Teddy Wilson was born in Austin. One of the central figures of jazz in the 1930s and beyond, Wilson played early dates with Louis Armstrong before working with Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa in a band that was one of the first integrated jazz groups to perform publicly in the United States. Wilson’s stylish, delicate approach also led to a fruitful collaboration with vocalist Billy Holiday, whoaring their performances together at the legendary New York nightclub Cafe Society.
Singer 1 [00:13:03] It’s easy to live when you’re in love and I’m so in love. There’s nothing in life but you
Jason Mellard [00:13:20] While Wilson left Texas as a child, he maintained a connection to Texas jazz musicians. Dallas natives and pianists Red Garland and Cedar Walton often cited Wilson as an influence. In 1956, Wilson joined Austin native and bassist Gene Raimi, the legendary tenor saxophonist Lester Young, and drummer Joe Jones for a session that resulted in the classic Pres and Teddy LP. Wilson even returned to Austin in 1966 for an engagement at the Longhorn Jazz Festival at the old Dish baseball field on Barton Springs Road, one of Austin’s first modern music festivals. The event also included Dizzy Gillespie, Lightning Hopkins, and Coleman Hawkins. Wilson reunited there with jazz trumpeter and former Anderson High Yellowjacket Kenny Dorham and legendary Anderson band director Alvin O. Patterson. Along with trumpeters Kenny Dorman Martin Banks, bassist Gene Raimi, and Nat King Cole guitarist Oscar Moore, Teddy Wilson led the way for Austin musicians to tackle the wide world of jazz. You can hear music from the Lone Star State 24-7 on the Texas Music Experience at tmx.fm.
KUT Announcer [00:14:23] Support for this week in Texas Music History comes from Brain Audio, maker of a compact portable speaker, featuring an internal subwoofer that produces deep bass sound, engineered in the live music capital of the world. More at Brain audio.com. That’s B-R-A-N-E-Audio.com.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:41] This is Austin Signal. Thank you for spending part of your holiday week here with us. And now, when it comes to holiday TV and movie specials, I know a lot of folks have their go-tos. And for a lot of people out there, the first thing coming to your mind might be those old Rudolph specials or classic Frosty the Snowman TV specials. But hold your horses for just a second. We are not quite there yet. Tomorrow is, of course, Thanksgiving. So we’ve got to line up some of the best, most memorable Thanksgiving episodes of television. Here to help us do that is one of the founders of the ATX TV Festival, Emily Gipson. Emily, thank you for joining us.
Emily Gipson [00:15:16] Thanks for having me. I’m very excited to be here.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:18] Well, we’re excited to hear what your list is going to be comprised of, but before we get into the list, I wanted to ask, just generally how you tend to approach Thanksgiving. You know, do you are you most excited about the T V specials or the sides that you’re getting with your dinner? What what do you most look forward to about the holiday?
Emily Gipson [00:15:36] Oh, it feels a little cliche as a Texan, but it might be football. I just deeply love a good Thanksgiving weekend array of football games and all of the food and snacks that come with it. I just really it just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving without some without some really great football to watch.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:54] Well, football was the other food football family I feel like tends to be the three that go with Thanksgiving. So, Emily, let’s get to your list. What are what start with the first one that comes to your mind, a most memorable Thanksgiving episode of a T V show.
Emily Gipson [00:16:08] Well, I want to give a little disclaimer in the ATX TV team has helped me come up with this list because we were all in charge of different episodes. So some of them are ones I would have picked and some of them are ones that I’ve forgotten about that I just remembered and reading their list. But I do have to say, I feel like people don’t really think about a lot of great TV shows having Thanksgiving episodes, but I was surprised by how many do and how many I wanted to revisit.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:35] Yeah, you know, I think there’s a lot of like Halloween and Christmas, there’s a lot of decorating, a lot of costumes that go with those two. But Thanksgiving I feel like even though it is prime T V season tends to get a little overshadowed by those other two.
Emily Gipson [00:16:47] It totally does. And I will say one of the shows that has a number of amazing Thanksgiving episodes is Friends, as we all know. So the first one picked for this year is season six, episode nine, the one where Ross gets high. I don’t know if you remember this one.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:07] I I can sort of remember it.
Emily Gipson [00:17:10] It is the one where Rachel makes the trifle, where two of the pages in her cookbook get stuck together. And so she mixes a couple of different different dishes together that should not be mixed together. I believe Joey enjoys it at the end, but the rest of the group is a little unsure about what she has created.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:29] And I’m not super f as verse with friends as I am with other T V shows, but there is an episode, a Thanksgiving episode of Friends, where a turkey ends up on someone’s shoulders, am I correct?
Emily Gipson [00:17:39] Yes, that is also a very important episode.
Jerry Quijano [00:17:42] All right. So we got a little bit of a of a a thirty minute T V show there with friends. What else is on the list?
Emily Gipson [00:17:49] So then the one that I picked for this year is an episode of succession. Were you a successor?
Jerry Quijano [00:17:56] I am a huge succession fan, but I gotta be honest, I’m kinda blanking on which episode happened around Thanksgiving time.
Emily Gipson [00:18:03] So this is season one, episode five. It’s called I Went to Market and it is where Logan’s brother comes to Thanksgiving dinner. And it also so it starts with cousin Greg having to go get his grandfather and do a twelve hour, basically silent car ride. Yeah, because he has all these
Jerry Quijano [00:18:21] Yeah, ’cause he has all these podcasts, right, that he has lined up that he wants to listen to, but the grandpa’s not having any of that.
Emily Gipson [00:18:27] Nope, doesn’t want anything to do with it. It is also where you get to set up really the cousin Greg and Tom duo and the two of them starting their shenanigans. It also is, I believe, the first time Kendall really starts to make moves to kind of take over and start trying to get Logan out of, I want to say out of office, but out of his job. So it’s really where things really start coming together for succession. I loved it from the beginning, but I feel like this episode, things really hit their stride.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:55] Yeah, that’s a good one. And I find you know, I haven’t revisited Succession since it initially aired. I think it was you know, the ending was a little too traumatic for me, but I think that that’s the perfect kind of episode where it’s got the the right amount of comedy and dark comedy and just kind of familial pain that is I think perfectly coincides with Thanksgiving, the the bringing together of all different sides of your family. So okay, so we have something, you know, kind of funny, kind of serious. What else did your your team come up with?
Emily Gipson [00:19:26] We have one of the Cheers Thanksgiving episodes. So this is Thanksgiving Orphans from season five that has a very ic iconic food fight that happens in it, which is absolutely fantastic. And you know, there’s just nothing better than a food fight.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:42] Yeah, I’m remembering that episode because I believe Vera gets a a pie thrown in her face at the very end, right? We never see Vera, we never know what she looks like, and right away we’re gonna we’re gonna get this reveal of who Vera is, and then she takes a pie to the face. So
Emily Gipson [00:19:56] She absolutely does. Yeah.
Jerry Quijano [00:19:58] Okay, so we have Cheers, Succession, and Friends. You don’t have to tell me too much about the the details of the other episodes, but what are some of the other shows that were featured in your list?
Emily Gipson [00:20:06] I will say a gossip girl makes a cameo on this list with one of their Thanksgiving episodes, which is pure debauchery, as one would think. And then the other one is the beginning of Slapsgiving for How I Met Your Mother, where the slap set really gets started. So that obviously goes into many seasons of How I Met Your Mother. So it’s a good array of Thanksgiving episodes we’ve got here.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:32] Okay, and can you remind us again about the the list that you were talking about, the newsletter list?
Emily Gipson [00:20:36] Yes. So this list we this is our special weekend watch for Thanksgiving. So we send out a weekend watch newsletter every Friday with the shows that our team is watching, things that you should be on the lookout for, you know, finding figuring out what to watch is a little overwhelming right now. So it is us helping you discover what’s out there, both old and new. So this week releasing on Thursday, so everyone got a preview of what’s gonna be on the list for this Thanksgiving.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:05] Excellent, excellent. Well, that’s a pretty good list. I think the only thing I would add is Mad Men the Wheel, you know, that that closing episode of the first season of Mad Men really gets you in and gets you all the feels and then you think Don is gonna be reunited with his family and then things don’t go so well. I won’t spoil everything, but that’s a great so many. Yeah, yeah. There are I’m thinking about more. I feel like my my coworker here at K U T Trey Shar, there’s an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, Turkey’s away with the turkey drop. I feel like he that’s really up his alley. So so many more to discover. And there is a lot of T V to be discovered. That’s part of the reason why you all started the ATX T V festival. The next one is coming up in May of twenty twenty six. Is it just the immense love that you have for T V, not just the specials, but T V in general that’s wanted you all to start this this conference, this festival.
Emily Gipson [00:21:59] It really is. We call it a celebration of TV, or as our attendees call it, TV Camp for Grown Ups. And it’s for people that love TV and people that work in TV to come together and watch it on the big screen, talk about it. We bring out cast and creatives of all sorts. We have a lot of panel topics that are very inside baseball, like how TV is made, and then a lot of fun fan topics about what you’re watching. And then obviously all the fun things that come with festivals, happy hours and trivia and TV karaoke. It’s just four days full of just T V fun.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:34] And I know the next one, season fifteen, is coming up in May of twenty twenty six. Have you started planning for that? Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Emily Gipson [00:22:42] We have all I can say is we have programming to announce that will be coming out very soon. I can’t tell you yet, but it’s definitely some things that we are obviously very excited about and a lot more to come once we get into the new year.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:56] All right, that sounds great. We’re talking Thanksgiving episodes. Perhaps we’ll have you back to talk some Christmas holiday season episodes as well. That is Emily Gipson. She’s one of the co-founders of the ATX TV Festival. Emily, thank you for talking with us.
Emily Gipson [00:23:11] Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Jerry Quijano [00:23:13] And we will have a link to sign up for that watch newsletter in our show notes. That is at kut.org slash signal. And that is it for today. But do not forget we’ve got a special episode on Friday all about the Longhorns versus Aggie football showdown. We’re gonna have some history, we’re gonna hear from some fans, and we’re gonna have a great time. We will talk to you then. We hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving day. Kristen Cabrera is our managing producer, Rayna Sevilla is our technical director. Very thankful for the two of them. They make this show possible every day. And thankful to you for tuning in. Thank you for being here with us. I’m Jerry Quijano. This is Austin Signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
