flowerchild1951's Blog

Mary Carter is a carefree, fun loving teenage girl who is graduating from high school with a dream of her own. Her mother, Gwen Carter, is an organized meticulous woman that runs the family antique store located in Austin, Texas called “Yesterdays Treasures” originally owned by Gwen’s mother Sharon Thalmeyer.  Sharon is a woman who appreciates art, shows Mary a beautiful old painting of a cowboy by Charles M. Russell that she keeps in a locked room in her house.  She asks Mary not to tell her uncle about it for fear that her uncle James will want to take the painting and sell it. James love to drink and gamble and shows up when he needs money. Unfortunately, Sharon dies suddenly in her sleep and Mary becomes challenged to keep the secret she promised her grandmother.  Mary, Gwen, and Mary’s little sister Anne move into Sharon’s house and discover that they can’t find the key to the locked door of the room where the painting is kept.

Antonio Borcelli, an older Italian man from Florence, Italy shows up at the door claiming that he has a pearl necklace belonging to Sharon.  Mary tells him that Sharon is deceased and brings him to meet her mother at their antique store. Antonio gives Gwen the necklace that belonged to Sharon and decides to stay a few days to get to know Mary and her family.  Antonio invites Gwen to visit him and his son Gregorio in Florence. Gwen decides that she will come to visit Antonio that summer and leave Mary with her sister Victoria so they can run the antique store while she is away.  James shows up drunk after Antonio returns to Florence and Gwen makes him go to stay with his sister Victoria and her husband Mike.

Gwen leaves for Florence, Italy.  As Mary and Anne are packing to go stay with their aunt Victoria, Mary finds the key to the locked room with the painting. Victoria is suddenly hospitalized with appendicitis.  James cons Mary into driving him to Las Vegas so he can gamble and Mary takes off leaving a note at the store that she was called away on a family emergency. Anne sees an art auction at a hotel where she and James are staying and tells James that there is a painting like the ones at the auction in a locked room at the house. James tells Anne that he wants to return home to get the painting so he can sell it at an auction.  Mary buys a print of a Charles M. Russell painting that she sees in a souvenir shop at the hotel to take back home and tells James that it is a souvenir poster.

When Mary, Anne, and James return home, Mary changes the painting with the print while Anne has James follow her to the tool shed in the back yard. Then James has Mary drive him to an auction in Dallas to sell the painting.  The auctioneer discovers that James painting is a fraud and arrests him.  Mary drives back home leaving James in jail. Victoria gets out of the hospital and Gwen returns from Italy to find out that James is in jail for fraud.

Gwen and Victoria decide to drive to Dallas to loan the painting to a museum and get James out of jail.  Mary joins a rock and roll band when she returns home and performs at a coffee shop called La Ruta Maya.  The family comes to watch her sing her new song “Saving Grandma’s Cowboy.”

The Powwow has played and important role in educating the citizens of Austin about the life, art, and history of the American Indian. Currently there are 539 federally recognized tribes in the US that live on 56 million acres of land held in trust by the federal government.

In Texas, there are approximately 70,000 American Indians with an estimated 2,000 living around Austin.  The Texas tribes are Alabama-Coushatta, Apache, Atakapan, Caddo, Carrizo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Jumano, Karankawas, Kickapoo, Texas Cherokee, Tigua, Tonkawas, and Wichita.  All these tribes play an important role in the history of Texas.

Preserving history, tradition, and heritage is important to contemporary American Indian life.  This powwow proves that Indian communities are vibrant and dynamic parts of contemporary American life.