Moon over Moravia,
Stars sparkle and shine,
Music plays in Moravia,
Waltz with me darling tonight.
—“Moon Over Moravia” lyrics by Daniel Klapuch and Mark Hermes
Like many dives and dance halls in Texas, the walls at Moravia Store are covered with its history. There are framed photos and newspaper clippings, hundreds of license plates and street signs, and countless beer posters, farm implements, and other relics dating back deep into the last century. Standing out among the rest are the framed lyrics of “Moon Over Moravia,” a popular waltz composed in the venue’s honor almost a quarter century ago.
The moon will be nearly full on May 2 when Moravia Store celebrates its 30th anniversary as a bar and dancehall in the eponymous blink-and-you-miss-it townlet of Schulenberg in Southeast Texas. The party will include two bands, a tractor show, a crawfish boil, and plenty of ice cold beer. The venue will also commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of “Moon Over Moravia” with its songwriters performing the tune, likely with plenty of help from the crowd. As the song goes, “We’ll join our friends at the old country store. Nine fifty-seven leads right to the door.”
Moravia Store owner Henrietta Filip grew up on the family farm her grandparents established a few miles away, in the heart of the Texas “Czech Belt.”
“I used to come here with my daddy,” she says, recalling drinking soda and watching the farmers play tarok (a centuries-old European card game), and listening to the music as her neighbors danced. Not much has changed about the place over the years, which was Filip’s plan all along.
In 1996, after the store had sat closed on FM 957 for six years, Filip purchased the building and reopened it as a bar. “Some people wanted me to sell bread and milk, but everybody goes to town for that,” she says. Instead, she chose to focus on the important things. “This place never goes dry,” she says. “I buy a lot of beer.”
Most everything else about Moravia Store is just like it always was, including its original wooden floors, bar, and shelving. It first opened in 1889 as a country market and saloon in Moravia, a Lavaca County hamlet located midway between Houston and San Antonio, about 10 minutes southeast of Schulenburg, and named for the homeland of the Czech settlers who began arriving in the area in the 1870s.
Adding to the building’s storied past are those framed lyrics to “Moon Over Moravia,” handwritten in pencil on an 8-by-11 sheet of white paper and hanging on one of the dance hall walls. Co-written by Daniel Klapuch and Mark Harmes, the waltz was recorded by the Dujka Brothers in 2001 and is a Texas polka staple.
Klapuch lived in Moravia as a child and has memories of visiting the store with his father when there was still a meat market. “I vividly remember the butcher giving me homemade hot dogs,” he says. “That was always a treat.”
Klapuch once pursued songwriting for a career, but gave it up to seek another line of work. Still, he enjoyed writing lyrics. He recalls the night when he and his friend Harmes, an accordion player, penned their famous song together.
“We walked out to the foyer and I came up with ‘moon over Moravia’ and wrote most of the lyrics, and Mark worked up the music,” he says. “I believe there was a moon out that night.”
Filip knows that many of the hundreds of people expected to show up for the anniversary bash will have strong connections to Moravia Store, the building, and the region—all rich in Texas Czech history.
“They’re just amazed,” she says of the people who see the Moravia Store for the first time. “A lot of people of Czech heritage make special trips to see the place. They tell me there are just no bars like this anymore. They don’t want me to change anything.”
