State of Lubbock

Sex and Texas

2016-12-23T13:07:00.000-08:00

I apologize because it has been so long since I posted anything on here. I’ll try to do better. I decided to do something that combined two of my favorite subjects—sex and Texas. This is what I came up with---

My Texas history books didn’t talk about sex—they’d have been a lot more interesting if they had. For the life of me, I can’t understand why most history professors shied away from discussing sex among our ancestors. The fact that they were ancestors proves they engaged in sex, whether or not they talked about it. During my research, I’ve discovered much about the sexual mores of Texas historical figures.

I guess we should start with the “Father of Texas,” Stephen F. Austin. There is no evidence that he ever had sex with anyone. When asked about it once, he said, “My mistress is Texas.”

That’s an odd answer, and if true, it must have been a pretty unsatisfactory arrangement. I need to point out that Austin died a bachelor, having never been married. I don’t want to infer that Stevie was perhaps a bit light in his loafers, but that possibility does exist. Look carefully at his statue in the capitol building, the one done by Elizabet Ney. With all that curly hair, he really was kind of cute.

Elizabet Ney did life-size Carrara Marble statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston. One set resides in the Texas State Capitol building in Austin and a matching set is on display in the Nation’s Capitol in Washington.

One other thing about Austin gives me pause—Jane Long claimed to have had offers of marriage from just about everyone involved in the Texas Revolution—except Stephen F. Austin. I can’t help it if I find that significant.

Erastus “Deef” Smith, one of the most heroic Texians, had decided to sit out the revolution. He didn’t mind living under Mexican rule. In a way, he already did. He was married to a Mexican beauty, a widow with three children, who reported excelled in all her “wifely duties.” She welcomed him enthusiastically when he came home, with a warm meal and a warmer bed.

Mexican sentries stopped Deef at the checkpoint outside San Antonio. Deef told the young captain that he had not been home in two months and he just had to see his wife. The young officer said his papers were not in order and he would have to wait three days. Smith, in a frenzy, explained that he could not wait three days, he just HAD to see his wife. The captain refused and Deef shot him, spurred his horse and made it back to the Texian lines. He joined the Texians on the spot and that night, slipped through the lines to see his wife. It did not take her long to trim his horns, and Deef returned to the army and did yeoman service. The Mexican officer lived, but never knew how much he hurt his country’s war effort by influencing Deef Smith to join the Texians.

On firmer ground, sexually speaking, we have William B. Travis. He only spent about five years in Texas, from age 21 to 26, and he did his best to screw someone every single day. Oh, I know he was a lawyer and lawyers do that, but I mean he had sex with females as often as he could arrange it. He kept meticulous records. He bragged about it, just like any other twenty-something male. He started calling himself “Buck,” possibly hoping to lead women to unconsciously wonder about his sexual prowess.

I did not accidentally mention the phrase “arrange it.” Travis did not obtain sex by seduction—he arranged it. If Buck Travis had limited himself to ladies he actually seduced, he would have been doing without more often than not. He was not especially handsome, certainly not witty, never lived in a city, and rarely travelled. He was boring, rural, and dour with a weird, some would say twisted, sense of humor. On the other hand, he was more than willing and less than picky. His seductive comments were most likely limited to, “How about a little, Baby?” and “Fifty cents—you got to be kidding”—or, “I didn’t want to buy that thing, Honey, just rent it for a while.”

Jane Long, in her forties at the time, claims that the 24-year-old Travis hit on her, but she turned him down. I have no trouble believing either of those statements—Travis hit on just about every female he brushed up against and if Jane had sacked out with him, he would have cataloged it in his notebook, and broadcast it from the rooftops.

With his non-discriminatory habits, it was only a matter of time until Travis contacted something he couldn’t wash off. He picked up a heavy dose of the clap, and commenced to spread it around the colony. He self-treated with quicksilver, but that didn’t help. With all his eloquence, he could not explain to his fiancé why he passed it on to her.

The busy boarding house owner, Jane Long, claimed marriage offers from Ben Milam, Mirabeau Lamar, William B. Travis and Sam Houston. I doubt if any of these gentlemen took her to bed, based on two pieces of evidence. One, I saw her picture. Two, it would have been common knowledge. I imagine the springs in those boarding house beds would squeak like rusty hinges, and broadcast the goings-on to everyone in the neighborhood.

If we accept the fact that Travis was a whoremonger, Austin may have been a bit less than manly, and Deef Smith took care of his horny spells at home with his wife, then Texans are hard-pressed to find some pioneer to admire for his sexual exploits. As usual, Sam Houston will come to our rescue.

The history books all tell variations of the same story. Sam Houston was 34 years old, tall, handsome, governor of Tennessee, and being groomed by Andrew Jackson to be president one day. In January of 1829, after a whirlwind courtship, he married 18-year-old Elisha Allen. After less than three months, Elisha packed her bags and moved back to her parents without explanation. Houston got drunk, resigned the governorship, and moved back to the Cherokee Nation. Neither party ever explained why the marriage dissolved, and Houston promised to kill anyone who said anything to soil Elisha’s reputation.

Looking past the history books and digging deeper into the story, I have pieced together a possible explanation. The following is all conjecture on my part, but it takes known facts and traces them to logical conclusions. At least the conclusions are logical in my mind.

Houston and his family moved from Virginia to Tennessee when Sam was a boy. His father was dead and everyone in the family was expected to work. When Sam was 14 or 15, he hated working as a clerk in his older brother’s store, so he ran away and was adopted by a Cherokee Indian chief. Sam lived with the Indians until he was 19, going back to civilization to visit his family only once or twice per year.

Why would a young white boy go off to live with the Indians? Sam was not an avid hunter or fisherman. There were no books to keep him occupied in the wilderness. What on earth would keep a fifteen-year-old boy out in the woods for five years? Fifteen-year-old girls. The same thing that keeps modern teenage boys standing in front of a mirror, mashing pimples and combing their hair for hours.

Adolescent Indian girls were encouraged to experiment sexually. The tribe wanted them to be prepared to deliver pleasure to their future husbands, so along with cleaning, cooking and tanning leather, they were expected to work on their sexuality. If they saw an appealing young buck, they tried him out. If they discovered something that felt good, they practiced it. They did all this when they were single. When they got pregnant, or otherwise chose to marry and settle down, they stayed strictly true to their mate, or he cut off their nose.

Imagine a young Sam Houston in such a target-rich environment. He was a good looking, strapping youth, nearing six feet in height. His fame spread through the tribe, and single girls were coming from miles around just to see what the pale-faced boy had to offer. Why on earth would he ever go back and sweep out his brother’s store.

On the other hand, consider Elisha. She was 18 years old and her mother had taught her all she knew of the birds and bees, which probably wasn’t much. Her mother may have explained that sex was painful, a curse that a woman must endure, along with a monthly period and childbirth. Elisha could not have looked forward to her wedding night.

Sam and Elisha were married in her parents’ palatial home near Gallatin. They spent their wedding night in separate bedrooms, and left early the next morning for the two-day wagon trip to Nashville. On the second night of their marriage, they stayed in the guest bedroom at the home of the bride’s aunt. The next morning, the bride confided to the aunt, “I hate that man. I wish Sam Houston was dead.”

What happened? How could a fresh young bride turn sour so quickly? What had Sam done to cause this sudden change of heart? Most of his sexual experience was with the Cherokee, and that had been as a juvenile. He certainly must have gone to brothels as he matured, but that does little to prepare a young man for the patience and tenderness sometimes required in marriage.

I expect, on the long wagon ride that day, Sam had remembered some of the Indian girls and some of the moves that had turned them on. He may have playfully grabbed a boob or patted a backside. He may have playfully tried so often that Elisha felt she was fighting an octopus. He was surely nursing a woody, and may have shown it to her. He may have even asked her to pet it. Or rub it. Or kiss it.

In their bedroom that night, Sam probably wanted to keep the lights on, while Elisha wanted it to be pitch black. She complained to her aunt of a hideous scar on Sam’s leg, near the groin area, so Sam had surely stripped. The wound was left over from the war of 1812, and bothered Houston for the rest of his life. He probably paraded around the bedroom naked, displaying his masculinity. He must have scared her more than anything in her life up to that point.

During the next few weeks, while living in the governor’s mansion, Houston complained to some close friends that Elisha was “cold” to him. He was not specific, and did not elaborate. Elisha told her parents he was insanely jealous, and accused her of having a lover. Because of his experience with Indian maidens, Houston was certain that all women enjoyed sex and could not understand his wife’s reluctance in the bedroom.

After their split, Sam Houston moved back to the Cherokees and married (in an Indian ceremony) a beautiful widow, Tiana. Sam stayed drunk most of the time they lived together. After four years, Houston dissolved the marriage, moved to Texas and, as they say, the rest is history. He and Elisha finally divorced after Texas became a republic. Both remarried.

Houston, at long last, found marital bliss. In 1840, at age 47, he married Margaret Lea, 21, a religious girl with fragile health. Margaret defined the term “long –suffering-wife,” staying at home in Texas while Sam went off to Washington as a Senator for most of the year. He wrote often, but only came home between sessions. During these yearly visits home, he met his new baby, impregnated Margaret, and went back to Washington. They had eight children. Sam managed to remember most of their names.

This only scratches the surface of sex in Texas history. Perhaps, one day, I’ll dig deeper into the subject.

General Sesma Arrives in San Antonio

2016-02-26T09:56:00.001-08:00

The Chapel at the Alamo, before the U.S. Army replaced the roof and added the iconic facade in 1846.

February 23, 1836

A hundred and eighty years ago today, William Barret Travis woke with a headache. It was late, almost seven, but he’d been at George Washington’s Birthday party until almost one, and afterwards, spent at least two hours with that Mexican girl. She charged him for it. What ever happened to the girls who used to give it away? Every woman he met had a price tag. He must pay or do without.

Travis catalogued his “conquest” in his log book, dressed and went out into the bright sunshine, still nursing the headache. The streets were filled with traffic, unusual for this time of day. Wagons with entire families were loaded with household goods, heading out of town. The population of San Antonio, about 2500 people, was 95 per cent Mexican-Texians—Tejanos—and Travis knew most of them were supporters of Santa Anna. Now they were making a mass exodus from the city. Travis chose to ignore the rumors that the Mexican Army was near.

Travis believed that Santa Anna was too good a general to march his army across the wild horse desert this time of year. Instead, he’d wait until spring, when the grass was green and the horses had fodder. The “brush and pear” country was brutal anytime of year, but especially in the winter. Santa Anna knew that, so he would wait, no matter what those lying Tejanos said.

“Col. Travis, Col. Travis!” John Sutherland hurried to catch up as Travis walked across Military Plaza, heading toward the Alamo to supervise the renovations he had ordered. Sutherland was a medical doctor and had volunteered his services to the garrison at the Alamo. “I been looking for you, Buck. Juan Seguin says the Mexican army is over on the west side of town right now. They say they’s at least a thousand of ‘em. What we gonna do?”

“First thing, let’s not go off half-cocked. I trust Seguin, but I wouldn’t believe most of those Tejanos if they told me the sun rose in the east. We need to check out the story. Let’s climb up in the bell tower there and see what we can see.”

Sutherland and Travis, along with a “reliable” soldier went into the San Fernando Cathedral and climbed the stairs to the landing, then took the ladder to the bell platform at the top of the tower. It was the highest point in San Antonio and offered an unobstructed view of the city and the surrounding countryside. There were no Mexican soldiers in sight.

Lt. Col. William B. Travis--in better days.

“What did I tell you, John? Those lying Tejanos were spreading rumors at the party last night. I knew better than to believe them. Look at those two fellows riding out the Del Rio Road. Let’s watch them ‘til they get over that ridge. If they’s any Mexicans out there, they’ll see ‘em.”

Travis and Sutherland watched as the travelers followed the road to the top of the ridge. Suddenly, the horsemen wheeled their mounts, used their spurs and rushed back toward town. Within minutes, troops appeared at the crest of the hill. The sun glinted off polished brass breastplates as hundreds of Mexican cavalry topped the rise. According to the rumors, that would be General Sesma with 1500 men, Santa Anna’s advance guard.

“We’ve got to get busy, Doc. You send Red Smith out to see how many Mexicans there are and what they’re up to. Spread the word for all our troops to gather supplies and get back to the Alamo. The guys are scattered all over town, sleeping off hangovers from last night. Crockett played the fiddle and we drank and danced ‘til way after midnight. I’ll get back to my headquarters and work out a plan. Bowie is sick or drunk—I can’t tell which, but either way, he’s not much help.”

General Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma, with 500 cavalry and 1000 infantry troops, stopped at the outskirts of San Antonio while he considered his options. His officers were pushing for an immediate attack. The Texians were disorganized, and according to local spies, most were hung over from celebrating Washington’s Birthday last night. Regardless of all this, the general was not eager to attack.

Sesma was a seasoned veteran, a Cuban, who believed in the old adage about victors and spoils. Inventories needed to be taken. Wagons and warehouses needed to be located and confiscated. Plans for sale and delivery needed to be made. The army did not need to rush into battle. Occupation was much more profitable, and the Texians, while appearing to be vulnerable, might be setting a trap.

General Sesma chose to wait until the main body of the army came to reinforce his troops and guarantee victory. Instead of dashing headlong into San Antonio and crushing the scattered opposition, Sesma set up camp outside town, sent in a detail to hang the blood red “No Quarter” flag from the San Fernando Cathedral bell tower, and had his chef prepare tea. His delay forced the siege and, during the next two weeks, cost Mexico over a thousand young soldiers.

Travis, safely back at the Alamo, watched from the roof of the old chapel as the Mexicans unfurled the “No Quarter” flag. “We can’t allow that challenge to go unanswered, Lt. Dickinson. Fire the eighteen-pounder. We’re not afraid of a bunch of Mexicans and we need to let them know it.”

“I don’t have a target, Colonel. I can’t shoot at the cathedral.”

“Use your head Al. Fire a round into the plaza, just to let them know we’re here and we’re dangerous. Get it done! I’m not accustomed to having my orders questioned.”

The gun crew turned to and fired one of their precious cannonballs into the plaza. It bounced off the stone pavement, and rolled harmlessly down the street.

Bowie was furious with Travis for wasting the shot and twelve pounds of powder, and he wanted to hear what the Mexicans had to say. He arranged for Green Jameson, the engineer supervising reinforcement of the fort, to carry a flag of truce and meet with the Mexican officers. Jameson explained that the cannon shot had been an accidental discharge, and the Texians were willing to hear whatever terms the Mexican army had in mind.

The meeting was short. The Mexican terms were surrender at discretion, meaning unconditional surrender. Santa Anna would accept nothing less. Jameson carried the news back to the besieged little fort and the officers met late into the evening, discussing options.

After the meeting, Travis composed his “Victory or Death” letter, which he would send out the next day. He was sure “El Colorado” Smith could still slip through the lines and make it to San Felipe. Travis wanted the letter to reach the American people. Not just those who lived in Texas, but all freedom loving citizens of the United States. He addressed the letter….”To the people of Texas and all Americans in the world…” William B. Travis was suddenly playing on a larger stage.

Part Three--VeryEarly Texas History--Panfilo de Narvaez--Conquistador?

2015-10-14T12:02:00.002-07:00

In the two decades following Columbus’ discovery of the West Indies, Spain launched dozens of expeditions to explore and colonize the New World. King Ferdinand richly rewarded Columbus, his descendants, and other explorers. The native inhabitants of the islands, docile and gentle Tainos, were easily dominated, and the New World was brimming with opportunity.

To encourage colonization, the Spanish established an encomienda system, whereby Spanish noblemen were awarded tracts of land and assigned Taino slaves. The landowners made huge fortunes and part of the profit from these colonies was paid directly to the king as tribute. Spanish soldiers-of-fortune flooded the islands, seeking riches. Encomienda grants were doled out on a first-come, first-served basis, and the competition was fierce.

Panfilo de Narvaez, a tall, blond native of Castile, came to the Caribbean as a soldier determined to make his fortune. Even though he was of noble birth and had friends in high places, Panfilo exhibited a natural tendency to screw-up. According to contemporary reports, he had an authoritarian personality and was unusually cruel to the Taino natives. Considering some of his decisions, he was less than bright. Indications are that de Narvaez was an arrogant, cruel and stupid soldier, dependent on relatives for his position and oblivious to the needs of his subordinates.

In 1511, Panfilo’s uncle, Diego Valazquez de Cuellar, the first governor of Cuba, put him in charge of the army with orders to conquer the unarmed Tainos and subject the island to Spanish rule. Father Bartolome de Las Casas watched as de Narvaez’s troops murdered 2500 peaceful natives whose only crime was bringing food offerings to the soldiers. Watching the massacre, the priest changed his attitude toward the Tainos and fought against the encomienda system, slavery, and mistreatment of Indians for the rest of his life.

When Cuba was secure, Governor de Cuellar sent Hernan Cortes to conquer Mexico for him. After launching the expedition, the governor realized the ambitious Cortes might take over Mexico and keep it for himself. He ordered Cortes back to Cuba. Cortes ignored the order. In 1520, de Cuellar appointed his nephew governor of Mexico and sent him with 1400 men to arrest Cortes, put him in irons, and bring him back to Cuba.

Cortes, with 250 troops, proved his military worth by whipping de Narvaez and his army. De Narvaez not only demonstrated military ineptitude, but lost an eye in the battle and Cortes threw him into prison in Veracruz for two years. The Cuban soldiers, promised gold and recognizing competent leadership, deserted Narvaez and joined Cortes. With his new army, Cortes decided to keep Mexico for himself, showing that de Cuellar was a shrewd judge of character.

When Panfilo de Narvaez was released from prison, he made his way back to Spain. Working through contacts in the government, he convinced King Charles V to back him in a mission to explore and colonize the land along the Gulf coast, from Florida to Mexico. The king provided ships, soldiers, and colonists, and de Narvaez led the expedition. In June of 1527, with five ships and 600 men, de Narvaez sailed back to the New World, planning to conquer and colonize all the land north of the Gulf of Mexico.

King Charles, wishing to protect his interests, sent a bright young man along to keep records for the king and to act as second in command. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca joined the expedition for his first trip to the new world. Most of what we know of the expedition is because of his writings.

The expedition first landed at the island of Hispaniola, where about one-fourth of the crew deserted. The soldiers had no confidence in their one-eyed commander, and desertion was a constant problem. Two ships and more men were lost in a hurricane off the Cuban coast. De Narvaez planned to start at the mouth of Rio de Las Palmas, north of Vera Cruz, and work his way east, but became lost and confused. Very confused. He managed to land some three hundred men on the east coast of Florida, near present Tampa Bay. Because of the confusion, de Narvaez decided to work west to the Rio de Las Palmas, which he thought to be about fifty miles. The expedition most likely used the crude map drawn by Alavarez de Pineda eight years before, which showed Florida to be a peninsula and not an island as Ponce de Leon believed.

De Narvaez, in a decision openly opposed by Cabeza de Vaca, sent the ships back to Havana and decided to march his troops overland to explore and occupy the country. Local Indians, having learned from de Leon that Europeans could not to be trusted, were less than happy to see de Narvaez’s expedition. Unable to fight the well-equipped Spaniards in the open, they hid in the jungle and picked off the Spaniards one or two at a time with arrows or lances. Rather than allow the soldiers to occupy their villages, the Indians burned them. There was no gold or silver and very little food. The Spanish were soon reduced to eating their horses.

Six months of struggling through the swamp, fighting Indians and starving, convinced de Narvaez to abandon his ambitions and return to civilization. There was, however, a problem—no ships. Cabeza de Vaca felt the expedition should go to Mexico across country, but de Narvaez overruled that notion. The soldiers built a forge, and melted down every bit of metal they could find—horseshoes, stirrups, bits, fasteners, buttons, armor, anything metal—and made tools and nails to build rafts. They built five rafts, each designed to hold forty men with oars, and used their clothing to make sails.

De Vaca protested separation of the rafts, thinking it best that they work together. Instead, Narvaez picked the forty strongest men to row his raft and made it clear that each barge and every man was on his own. As they sailed and rowed close to shore, the heavy current of a river, probably the Mississippi, swept de Narvaez’s raft and two others out to sea, leaving Cabeza de Vaca to make his way along the coast with the two remaining rafts.

De Narvaez's raft was washed out into the Gulf, probably by the force of the Mississippi River. He and 150 men were lost in the Gulf of Mexico.

Cabeza de Vaca, with two rafts and eighty-six men, kept close to shore and made his way west, planning to follow the coast to civilization in Mexico. A hurricane washed them ashore and destroyed the rafts on a barrier island off the coast of Texas. It may have been Galveston Island, but most historians believe it was a bit farther down the coast at Follets Island. De Vaca named the island “The Isle of Misfortune.”

Only fifteen of the eighty-six men survived the winter. Naked, without tools or weapons, and lost on a barren island, some drowned, many starved to death and some were killed by Indians for “sport.” Cabeza de Vaca made his way to the mainland where he almost died of an illness. Nursed back to health by the Indians, he stayed on the mainland several months.

When de Vaca regained his health, he made his way back to the “Isle of Misfortune” and discovered that twelve of the survivors had swum to the mainland, planning to walk to Mexico. Two men remained and de Vaca joined them to live on the island. The Indians permitted the trio to stay, and sometimes traded food for menial labor. De Vaca collected seashells and bartered for hides and other items with mainland Indians. In a short time, he became a well-known trader and travelled extensively among the tribes along the coast.

More to come----

The Fire of the Angels

2015-08-21T09:09:00.002-07:00

Angel Fire at dawn

Sitting with an old friend at 5:15 in the morning, sipping a steaming cup of black coffee on Davis Ford’s front porch in New Mexico, we watched as a faint rose-colored glow started to show in the east, just over the mountain and just under the cloud cover. Soon an intense red fire filled the triangle formed by the mountains and the dark clouds above.

After several minutes, crimson rays began to grow out of the formation and tentatively creep across the bottom of the cirrus clouds, lighting them up. Within seconds the fleecy white clouds that had been invisible in the dark glowed fiery red, filling the sky with intense color. The entire sky ignited with “Angel Fire.” Another day began.

I had decided not to include this post on my blog, considering it too personal, but it is, after all, about a bunch of boys from Lubbock—old boys, but Lubbock boys, none the less. I won’t ask that you do the math, we’re all around seventy-eight years old, and showing that age in various ways. All of us hurt somewhere and some of us hurt everywhere, but, characteristically, no one from Lubbock mentions his pains or infirmities. Some were too old to fish, sightseeing was fun so long as we stayed in the car, and we almost lost Brad in a hot tub, but everyone’s sense of humor stayed intact. We laughed our wrinkled old asses off.

Eight of us, classmates from Lubbock High School, enjoyed Davis Ford’s hospitality at Angel Fire for two days, and then drove north to Creede, Colorado, to join three other classmates, making eleven people with at least one thing in common. We all graduated from high school on Friday, May 27, 1955, at the Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock, Texas. Technically, Brad didn’t walk across the stage that night due to complications having to do with the mindset of Lubbock in the fifties, but he got his diploma the next week and it is just as official as any of ours.

We laughed. We fished. We joked. We ate. We explored. We laughed. We enjoyed each other.

Headquarters at Freemon Ranch near Creede.

Our hosts for the Creede and Gunnison parts of the trip, James Collins and Neil McMullen, had several reasons to put together this package. They want to stay connected . They enjoy fly fishing and leading others to their favorite hot spots. They want to share the magnificent mountains they love. They enjoy laughing with old friends.

McMullen's justifiably famous scratch biscuits and gravy, with a side of bacon. For dessert, smear one of these babies with soft butter and top it with grape or apricot jelly--it'll stick to your ribs.

Many times, when visiting with a friend from my youth, I have a quiet yearning to end the visit. I want to move on, finish this conversation and speak with someone else. I’ve wondered about this, and decided that I have placed that person in a certain box in my memory and he or she has changed. I want to get away, so I can put them back into their proper boxes and not be confused by the people they have become. Unless they are very interesting, I don’t want to make a new box. I was not bothered by that sensation on this trip with these guys.

Did I mention that we laughed? This in Neil's backyard at Gunnison. I didn't step it off, but I'd say the Gunnison River, there on the right, is about forty feet from his back door.

These men are the same people they were in high school, evolved and polished by time and experience. It is not possible for these guys to be boring—they have special talents which have carried them past the norms in life. All have that deep-seated ambition that is a trademark of the High Plains. Their careers span those initials we read about—MDs, MBAs, PhDs, LLBs, CEOs, and Captains of Industry. I felt honored to be included. Did I mention how much we laughed?

We learned important lessons, just growing up in Lubbock. Ten years old and almost crying after I struck out once, a baseball coach at the Boys Club put his hand on my shoulder and told me, “As long as you’re swinging son, you’re dangerous.” I took the message to heart and have used it often throughout my life. It fits a lot of situations.

The Creede Crew in alphabetical order: James Collins, Davis Ford, Truitt Garrison, Jim McLaughlin, Neil McMullen, Larry Merriman, James Pope, Wayne Ratisseau, Brad Reeves, Paul Sikes, and Roy Turner. This is a funny bunch of old men—boy, did we laugh.

The whole week was wonderful, if perhaps a bit bittersweet because of our age. Time polished some of us a bit more than others, and leaned heavily on all of us, but we’re still here and we’re still swinging. I cannot help but remember a line from a favorite poem of mine—“Why, to be in such fine company would make a deacon proud.”

This little creek feeds into the Rio Grande. During the 1880's, the stage coach from Creede to Lake City stopped overnight here, to give the passengers a needed rest. The Rio Grande originates in those mountains beyond. All this was part of Texas until 1848.

P.S. I read that Angel Fire was named for the fiery reflection of the late afternoon sun on the snow-covered mountains and not for the fantastic sunrise. I suppose a Madison Avenue ad man named it to attract skiers. He should have been there in the summer, just after 5:00 AM.

More early Texas History

2015-06-28T09:35:00.001-07:00

Columbus sailed on the Santa Maria, with the Nina and the Pinta nearby.

In 1492, when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was just two years old, Columbus left Portugal, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and sailed, more or less aimlessly, around the Caribbean Sea trying to figure out where he was. He realized the world was round, but it was about twice as big as he imagined. He was convinced that everything would be fine if he could just find India. Or maybe China. Instead, he kept finding islands.

The islands he found were inhabited by friendly indigenous people called Tainos. After his first encounter with the Tainos, in the Bahamas, Columbus wrote King Ferdinand and described them as tall, well formed, handsome people. He went on to say:

“They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will….They took great delight in pleasing us. They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal….Your Highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people….They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing.”

The Tainos were handsome people, warm and gentle and eager to please the Spaniards.

This is, no doubt, a Hollywood version of the Tainos.

Regardless of Columbus’ feeling that there were “no better people” on earth, the Spaniards were more than ready to give these “gentle and ….laughing” people knowledge of “what is evil.” Columbus believed the “Indians” would make great slaves, and on his second voyage, in 1493 and 1494, set about to conquer and enslave them. He decided the subdued natives would pay a tribute which he would split with the king. Every three months, every native over fourteen years of age was required to deliver a hawk’s bell full of gold to Columbus. If there was no gold, Columbus would accept twenty-five pounds of spun cotton. If the Tainos did not pay, Spanish soldiers cut off their hands and left them to bleed to death.

The Indians rebelled against these harsh methods without much success. Many died in battle, and many, forced into slavery and not allowed to work their fields, starved to death. The biggest killer of all was disease—the natives had no immunity to smallpox, measles, influenza, typhoid, or other European maladies and hundreds of thousands were infected and died. In 1492, the apex of Taino society and coincidently, the arrival of Columbus, historians estimate one and a half million natives lived on the island of Hispaniola alone, with at least that many more scattered among other islands. Some estimates put the entire Caribbean population at over eight million, and "long counters"estimate over thirty million. In any case, only fifty years later, in 1540, the Taino population of the islands stood at forty thousand and falling. The Spaniards imported slaves from Africa to do the work.

It is believed that the Tainos moved into the islands from the South American continent about 400 BC, and thrived there almost 2000 years, until the Spanish came. Taino language gave us the words canoe, hammock, barbeque, tobacco, and hurricane. Tainos named Cuba and Haiti. The Karankawa Indians who lived along the Texas coast are believed to have migrated from the Caribbean. They were large, handsome people and may have been distant relatives of the Tainos.

Columbus discovered Cuba, but was not sure if it was an island or a continent. Perhaps it was China. In 1494, he sailed along the south side of the island and finally, in 1508, Sebastian de Ocampo proved Cuba was not a continent by sailing around it. Columbus never saw the mainland of either continent that blocked his way to China, but he kept searching.

Also in the year 1492, Spain drove the Moors out of their last European stronghold, Granada. Suddenly, a number of young Spanish soldiers were left without a war to wage. Many of them volunteered to help explore the “New World,” and hurried west to make their fortunes. Cuba became the center of operations in the Caribbean. Spain conquered and enslaved the native population, and built the city of Havana on the South Coast in 1514. The city was moved to its present location on the north side of the island in 1519 because of the superb natural harbor there. Havana soon became the center of all commerce and culture for the New World.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes, a cousin of Pizarro, ignored orders to return to Cuba and proceeded to conquer the Aztecs in Mexico. He enslaved the indigenous people, put them to work in the gold and silver mines, and began systematically looting the country. The Spanish king forgave his mutiny and appointed him ruler of Mexico in 1523. Ruthless and universally disliked by his contemporaries, Cortes became one of the richest and most powerful men in the New World.

Ships arriving from Spain unloaded their cargo into Havana’s warehouses. Treasure ships returning to Spain stopped in Havana to take on fresh food and supplies for the voyage back to Europe. Conquistadores and explorers planned their trips and outfitted their ships among the wharves in Havana. About this time, a twenty-one year old Cabaza de Vaca joined the army in Spain and began making a name for himself on the battlefield.

The Spanish conquistadores were young, ambitious and utterly ruthless. They shared a complete disregard for the welfare of the natives in whatever area they conquered, enslaved them, killed them in battle, and wiped out whole populations with European disease. When the native populations died off, the Spaniards imported slaves from Africa.

Most of these conquerors knew each other, or at least knew of each other. Ponce de Leon arrived in the New World with Columbus, on his second voyage in 1493, as one of 200 “gentlemen volunteers.” DeSoto fought alongside Pizarro and Balboa, and became rich in the conquest of Peru. Ponce De Leon became the first governor of Puerto Rico before he decided, in 1512, to lead an expedition to search for gold, explore, and colonize lands to the north. He discovered and named La Florida, which he thought was another big island. A popular legend was born fifty years after his death, when a writer wondered if De Leon had been searching for the “Fountain of Youth.”

Financed by the governor of Jamaica, Alonso Alvarez de Pineda set out to map the coast of the gulf from the “island” of Florida to the Panuco River, just north of Veracruz. He hoped to find an ocean route to China. Pineda was the first to see and map the Gulf Coast of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, land which he called “Amichel.” His explorations verified the fact that Florida was a peninsula, and he was the first European to see the Mississippi River. His notes describe the river and the many Indian settlements on its banks. He sailed eighteen miles upriver from the coast before he returned to the Gulf. Historians are always ready to dispute the findings of each other. Some suggest he missed the Mississippi River altogether and, instead, sailed eighteen miles into Mobile Bay.

A "cleaned up" version of Pineda's first map showing the Texas Coast.

Pineda’s map, done in 1514, was the first document in Texas history. By today’s standards, it is a rather crude rendition, with an oversized Cuba dominating the center of the Gulf, a misshapen Yucatan Peninsula to the left, and the coast curving past Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and finally terminating at a rather boxy-shaped Florida on the far right. Pineda proved La Florida was not an island, proved there was no outlet to China from the Gulf, and proved the Gulf was much larger than previously believed. Cortes disputed his findings, probably in an attempt to keep from sharing any of the discovered lands with one of his many rivals, Francisco de Garay, the governor of Jamaica who financed Pineda’s expedition.

Pineda’s discoveries were taken to Seville and entered into the Patron Real, a master map of the Caribbean set up for the king to keep track of all discoveries, claims, and counter-claims in the area. These maps were shared with any Spanish ship’s captains, explorers, or conquistadores bound for the New World. One of the first explorers to use Pineda’s information was Panfilo de Narvez, who, in 1527, mounted an expedition to explore, colonize, and settle La Florida. A thirty-five year old soldier with the unlikely name of “Head of a Cow,” Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, was the king’s accountant and second in military command of this expedition.

More to come….

Very early Texas History

2015-04-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Giant Bison, weighing near 4,000 lbs, were common around Lubbock until about 15,000 years ago.

Texas History starts whenever the historian wants it to start. Some have placed the beginnings of Texas at the time man first crossed the land bridge at the Bering Strait and began to filter down between the glaciers into North America and naturally settle in the garden spot of this continent, around present-day Lubbock, Texas.

Newer evidence suggests that this migration happened, but may not have populated Texas. The first humans on Texas soil may have come from Europe or Africa, by sailing across a narrow part of the Atlantic, landing in South America and working their way north. Then again, they may have floated over from Polynesia and landed in Chile. Perhaps all of the above contributed to the settlement of early Texas. Because of advances in the study of DNA, all these theories have some merit and are being investigated.

No matter how they got here, there is solid evidence that humans lived near Lubbock over 12,000 years ago. At the Lubbock Lakes Archeological Site, one excavated cliff wall shows proof of continual habitation from before that time. This site is the only place in North America showing such evidence. Indications are that early Texans hunted Wooly Mammoths and Giant Bison in this area, butchered their kill here, and dried and preserved the meat. A variety of artifacts, flint spear points, arrowheads, and cutting tools show that these Indians were nomads. Some lived near here and others came from afar or perhaps traded with distant peoples.

Instead of getting into an argument about who came first from where, fast forward 12,000 years to 1211 A.D. The Moors from North Africa conquered most of the south half of the Iberian Peninsula and the Pope in Rome was worried they would take the rest of Spain, and then Europe, which would put him out of a job. He was so worried that he ordered the Christian Kings of the area to quit squabbling among themselves and join together in a Crusade against the Muslims. Most everyone joined. It is no surprise that the French didn’t like the rules and took their 30,000 knights and went home.

Pope Innocent III ordered this Crusade. Thinking this might be the first example of an oxymoron in modern history, I read all I could about him. He was not the first oxymoron—at least two examples preceded him—Innocent I and II.

King Alphonso VIII of Castile, Jimenez De Rado, the Archbishop of Toledo, Sancho VII of Navarre, and Pedro II of Aragon followed Innocent III’s orders, pooled their armies, and set out with some 50,000 soldiers to fight the Saracens. The Muslim horde, estimated to be over 125,000 men, was camped in a secure valley near Las Navas, protected on all sides by impassable mountains. They rested peacefully, knowing they controlled the high ground at the only known pass into the valley.

A local shepherd, Martin Alhaja, (or Halaja) told the soldiers of a secret pass into the valley which he had marked with a cow’s skull. The troops found the pass, staged a forced march through the night, and surrounded the surprised Muslims on the morning of July 16, 1212. The ensuing Battle of Los Navas de Tolosa was a slaughter.

Sancho VII making short work of the Caliph's guards.

The caliph in charge of the Muslims, Muhammad al-Nasir, camped in a splendid tent on a rise near the center of his army. His tent consisted of “three-ply crimson velvet flecked with gold; strings of pearls descending from its purple fringes.” Rows of chain radiated from the center of his camp, and tied in place 3,000 camels. Inside the ring of camels, 10,000 black slaves were chained together in a circle, their steel tipped lances facing outward at an angle, with the bases buried in the ground. According to reports by the Christians, the caliph stood inside this protection, “wearing the green dress and turban of his ancestral line,” holding a scimitar in one hand and a Koran in the other. He read passages from the Koran which promised all the delights of paradise to any young man who perished in religious battle and the torments of hell to any coward who should desert his ranks.

The Spanish attacked eagerly. Sancho VII drove his war horses through the lines of camels and made short work of the chained, immobile slave guards. Muhammad al-Nasir fled on a mare and “did not rest until he had reached Jaen,” where he spent long hours writing elaborate excuses as to why he lost the battle. The Spanish soldiers roamed the mountains for the next few days, slaughtering Muslim stragglers. Causality estimates are perhaps exaggerated, but approximately 100,000 Muslims are claimed to have perished, while the Spanish only lost some 2,000 men.

Written accounts of the battle are available from both sides and are interesting in their contradictions. Moorish reports tend to stress the unavoidable series of unfortunate circumstances which befell the competent commanders, while most of the Spanish reports come from various letters to the Pope and uniformly cite the hand of God and the influence of the Pope in the victory. Self-serving statements praising the authors are scattered through all the documents, no matter which side they represent.

The caliph’s elaborate tent was sent to Innocent III as a gift from Alphonse VIII, in case the Pope needed a folding three-bedroom, two-bath place to sleep. Perhaps in deference to the Pope, no mention was made of the dispensation of the harem. The poor shepherd, Martin Alhaja, was appointed a nobleman, and gifted appropriate lands and a coat of arms. He was bestowed the title Cabeza de Vaca—the head of the cow.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, probably in 1540 or so. He must have been very wise, because he sure wasn't pretty.

The heirs of Cabeza de Vaca prospered, and almost three hundred years later, in 1490, Francisco de Vara and Teresa Cabeza de Vaca had a son named Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Two years later, in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's armies finally drove the last Moors out of Granada and across the Mediterranean into North Africa. That same year, Isabella backed an unknown Italian, Christopher Columbus, on a quest to find a short cut to India. Spain was on a roll.

The Reason I was Banned from McDonald's

2015-04-12T05:25:00.001-07:00

When my son, Paul, was eight years old, we had his birthday party at the farm. Our rule was one guest for each year, so Paul invited eight friends, all boys. Most of these boys were also in his Cub Scout troop and on his Little League team. Charlotte and I were well acquainted with all the parents.

The farm was called the Easy Three Ranch, located near Austonio, Texas, about twenty miles west of Crockett. Being from West Texas, I called it a farm. Two hundred acres to me is a small farm, but the other two-thirds of the EZ3 partnership, Ken Black and Hugh Ruggles, deemed it a ranch. Because most everyone from Houston lived in a condo or on a 5,000 square foot residential lot, they considered it vast acreage.

After work on Friday, the boys gathered at our home, with their bedrolls and overnight gear. I loaded the gear into the trunk of my car and put the boys into Charlotte’s Buick Estate Wagon. I drove the wagon and carried the boys. Charlotte and our twelve-year-old daughter, Devon, followed in my car. They were my support group, along to help with food prep and other chores.

All the seats in the Buick folded down, which created a semi-level, carpeted platform from the back of the front seat to the rear window of the wagon. Plenty of room for the nine little guys and they loved it. Seat belts were not mandatory then, and would have impeded the natural flow of busy boys in the back of the car. I only had three rules—don’t fight, don’t pester the driver, and don’t jump out the window. Being safety conscious, I locked the doors and windows from the driver’s seat. I turned on the A/C, tuned in some good country music, and zoned out for 112 miles.

We got to the farm in time to build a wonderful fire in the pit behind the house. The boys sang camp songs, roasted hot dogs, and did S’mores all around. Everyone had a bath, brushed his teeth, and bedded down in the bunkroom before eleven. They slept very well.

I fixed scrambled eggs, German-fried potatoes, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy for breakfast, with orange juice and milk. Some of the guys didn’t like some of the food, but most of them found something they would eat. Josh Spikerman ate everything in sight, and Shane Rogers didn’t like anything. I offered him oatmeal. No way. I finally told him, “Tough stuff, Shane. Maybe we’ll have something you’ll like for lunch.”

Paul led the guys on a nature hike, through the thicket, around the lake, and out into the hay meadow. He taught them how to herd cattle by waving his arms and yelling as he charged. The cows hooked it into the next pasture. We spent the rest of the morning shooting arrows at targets I had set up on the ends of the round hay bales stored in the meadow.

Charlotte and Devon brought lunch out at about 1:30. Cold drinks, deli sandwiches and potato chips. Shane Rogers drank a Coke, ate two thick bologna and cheese sandwiches and two bags of chips. Charlotte worried that he would get terminal constipation.

We finished Saturday with Paul’s favorite dinner—brisket I’d smoked all day and Charlotte’s potato salad, followed by the mandatory birthday cake. After a session in the hot tub in lieu of showers, everyone fell asleep without any trouble. Sunday morning, I fixed oatmeal and orange juice, we cleaned up our trash, straightened the house, loaded our gear and left the farm at about 11:30, planning a stop for lunch on the way home.

I pulled up to the McDonald’s in Huntsville with the after-church crowd at 12:45 and waited in line. When it was my turn, I eased up to the window and ordered ten assorted drinks and ten Happy Meals, nine with everything and Shane Rogers’ plain, no pickles, no secret sauce. I was worn out. My ears hurt. My back hurt. I was bone tired. The girl at the window took my money and asked me to drive forward to the next window to pick up my order.

The timid little girl at the service window passed our drinks to me and I distributed them. Then she handed me ten sacks, one marked with a yellow tag for Shane. I passed them out and prepared to get back on the road.

“Mine has secret sauce on it! And pickles. I can’t eat secret sauce and I hate pickles.” Shane yelled from the back seat.

I put the car in park and asked the girl to give me a second. “Everyone check your burgers and find the one without sauce or pickles.” No such luck—all had sauce. I returned Shane’s to the girl, apologized and asked her to replace it.

She smiled and said, “No problem, sir. We’ll fix another one. Just pull forward and wait over there and we’ll bring it to you in a few minutes.”

I put the wagon in drive, then had a thought. I put it back in park. “I’ll just wait right here, if It’s all right with you.”

“Oh no, Sir. You must move—you’re blocking the whole line. Please drive forward.”

“You don’t understand. I want that burger to be as important to you all as it is to me. I’ll just stay right here till I get it.”

The Plymouth immediately behind, knowing I had received my order, gave a polite little toot on his horn. I put my foot on the brake to show him the size of my tail lights.

“Oh, Sir! You can’t do this. Please move up to that parking space and I’ll get your burger right out. Please don’t make me call the manager.” The poor child was almost in tears.

A Chevy Blazer, three cars back, started honking. I noticed Charlotte and Devon had pulled around the line, and were waiting at the edge of the parking lot.

“It’s not my burger, Ma‘am. It is for Shane Rogers. He doesn’t like secret sauce and he cannot stand pickles. Call your manager. I’m not moving.”

The young lady slammed the sliding glass shut and spoke into the microphone. In a minute or so, a yuppie-looking fellow in his early thirties, with a McDonald’s baseball cap on backwards, a Golden Arches Polo shirt and slacks, came out of the store and motioned with a lot of authority for me to move forward into the parking space he designated. His manner said I should do so immediately.

I put my car in drive and moved forward about three feet, enough to clear the service window, but still block the drive. I stopped, put it in park and killed the engine. Clear of the service window, I could open the door and step out. The Plymouth driver went crazy, standing on his horn. He was six feet from his lunch. He could see it getting cold in the window. A jacked-up pickup pulled out of line six cars back and roared past me. The driver was honking with one hand and shooting me the finger with the other. A sweet-looking girl in the front seat was shooting me the finger with both hands.

I stepped out of the manicured ivy bed and onto the sidewalk with the manager.

“You’ve got to move that car. No one can get through the line. This is our busiest time. We’ve got orders piling up inside. I’ve been nice about this, but I want that car moved now!” The young manager seemed to be under a lot of stress.

“You would be making a lot better use of your time to get back inside and make Shane’s hamburger. I waited in line to order it. I waited in line to pay for it. I waited in line to pick it up. I’m not waiting in line anymore. Let the line wait on me. You have my money. I want that burger.” I was growing short of patience.

“Look here, now! We can’t be held responsible to instantly produce every special order some spoiled kid wants. These things take time. I want that car moved. You need to move it right now!”

In the great scheme of things, I have to admit that I may have been a bit unreasonable. I was tired and looked forward to nothing more than getting on my way with all the boys quietly sipping their drinks and munching their burgers. I wanted to get them back to their parents and away from me as soon as possible. It had been a great weekend, but enough was enough. Besides, that yuppie irritated me. I enjoyed pulling his chain.

“I’ll move the car as soon as I have that burger. It is not complicated. “ I held my left hand out, palm up, as I spoke. My right arm rotated, windmill style, until my right hand slapped down on my left palm. At the impact of the palms, I did a little hop, both feet coming off the ground.

“I want a piece of bread.” Slap. Hop. “I want a piece of meat.” Slap. Hop. “I want a piece of cheese.” Slap. Hop. “I want a piece of bread.” Slap. Hop. “That’s it. I’ve already paid for it. I don’t care if you make it yourself or if you get it from Jack-in-the-Box, I’m not moving until I get it.”

I turned and started back to the car. Nine boys, all with eyes wide and mouths open, peered through the windows on that side of the car. Several people in the line were standing outside their cars, trying to see what was happening. The jacked-up pickup came around again, honking and shooting fingers from both windows. I glanced at Charlotte and Devon, parked near the edge of the lot. Charlotte wore a curious, exasperated look and Devon was laughing hysterically. Both of them have reacted to my antics much the same way for the last forty-odd years.

“Here’s your burger, Sir.” The timid country girl held out the sack with Shane’s lunch. “Please come back soon.” I arched an eyebrow. She realized what she’d said and flushed with embarrassment.

I got into the car. Shane checked his burger and found it satisfactory. I adjusted the mirrors, fastened my seat belt, checked the blinkers, and drove to Houston.

Paul turned eight in 1982. Those kids are in their forties now, and to this day, when I see any of them, they ask if I’ve been to McDonald’s lately.

Texas Independence Day March 2, 1836

2015-03-04T08:43:00.001-08:00

I wrote this a couple of days ago, hoping to get it ready to publish on the 2^nd, but I let it slide because I've discovered the joy of ignoring deadlines. March 2, by the way, is not the day Houston beat Santa Anna at San Jacinto. It is not the day the Alamo fell. It is not the day the drunks at Gonzales fired the cannon shot through the pecan trees over the Guadalupe River. It is none of those things.

On this day in 1836, 179 years ago, fifty-nine elected representatives and an appointed secretary all signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. The day was not unlike today, with the wind blowing cold and damp through the unchinked walls of a half-finished, wood-frame capitol building at Washington-on-the-Brazos, the newest designated capital city of Texas. The delegates covered the window openings with sheets and huddled around a wood stove, attempting to keep warm as they made plans for the colony.

     Colonial conventions had been held in San Felipe in 1832 and 1833, and a “Consultation” took place there in 1835. The chief purpose of these meetings had been to ask Mexico to honor a pledge to return to the liberal policies of the Constitution of 1824, which Santa Anna agreed to do, but then characteristically reneged on his promise.   A secondary purpose of the conventions was to convince Mexico to allow Texas affairs to be dealt with in Texas, and not govern the colony from far-off Saltillo.
     The Texians discovered that a “hat in the hands” approach to the Mexican bureaucrats did not work. Stephen Austin, who, hat in hand, delivered these requests, was promptly imprisoned for over two years. The colonists decided to mail a letter next time.
      New delegates, mostly a rowdy bunch of lawyers and real estate promoters known as “War Dogs,” were elected for the convention of 1836. Many were new to Texas, trying to get in on the land grab. Only ten members of the group had been in Texas for more than six years, and fifteen had been here less than one year.   The “War Dogs” were openly opposed to rule by Mexico and loud in their criticisms. The stately Lorenzo De Zavala and the learned Jose Navarro represented the Tejano population, along with Francisco Ruis (spelled elsewhere as Ruiz). All other delegates were white European males, including Thomas J. Rusk and Sam Houston. William B. Travis did not attend the convention because of pressing business at the Alamo.
      The Convention of 1836 convened on March 1, and the president, Richard Ellis, from the Red River delegation, wasted no time. He did away with all pretense and immediately appointed a five man committee to write a declaration of independence. The committee was chaired by George Childress, and included Edward Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney. Indications are that Childress did most of the work on the document, and probably came to the convention with a draft already prepared. He was obviously primed for the task—the committee presented a complete draft of the declaration first thing the next morning and it was passed by a unanimous vote on the first reading, without discussion.
      Stated in language borrowed freely from Thomas Jefferson’s American Declaration of Independence,  the Texas declaration contained a long list of real and imagined grievances. Among examples of dire suppressions named in the Texas document are, “….our interests have been continually depressed…., carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue…” and, “It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.”

The document includes several examples of unwelcome intervention by the Catholic Church, corruption within the Mexican Government, and, as if the Indians needed encouragement, it accuses the Mexicans of inciting the Comanche to rape, scalp, and pillage the settlers.

The Mexican Government did not lie or trick these people into colonization. Every man in the room had come to Texas knowing that it was a colony of Mexico and all official business would be conducted in Spanish. Most of the delegates were landowners. To own land in Texas, one had to swear allegiance to Mexico, join the Catholic Church, and accept Spanish as the national language.

After the list of grievances, the document continued, “We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free and incapable of self-government.”

Having introduced the idea that the Mexican people were incapable of governing themselves, and therefore unfit to be free, the Texians announced that they were not hampered by such limitations, and would no longer submit to Mexico’s laws, “unknown tongue,” or “national religion.” Texas was declared a free and independent nation, open to the judgment and dealings of an “impartial” world.

Logical questions arise from many quarters. Was this simply a land grab by a bunch of shady real estate agents? Did these promoters really have any patriotic intentions or were they just power and profit driven scum who stole Texas from Mexico? Is this just another example of white European males taking advantage of poor, unsophisticated, simple people? Are we not morally obligated to give this territory back?

The Mexicans are a fun-loving, happy race. They work incredibly hard and take good care of their families. Most attend church and, as much as is possible, help the poor. They are honest, warm-hearted, good-natured and resourceful. The peons laugh, drink cervesa, gamble, and fiddle around with their neighbors' wives. On the other hand, they don’t vote. They don’t educate themselves. They don’t pay debts. They don’t own property. They don‘t deserve Texas.

Back in 1836, many of the delegates wanted to adjourn and hurry to San Antonio to help Travis and his boys at the Alamo, but Sam Houston convinced them it was more important to stay and establish a government for the new republic. Their efforts to relieve the Alamo would have been in vain—it fell within four days. It is doubtful they could have made the journey in time to get slaughtered by the Mexican troops under Santa Anna, so, instead of a futile attempt to save the Alamo, the delegates, quietly encouraged and nudged forward by Sam Houston, settled for a futile attempt to write a constitution.

Some of these delegates, including Thomas Rusk and Lorenzo De Zavala, were pure and noble in their intentions. They wanted to establish a fair and democratic nation for the betterment of all the people. On the other hand, delegates such as Robert Potter were simply rotten to the core, and wanted nothing more than to line their own pockets. Most of them were between the two poles. Politicians are no different today. They are motivated by self-interest, and every single one of them can find moral justification for taking someone else’s property.
I have reached my own melancholy conclusion and wish to answer from a purely intellectual standpoint. Screw the fun loving Mexicans. They could not govern themselves in 1836 and they cannot do it now. Look at the condition of their country. One dictator after another moves in and seduces the populace with promises of power to the people. He says let us share the wealth, and offer equal reward for equal effort, and so on, and so on. Immediately upon gaining office, he executes all known or suspected enemies, raids the treasury, confiscates private property, encourages and accepts bribes, and grinds the common people under his heel.

Give Texas back? Pay reparations? Feel remorse? I take a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant view of the situation. Ain't gonna happen.

The Rabbit Hunt

2015-02-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

If you
If you're gonna hunt Jack Rabbits, this is a good place to do it. Did you know Mark Twain called them Jackass Rabbits, because of their big ears. That was shortened to Jack Rabbits and came into general use.

If you are a regular reader of mine, you know about Buck Campbell and Charlie Flowers. They farmed in Muleshoe, and have been friends of mine for over sixty years. Their sons, Scott Campbell and Eddie Flowers, grew up together.

One night, during their senior year, Scott and Eddie decided to go rabbit hunting. If you were a high school boy and lived in Muleshoe, that was a popular pastime, made more so because it provided an opportunity to drink beer with friends in the middle of the night. The equipment needed was minimal—a pickup truck, a spotlight, a cooler chest, and a 22 rifle. Some cheaters used shotguns, but right-thinking sportsmen considered shotguns unfair to the rabbits.

The best time to hunt rabbits is between 1:00 and 3:00 AM, while they’re out feeding. A foursome of teenage boys pile into a pickup truck and drive across the prairie, scanning the area with a high-powered, Q-Beam spotlight until a rabbit is spotted. Each boy plays a specific role, one driving, one spotlighting, and two standing in the pickup bed, holding onto the headache rack and shooting over the cab. Every so often, they rotate, so everyone gets to shoot.

Muleshoe rabbits do not deliver Easter eggs. They are not cute little Cottontails. Muleshoe rabbits are long-legged, big-boned jack rabbits that are incredibly fast and very tasty. They can be chicken-fried or cooked into a wonderful stew. Sydna Flowers made a legendary rabbit pot pie.

A rabbit hunt is pure excitement. When the rabbit is spotted, all hell breaks loose. The bright light temporarily blinds and confuses the rabbit, but it recovers and takes off like wild fire. The shooters fire away with semi-automatic 22 long rifles. It sounds like a Mexican revolution. The rabbit pops up and down at top speed across the prairie, while the driver keeps his foot in it and the truck bounces over the pasture. The spotlighter focuses the light on the critter as best he can. Panic-stricken rabbits do not run like other creatures. They take long, erratic hops high into the air, incredibly quick and mostly in a zig-zag line. The best hunters time their shots to catch their quarry in mid-hop, when it can’t change direction and seems to float above the landscape.

The boys were not allowed to hunt rabbits on school nights, but one of their friends had scored a case of Coors, and all high school kids know that stuff will spoil if it ages too much. Charles Flowers came in from the cattle auction after eleven that evening. At 12:30, the boys pushed his pickup out of the driveway and down the street, so Sydna Flowers would not hear it start. No danger of Charles hearing anything after the cattle auction.

I tried my best to get a picture of a Jack Rabbit in here, but it would not work, so I just put her in. Ain't she cool?

By 2:30, the boys had a half-dozen rabbits skinned and field dressed on ice in the cooler. Eddie was driving and all four boys were in the front seat, drinking the last of the beer and singing “There were Ninety-Nine Beer Bottles, a hanging on the Wall.”

The bar ditch came up suddenly and Eddie tried to turn left and miss it. Too late. The pickup slammed into the ditch. The front passenger side tire smashed into the far wall and the wheel bent under the axle at a weird angle. The boys managed to push the truck out and get it on solid ground. It listed a bit toward the right front, but, after they changed the flat tire on the crooked wheel, the vehicle was drivable. Only problem, it took two guys to hold the steering wheel and keep the truck going straight down the road.

“My dad’s gonna kill me!" Eddie groused. "He’ll be mad as hell when he sees that wheel. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Don’t panic, Eddie." Scott had an analytical mind. Let’s think about this for a minute. Your dad went to the cattle auction tonight. You know what he generally does at the cattle auction. He sips Black Jack with my dad and Charlie Tom Isaacs, and they all get plastered. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, but that won’t help. He’ll have a headache and just get madder. You know how he gets if someone messes with his truck.”

“Well, we just might get lucky. If we can get the truck back in the driveway without waking anybody up, he might come out in the morning and think he bent that wheel himself." Scott said logically. "It’s worth a try. Beats hell out of waking everyone up and telling a made-up story. We don’t dare resort to the truth, and they ain’t no lie we can tell that they’ll believe.”

They killed the motor three houses down and the boys managed to push the pickup into the driveway without waking anyone. All four walked home—it was not far. After all, this was Muleshoe, not some big town like Lubbock or Odessa.

Every Friday morning at 5:45, the twelve members of the Muleshoe Politically Correct Conservative Action Committee meet for breakfast at the Dinner Bell Café on Highway 84, just across the road from Leal’s Mexican Food. They talk about manly things—politics, religion, crops, weather, government subsidies, and big-titted women. They wonder if it will ever rain again.

“Man, I’m damn lucky to be here this morning,” Flowers said. “I mighta had a drink or two last night, but I don’t rightly remember. I musta hit a curb or something on the way home. Bent the front wheel on my pickup over sideways and I can’t hardly herd the damn thing down the road. Sydna’s gonna be pissed, too.”

Bobby Dale Johnson grinned. “As far as I can tell, Sydna has good reason to be P.O.’d at you most of the time. She got somethin’ extra to be mad about now?”

“Well, when I got in the truck this morning, I didn’t feel too good, but I cranked it up anyway, put it in gear and went to back out. It didn’t want to go, so I goosed it. The damn thing jumped clean sideways and smashed into Sydna’s car. Tore hell out of it. She’ll be madder’n a wet hen. Tommy Joe, I’ll come down to your office and fill out them claim forms soon as Willie James can get me some estimates. You reckon they’ll cancel my insurance?”

“Damn, Flowers, if they was gonna cancel it, they’d a done it last year after you run the cattle trailer over Buck’s yard and took out that motor home. I’ll write a letter to submit with the claim, kinda explaining things from your point of view. It’ll be all right.” Tommy Joe turned toward the waitress. “Hey, Ruthie! Is they some law against us getting any more biscuits over here?”

Almost twenty years later, during happy hour one evening at his Dad’s home, Scott told the true story of the rabbit hunt. Nobody enjoyed it more or laughed harder than Charlie Flowers.

Charles Flowers died three years ago with stomach cancer. His friends and neighbors miss him a lot. Flowers had his flaws, as we all do, and was little-known outside the high plains. He lived his entire life in that harsh and beautiful environment, and became a legend. Stories about his exploits live on and grow more elaborate with each telling. Charles taught us all how to live.

Creature of Habit

2015-01-31T09:13:00.003-08:00

I have become a creature of habit. That is not something I intended to do. In fact, I have resisted the idea for most of my life. I want to be young, spontaneous, unpredictable, and interesting. I want to be the dashing young man with a careless curl and devil-may-care attitude. I did not choose to be old, spectacled, plain, or boring. I did not plan thinning white hair and skinny white legs. As time passed, some habits seem to have eased into my daily life without permission and altered my persona. Perhaps there is still time to change.

I read somewhere that habits are, at first, strings—then they become cables. I’d guess my habits right now are somewhere between the kite string and the nylon rope stage. I may be able to change some of them, but I really don’t have the will, or desire, to change others. I didn’t count on that. I expected to always resist the urge to be predictable, but I find that I actually enjoy some repetitive behavior.

For instance, at about six-thirty each morning, I pull the tea kettle off the shelf on my stove, fill it with cold water, put it on the front, right-hand burner, and set the burner on high. I take the French press from the dishwasher, place it in its precise position on the counter, put 4 1/3 scoops of Eight O’clock Columbian coffee beans into the grinder and count to nine while it grinds. The coffee gets too powdery if I let it go to ten or more and is full of chunks and half-beans if I cut it off too early. I put the properly ground beans into the press and wait for the water to boil.

The tea pot whistles when the water is ready, but I don’t hear it. When I brought the contraption home from Der Kutchen Laden and it didn’t whistle, I was furious. I planned to take it back and give them a piece of my mind. Charlotte suggested I settle down.

Turns out I have a high frequency hearing loss and do not hear that particular sound. Same for the alarm on my Wal-Mart wrist watch. It goes off at odd times and my grandchildren say, “Mac, your watch is beeping. You need to turn it off.”

I have no idea how to turn it off. I didn’t turn the damn thing on. I just ignore it and go about my business as if I’m not beeping like sonar on a World War Two submarine. The kids exchange knowing looks and roll their eyes.

When I see the steam blowing out the top of the kettle, or when Charlotte yells from the bedroom to stop the whistling, I pour the boiling water into the glass beaker and stir the mixture with a long-handled spoon I keep for that purpose. The spoon is always in a container on the drain board so I can find it. Others around the house have learned not to fiddle with my coffee spoon. A knife or a fork or even another spoon does not work the same. I need to stir my coffee with THAT spoon or it won’t taste right. If the spoon is misplaced, my coffee gets cold while I search for it.

After I stir the coffee with my spoon, I let it steep for three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, or longer if I want it stronger. When I push down the plunger, the kitchen fills with a heavenly aroma and the beaker fills with fresh, rich, flavorful coffee. I pour the brew into one of my special mugs and sit down to watch television and work a crossword puzzle. (For more on the special mugs, see “Coffee Cups” in this blog on 8-5-13)

I say “watch” television because I set the sound low, just loud enough to hear the commercials. At that level, it is impossible to hear or understand the programs. That is fine with me, because the programs at that time of day are all morning news. I watch the Fox bunch, not because of my political leanings, but because the news is delivered by good-looking women in short, tight dresses. I don’t give a whit about the news, but I enjoy watching the girls squirm and jiggle while they talk.

Fox likes to bring in a lot of “guest experts” and sit them down on a rounded sofa, facing the camera. They are experts about different subjects--psychology, mathematics, economics, the stock market, or world peace, but you can bet they’ll have some things in common. They will be nice-looking, long-legged, well-built women in short skirts, wiggling around on that couch, showing a little cleavage and trying to make their case without flashing the TV camera. If they bring on any of the arrogant know-it-alls—Geraldo, The Donald, or Pat Roberson, I just switch over to CNN and watch the liberal cuties over there.

I “listen” to the commercials because I get a kick out of the disclaimers. Most of the commercials are about medicine, which says something about who is watching at six am. They say, “Ask your doctor about so-and-so.” They want you to think the doctor appreciates your advice. They also want to give him a little nudge in the direction of so-and-so, just in case he hasn’t already thought of it. The announcer low-talks real fast and tells you to watch out for the side effects of so-and-so, which may include body parts dropping off, kidneys locking up, and livers exploding, to name the most common.

There is always a Cialis commercial, which focuses on two consenting adults on a deserted beach, relaxing in separate footed bathtubs. Oddly enough for this day and age, the consenting adults are of opposite sexes. As the golden sun sets, music plays softly in the background, and a quiet-voiced announcer tells you to call your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours. If I take one of those pills and that problem arises at my house, there are several people I might call to help with it. My doctor is not on that list.

As I said at the outset, if I decide I want to, I may be able to change some of these habits. I probably should, just to demonstrate that I’m on board with the spirit of hope and change. All the same, I’m not about to quit watching good-looking women squirm around in tight skirts. Maybe I’ll try instant coffee.

San Fernando Cathedral

2014-11-27T08:44:00.002-08:00

The San Fernando Cathedral as seen from the Main Plaza in broad daylight. Note the young pickpocket on the right, on his way into the chapel to confess his sins and, perhaps with some loose change in his pocket, promise to sin no more.

In 1719, the Marques de San Miguel de Aquayo, governor and captain general of Coahuila and Texas, recommended to the king of Spain that 400 volunteer families be gathered from either Galicia, or the Canary Islands, or Havana, and transported to Texas to provide settlers for the colony. In 1723, the king decided to send 200 families from the Canary Islands.

The governor wanted these settlers to populate the area around his newest presidio, San Fernando de Bexar. The mission Valero, later known as the Alamo, had been established there in 1720, and settlers were needed to farm and defend the land. The Indians in Texas were not nearly as docile as those in Mexico, and the friars were having trouble recruiting slave labor. Comanche didn't make good slaves.

For the next several years, governmental delays kept the project on hold, but by midsummer of 1730, twenty-five families from the Canary Islands made it to Havana and ten more to Veracruz. The king cancelled the project, but the ten families in Veracruz, fifty-six people altogether, decided to continue overland to the remote presidio at San Fernando de Bexar, and arrived there on March 9, 1731.

Due to marriages while en route, fifteen actual families arrived in Bexar. The cagey islanders must have realized that single daughters, no matter how sweet, received no land, but young daughter-in-laws and their husbands were awarded a farm. Four single men, ranging in age from 17 to 22, arrived with their families and were collectively designated the sixteenth family. Each family was allotted a generous farm, and the single men each received one half a family share.

In 1731, the Canary Islanders established the San Fernando Cathedral and started construction on the chapel, which was finished in 1750 or so. To put this time frame in context, the population of New York City was around 9,000 loyal British subjects when San Fernando was started, and the famed San Juan Capistrano Mission in Southern California was not built until almost fifty years later, in 1776.

The San Fernando Cathedral has quietly existed in its spot in the exact center of the city of San Antonio for 282 years. It is the mother church of the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the seat of its archbishop. Pope John Paul II visited there in 1987, during the only trip to Texas by a sitting pope.

In 1831, Jim Bowie married the beautiful Ursula de Verimendi in the San Fernando Chapel and his two children were, no doubt, christened there. In 1836, William Barret Travis and Green Jameson watched from the church's bell tower, the highest structure in San Antonio, as General Sesma led the advance guard of Santa Anna’s army into town. The Mexicans unfurled the famous blood red, “No-Quarter” flag from the belfry and it remained there during the siege and fall of the Alamo.

The cathedral during Richemont's presentation.

Now, in addition to its other functions, the building is used as a backdrop for a fantastic light and music show. For the next ten years, four nights each week, the facade of San Fernando Cathedral will be used as a sort of movie screen to reflect the imagination of French artist Xavier de Richemont. Visitors are urged to bring lawn chairs and find places in the main plaza to watch and listen as the free presentation unfolds three times nightly.

The show is called “The Saga at San Fernando Cathedral” and consists of a series of psychedelic-like visions in intense full color that condense the three hundred year history of San Antonio into a twenty-four minute visual and auditory experience. It is, in a word, incredible.

I am not a fan of contemporary art. I’ve seen too many slick talkers foist off absolute junk on unsuspecting patsies by calling it “art.” We had an ole boy in Lubbock named Terry Allen that scratched out a living doing just that. Oh, he also wrote some songs that pretty much rhymed, and picked a guitar around town, just about anything to make a living without working. One time, at an art show in New Mexico, he put a used Airstream trailer house on display as a piece of art. If I remember correctly, he artistically leaned a broom up against the side of the trailer. He was a lot better salesman than artist.

This “video art installation” isn’t like that. It is art on a level with any I've seen, but entirely different. I watched the show on the Internet and was mesmerized. In the beginning, the chapel was all darkness with hints of red in the background, as if the viewer is peering toward an early morning red sky through a dense black forest. Thunder rolls. It's raining. The sound of the rain becomes music. I feel as if this represents the dawn of time—the instant of creation.

The church as it appears toward the end of the presentation.

In continuous color, synchronized with fantastic music, the story of Texas unfolds on the face of the cathedral. Geronimo, Sam Houston, Stephen Austin, LBJ, Abraham Lincoln and dozens of others are recognizable on the face of the chapel. Tepees, horses, cattle and oil wells drift by. The Alamo with Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, all in living color and all accompanied by appropriate music, fill the scene.

The music ranges from distant thunder to a lonesome flute or guitar. A complicated pipe organ ensemble precedes the plaintive lyrics of simple folk music sung by a nasal hillbilly. Accordions and mariachis follow symphonic sounds from a full blown orchestra and choir, all perfectly coordinated with the visual extravaganza taking place on the facade of the old church.

I watched in rapt attention as the saga played out. I marveled at the talent of Xavier de Richemont, and the foresight of those who commissioned him for this piece, his first in the United States. I watched the whole show on my computer and have yet to see the saga in person, but that will be remedied shortly. If need be, I will go alone and sit in the cold rain. I will see this work of art in person.

For more information on The Saga of San Fernando Cathedral, and to view the work, go to www.mainplaza.org, read about the installation and see the show.

Some of the remains of the Texians slaughtered and burned by Santa Anna's troops at the Alamo were recovered by Juan Seguin and are interred here at San Fernando.

Luxury

2014-10-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

A road like this in the moonlight becomes magic in a Jaguar

When you see that title, your first thought may well be, “What does anyone from Lubbock know about luxury?” I admit West Texas is not exactly chock full of luxury, but if you look past the surface, it is there.

As a young man, when I considered the word “luxury,” the first images that came to mind involved objects. Automobiles, diamonds, mink, leather, and silk—that sort of thing. After spending my life chasing all the above, I discovered that luxury has nothing to do with things. Luxury is much more complicated—and simple. It is a state of mind.

In 1975, I made a decision. I had been to the showroom three times the week before, looking, touching, admiring, and dreaming. At two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, a neighbor and I finished pouring his new concrete driveway. He and I started at seven that morning, and worked in the heat and humidity of late-summer Houston. We were hot and sweaty, dressed in tee shirts and cut-off jeans, splashed with concrete.

Remember, this was 1975

“You want to take me down to Overseas Motors, Rudy? I’m going to buy that car.”

“Right now? Overseas Motors? Dressed like that?” Rudy was incredulous.

“Right now.” I said. He grinned. Rudy was a Rice professor, a PhD, and the idea appealed to his overdeveloped sense of irony.

I wrote a check for a brand new, 1975 Jaguar XJ6L, a four-door sedan, midnight blue, with extended wheel base. The seats were Corinthian leather and the dash gleamed with polished burled walnut. The car had power everything, two gas tanks and a state-of-the-art sound system with eight speakers. The speedometer was pegged at 140 mph. I drove it home that afternoon, dressed in concrete-splattered cut offs, with a day’s growth of beard and a lot of what I considered justifiable pride.

The Jaguar was not just a car. It was a statement. I was thirty-nine years old, my company was thriving, my wife was lovely, my children were beautiful, and I was just getting started. I well remembered the one room house on the dirt farm in Lubbock where I started first grade. It would fit in my West University living room. I knew where I came from and I knew where I was going. It was time everyone else did.

American version, with the controls on the left.

Charlotte, Rudy, and Jola, his wife, loaded into the car for a demonstration ride. Immersed in classical music from the unbelievable sound system, we eased onto the Southwest Freeway. The powerful vehicle accelerated soundlessly while music and the smell of leather permeated the interior. We were cruising at seventy in the far left lane as the independent suspension straightened the curves and buffered the road noise. Luxury. Pure automotive luxury.

Tink.

The small rock was evidently kicked up randomly by a junky ’63 Ford Galaxy going fifty miles an hour in the lane ahead of us. The stone created a ding just under the rearview mirror in the exact center of what the English call the windscreen. A dark circle, maybe three-eights of an inch in diameter marred my view of the world and shattered my sense of superiority. I felt as if someone had kicked me in the stomach. I wanted to cry. I turned the music down and drove home.

One night, in February of the next year, Charlotte and I drove from Breckenridge to Copper Mountain to meet some friends for dinner. On the way back, it was late and powdery white snow covered the black pine trees that dotted the mountains. A bright moon lit the landscape; the curvy road was lonely and dry. The Jaguar was in its element. Dual heaters silently kept the interior cozy and Ferrante and Teicher filled the car with fantastic music as I effortlessly negotiated the sweeping curves. To this day, I cannot forget the intense pleasure I felt that night. It is easily the most memorable drive of my life.

Back in Houston, about six months later, Charlotte called me from Wagner Hardware, on the corner of Kirby and Rice Boulevard. “The Jaguar quit. Just died in the middle of the intersection. What should I do?”

“Call Triple A and have it towed home. I don’t have time to fart with it now. I’m trying to work.”

When I got home, I raised the bonnet and inspected the motor. I checked the wiring connections and wiped dust off the air cleaner. Nothing amiss. I tried the starter. The car started immediately and ran beautifully.

The next day, Charlotte took the Jaguar to the dealership. They could find nothing wrong, so naturally, they replaced the spark plugs, the spark plug wires, the distributer cap, all the filters, the oil, the coolant and the fan belts. The amount of the invoice was obscene. During the next two months, the car died in the middle of the street four more times.

No matter how fantastic the sound system, it is little consolation when you’re stopped in the center of a busy intersection with the motor dead and half of Houston honking at you. Just ask Charlotte. We bought a Buick station wagon for her and I kept the Jaguar to play with.

I talked with an architect friend of mine who loved Jaguars. “John,” I said, “I’m thinking of buying another Jaguar, an XKE. What do you think?”

“Jim, if you had two Jaguars, what would you drive?”

The logic of his comment was obvious. I had no reply.

Charlotte still loves silk, fur, leather and Joy perfume, but my idea if luxury has evolved. Luxury is simple. A faucet that doesn’t drip. A spotless bathroom. An intelligent conversation. Sharp kitchen knives. Warm, thirsty towels. A drink of cool water. Homemade lasagna. Ironed sheets. Strong, black coffee. Things that touch you and make you feel good. That is luxury.

A friend of mine put everything in perspective. He said when we’re young, we want everything to be up to date and stylish. Our clothing must be snappy and well-tailored, our cars need to be sleek and shiny, and our women trim and shapely. As we grow older, we begin to place a lot more value on comfort.

A new Jaguar, fresh off the showroom floor, is nice, but it is not luxury. It is a machine. If you’re lucky, one day you might drive it through snowy mountains at midnight, and remember the trip for a lifetime. That is luxury. Luxury makes us feel good, no matter what it costs.

Putting the Lid on the Churn--Final Episode of the Fishing Trip

2014-10-02T12:27:00.003-07:00

The Conejos River, near Platoro.

The wake-up aroma of fresh-brewed coffee wafted up the stairs. I knew it was sometime after 4:30, and, as John Wayne said, we were burning daylight. That whole idea confused me, but I climbed out of bed and made my way to the bath room. I could hear Roy telling his story as I dressed and went downstairs.

Coffee just tastes better out of a heavy mug. We pulled on jackets and went outside to sit on the front porch and drink the steamy brew, watch for any hint of daylight, and listen to Roy weave his endless tale. He was building the drama as he neared the climax.

“Finally, she got this little gleam in her eye and said, Uh, er, uh—oh shit! I forgot!” Roy said.

“What do you mean, she said, ‘I forgot!’ That doesn’t make any sense,” Collins said.

“She didn’t say 'I forgot.' I did. I’m the one who forgot. I don’t remember what she said, but it was really cool,” Roy explained.

“Dammit Roy, you mean we been listening to a story for two days and you can’t remember how it ends? What the hell kind of deal is that?” Wayne was stunned. He never failed to properly finish a story, even if he had to make up the ending, which I suspect happened more often than not. We let Roy off the hook because we all tend to let details drop through the cracks on occasion. That may be a function of age.

I fixed “Country Eggs Benedict” for breakfast. Simply split one of Neil’s big scratch biscuits and top each half with a thick slab of fried ham and a poached egg. Smother the whole thing with a ladle full of Tabasco-spiked cream gravy and serve with a side of German fried potatoes and onions--sophisticated, southern, and delicious—stick to your ribs food. I know, I know—some of it will also stick to the inside of your arteries.

On a fishing trip, I don’t do real Eggs Benedict for several reasons. We don’t generally bring English Muffins and Hollandaise Sauce to camp. I could do the sauce from scratch, but it is just not civilized to serve Eggs Benedict unless preceded by spicy Bloody Marys and accompanied by crisp, dry, fermented-in-the-bottle Champagne. After a breakfast like that, it’s impossible to concentrate on fishing.

A mountain with the not unusual name, "Old Baldy," adjacent to the Alamosa Canyon, near Platoro.

Time passed, as always, and our few days stolen from reality came to an end. Someone may find it possible to leave those fellows and not miss them immediately, but not Wayne and not me. We talked all the way to Kerrville, over 800 miles, about Roy’s wonderful stories, Neil’s quiet wisdom, and James’ quick wit. We marveled at how little we all have changed, while the world kept turning and perhaps, passed us by.

No doubt, we have changed—we’re almost eighty years old. For one thing, we drink better whiskey. We also drive better cars and eat better than we once did. All of us parlayed the lessons we learned in West Texas into a good life. The work ethic we learned is taken for granted out there, but in the rest of the world it is much admired and sought after.

I think the lack of change in our personalities is due to the fact that we were pretty well satisfied with who we were when we got out of high school. We chose not to change. College and professional life taught us new ways to express our ideas and expanded our vocabularies, but short of superficial changes, we stayed true to the land of our youth and the rules of life we learned on the high plains.

We all have made new friends. Part of being from the Texas panhandle has to do with being open to friendship. In the early days out there, neighbors lived on lonely farms, miles apart, and seldom saw each other. When they did get a chance to visit, they took full advantage of the opportunity and regaled each other with stories, news, and gossip. Friends were necessary, whether building a barn, rounding up cattle, fighting Indians, or chasing outlaws. New friends were desirable, and old friends were indispensible. We inherited these traits, refined them to suit the times, and live with them to this day.

Neil, James, Wayne, and Roy. Four better fly fishermen may exist somewhere, but I doubt it. About 280 years of experience is represented here.

The guys on this fishing trip are some of my closest friends. We’ve known and loved each other since we all had pimples. We’ve shared each other’s highs and lows. We know instinctively which buttons to push…. and which ones to leave alone. We sometimes don’t visit for months, but that does not matter—we know where we stand. We’re friends.

James Collins called yesterday to wish me a happy birthday. During our conversation, he mentioned that Neil and he were already planning next year’s event and it was going to be a regular stem-winder. He intimated that if Wayne and I were nice to him for the rest of this year—very nice to him—we might be invited. Ford nailed it—the little S.O.B. has been that way since he was five years old.

The Fishing Trip----Part Three

2014-09-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

One of the massive hammer mills in the canyon beyond Creede. Ore was loaded into wagons under the shed at the base, but back then few people rode bicycles--they got exercise in other ways.

Monday morning we broke camp—meaning we moved our gear out of the log cabins and packed the vehicles—and headed for Platoro, Colorado. On the way, we visited the old mines in the steep canyon just above Creede. The mines at Creede operated continuously from 1890 until 1985, producing tons of silver, gold, lead, zinc and copper. In the early days, ore was broken down here in massive hammer mills, then loaded on mule trains and carried overland to the railroad at Alamosa, where it was loaded onto railcars and transported to the smelter. The whole canyon is full of history.

Bob Ford shot Jesse James in Missouri, and ten years later, Ed O’Kelley shot Bob Ford in a tent saloon in Creede. Bat Masterson and Poker Alice both lived and gambled there for a time. Wide open, with gambling halls, saloons and whore houses, the local motto was, ”There is no night in Creede.”

When the “Holy Moses” Mine was discovered in 1889, six hundred people lived in Creede. By the end of 1891, the population had grown to over ten thousand. When the mines closed in 1985, the locals continued digging for gold, changing their focus from ore to tourists. The little city is filled with brightly painted, perfectly restored Victorian buildings.

We made our way through South Fork and on to Monte Vista, then, because there are no front roads, took back roads to Platoro. Platoro is a mining town, and an active mine still operates, boring into the mountain on the western edge of the community. No idea what they mine there, but there may be a clue in the name. A Mexican friend tells me the name Platoro is a combination of Plata, Spanish for silver, and Oro, which means gold.

Looking down into the metropolis of Platoro, at the curve of the Conejos River.

The last forty miles of road into Platoro is dirt, and according to the signs, must be graded by the county once each twelve months. We arrived at the Skyline Lodge, cabin number eleven, about two P.M. Roy Turner had already arrived—his gear was inside. He was out exploring, but drove up within fifteen minutes.

Ratisseau said having Roy show up was, “just like the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae.” As soon as we stowed our gear, the fishermen began to talk in tongues as they prepared for battle and pulled on their waterproof suits of armor.

“I reckon I’ll use one of them black-and-yellow pity pons this afternoon,” said Wayne, “or a solid black cinco loco. Them big ‘uns cain’t hardly let one of them cincos go by.”

“When I think back over the past sixty-some-odd years of fly-fishing, I doubt if I ever caught anything on a pity pon, much less a cinco. My best luck has always been with a red-and-green jumble-iya, tied on a number eight hook with my daddy’s secret knot,” Roy drawled.

“I wouldn’t use anything red and green today. Look at those birds—they’re going crazy over dark blue hotty-tottys. I tied me some of them last week and that’s what I’ll be using,” McMullen put in.

“You guys need to make up your minds and get moving or we won’t get any fishing done today,” Collins said. “I’m gonna use one of these McFly Terminators that Neil tied for me last Christmas. Never fail to catch something with one of them.”

Roy, Wayne, Me, James, and Neil in front of cabin #11. I took one look at this picture and started a diet.

As I sat there on the porch and listened while the group discussed the proper weight of a leader, the exact color of a fake tsetse fly, the most advantageous length for a rod, and the type of line best-suited for dry-fly fishing, I suffered from an utter lack of understanding. Except for the obvious West Texas accents and phrasing, I could have been listening to a bunch of Greek farmers arguing about the best way to cook a goat.

After the afternoon fishing, Neil broke out a bottle of Ezra Brooks, and happy hour commenced as we fried trout for dinner. Now, let me point out once again, none of us are spring chickens. The guys moved slowly getting into their fishing gear. They took forever to rig the fly rods. Everyone maneuvered gingerly up and down the rustic steps at the front porch, and it took three rest periods for any of us to clomp up stairs to the bedrooms. Not so with the whiskey. A sack of crushed ice and more than half of Neil’s bottle disappeared instantly. I suppose the thin air up there melts ice and evaporates good bourbon.

I hated to put a damper on the festivities, but I had to relay a comment to James Collins. “Now Collins, I don’t hardly know how to say this, but I need to tell you something. Our friend, Davis Ford is hurt that he was not invited up here to enjoy this trip with the rest of us. He wouldn’t want me saying anything, but he was absolutely crushed. He had a little catch in his throat when he told me you all had been friends since before the first grade and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t invited. Maybe you ought to call him—you know, maybe help him feel better.” Davis had asked me to lay a good, thick guilt trip on Collins and I did my best.

“You tell Davis Ford if we’d wanted him up here we’d have invited him.” Guilt trips don't work on Collins, and that closed the subject of Davis Ford. “Pass that bottle over here, Jimmy Paul—as Rat says, ‘I need a half-sole on this drink.’”

Later, when I told Ford about the incident, he laughed heartily, and said, “The little S.O.B. hasn’t changed a bit. He was just like that when he was five years old.”

Turner started telling a story about two of our classmates. During a brief pause, Ratisseau told three jokes. Roy went on with his story.

As Roy caught his breath, someone mentioned that Collins was the only guy they knew who reached puberty and went bald all in the same year.

“Nineteen sixty-one at Fort Bragg,” Collins said. “I was a brand new second lieutenant.”

Roy went on with his story.

“Let’s call Merriman,” Ratisseau said. “Maybe he knows how Tom is doing.”

I had Larry’s number in my phone, and he answered immediately. He and Brenda were on vacation in the Caribbean somewhere. We passed the phone around and everyone talked with him a few minutes. We marveled at what a great age we live in—routinely talking with a friend in the Caribbean from the outback of Colorado. Roy went on with his story.

For dinner, we had fresh, pan-fried trout, crisp wedge salad, and corn on the cob. I made a cherry cobbler that was a bit dry, but otherwise passable. After we cleaned the kitchen, it was bedtime. Everyone knew James would be fixing coffee at 4:30 in the morning, so we better get to sleep. Roy went on with his story….

A bit dry, because I was unacustomed to working with fresh cherries, but passable.

To Be Continued…..

The Fishing Trip Continues---Part Two

2014-09-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

The Rio Grande doesn't look like this in Texas

At 4:30 on Sunday morning Collins put on the coffee. That is not something unusual for James—he makes coffee every morning at 4:30. Has for years. He gets up when he wakes up, makes coffee, and then sits, drinks coffee, and plans his day. I think it is one of the reasons he has always been successful. He’s thinking about problems and working out solutions three hours before the rest of the world wakes up.

Neil, Ratisseau and I straggled into the kitchen as we awakened. It was forty degrees—too cold (and too dark) to sit at the picnic table outside. McMullen mixed up a batch of scratch biscuits, fried a pound of bacon, made gravy and we feasted—bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, coffee, orange juice, and sweet milk—Collins quoted a high school friend, “The Queen of England don’t eat no better’n this.”

We quoted a lot of old friends that morning. We decided Charles Flowers had picked up the “Queen of England” quote from Robert Benton, who used it often. We talked about people I had not thought of in years. We laughed about things that happened during high school, while we were learning math and English and how to live and who we were. We remembered sixty years ago, when we were teenagers trying to decide who we should be when we grew up. We all helped each other over the adolescent rough spots.

By the time it was daylight, we finished breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, made more coffee and moved outside to continue our visit. I enjoyed these same guys in high school. They were older, and perhaps wiser now, but they were the same friends with the same personalities I had been drawn to over sixty years ago. We shared the same high plains values, the same ambitions, the same goals. After all these years, McMullen still lights up the room when he smiles, Collins can double me over with his dry wit, and, of course, Ratisseau just loves to tell a story.

About mid-morning, the fishermen, like so many gladiators, pulled on their waterproof armor and girdled up for battle. Trout are civilized fish. They mostly don’t care for breakfast before ten am or so, and it is foolish to try to catch them before the day warms up. Evidently, the fish take a siesta in the early afternoon, and have dinner around five, because the fishermen adopted that schedule and were very successful with it. My friends were pros—no frenzied casting, no frantic splashing from place to place, no indiscriminate fly-switching—just quiet, skilled fishing, dropping the fly at the proper place, and teasing the trout into taking it.

There may be three better fishermen in the world, but I doubt it. The Rio Grande is just behind those bushes.

Neal and Wayne hustled off to a pre-selected hot spot, and Collins, knowing my interest in Texas history, gave up his morning session with the trout and took me on a guided tour of the Rio Grande headwaters. We drove the high road past the Rio Grande Reservoir and followed the river up toward its source. The road was literally cut through the forest. It was unpaved, narrow, steep, and rocky, with no guard rails or shoulders. I was glad for James’ four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser.

As we climbed higher, the Rio Grande branched into a north and south tributary. The river was no more than a creek now, and the north branch cascaded downhill past us and on to the intersection below. Stony Pass, where this primitive road crossed the Continental Divide, was about three miles farther up. From that pass, the road meandered seventeen miles downhill into the old mining town of Silverton, Colorado, on the western slope.

Five hundred yards uphill from where we stood, a snowmelt spring marked the source of the river and once defined the westernmost border of the Republic of Texas. From the spring, the border went due north to the 42^nd parallel, which was Texas’ northern border, in present-day Wyoming.

In my youth, nothing would have kept me from fighting through the trees and following that creek uphill to stand at its source. I would have insisted upon a picture, standing astraddle the Rio Grande. Now, I had to admit the mountain was steep and I was not forty anymore—hell, I’m not even sixty anymore. With some effort, James found a place wide enough to turn around, and we went back downhill and downstream to join the fishermen. I had been close enough to the ancient Texas border. I could feel it. Thanks to James, I can write about being there.

The rest of the day, the Rio Grande was kind to the fishermen. James called it, “One of the single greatest afternoons of fishing I ever had.” I felt he was being rewarded for taking the time to let me explore.

The cobbler looked better after it was baked. As you can see, we ate well.

Somewhere in the bowels of the big Ford pickup, Ratisseau found a jug of Crown Royal for happy hour that evening, and we prepared an oriental stir-fry with veggies and chicken that was simply delicious. I fixed a black-iron skillet peach cobbler that would have been somewhere around average at home, but was absolute perfection in the clear, crisp air, sixteen miles north of Creede. Tomorrow, we are going to meet Roy Turner at a place I’ve never heard of—a place high in the mountains called Platoro, which, in Spanish, means silver and gold.

To Be Continued-----

Lubbock Boys Go Fishing---Part One

2014-09-14T08:39:00.002-07:00

The Homestead Cabin at Freemon Ranch--built in 1874 to "proof up" the claim for timber and minerals.

Wake up, don’t just lay there like cold granite stone------Merle Haggard filled Wayne’s big Ford pickup with sad country music as we headed west across the Llano Estacado—the land of our youth. It was good to be back—back on the road and back on the high plains. We didn’t call it by a fancy Spanish name when we grew up out there. It was just the high plains of the panhandle of Texas, and we had no idea how that country would mark us for life.

James Collins called before we got to Big Spring, to tell us not to go to Pagosa Springs as planned, but drive instead sixteen miles past Creede to a place called Freemon Ranch. He said the water at Bruce Spruce Ranch was muddy and fishing would be no good and we’d have better luck on the Rio Grande near Creede.

I was silently happy that I didn’t have to tell anyone we fished at Bruce Spruce Ranch—it sounds vaguely effeminate and is hard for an old man to pronounce. I was also anxious to see the headwaters and the source of the Rio Grande because that was the northwestern border of Texas from 1835 until 1846. Wayne adjusted his fancy GPS and kept his foot in the carburetor.

James and Neil McMullen had invited Wayne Ratisseau, Roy Turner and me to join them on a fishing trip. They made an offer we could not refuse. I did not get the fishing gene, but I went along to keep the coffee pot warm, do a little cooking, and make sure all the lies got told. Not much I’d rather do, and no one I’d rather do it with. All these guys had been my friends since our sophomore year at Lubbock High School—sixty-two years, if anyone is counting.

A typical sunset on the high plains, where we grew up. Because this is a daily occurrence, sometimes we forget. Thanks to my friend Rick Palmer of Amarillo for reminding me.

Wayne and I made it to Las Vegas, New Mexico, before dark, and the next day, we got to Freemon Ranch before two o’clock in the afternoon. The lady there showed us our cabin and said that James and Neil were out fishing. The air was clear, the valley was green, and the high mountain setting was magnificent.

The Freemon Ranch consists of a cluster of log cabins built in the early 1900s, with a trout stream running through. According to the marker, one cabin, the “homestead cabin,” was built in 1874. It had a sod roof but was past occupation, only used as a prop now days. Our cabin was cozy, with indoor plumbing and a kitchen. We unloaded the pickup and Wayne, a consummate fisherman, could not wait to gird his loins and do battle with the wily trout.

As a novice, I just do not understand the serious nature of this undertaking. Wayne was dressed, appropriately I thought, in shorts and tee shirt. He sat on our cabin’s front porch and removed his shoes and pulled on a pair of heavy woolen socks. He smoothed the socks over his ankles, and slid one leg into what appeared to be rubberized khaki-colored overalls, with black rubber feet attached, not unlike kiddie’s jamas. It was a struggle. He got one leg in and sat there hyperventilating before he attempted the other leg.

The air in the Colorado Rockies leaves something to be desired. Oh, there’s plenty of it, but like a lot of things when you get outside Texas, it is just not real satisfying. You can breathe up several gallons of it and still feel deprived. Texas air, on the other hand, is something you can get your teeth into. A couple of good deep breaths and you’re ready to take on the world. In the high country of Colorado, it takes a whole vacant lot-full just to get on a pair of overalls.

Wayne struggled into the left leg of his fishing suit and, leaving the trousers around his knees, began the ordeal of putting on his waterproof, lace-up fishing boots. Several minutes and quite a lot of gasping later, he was completely dressed—up to the knees. He rested awhile.

Ratisseau stood and pulled the khaki rubber overalls up to his waist and sat back down to rest. After a few minutes, he stood up and batted around behind himself, trying to locate the straps to his rubber long-handles. I helped him as much as I could—as I said, I’m a novice. Besides, I haven’t worn overalls since George R. Bean Elementary School.

Wayne, with his loins all girded, explaining why he cannot reveal the secret knot. Those of you who know Wayne will understand that no one has a camera with a shutter speed fast enough to catch him with his mouth closed.

With my help, Wayne had little trouble finishing. He pulled on a fishing vest and an old hat. Now it was time to rig up his fly rod and pick the perfect fly, one that was irresistible to even the Albert Einstein trout. He chose a black ant-looking thing and tied it in place with a knot that only fly fishermen can know. As he tied the knot, he turned his back so I could not watch.

Fly fishermen teach the knot to their sons in a coming-of-age ceremony. With the knot secure, he added just the proper amount of leader so the fish would not see the line and would believe that clump of horsehair was a real live black ant. Many years ago, Wayne built that fly rod and tied many of his own flies. His dad taught him, after he showed him that secret knot.

As Wayne went down to the stream that flowed through the ranch to prove he was physically and intellectually superior to a 10-inch speckled fish with a half BB-sized brain, I found a shady place with a porch swing to breathe the mountain air, drink in the scenery, read about Sam Houston, and wonder about the water in that creek. How long did it take that particular water to make it to Del Rio, on its way to the gulf?

Here, fishy, fishy, fishy-----This creek feeds the Rio Grande, which...well you know what the Rio Grande does.

James and Neil came in a couple of hours later, carrying a creel full of fish. They most always catch-and-release, but when Roy comes Monday, we’re gonna have a fish fry.

This, of course, will be continued…..

Part Five---Mirabeau Lamar, General Hugh McLeod and the Santa Fe Expedition

2014-07-13T13:54:00.003-07:00

The Llano Estacado, not the Mexican Army, defeated the Santa Fe Expedition.

After the Battle of Plum Creek, in August of 1840, Mirabeau Lamar, President of Texas, still faced problems. He had been elected by an overwhelming majority of the votes, largely because both his opponents committed suicide before the election. His policies differed greatly from those of Sam Houston, who preceded him and would follow him as president of the republic.

Unlike Houston, Lamar mistrusted all Indians and felt that they should be forced out of Texas by whatever means available, up to and including extermination. Houston was against slavery and wanted Texas to become a state of the Union. Lamar wanted to continue slavery and did not want to be annexed by the United States—he wanted to build a nation that stretched to the Pacific Ocean and was recognized as a world power. Lamar felt that Texas, with all its land and its vast potential, would be foolish to become subservient to any other country.

Lamar wanted immediate recognition of the Republic of Texas by France, England, and other world powers, which he hoped would enable the republic to borrow money from world banking institutions. Texas was dead broke, unable to collect taxes and, even after formal recognition by Britain and France, unable to borrow. During Lamar’s three year tenure, the republic generated a bit over one million in revenue, and spent almost five million.

To distract the public from these problems and as a first step toward expanding the empire to the Pacific, Lamar started a campaign to annex New Mexico, at least that part east of the Rio Grande, which Texas had claimed since San Jacinto. The trade along the Santa Fe Trail would go a long way toward alleviating Texas’ financial situation and Lamar was convinced that the people of New Mexico were ready to join Texas and split from the despotic rule of Santa Anna, who had returned to power in Mexico. Lamar believed when he announced Texas was ready to assimilate New Mexico, the New Mexican people would jump at the chance to become Texans.

     Lamar tried to get support, financial and otherwise, from the Texas Congress for his plan to send a “trade mission” to New Mexico. The legislature would have nothing to do with the idea, so Lamar, on his own, appropriated $89,000.00 to finance the mission. No doubt he exceeded his authority and went against the constitution, but he managed to get the expedition organized and funded. He chose his young friend, Hugh McLeod, now a 27 year-old brigadier general, to lead the military component of the expedition.

     McLeod was lap-dog loyal to Lamar. He was red-headed, freckle-faced, a bit rotund and a quite jolly fellow. A lot of fun at parties. He was also dumb as a post. There was a reason he was last in his class ar West Point.

The Santa Fe Expedition consisted of 21 ox-drawn wagons carrying about $200,000.00 in merchandise, several businessmen, four civil commissioners, one newspaper editor, five companies of infantry, and one artillery company. Including the soldiers, the expedition totaled 321 men. General McLeod was in command of the military forces, which were there to lead and protect the expedition, not for any aggression against New Mexico.

With Mexican guides, eighty head of beef cattle for food, provisions for ninety days and high hopes, the wagon train left Brushy Creek, in the vicinity of present-day Round Rock, on June 19, 1841. The guides must have been dandies. Six weeks later, heading for Santa Fe, they were closer to Oklahoma City. They made it to the vicinity of present-day Wichita Falls, and mistook the Wichita River for the Red River. After following the Wichita for twelve days, McLeod realized their mistake and sent scouts north to hunt for the Red River. The Mexican guides deserted.

McLeod eventually found the Red River, and followed it west. His command was in trouble—supplies were running low, there was little food, no one knew how far it was to Santa Fe, progress was slower than anticipated, and Indians had stolen some of their horses and all of the beef cattle. When the little group found the Llano Estacado, McLeod split them up and sent a patrol west on horseback to find a route to the trading villages of New Mexico, while he and his group camped in the valley. They couldn't find a place to climb the Caprock with twenty-one wagons.

The men in both groups were starving. According to the reporter Kendall, they ate snakes, prairie dogs, toads, and anything else they could catch, and they didn’t cook it long. Indians had stolen their cattle and most of their horses. They lost six soldiers fighting Comanche, and morale was non-existent.

On September 12, the advance patrol sent back a guide to lead McLeod and the wagons into New Mexico, where the Texans expected a hero’s welcome. In the meantime, the Mexican guides who deserted made it to Taos and told of the expedition headed toward New Mexico. The Mexican authorities were less than pleased.

When Governor Manuel Armijo heard of the expedition, he considered it an armed invasion. He brought 1500 troops to San Miguel and captured the advance party on September 17^th, then surrounded and captured McLeod’s main force near Tucumcari on October 5^th. Captain William G. Lewis, who spoke Spanish, convinced both Texas parties to surrender, which may not have been a difficult task. The troops were thirsty, hungry, tired, and unwilling to fight a much larger force. Captain Lewis lied when he assured them that the Mexicans would treat them kindly and send them back to Texas with full bellies. Whether or not he knowingly lied is a matter for debate. Surrender to a friendly army may have appeared to be a good option to the starving troops, but Armijo’s army was not friendly.

The Texan captives were bound and listened as the Mexican officers debated their fate. Governor Armijo was determined to execute all the prisoners, the accepted Mexican way of dealing with revolutionaries. When the officers' vote was taken, the prisoners were spared by one vote. Early the next morning, they were bound together by twos and started a march to Santa Fe, then El Paso, on to Mexico City and finally to Vera Cruz and Perote Prison, where they arrived in December of 1841. Many died during the march from Santa Fe to El Paso, but the sadistic commander (an officer named Salazar) was replaced by a more lenient individual in El Paso and the rest of the 1200 mile march was less strenuous. Most of the prisoners were released in April of 1842, after diplomatic pressure from the United States Ambassador, Waddy Thompson.

Governor Armijo confiscated all the trade merchandise for his own use and continued to rule New Mexico with an iron fist. He was known to be corrupt—rumors persist that he started his fortune by stealing sheep from his employer and selling them back. In 1846, he was prosecuted for treason and cowardice during the Mexican/American war, but was acquitted.

Captain William G. Lewis was released by Armijo and rewarded with his choice of items from the Texan merchandise wagons. He was widely considered a traitor and was shunned by both Texans and Mexicans for the rest of his life. His intervention resulted in the surrender of all the Texas troops without a shot being fired. He may or may not have been aware of Governor Armijo’s plans.

Even though Hugh McLeod was popular with his men and with President Lamar, he was not a good choice to lead the expedition. His choice of guides was obviously flawed, he allowed the beef cattle and over eighty horses to be stolen by Indians, he had no idea of the whereabouts of Santa Fe or how far it was from Austin, he split his troops and surrendered without a fight. All in all, not unforseeable results from an officer who was considerably less than bright..

General McLeod was treated leniently while in prison, because of his rank in the Texas Army. He returned to Texas and retired from the military when Sam Houston regained the office of president. McLeod, a lawyer, opposed Houston on every major issue for the rest of his life. He died of illness during the Civil War while serving as a Lt. Colonel in the unit that became Hood’s Texas Brigade. In honor of his contributions, Hugh McLeod’s grave was moved to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar--Georgia Fire-Breather, Statesman, Poet, Visionary, and President of the Republic of Texas

Mirabeau B. Lamar was blamed for the failure of the expedition. A “Letter to the Editor” in the Austin newspaper of the time suggested that he be traded for the Texan prisoners in Mexico. His political opposition considered him a much better poet than President. Lamar truly believed that Texas should stretch from the Gulf to the Pacific and worked tirelessly toward that end. He believed strongly in education and introduced legislation that forced each new county to set aside three leagues of state land to finance a school system. His work resulted in the establishment of Texas A&M in 1871 and Texas University in 1876.

George Wilkins Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, who went on the expedition and wrote a book-length report about it, wrote at the time,

President Lamar’s estimation of the views and feelings of the people of Santa Fe and vicinity, was perfectly correct. Not a doubt can exist that they all were, and are (1843), anxious to throw off the oppressive yoke of Armijo, and come under the liberal institutions of Texas; but the Governor found us divided into small parties, broken down by long marches and want of food; discovered too, a traitor amongst us; and, taking advantage of these circumstances, his course was plain and his conquest easy.

Had this mission proved successful, Lamar would have been heralded a greater hero and the history of Texas, Mexico, and the United States would have been drastically altered. Lamar was a dreamer, who, like his rival, Sam Houston, dreamed big dreams. History will remember him for his substantial contributions to education in Texas and no one will blame him for his grandiose dreams. That sorta comes with the territory….

Thanks Jimmy, for the idea for this series. Hope you enjoy....

Part Four--Buffalo Hump, The Battle of Plum Creek and Captain Jack Hays

2014-07-05T18:19:00.001-07:00

Comanche, when raiding, ordinarily move in quickly, attack, and move out quickly. Usually, they are content to kill a few settlers, burn a homestead or two, steal some horses, and hurry back to the safety of the high plains. Many times, raids are planned to coincide with the full moon, so the raiders can come and go at night, riding full speed across the prairie by the light of what is still known in Texas as a “Comanche Moon.”

The Great Linnville Raid, as it came to be known, was different. It was the largest raid by any group of Indians on a populated city in the history of the United States—Texas was not technically a part of the U.S. at the time, but would become so in a bit more than five years. Buffalo Hump was forced to surrender the tribe’s mobility because of the sheer size of his war party. He did not expect organized resistance from the Texans, even the Rangers. He knew that a small group of Rangers would be foolish to attack so many Indians. He also felt that his group would move faster than it did.

Military-style discipline, never strong among the Comanche, broke down completely after the Linnville raid. The Comanche were herding 3,000 horses, leading dozens of stubborn, heavily laden pack mules, and carrying bedding, food, and cooking supplies for over a thousand people. Braves, some still wearing top hats and carrying parasols, rode horses, while the squaws and children walked. They were travelling two or three abreast and the column stretched out for several miles. By August 12, they had covered less than a hundred twenty miles, and the Rangers struck.

John Coffee Hays, just starting a career that would make him a legendary Texas Ranger, fought with a company of Rangers headed by Edward Burleson. Hays’ friend from Tennessee, Ben McCulloch was chief scout and later took command of a unit. They were joined by some militia men from nearby communities, and volunteers from central and east Texas, all together less than two hundred men. The Texans engaged the tail end of Buffalo Hump’s column as it crossed Plum Creek, just east of present-day Lockhart. A running gun battle ensued, with the Texans charging and firing at anything that resembled a Comanche. The squaws and children abandoned their pack animals and hurried forward for protection.

Some of the Texans discovered a chest of silver on one of the mules and they became distracted. The Indians continued to run away, and the Texans concentrated on recovering the mules and investigating their cargo. The attack disintegrated into a treasure hunt, and the Indians moved ahead toward the high plains and safety. A few captives were rescued, some merchandise was recovered, and the silver bullion was distributed among the attackers.

The Texas newspapers, hungry for any good news, proclaimed a great victory. According to the militia members, some eighty Indians were killed, but only twelve Comanche bodies were found.

Pochanaquarhip, riding bareback at the front of the column and hanging his canteen on a makeshift saddle horn that he had, was little disturbed by the rangers’ attack. He led his people back to the Llano Estacado and continued to lead the tribe, in war and in peace, for many years.

When Sam Houston regained the Texas Presidency, he and Buffalo Hump signed a treaty in 1844 that guaranteed peace. If the Anglo settlers stayed off the Edwards Plateau, the Penetakas would stay out of central Texas. Houston and the Republic of Texas legislature were sincere, as was Buffalo Hump, but unfortunately, the Texas Senate neglected to include the agreed-upon boundaries in the final version, angering the Indians. Anglo settlers moving west would not be stopped at the Edwards Plateau, and within two years the treaty proved worthless. The Penetakas went back to raiding.

In March of 1847, Buffalo Hump, Old Owl, and Santa Anna (also called Santanna) negotiated a treaty with John Meusebach and the German settlers in the Fisher-Miller Land Grant, just north of present day Fredericksburg. The Comanche trusted Meusebach and called him “El Sol Colorado” (The Red Sun) for his flaming red hair and beard. When Buffalo Hump asked why he should trust the white colonists, Meusebach replied that the Germans were a different tribe. Satisfied, Buffalo Hump went ahead with the treaty.

The treaty allowed white settlers to go unharmed into the Penetaka lands, and the Comanche to freely visit and trade in the white settlements. Both sides were to report any criminal activity and were responsible for punishing their lawbreakers. White surveyors would be allowed into the Penetaka lands and the Indians would be paid at least a $1000.00 for this privilege. The agreement opened almost 4,000,000 acres to colonization and may be the only treaty that was never broken by either side.

In 1856, Buffalo Hump led his tribe, on the brink of starvation, to a new reservation on the Brazos River, set up by the US Government and supervised by the Indian Agent, Robert Neighbors. Despite Neighbors’ protection, the tribe was mistreated, underfed, and blamed for every offense that occurred anywhere near the reservation. Finally, in desperation, Buffalo Hump led his people back out onto the Llano Estacado, where they were eventually captured by the U.S. Army and forced to move into Indian Territory.

On the reservation in Oklahoma, Pochanaquarhip asked for a small plot of land and some tools, so he could teach his people to farm. He died in 1870, farming that plot of land and insisting that his people get an education if they planned to succeed in the white man’s world.

The Battle of Plum Creek was the first meeting of Jack Hays and Buffalo Hump. Hays, a surveyor who became a legendary ranger captain, successfully fought the Penetaka for many years, engaging bands led by Buffalo Hump or one of his war chiefs. The fact that both men stayed alive is a tribute to their abilities.

“Cap'n Yack” was held in high regard by all Indians. Chief Flacco, a Lipan-Apache guide said, “Me and Red Wing not afraid to go to hell together. Cap'nYack… not afraid to go to hell by himself.”

Captain Jack Hays left the Rangers and moved to California in 1850 and became the sheriff of San Francisco. When his first son was born, the Hays family received a gift from Buffalo Hump—a tiny golden spoon, engraved “Buffalo Hump, Jr.”

To be continued….

Part Three of a Series--Buffalo Hump and the Great Linnville Raid.

2014-06-28T07:11:00.001-07:00

Plum Creek Comanche Spoilers by Howard Terpning shows warriors after the Linnville raid.

Considering the year—1840—and the Puritan ethics of America and Texas at that time, it is not a mystery that Pochanaquarhip, which means “an erection that won’t go down,” was mis-translated by the press. After all, many women could read, and some of them would surely read about that Comanche’s peculiar condition. In the eyes of the men who reported the news, it was better that some things not be shared with women-folk, especially vulgar stories about an Indian chief. So far as anyone knew, no white man suffered from such an affliction, and how it would be looked upon among the female population was a cause for concern. What if women liked the idea? A savage, walking around with a petrified member, was just better not talked about in mixed company.

The media, not much changed in almost 180 years, decided to protect the public. They chose to ignore the facts, ignore the Comanche language, and ignore the perpetual woody. For noble reasons based upon protection of its readers, the press called the chief “Buffalo Hump.”

Buffalo Hump was described by a German scientist, Ferdinand Roemer, in 1847 as follows: “The pure unadulterated picture of a North American Indian, who, unlike the rest of his tribe, scorned every form of European dress. His body naked, a buffalo robe around his loins, brass rings on his arms, a string of beads around his neck, and with his long, coarse black hair hanging down, he sat there with the serious facial expression of a North American Indian which seems to be apathetic to the European. He attracted our special attention because he had distinguished himself through great daring and bravery in expeditions against the Texas frontier which he had engaged in times past.”

The description of a Comanche War Chief is likely to be more nearly accurate when it comes from a disinterested third party, such as a European scientist. It was difficult for a Texan to be objective when describing a cruel and vicious enemy. Dr. Roemer noted that Buffalo Hump shunned all type of European dress. This must have included belts and suspenders, which were unnecessary for him. To protect his loins from exposure, Pochanaquarhip had something to hang that buffalo robe on when he walked around. As the German scientist inferred, the only thing that hung down was the chief’s coarse black hair and a string of beads around his neck.

Beginning immediately after the Council House Fight, Buffalo Hump travelled among the Comanche tribes, telling of the murder of their brothers during council under the flag of truce, and asking the tribes to join him in a quest for revenge. Being well-respected and eloquent, he had no trouble getting volunteers and, by midsummer, was ready to move against the hated Anglos.

In early August, over 500 mounted warriors, accompanied by at least that many squaws and children, moved out of the Llano Estacado and followed the Guadalupe River Valley from the vicinity of present-day Kerrville into the heart of the Republic of Texas. Pochanaquarhip brought squaws and young people to do the work—a Comanche brave could not be expected to gather firewood, set up camp, or cook meals.

The Indians purposely avoided Waterloo (Austin) and San Antonio. It was foolish to attack cities that had army garrisons and newly formed Texas Ranger Companies for protection. Buffalo Hump wanted to strike at the soft underbelly of the Republic. His scouts had been busy for weeks, gathering information and choosing routes. He eased his warriors around Gonzales and moved toward Victoria.

Moving over a thousand Indians through 1840 Texas without being discovered was not possible. A troop of fifteen Rangers struck the trail of the Comanche and followed, but there were too many Indians to attack. The Rangers stayed close and sent out scouts to warn the citizens and gather help. The warnings didn’t get to Victoria in time.

On August 6, 1840, the citizens of Victoria were surprised when they looked across Spring Creek and 600 mounted Comanche warriors stared back at them. The Comanche, having already killed several slaves and farmers working in the nearby fields, charged into town. Townspeople barricaded themselves inside their homes and fired at the Indians from upstairs windows. Buffalo Hump’s braves bolted back and forth in the streets, setting fires and killing anyone they caught outside. Never willing to attack a fortified position, the Comanche soon tired of the sport and withdrew, taking 1,500 horses with them.

After noon on August 7, the Comanche gathered their spoils and headed toward Linnville, at that time the second largest port in Texas. They contented themselves by killing a few isolated farm workers and some freight haulers, then spent the night camped on what is now called Placedo Creek, about twelve miles from Linnville. Early on August 8, they went into town.

Buffalo Hump’s scouts had done a good job. The town of Linnville was the main port where goods from New Orleans and points east were off-loaded to be freighted overland to San Antonio. At the time of the raid, over $300,000.00 worth of merchandise, bound for markets in San Antonio and Austin, was stored in the warehouses of Linnville. The people of Linnville heard that the Indians were coming, but refused to believe it. Even when Comanche appeared on the outskirts of town, they were thought to be Mexican horse traders.

Comanche surrounded the town and began to kill people and plunder warehouses. The local citizens fled to the sea, and stayed out of range on small boats while they watched their homes burn. Indians raided the storage buildings, delighted with their discoveries. Squaws and children squealed with pleasure as they gathered goods and tied them on pack mules. A storehouse of dry goods bound for a San Antonio merchant was discovered and emptied, along with a safe full of silver bullion. Braves in top hats, carrying parasols, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, laughed and played like school boys as they rode up and down the streets dragging feather mattresses and bolts of brightly colored cloth behind their ponies.

All the pack mules in town were loaded with merchandise, all the horses and mules were gathered into one herd, and all other livestock was penned and slaughtered. When the braves emptied a warehouse, they torched it. The residents of Linnville watched impotently as their city was systematically sacked and burned.

When the Indians crossed the bayou to camp for the night, nothing of value remained. Fields around town appeared to be covered with new fallen snow, but it was white feathers from mattresses found in the warehouses, slit open, and dragged for sport. Townspeople returned to shore after the Indians left. During the next few months, the weary citizens relocated to Port Lavaca, three-and-a-half miles south, and Linnville ceased to exist.

Buffalo Hump and his braves moved out, slowed by 3,000 horses and dozens of unmanageable pack mules loaded with plunder. Texas Rangers gathered, followed, and waited for an opportunity to attack.

To be continued…..

Part Two of a Series--Hugh McLeod, Pochanaquarhip, and Matilda Lockhart

2014-06-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

The Council House is behind the wall, to the left of the church. The San Antonio City Hall occupies this space today.

In March of 1840, President Mirabeau Lamar sent his new Inspector General of the Texas Army, twenty-six-year-old Lt. Col. Hugh McLeod, to San Antonio. McLeod was part of a three-man team sent to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty and the return of hostages with the Comanche Nation. Lamar knew McLeod was not the shiniest penny in the bank, but felt the impatient young colonel was bright enough to make a reasonable deal with a bunch of hungry Indians. He also knew that if the talks stalled, the impetuous McLeod was likely to fight, which was not, in Lamar’s opinion, all bad.

On the morning of March 19, 1840, sixty-five Comanche, including twelve chiefs, arrived dressed in their finest ceremonial regalia. The chiefs were accompanied for this festive occasion by their squaws and children. The meeting was held in the council house adjacent to the jail where present-day Market Street and Delarosa meet the Main Plaza in downtown San Antonio. The twelve chiefs sat on the floor, as was their custom, and the Texans sat in chairs on an elevated platform facing and looking down on the Indians, a not surprising white man tactic. The other Comanche, mostly women and children, remained outside, in back of the building. Two companies of Texas infantry assembled in front of the building to provide “security.”

The Comanche brought only one white hostage, sixteen-year-old Matilda Lockhart, and several Mexican children of little interest to the Texans. Miss Lockhart informed the group that she had seen fifteen captives in the main Indian camp, and she believed the Indians would bring them in, one at a time, after the ransom for her was paid. From her observations, she thought the Indians wanted to establish a high value for the hostages before they released any of them.

When asked about hostages, Chief Muguara, spokesman for the Comanche, said that he was sure they would all be released, but only after a large ransom was paid for each. When he finished, he asked, “How do you like that answer?”

Whether Muguara was being sarcastic or was seriously seeking an opinion, the Texans did not like that answer. They were furious. The Comanche had reneged on their promise to free the captives. Lamar, always expecting treachery from the Indians, had prepared for such an eventuality. If the Indians failed to produce the captives, the negotiating team had been instructed to imprison the chiefs and hold them to trade for the hostages. The interpreter was instructed to inform the chiefs that they were under arrest.

Outside, one of the rifle companies moved around the building to watch the Comanche at the back of the structure. The other group crowded around the open doors and windows of the council house, to hear the exchanges as they grew more heated. The glare of the bright sunshine made it difficult to see into the dark interior of the building.

The translator refused to tell the Indians they were under arrest, knowing there would be a violent reaction. Lt. Col. Fisher, head of the Texas council team, ordered him to translate the message. The nervous interpreter edged toward the door, delivered the message, and lunged outside as the Comanche leapt to their feet, slashing with razor-sharp knives at everyone within reach, and pushing for the door. One of the officers may have given the order, it may have been pre-arranged, or the soldiers may have acted spontaneously, but in any case, the riflemen at the doors and windows fired point blank into the building, hoping to hit Indians.

The braves, squaws and children outside, hearing the commotion, began to shoot arrows at everyone on the street, while the Texan soldiers began to fire at the Indians. According to the soldiers, they aimed for the braves and did not shoot at women and children.

The “battle” lasted only a few minutes. Lt. Col. McLeod’s official report, issued the next day, accounted for the sixty-five Indians as follows: Thirty-five dead—thirty adult males, including all twelve of the chiefs, three women and two children. Twenty-seven women and children and two old men were captured and held at Mission San Jose. One renegade Mexican who came in with the Comanche, slipped away in the confusion.

The Texans lost seven dead and ten wounded. Of the seventeen Texas casualties, perhaps a few were actually harmed by Indians. Most were killed or wounded by friendly fire.

The Texans, once again demonstrating their ignorance of the Comanche, decided to release one of the women hostages, give her a good horse and provisions, and send her to the Llano Estacado with an ultimatum for the tribe. The Texans would release the remaining women and children and two old men when the Comanche brought in the fifteen hostages Matilda Lockhart had seen. A two-week truce would be allowed to give the tribes time to deliver the hostages.

The Comanche were mourning the loss of the twelve chiefs and other members of their tribe when the squaw delivered the message from the Texans. Immediately, they began to torture the remaining captives in some of the cruelest, slowest, and most painful methods ever devised. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was reportedly roasted alive over an open fire. All the hostages were dead within a short time. Of the original fifteen, three hostages had been adopted by Comanche families and were not harmed as they were considered members of the tribe. The Comanche made no distinction between native-born and adopted members of the tribe—all were considered Comanche and treated equally.

Hugh McLeod and Lt. Col. Fisher made their way back to the primitive new capital at Austin to report to President Lamar. The citizens of San Antonio worried about Comanche retaliation, but within a few weeks, things returned to normal.

In most descriptions of this event, Matilda Lockhart, who had spent eighteen months in captivity, is said to have been horribly disfigured from abuse by her captors. Her slender young body was scarred from months of torture with hot coals, rawhide whips, and knives. Beatings with heavy clubs left evidence of broken bones. Supposedly, her nose was entirely gone, burned off with hot coals, which left a grotesque hole in the center of her face. Her appearance reportedly so enraged the Texans that they could not help but take revenge on the twelve chiefs.

Matilda is mentioned in Lt. Col. McLeod’s report of the incident, written the day after the battle. McLeod acknowledged her obvious intelligence, but said nothing about any sign of abuse. It was common knowledge that she had been repeatedly raped, as were all female captives, but no contemporary report says anything about scars, burns, or other evidence of torture. The newspaper reporters described everything about the “battle” in great detail, but no mention was made of a sixteen-year-old girl with a missing nose. Matilda’s sister-in-law, in a letter to her mother, reported on Matilda’s condition, but mentioned no disfigurement.

The first mention of abuse occurred more than fifty years later. In 1890, Mary Maverick wrote that Matilda had been abused, was terribly scarred, and her nose was badly burned. Texas writers and the press quickly jumped on the story and expanded it. At the time, Texas’ image was suffering at the hands of the Victorian press, both on the East Coast and abroad. A tortured, abused, and disfigured sixteen-year-old girl may have helped give the Texans an excuse for their brutal treatment of the Comanche.

Out on the Llano Estacado, Chief Pochanaquarhip, known to the Anglos as Buffalo Hump, was planning reprisal. The sacred council laws had been violated. The hated whites had murdered chiefs under a flag of truce. Pochanaquarhip was arroused. He was not one to go soft when faced with adversity. He quietly planned and gathered braves, supplies, and horses for his revenge. The Texans were well advised to worry—Pochanaquarhip in the Penataka dialect means “ an erection that won’t go down.” Buffalo Hump was destined to become a legend in his own time.

Stay tuned…..We're gonna have some fun with this....

Number One of a series on three great Texans---Hugh McLeod, Mirabeau B. Lamar and Chief Pochanaquarhip, better known as Buffalo Hump.

2014-06-16T10:49:00.001-07:00

Depiction by Donald M. Yena ot the Battle of the Neches, where Chief Bowl was killed.

Hugh McLeod led a charmed life. He grew up in Georgia and graduated from West Point at age twenty-one in 1835. He struggled a bit academically, but he was a polished public speaker, amiable, jolly, and well-liked, and no one mentioned that he was last in his class at the Military Academy. After the red-headed and freckled McLeod delivered a fiery and persuasive speech at a Texas rally, Johanna Troutman chose him to carry her Lone Star flag to Texas with the Georgia volunteers.

Because he was so enamored with the Texas cause and the outlook for a career in the U.S. Army appeared bleak, the stocky young officer decided to resign his commission as a second lieutenant and cast his lot with the Georgia boys going to Texas. His resignation paperwork was delayed, so he entrusted the Troutman flag to Col. William Wood, and reported to Fort Jessup, Louisiana, for mustering out. That paperwork snafu saved his life. The entire Georgia battalion, including Col. Wood, was marched out and shot at Goliad, after surrendering with another Georgia boy, the former slave trader and inept commander, Col. James Fannin.

Following his release from the U. S. Army, McLeod hurried to join Houston’s forces at San Jacinto, but arrived after the battle and proceeded to Galveston. There he joined his boyhood idol, Mirabeau Lamar, and the interim governor of Texas, David Burnet. Lamar, Secretary of War in the temporary government, found a place in the Texas army for young McLeod. Eight days after the Battle of San Jacinto, the twenty-two year-old second lieutenant, whose only military experience involved almost flunking out at West Point and serving about six months in a peacetime army, was appointed a major and assigned to the command staff of the Texas Army.

McLeod looked on Lamar with blind hero worship, and Lamar, flattered, looked out for the young man. When Lamar became president of the Republic in December of 1838, the twenty-four year-old McLeod was Adjutant General of the Texas Army. Lamar’s attitude toward Native Americans was diametrically opposed to that of Sam Houston, and the new president immediately set about to remove all Indians from the republic. McLeod helped evict the peaceful Caddos and Kickapoos, and Lamar sent him to meet with the Cherokees in 1839.

Lamar decided to reclaim the land Houston had promised to deed the Cherokees for their help in the Texas Revolution. In July of 1839, he sent McLeod and others to council with the Indians, who were peacefully farming their land in east Texas, north of Nacogdoches. The interested “others” included Lamar’s vice president, David Burnet. That same land had been ceded to him by a Mexican Land Grant, he sold it to an eastern syndicate, Houston gave it to the Cherokees, and Burnet saw an opportunity to get it back.

Cherokee Chief "The Bowl"--Houston's friend. After The Bowl was killed, Hugh McLeod presented Sam Houston with the old chief's distintive hat as a form of ridicule--Houston was considered an "Indian Lover."

After three days of peaceful talks, the Texans lost patience and attacked. The two-day Battle of the Neches resulted in the death of Houston’s old friend, Chief “Bowl.” Hugh McLeod was slightly wounded in the battle and the Cherokee were driven across the Red River into what was then Arkansas Territory.

President Lamar, pleased that the “Cherokee Problem” was resolved, turned his attention to the “Comanche Problem,” a much more complicated and dangerous situation. Raiding parties of Comanche swooped in from the Llano Estacado, tortured, raped, and killed settlers, kidnapped children, burned settlements, and stole horses with impunity. After the raids, the Comanche disappeared back into the trackless high plains, where no white man would go.

An opportunity to resolve the problem presented itself in January of 1840, when a band of Comanche sent delegates to San Antonio to try and arrange peace with the whites. After long years of war, an especially hard winter, and a deadly epidemic of smallpox, this small group felt that peace might be a better course of action. They arranged for a council to be held in March.

The leaders of the Republic of Texas did not understand the Comanche. The Comanche Nation existed as a group of individual tribes, living, hunting, raiding, moving, and dying on a piecemeal basis, with no central control or government. The nation was made up of at least twelve distinct tribes, broken into as many as thirty-five separate bands. Each band chose its own leaders, made its own rules, lived where it wished, and did as it pleased. They warred with everyone except other Comanche. Sam Houston may have understood all this, but his advice was not welcome in Lamar’s administration. Because of their many differences, the two leaders could not stand each other.

Some eight or ten bands of Comanche were involved in the peace initiative, but dozens of bands refused to hold council with the dishonest Anglos. Council was a sacred thing to the Comanche and not to be entered into lightly. Delegates from the starving groups truthfully told the powers in San Antonio that all the prisoners they held would be released, borders would be established and honored, and none of their band would break the truce. They did not, and could not, speak for the other tribes, but the elated Texans thought this meant the entire Comanche Nation would lay down its arms, release hostages, and go back to peaceful existence out on the high plains, away from settled areas. The Texans believed President Lamar’s “show no mercy” policy with the Indians was working.

Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second President of the Republic of Texas and lifelong enemy of Sam Houston.

Two prominent chiefs of the Comanche, Peta Nocona of the Noconas and Buffalo Hump of the Penatakas, refused to council with the whites and refused to release any hostages. Peta Nocona married a captive, Cynthia Ann Parker. They may have been married at that time—she would have been fourteen and had been with his tribe for over four years. Their son, Quanah Parker, born over five years later, became one of the most famous chiefs of the Comanche. Buffalo Hump was especially vocal in his opposition to the meeting, and predicted dire consequences. Both these respected chiefs were well acquainted with the treachery of the whites, and felt it was foolhardy to attempt any dealings with them.

To be continued…..

(My friend, Jimmy Wallace, asked that I do something about Buffalo Hump. Jimmy is a serious student of Texas History and a full time resident of San Antonio, where so much of it happened. I do not, at this time, know how many episodes this series will be, but all of them are dedicated to Jimmy Wallace.)

The Tragic, Lusty, and Short Romance of Annie Stone and Abraham Rothschild

2014-05-18T14:08:00.001-07:00

Bessie Moore, AKA Diamond Bessie, nee Annie Stone

Annie Stone was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1854, the daughter of a successful shoe store owner. She was a lovely child, with creamy complexion, raven black hair, and ice-blue eyes. Annie quickly grew into a strikingly beautiful woman with an endless supply of suitors who were more than willing to teach her the facts of life. She learned well, and at age 15, the promiscuous young beauty became the mistress of a businessman named Moore and changed her name to Bessie Moore, probably to protect her family honor.

After the short affair with Moore ended, Bessie, well-educated for a woman in that day but no longer welcome at her parent's home, chose to become a prostitute. She thoroughly enjoyed the work and was well-equipped for it. The talented teenager practiced her craft in brothels from Cincinnati to New Orleans and her happy, satisfied clients showered her with expensive gifts and diamond jewelry. She worked in the “Mansion of Joy” in Cincinnati, and wintered in an equally joyous Bourbon Street hotel. The cool of the Ozarks drew her to Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the summers.

Abraham Rothschild was born in August of 1854 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Meyer Rothschild, a wealthy diamond merchant. Abe, a handsome and gregarious young man, began a career as a drummer--travelling salesman--for his father’s company, visiting cities throughout the country selling jewelry. He loved to travel and enjoyed his work, but soon discovered the pleasures of saloons and brothels, and devoted less and less time to serious activities. Abraham fell into disfavor with his parents and was considered a drunkard and the family black sheep, which bothered him not a whit. He liked barrooms and whorehouses and whiskey and women.

Abraham Rothschild, AKA A. Munroe

Abe and Bessie crossed paths in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1875. They may have been acquainted from Bessie’s days at the Mansion of Joy in Cincinnati, but after meeting in Hot Springs, they became travelling companions. Even though they moved about as man and wife, Abe insisted that Bessie continue to turn tricks to help with expenses and finance his gambling habit. She seemed to be in love with him and did as he asked. Both of them began to drink heavily, and, to keep Bessie in line, Abe sometimes found it necessary to physically discipline her. He was arrested once in Cincinnati for slapping her around in public, but Bessie refused to press charges.

They may have married during the next two years. They certainly acted as if they were married, but there is no record of a wedding. In any case, they travelled to Marshall, Texas, in January of 1877 and registered at the Capitol Hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Rothschild of Cincinnati. After two days, the couple boarded the train and travelled eighteen miles to Jefferson, where they registered on January 19^th at the Brooks House Hotel as A. Munroe and wife.

Jefferson was a busy center of commerce at the time, and Abe may have intended to sell jewelry to prosperous businessmen in the city, or he may have had something else in mind. Why he registered in Jefferson under a false name is a matter of conjecture, and there are those who believe Abe’s sole reason for the trip to Jefferson was to rid himself of Bessie.

Abe had several possible motives. Bessie may have been pushing him toward marriage, a step he was not willing to take. She may have claimed to be pregnant which would have created a family scandal at the time. (She would not have been the first young lady to lie about such a thing.) On the other hand, Abe could have been bored with Bessie and their relationship, or he may have simply wanted her diamonds, which he could use to finance his gambling. Whether it was robbery or a more complicated reason, Abe wanted Bessie out of his life.

Bessie joined Abe at the Rosebud Saloon the next two evenings, drinking, dancing, flashing her collection of diamond jewelry, and displaying her shapely figure in fine satin dresses. The handsome young couple made quite an impression on the conservative population of Jefferson. Someone heard Abe refer to his wife as Bessie, and she was immediately dubbed “Diamond Bessie.”

Shortly before eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, January 21, 1877, Abraham and Bessie had breakfast at Henrique’s restaurant and arranged for a picnic lunch, even though the weather was cold and threatening. As the couple ate breakfast and waited for their lunch to be packed, Frank Malloy admired Bessie’s large diamond rings and other assets. He was the last local citizen to see Bessie alive. Frank watched as Abe carried the picnic basket across the foot bridge over Big Cypress Bayou and the couple disappeared into the fog on the Marshall Road.

Before three that afternoon, A. Munroe, as he was known, returned to Jefferson and explained that his wife was visiting friends across the bayou, but would return before their scheduled departure on Tuesday morning. Someone noticed that Abe was wearing two diamonds that had been on Bessie’s fingers. A cold front moved through town on Monday, and snow, a rarity in Jefferson, covered the ground by Tuesday morning when Abe, with all the couple’s luggage, sneaked aboard the train and left for Cincinnati, alone.

Snow continued for a week. The weather cleared, and on February 5^th, a woman gathering firewood in the forest off the Marshall Road discovered the body of a finely dressed, attractive young lady. The body was seated, leaning against a tree, partially covered with snow. Cause of death appeared to be a bullet hole in her right temple. Authorities in Jefferson knew immediately the corpse must be Diamond Bessie. Because there was no gun at the scene and no jewelry on the body, suicide was ruled out and foul play was suspected. When it was discovered that A. Munroe did not exist, but Abe Rothschild of Cincinnati and his wife, Bessie had been in Marshall, a warrant was issued for Rothschild’s arrest.

Abraham Rothschild, after his return to Cincinnati, acted strangely. He increased his drinking and became paranoid, insisting that “someone” was out to get him. Early one morning, after a particularly grueling, all-night session at a bar down the street from the Mansion of Joy, Abe stepped out into the deserted street and attempted to blow out his brains. He managed to blow out one eye, but survived. Sheriff John Vines, of Jefferson, arrived and arrested him as he recuperated in the hospital after the incident.

The Rothschild family, disgusted with Abraham but anxious to protect the family name, put up a vigorous defense against extradition, but eventually lost the battle. To the family’s shame, Abraham was taken back to Texas to stand trial for the murder of a common harlot. The trial would become one of the most sensational of the century, with every prominent attorney and politician in Texas clamoring to get involved on one side or the other.

Abraham’s wealthy father spared no expense in the defense of his family name. He hired ten pricey lawyers and paid them lavishly to defend his son. The team succeeded in getting many delays and a change of venue because sentiments were so strongly against Abe in Jefferson, and the trial was moved. The case was finally tried in Marshall in early December of 1878.

After three weeks of testimony, Abraham was found guilty and sentenced to hang. The defense team earned its money by getting the verdict thrown out and winning a new trial. The press was incensed and claimed that anyone with a few good friends and a lot of money could get away with murder in Texas.

This Cypress Siding was nailed in place in 1875, when this building was a synagogue. There is no record that Abe and Bessie worshipped here, although it was available for them.

After months of delay, posturing, and motions by both sides, the retrial started in Jefferson on December 14, 1880. The defense presented a new witness, Miss Isabelle Gouldy, who testified that she had seen Diamond Bessie in the presence of an unidentified man on January 20^th, and again on January 25^th, two days after Abe Rothschild left town. The coroner testified that the body was not sufficiently decomposed to have been in the woods for fifteen days. He also noted that Bessie was not pregnant.

The prosecution viciously attacked Miss Gouldy’s veracity, implying that she was a prostitute and not to be trusted, and suggesting that her testimony had been bought and paid for with Meyer Rothschild’s money. They also pointed out that the body had effectively been in a deep freeze for almost two weeks because of the snowstorm. The jury listened carefully to these arguments and, because the defense had created more than a shadow of doubt to cloud the issues, found the defendant innocent of all charges.

Abe and his family left town on the first available train and went back to Cincinnati. After a long and checkered career as a con man, Abe died in 1937, and is buried in a family plot in San Mateo County, California. Bessie Moore is buried in the Oakwood Cemetery in Jefferson, her gravesite neatly fenced and tended by the industrious ladies of the Jessie Allen Wise Garden Club. Sheriff John Vines, Frank Malloy, Isabelle Gouldy and several others involved in the trial are buried nearby.

The final resting place of Diamond Bessie, in the Oakwood Cemetery at Jefferson.

Each year, during Jefferson’s annual “Pilgrimage” celebration, the Jessie Allen Wise Garden Club sponsors several performances of the play, The Murder of Diamond Bessie in the building that, in 1877, housed the Jewish Synagogue in Jefferson.

To this day, the murder of Bessie Moore is listed in the files of the Texas Attorney General’s Office as "unsolved.”

Bob Wills' Day in Turkey and The Pilgrimage in Jefferson

2014-05-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

The water tower for the city is in the background. This farmer plowed up his cotton, for a reason unknown to me, but I bet the government paid him to do oit.

Last week, I travelled 369 miles due north to meet some old friends and attend the annual Bob Wills Day celebration in Turkey, Texas. The Bob Wills Committee bought the vacant high school building in Turkey and converted it into a museum, dance hall, gift shop, and dining establishment for use once a year during the celebration.

The Church of Western Swing, a former church down the street from the high school, celebrates nightly with Western Swing dances where couples two-step into the wee hours. Breakfast tacos are available at the re-furbished high school cafeteria, along with coffee, pancakes, and sausage.

The city of Turkey is located about thirty miles north of Matador, Texas, the headquarters of the legendary Matador Ranch, in the so-called Cross-Timbers section of Texas. The timber part must be elsewhere, because most of the land around Turkey is treeless, with sweet potato or cotton fields covered much of the year by sand dunes. It is hot, arid, dry, and gritty land. Outsiders might complain about the twenty-mile-per-hour winds, with gusts to thirty, but the natives don’t notice.

Saturday morning parade with the aforementioned water tower in the background.

Hugh and I met our friends, Buck Campbell and Ken Black at the festival. Buck came over from Muleshoe, and Ken drove down from Dallas. Buck’s son, Scott, lives in a place called Trophy Club, north of the DFW Airport, and his son, Conner, just turned 21, is a student at Texas Tech in Lubbock. This was Conner’s first Bob Wills, Day celebration. I imagine there were other families with three generations present, but I doubt if there were many.

Scott, and the other fifteen members of the delegation from Trophy Club, had restored an ancient riding lawn mower to ride in the Saturday parade and to race in the lawn mower race that afternoon. Many hours of careful, late-night drinking, planning, and meticulous craftsmanship went into the design and renovation of that machine. It created quite a stir when unveiled for the first time, its shiny black paint job emblazoned with decals from a variety of sponsors.

The Trophy Club beast bears down on the competition at turn five.

Jody Nix, a virtuoso on the fiddle and practitioner of Western Swing Music from ‘way back headlined the Saturday night dance, as he has for many years. I have watched Jody grow old at these sessions. His perfectly groomed hair and moustache are now gray. His form-fitting western shirt, hand-tooled Ranger belt, and starched Wrangler jeans are all larger and much tighter than in years past.

I first saw Jody Nix when I was in college. Buck Campbell and I took dates to the “Brownfield Stomp,” a monthly dance at the VFW Hall in Brownfield. Hoyle Nix and his band would come up from San Angelo to play, and Buck and I would drive over from Lubbock with our dates. Jody Nix was about twelve, and, back then, played a sit-down steel guitar for his dad’s band. He only played on Saturday nights because Hoyle insisted he stay in school.

* * * * *

This last Thursday, Charlotte and I drove to a different world, but stayed in Texas. A bit over 412 miles northeast of Kerrville, deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas, the city of Jefferson transports us back to the Antebellum South. We were there for the annual “Pilgrimage,” a festival that celebrates the history of this unique little city.

Bobbie Hardy's plantation house, finished in 2002, but no longer a B & B. We watched the muster of the Confederate soldiers from this porch. The 1860 Episcopal Church is directly across the street.

Jefferson, once the second largest and most prosperous city in Texas, grew as an inland port, shipping bales of cotton down Big Cypress Bayou to the Red River, then on to the Mississippi and Natchez, St. Louis, or New Orleans. Entire plantations from the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama, having “farmed out” their soil, relocated here during the 1840s and ‘50s, bringing their possessions, their slaves, their attitudes, and their way of life. The army Corps of Engineers, in a successful effort to drain the swamp, left Jefferson high and dry before the turn of the century. With the loss of the port on Big Cypress Bayou, prosperity literally dried up.

Many plantation homes in the little city were lost to decay, but in the late sixties, when the Bed and Breakfast industry developed in Texas, these homes became popular and desirable places to visit. Tourism revived the economy of the quaint little town.

In 1872, during the heyday of Jefferson, a Cincinnati playboy and his lady companion visited Jefferson for about two weeks. They stayed at the Excelsior Hotel, and Abraham Rothschild, a young diamond merchant, called upon local businessmen, peddling his wares. At night, he and his “lady” frequented the Rosebud Saloon, where she cut a fine figure, dripping with Abe’s diamonds. She became known around town as “Diamond Bessie.”

Part of the cast from Diamond Bessie during the parade. I can pick out the Sheriff, the Defense Attorney, the Judge, and a local "Social Worker" in the red dress. The old man, seated and waving an American flag, was a Belly-Gunner on a B-17 in World War II. He was only 5-2, and fit nicely into the pod beneath the plane.

On a Sunday, Abe and Bessie left for a picnic in the nearby woods. That afternoon, Abraham returned alone and caught the Monday morning train back to Cincinnati. Bessie was found, two weeks later, deep in the woods with a bullet in her head. Abe was arrested in Cincinnati and brought back to Jefferson for trial.

In the fifties, a play was written about the incident, and has been performed annually during the Pilgrimage for sixty consecutive years. I was asked to play one of the jury members in this year’s presentation, and jumped at the opportunity.

The arthor, as one of the finest jury members money can buy.

On Sunday morning, I sat on the front porch of a plantation house similar to “Tara” from “Gone with the Wind,” and watched as three hundred costumed Confederate soldiers re-enacted the original muster in the park across the street. These Jefferson volunteers were marching off to join General Lee’s army. A letter used in the original ceremony was read from the front steps of the Episcopal Church, the same place it had been read at the start of the Civil War. The brick church was built in 1860 and is still in use today.

I cannot help but compare the two experiences, one week apart, in Texas. On Saturday, at 10 AM in Jefferson, it was warm and humid. Pecan, oak, and pine trees towered over the little city, and we wished for the hint of a breeze. I thought of last Saturday in Turkey and four hundred people sitting in lawn chairs on a former football field, trying to hold their umbrellas in a thirty-mile-a-hour wind, seeking protection from the blowing sand and hot sun. They braved the elements to sit there and hear Bob Wills’ music, played by old men, the remnants of Bob’s Texas Playboys.

Western swing music by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys brought joy, hope, and laughter to the dirt farmers on the scorched, open prairies of West Texas during the depths of the depression. At the same time, in run-down homes deep in the East Texas woods, genteel southern ladies served herb tea in China cups and prayed their husbands would find work. Poor people in little towns built this state. Rich men helped, but poor people did the work. With pride, energy, and hard work, they created Texas. So long as I am able, I will attend their celebrations—I will honor their customs and their memories.

My Front Porch

2014-03-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

Sunrise from the front porch.

I’m setting on my front porch because that’s what I do—I set, I don’t sit. I set here in the early morning and have my coffee a lot of days, because this place has pleasant weather most of the time and I can set here in a robe and still be comfortable, especially with a steaming cup of strong coffee. Sometimes, in the evenings, I set here with a drink of whisky. Depending upon a lot of things, I sometimes set here at the end of the day with a big glass of iced tea.

My front porch is fifty feet long and over eight feet wide. I have six rocking chairs and a porch swing, plus sixty feet of rail wide enough to set a drink on if you have to stand up because all the seats are full. I built it this way so I could set out here with my friends or family whenever I wanted. The porch deck is unfinished, as are a lot of things at my house, because I ran out of money and energy before it all got done, but the house is solid and strong and safe and comfortable to live in.

I wired the porch for sound when I built it—we didn’t have all the new-fangled wireless speakers back then—I put four stereo speakers up in the rafters so the music filters down in the background and you can hear it but it doesn’t interfere with any conversation going on. When I’m out here by myself, in the dark of early morning or the shank of the evening, I sometimes crank up the volume and immerse myself in music. Depending upon my mood, it might be Asleep at the Wheel playing Bob Wills, or Simone Dinnerstein playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Usually it is both, with Norah Jones, Hank Thompson, and Dakota Staton thrown in, all magically mixed by a machine back in the mechanical room.

My front porch faces east, and the neighbors are far enough away so they can’t hear my music. At sunrise, I have to go back in the house because the sun is usually so bright it hurts my eyes, but in the evening the sun sets behind the house and lights the distant hills with spectacular color. The view across the valley always includes the limitless sky and is fresh and new every time I look. I can see Bandera Pass in the far distance and tell stories about Texas Ranger Cap’n Jack Hays, all the while watching the magnificent panorama that plays out in the sky here everyday at dusk.

Company must be coming--all six flags are out!

I have six columns on my front porch, one for each flag that flew over Texas. When I was running out of money, I had to decide whether or not to finish the porch deck and handrail, or buy the mounting hardware, swivel poles, brackets, and flags. I bought the flags and I fly them on holidays and anytime out-of-town visitors come to see us. I’m glad I chose the flags. They add history and color and personality to the house and the temporary deck and handrails work just fine.

Among the trees in front of the porch, I planted three arrows my friend R.G. Box made for me. They are thirty feet tall and sticking into the ground at an angle, as if a great big Indian shot them at the house from the hill across the valley. If that Indian had four arrows, I'd be in deep trouble. Box also made me a sign that says, “Watch out for great big Indians.”

I don't believe there is an ordinance against arrows in our little town. Just to be safe, I didn't ask.

My front porch is the best place ever to enjoy a thunderstorm. Most of the weather here comes from the north or west, and the house shields the porch from those directions. I can sit there during a raging storm, hear the rain or hail beating on the tin roof, and experience the violent side of nature without getting the least bit wet.

When friends or family come over and the weather is nice, we just naturally gravitate to the front porch. We talk and drink beer, wine, tea, or something stronger—I don’t discriminate—I’ll drink anything my guests bring. We talk and laugh and just enjoy each other. Sometimes it’s after supper with the immediate family and we listen to the grandkids’ adventures at school. Sometimes it’s extended family from out of town and we catch up on each other’s lives, triumphs, and disappointments. Sometimes it’s an old friend and in the words of Wayne Ratisseau, "we sip some mash and talk some trash."

I sometimes feel we have too few young friends, but that is not really true. We have a number of friends in their thirties or forties that we have known since they were babies and we have vicariously enjoyed their lives and consider their children our own. We are complimented that these young people take the time to drop by when they’re in town, and we hurry out to set on the front porch with them whenever they visit.

The storm passed over and headed toward Bandera.

Any of these uses justifies the time and effort I spent designing and building my front porch, but, as an added benefit, I get to set out there all by myself and hatch ideas like a mother hen. I can turn a story over and over in my mind, before I write a word. I can think about that silly yankee who got so angry at me in the HEB, or the pretentious young doctor trying to expand his practice, or the time I misplaced my pickup. I can dream of big arrows and great big Indians. I can remember my life, the mistakes I made and the things I did right. I can wonder what ever happened to that special girl in high school, and I can imagine my life had I made different choices.

I can swell with pride as I remember accomplishments, or shed warm tears as I remember disappointments. No one will know except me, alone, here on my front porch.

This front porch is my place. I dreamed it. I built it.

The Road to Texas--The Natchez Trace

2014-03-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

The Modern Natchez Trace parkway as it appears on a warm day in October.

In the 1820’s and 30’s, when hundreds of American families were migrating to Texas to take advantage of the liberal colonization policies offered by Mexico, there were few roads in that direction. Dense forests, sparse population, swamps, and hostile Indians surrounded Texas and made it very difficult to simply go there.

Nashville, Tennessee, was accessible and from there, the Natchez Trace offered a convenient, relatively safe wagon route to Natchez on the Mississippi River. Once in Natchez, the travelers could choose to float down the Mississippi to New Orleans, and then take a ship to Galveston, Velasco, or Indianola, ports on the Texas Coast. A slower, but less expensive choice from Natchez was to go cross-country to Natchitoches, Louisiana, then overland and enter Texas at the sister city of Nacogdoches. Both these routes grew popular and well travelled, and early Texans knew them well.

I cannot remember when I became aware of the Natchez Trace, but I first saw one end of it in 1973 at the Belle Meade Plantation on West End Boulevard in Nashville. I knew it had been a main route for immigrants from the Ohio River Valley. They hung out the “Gone to Texas” signs and headed west to pledge allegiance to Mexico, join the Catholic Church, and claim their near-free homestead land. I didn’t know the Trace (as some trails were called in those days) started in Nashville.

James Michener wrote about a twelve-year-old boy walking to Texas from Baltimore on the Natchez Trace, so I believed for many years the Trace started in Baltimore. I should have paid more attention. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson, perhaps anticipating the Louisiana Purchase, sent the U.S. Army to clear a mail route from Nashville to the Mississippi River. Jefferson wanted a reliable road to the “southwest.” The army simply widened, marked, and improved ancient Indian trails that led to Natchez, Mississippi. By 1809, the entire route was wide enough to accommodate wagon traffic in either direction.

The Trace starts in Nashville, Tennessee, clips off the northwest corner of Alabama, heads diagonally across Mississippi and terminates in Natchez, a distance of just under 450 miles. It follows the high ground in the forest between the rivers on a ridgeline trail that was used by Native Americans for hundreds of years.

A map of the original Natchez Trace. The current Parkway skirts the cities.

“Kaintucks,” the name given a rough, semi-civilized group of backwoods farmers in Kentucky and Ohio, used the Trace to get back home after delivering their crops and livestock to market in Mississippi. These enterprising men built river barges, loaded their stock and produce, and floated down-river to willing buyers waiting in Natchez. Because the barges would not float upstream, the Kaintucks either sold or traded them for wagons. The more industrious dismantled the barges and sold the lumber.

The Kaintucks, flush with cash, made their way back home overland on the Natchez Trace. By 1810, over 10,000 Kaintucks made this journey, along with hundreds of pilgrims heading west. Dozens of inns and hostels (called “stands”) sprang up along the Trace. Highwaymen, thieves and cutthroats camped in the adjacent woods and preyed on weak or unwary travelers.

Merchants, plantation owners, and genteel society members of Natchez built mansions on the hills above the river, but the docks and warehouses were located in what was known as “Natchez Under the Hill.” In this wicked underbelly of the city, a hotbed of saloons, dance halls, whorehouses, and gambling dens competed for the opportunity to fleece the unsophisticated farmers carrying in their moneybelts the proceeds from a year’s work. Then, as now, these “victimless” crimes were mostly ignored and lawless activity flourished “under the hill.”

The Natchez Trace enjoyed a colorful, but relatively brief, existence. In 1820, then-General Andrew Jackson completed the Jackson Military Road from Nashville to New Orleans. The new road was east of the Trace, through the Alabama swamps and about two hundred miles shorter than going by way of Natchez. West of the Trace, steam-powered riverboats began to ply the Mississippi and Memphis became the center of commerce upriver from New Orleans. Traffic began to fade on the Trace. The Kaintucks preferred the river route home, and, after the 1830s, most colonists headed west by different routes.

The Trace is memorialized by a paved, two-lane road that parallels the original trail and is called the Natchez Trace Parkway. Established by the National Park Service in 1938, construction on the Parkway was completed in 2005. The speed limit is fifty miles per hour, commercial vehicles or trucks are not allowed, and frequent rests stops and historical markers abound. Gas stations, convenience stores, and commercial activity, including signs, are banned from the parkway.

I first rode the parkway in 1996, on a motorcycle trip with three friends. We visited the Vicksburg Battleground early one morning, then rode east and picked up the Trace about twenty miles west of Jackson. We rode northeast about 200 miles and dropped off at Tupelo, on our way to barbeque and blues on Beale Street in Memphis.

We had travelled across two states and over 600 miles on public highways and freeways, buffeted by windy backwash from eighteen wheelers every mile of the way. We searched among the billboards on either side of the road for the next exit sign, where we could get gas or take a leak. We often were forced to ride, white-knuckled, over ninety miles-an-hour just to get past a truck and out of the turbulence the big semis create. We filled our lungs with diesel and gasoline fumes, dodged unaware drivers as they changed lanes indiscriminately, and concentrated on the road ahead for loose pieces of debris that will wreck a motorcycle. I can tell you, the joy and freedom of motorcycle touring does not come easy.

By contrast, with my motorcycle at fifty miles-per-hour on the Natchez Trace Parkway, I could hear the birds singing and I could smell the flowers. Pristine lakes dot the countryside, and thick green forests crowd the roadway. Lush manicured grass grows next to the pavement and no weed dares raise its ugly head. Frequent rest areas with picnic tables break up the ride, and spotlessly clean restrooms are strategically placed to ensure comfort. All points of interest are well-marked with uniform National Park Service signs, each clear, concise, and fresh-painted. If there is a downside, the route is almost too sanitary.

In 2008, my wife and I drove the Natchez Trace Parkway, from its inception on West End Boulevard in Nashville to its terminus at the Mississippi River in Natchez. We stayed in one of the magnificent plantation homes on the hill above the river, and had dinner at a white tablecloth restaurant in a trendy section of town called “Under the Hill.” Everything about the experience, from the bright-eyed little cutie who served us to the “Kaintuck Strip” sirloin we ate, was entirely pleasant.

I am not the first in my family to travel the Natchez Trace. In 1828, my great-great grandfather, James McLaughlin, left Nashville and headed for Texas. I cannot help but wonder, after over a month on the Trace, if he paused to relax “Under the Hill” in Natchez. If so, could he have been served by our little cutie’s bright-eyed great, great grandmother?

A view of the original Trace, cut through the woods by countless wagon wheels and horse's hooves.