Registered: Oct 2001
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I just finished this little book a short while ago, and I really didn't want to put it down. I could've easily stayed wrapped up in it had it been 700 pages long rather than a mere 154 pages.

J.O. Langford brought his wife and young daughter to the Big Bend in 1909 seeking to homestead on a natural hot spring that lay on the banks of the Rio Grande. He remained there until about 1914 when revolucion in Mexico made life for his family on the border untenable. They moved suddenly to El Paso and didn't return for fourteen years. However, with Gipson's help, Langford tells a pleasant and colorful story about the early years of their homestead.



Langford ended up being somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades of sorts, fullfilling the duties of schoolteacher, doctor, postmaster, builder and innkeeper. And he met those responsibilities with a humble acceptance and willingness I found refreshing.

quote:

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As a teacher, I take no credit for the way my pupils learned or for their good conduct. I was about the sort of teacher you might expect me to have been, with my limited education and total lack of experience. My pupils didn't learn good manners from me; they had good manners when they came to my school. They didn't learn art from me; they were born with an instinctive knowledge. And as for what they learned about reading and writing, they learned that from me only because I showed them how to learn a thing they were eager to learn.

For me, those children made teaching a real pleasure.

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well, that's a novel thing to see from a teacher.

and when he describes the view from his front porch I feel like packing up and leaving tomorrow.

quote:

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Often, during a cool, windy period we'd watch a stream of clouds many miles wide flowing across the table-top ofthe Carmens, spilling off down the mountainside and across the foothills. Some two-thousand feet below, the cloud formation was rolled back and uplifted by a current of warm air. This ocean of clouds would completely hide the entire range from sight, flowing for hours under the bright sun with every appearance of water.

At other times, when temperature and wind direction were right, small sheets of clouds, floating lazily along this high escarpment, would be sucked down into the canyon below, where they were rolled into a huge, dense bolster of downy white. The bolster would be several hundred feet in diamter and many miles in length and would hang there in the silver light like a great dirigible anchored to a peak halfway up the golden walls of the Carmens.

There were in these sights a splendor and magnificence not to be denied. There was in them, too, that which could quiet and ease the restless spirit of man.

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Anyway, I wish I hadn't finished it halfway through the day and so far from the Rio Grande.

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