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oxsan
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Back in the days when steamboating was the principal form of commerce in the middle of the US and thus on the Mississippi River the bells and whistles on the big river steamboats were an important attribute of the boat. They varied in tone, pitch and volume from boat to boat and the other steamboats and people who lived along the river were soon able to distinguish which boat was "just around the bend" by the sound of its bell or whistle. As a matter of fact, a Kentucky farmer near Scuffletown named Barnett claimed that his mule would stop in its tracks in the furrow and refuse to move further until fed when the Two States boat sounded for the landing at Scuffletown but was not so compelled when other boats whistled for a landing. The whistle of The Natchez was said to sound like a bumblebee. Many claimed that the crew of The Revenue had stolen its whistle from the top of the smokestack of a factory in Pittsburgh after a round of drinking at Pittsburgh bars and did not dare whistle for a landing in the vicinity of that factory. The deep-throated whistle of The Kate Adams steamboat was said to be heard for thirty miles on the river on a still cold night.
One of the most famous whistles of that era involved the side wheeler Eugene. The Eugene had no whistle and her crew was sad about that and sought surcease from their misery in the bars of New Orleans famous French Quarter. While drinking there they heard a magnificent whistle and instantly knew that they had to have it for the Eugene. So they had a few more drinks and went down to the waterfront and found that this lovely whistle was on an Italian freighter. All of the hands of the Eugene agreed that this whistle deserved a better home and they waited until the wee hours of the morning and climbed up the stack of the Italian ship and stole the whistle and carried it home to the Eugene where they installed it. Early the next morning the Eugene made a silent departure from New Orleans. This was in the 1840s and the Eugene became famous for its full-throated, melodious whistle. But alas the Eugene was not destined to enjoy this whistle for long. In 1850 it made a trip up river and stumbled over the wreck of the Eliza boat and was sunk. The whistle however was salvaged and installed on The Hattie Gilmore and was there for many years until 1863 it was transferred to the Tarascon which had New Orleans as its home port. It was during the Civil War and the blockade of the Mississippi River was lifted and in celebration of this the Tarascon plied up and down New Orleans Port sounding her new whistle.
Yup! You guessed it! The Italian Captain of the freighter was in port and instantly recognized the sound of his purloined whistle and complained thereof to the Port Authority asking their aid in getting the whistle from the Tarascon.. A sort of unofficial Admiralty Court was convened by the Port Authority with a French captain as Chairman of the court. After hearing testimony and deliberating the court ruled that the whistle was lawfully salvaged from a sunken vessel and that the Italian Captain was just out of luck and that Tarascon could keep it. The Captain of the Tarascon was Louisiana French I understand and this decision was necessary to prevent bloodshed.
As the years went by the famous Tarascon whistle was transferred to other boats. It was on The James Guthrie for some years and then on Tell City and finally put on the Nashville which was renamed the Southland in 1922. In 1932 on a December day the Southland was wrecked on a Kentucky shore and burned and the peripatetic whistle was lost forever.
I think that you can tell from the above that I am into another book. YUP! It is "Voices On The River" by Walter Havighurst and I am really enjoying it. It has all sorts of Mississippi River folklore in it including most of what I wrote above. It is a good read if you dig that sort of stuff.
I have always longed to go to New Orleans and take a steamboat ride to Pittsburg. They still have big side wheelers that make that round trip in about a week. I may do that some day when I retire.
love
dad, granpa et al
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I was asked recently if I could remember the terrible sandstorm that occurred in the Texas Panhandle on 14 April, 1935 and earned the title of "Black Sunday" for that date and I am afraid that I could not give a cogent answer. It is not that I didn’t remember the events of 1935. I was seven years old on that date and remember events of that year quite clearly. It was the year of my many childhood diseases of that day. I had mumps, chicken pox, measles, whooping cough and a tonsillectomy that year which made it very memorable from a medical standpoint. I consulted my perpetual calendar and sure enough the 14th of April in 1935 did fall on a Sunday. As usual we didn’t live in just one town in 1935. We lived in Haskell, Clarendon, Lubbock, and Brownfield Texas and ended the year in Carlsbad New Mexico. I spent the three months of summer vacation at my grandfather’s farm which was located between Plainview and Lockney, Texas. The problem is that I don’t remember one horrible sandstorm to earn that name for the day, I remember maybe ten or fifteen. All of those locations I mentioned above were subject to blinding sandstorms in 1935. It was the time of the "Dust Bowl".
It is certainly understandable that 14 April got named Black Sunday. When the sandstorms came
It seems to me that they usually came out of the northwest and the first indication was a wall of dark purple rolling in that got darkened to almost black as it approached. For those with any kind of a breathing disorder the advent of a sandstorm was a dangerous affair and the weak and disabled frequently died as a result of the breathing difficulty. The air was literally filled with a choking, gritty dust that there was no way to keep out of your lungs. The best plan was to get to an inner room of the house and cover your mouth and nose with a damp handkerchief or napkin.
Nearly every farm had a root cellar and I have sat out many a storm of both sand and rain in the root cellar because someone in the family predicted the simultaneous occurrence of a "cyclone" with the sand or rain.
My grandmother was an immaculate housekeeper but I have seen her attack the accumulated sand and dust on her kitchen floor with a scoop shovel after the sandstorm and then repeatedly mop and sweep to get rid of the dust.
A sandstorm or dust storm usually caused a great increase in the static electricity in the air. My dad at this time was a lineman for the Southwest Associated Bell Telephone Company and I remember one incident about halfway between Brownfield and Levelland when he was on a pole splicing a telephone line that had broken. I was on the ground watching him work and acting as his "grunt" tying tools he needed to his rope handline when I saw a ball of fire coming down the wire. His back was to the approaching static charge and he had the wire under his arm when the ball of fire hit him and jolted him off the pole He was hurt more by the fall from the pole than he was by the burn of the electricity. Being static electricity the burn was very minimal. He nevertheless had some difficulty in driving back to Brownfield.
By 1935 a definite effort was being made by the farmers to plant multiple rows of trees and bushes like Russian olive, juniper, and elm called "shelter belts" around each field to break the wind force and changes in plowing techniques were developed by that time to reduce the damage from high winds and prevent sandstorms from forming.
So I cannot swear that I remember the awful sandstorm of 14 April 1935 but I am certain that if I didn’t remember it I at least remembered several other sandstorms that occurred that year and in previous years which could easily have earned the title .
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I took a trip to town today. By "town" I mean Weatherford, Texas. Doesn’t sound very exciting? Well to me in a way it was and is exciting. The Department of Public Safety of my state have decreed that I can drive a car upon the highways of the state if I abide by four restrictions in the manner in which I do so. These four restrictions are:
1. Thou shalt not drive without the use of prescription spectacles.
2. Thou shalt not drive upon the freeways.
3. Thou shalt not exceed a speed of 45 mph.
4. Thou shalt not drive at night.
I am sure that you would think those restrictions to be cruel and unusual punishment to visit upon this poor old man who has driven in this state for 64 years and also in several foreign countries and never had a collision or a wreck. Really though with a little windage applied I don’t find them to be a hindrance to my enjoyment of life at all. I don’t mind wearing glasses when I drive. I see a little better with them on but not much and Heaven knows the way my neighbor’s wife drives that red Porsche I need all the seein’ I can get. And I don’t like to drive on their freeways anyway. Most of the things I describe below that I saw on this trip I would not have seen had I been on I-20 which is our local "freeway". So I stay off the freeways by my own accord except when it is necessary once a quarter to go to Fort Worth to get my Pacemaker checked and when that occurs I just drive on the freeway because that is the only way to get there. The 45 mph speed is a little silly actually. I would impede traffic at that speed and lose all the friends that live between here and Weatherford if I did not exceed 45mph. That speed is a danger because it is too slow so I drive what speed I think is required to keep up with the flow of traffic and within the legal speed limits imposed on "non-restricted" drivers. No problem. Driving at night? I observe that. My night vision is not good and I would not drive at night except in case of emergency.
So in order to comply with the wishes of the Texas Department of Public Safety (may Homer Garrison rest in Peace) I have devised a route to get to Weatherford with my route confined totally to county roads except for about one and one half miles of state highway. I go from Benpensa Farm east to Dennis (all county road) thence on State Highway 1460 one and a half miles to Dennis Cemetery where I turn on The Old Dennis Road which I stay on until I get to Weatherford and cross over to Bethel Road which leads me right to my bank and Walmart–my two most frequent destinations. The beauty of this route is that the speed limit on all of the county roads is 40 mph. That doesn’t mean that they are safe or that everyone drives within that limit but it does mean that we who honor the laws of our state and drive sanely do not attract the notice of the constabulary.
It is a beautiful drive into Weatherford and back along this route It is intermittent hills and valleys with the hills running 200 to 300 feet high and being heavily wooded as are the valleys with clearings that have been made for a century of farmers and ranchers to make a living. Coming back when I am driving southwest is the most scenic. From the hill tops it seems that one can see forever. I am convinced that I can make out the distinctive shape of Comanche Peak to the southwest. That is about 45 miles as the crow flies and I may be mistaken but I can see how the Comanche, the Lipan Apache, and the Kiowa navigated this land by knowledge of the gross shape of the hills. My farm is only a few miles from a branch of the Comanche Trail so called because it served for yearly raids by the Indians upon the Mexican towns for slaves, weapons and food and above all horses. My neighbor has picked up a bushel basket full of flint arrowheads off the hill directly in front of my house. There is a nuclear power plant in the lee of Comanche Peak but that doesn’t really take away its romance. To the west I can also see what I believe to be Ranger Hill as we used to call it which was so steep that pre-1930 cars used to have to ascend it in reverse. The modern I-20 is not nearly that steep now but the old road went straight up the hill.
On this route to and from Weatherford the trip as far as Dennis crosses the old M.A. Majors ranch and perhaps you will remember that back in the 1890s nineteen year old Bob Rosenfeld was on his way to the Major’s Ranch house to court his daughter Elizabeth when he was stopped by old man Majors on the hill right in front of the house here. The two men sat facing each other on their horses and Mr. Majors demanded to know what Bob was doing on his ranch. Bob looked him in the eye and told him he was coming to ask Elizabeth to marry him. M. A. swore that no Rosenfeld would marry his daughter and for him to get himself and his horse off his range. Bob kicked Major’s horse in the nose, caused him to shy away and Bob drew a revolver and shot Majors dead on the spot. He took Majors’ body on into the Major’s ranch house, talked to Elizabeth and they left immediately for Oklahoma which then was Indian Territory. Must be strange to ask a woman to marry you and say"Oh, by the way, I just shot and killed your father."
Just past Dennis there is an area down by the River that is sort of a natural park with grass and old, very old, native pecan trees. There is a bit of mystery attached to that area. Back in the 1890's one of the last Indians raids in Texas occurred there—or did it. Two neighboring ladies had arranged a picnic for their children and were there with them when a group of Indians swooped down upon them with masked faces and killed one of the women. The other woman and the children were not molested. There was some thinking among the people in the area that they were not Indians at all but rather local Weatherford residents.
Once on the Old Dennis Road you come to a house where I used to have a big collie bark at me and chase the car every time I came by and I often wonder what happened to her. She was a big beautiful long haired collie dog. Then you drive down the side of the River Bluff Ranch which amounted to about 2500 acres and was uncrossed by even a trail. That is now being supplied with water lines , gas mains and paved roads and will someday be incorporated into Weatherford. I hate to see it.
On the way back from town I was little more perceptive and was rewarded by a riot of fall color in the trees. We have not had a hard freeze as yet but have had a couple of nippy frosts and it has done its work on the trees. The western soapwoods, the Mexican plums, the few cottonwoods on the creeks and the ash trees are bright yellow, almost canary yellow. The sumacs, the shumard red oaks, the Texas red oaks are all brilliant red and the persimmon trees are a brilliant orange. We had 45 mile an hour winds day before yesterday and blew the dying leaves off the pecan trees and they are essentially bare-limbed now. The post oaks, black jack oaks, and burr oaks are a little slower to turn and are mostly still green and they along with the cedars and live oaks make a nice dark green background for the great supply of colors mentioned above.
And as usual I saw a bit of wild life this morning even though it was broad daylight when I left for town. Yesterday I decided to take some catfish fillets that had been around a bit too long and dump them in the middle of the pasture up front for the benefit of the vultures (or buzzards as we always call them). But this morning as I left I saw that my friend (and possibly my chicken thief) the red fox (Vulpes fulva) running across the pasture with a mouthful of catfish. I have read that the red fox was not native to this area but had been introduced for foxhunting and done well in the wild. I see our red fox quite often if I am out in the early morning and I find fox scat around the place. I don’t resent his depredations on the chicken yard if he is the one who did it. Everyone has to eat. I really think that it was bobcats who got my chickens though. Once I saw a gray fox here. The grey fox is a native American fox (Urocycon cinereoargenteous). I only saw him once however.
Coming home I saw four killdeer (charadrius vociferus) just as I turned in the driveway. I was used to these birds when I was growing up on the plains. They nested around every buffalo wallow pond and pasture in the high plains. They nest on the ground and if you walk up too close to their nest they put on a lively distraction display to lead you away. They spread their wings and tail and flop on the ground as though crippled but each flop takes them further away from the nest where their eggs or young are. They are a pretty bird. They don’t come around here until after August heat is over then they are pretty plentiful until spring when they head back for the high plains to nest. We are glad to see them come for the winter. Sara likes to chase them.
Between here and Dennis this morning I saw 4 yearling whitetail deer along the roadside. They ran into the woods but didn’t seem too scared of the car.
But I also saw coming home my favorite wildlife creature around here. I like him because he is saucy, rude and brash and thinks he owns the country. He is the common Roadrunner, the Chaparral Cock, or as the Mexicans call him El Paisano (the countryman). There is a particular spot on the road where he crosses dangerously close to the front of the car nearly every time that I come back from town and scolds me as he runs along for driving my car on HIS road. In the summer he lives on snakes, lizards and large insects and spiders. In the winter he hunts rats, mice, shrews, young quail and carrion. He is a very independent bird.
So that was my trip to town this morning and there are not many who would think it was exciting but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Love
Dad, granpa et al
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That great American philosopher John Wayne once said (I think), "Never apologize. It is a sign of weakness." Regardless of that excellent advice I have listed some areas below in which I believe that I personally have inherent weakness and inability. In just six months and three days I will be eighty years old. It has been my practice for a long time to sit quietly two or three times a year and count my blessings, to list the talents, abilities and gifts that have allowed me to reach the place where I am. I suppose that nearly everyone does that once or twice a year. This year I did it again and was sitting looking at my list of strong points and saying what a fine fellow I was when it dawned on me that this was sort of a mental masturbatory self-aggrandizement. Sure it is pleasant to list all your good fortunes, and you might even convince yourself that it was your effort that got you there. But the more important question to be answered is, "What are my weak points, and wherein have I failed to develop a talent or ability?" So this time I have looked back and tried to determine what my missing talents and abilities were, and I have come up with the list below:
PEOPLE – This will be difficult to explain, but since explanations are one of my strengths I’ll get right down to it. I am not a people person. I live in a world of things and processes and sometimes (more often than not actually) fail to see, know, and understand people about me. This is not a major dislike or distrust of people or a lack of friendliness on my part. It is a product of my thought processes, and it may be an expression of a grand conceit on my part. It may be that I believe I just don’t need anyone. I think it is perhaps best that I am no longer an industrial manufacturing manager. I am not one that works well with committee-driven policy determination or upward flow of direction, and those are directions in which industry is heading these days. I was admittedly a "bull of the woods" manager, a dictator. There are some advantages and some disadvantages to such an approach to management. I profited and suffered from both. So I think that if it were all to do over again I would hope to be a bit more of a people person and perhaps a little less of a "things" person, if that sacrifice was necessary. I was very fortunate in industry to have two people about me on my staff that were almost wholly people persons and who thus blunted at least the sharp tang of my materialism.
MUSIC – I possess not one shred or iota of musical talent. I love music (some of it) and wish that it was a language in which I was fluent, or I was at least able to discuss the subject . I am not capable of playing any instrument. I cannot read music. I cannot sing well. I am not well versed in the history or characteristics of any branch of music. As I have grown older this situation is exacerbated by the fact that the frequency range that I can hear is sharply truncated on the upper end and some of the instruments in a symphony I do not even hear, I am sure. I look upon music as a form of language, and I cannot conceive of any mental or physical characteristic that would keep me from learning in this field. When I was in the fifth grade I took a year of lessons on the violin. I never got a decent squeak out of that fiddle. I can’t even pick out a piece on a piano or xylophone simply because my mind refuses to compute whether the next note is above or below in the scale. I remember a party once where this delightful lady played on the piano without a trace of sheet music, and I asked her about a particular song. She said, "Hum it for me." I did, and she proceeded to play it as well as I’ve ever heard the song played. “Black Magic” – that is what I think it was.
AUTHORSHIP — I always wanted to write the great American novel – to become the Tolstoy of Texas. In my work life I did a lot of writing. I even had a couple of articles appear in nationally distributed trade and technical journals. But write the great American novel I did not. I started a few "great American novels" but never finished them. I can’t blame that on lack of time or opportunity. I have been retired now for 12 years, so I have had plenty of time. Or for that matter if I had just written my novels while in flight on commercial or company planes I could have won several Pulitzer Prizes by now. No, this one just goes to lack of will or purpose. Mea culpa!
LANGUAGES – There used to be a TV program named "I, Spy" that had a character who could speak any language. One of the two "good guy" spies was played by Bill Cosby, and if the team encountered some "bad guy" spy that spoke Inuit or Hausa Cosby could question him until he broke in his own language. I always wanted to speak a foreign language well, not just to understand but to pass for a native. I never got to be fluent in any foreign language. I got pretty close at one time in German. In University I performed in plays that were given in German, and we took the plays on the road to various towns in Texas that at that time rarely heard a word of English – places like Fredricksburg, New Braunfels, and Giddings. Even after graduating from UT I used my German pretty regularly in Europe. I also took a year of French from Berlitz and a year of Arabic from Berlitz, but in no one of the three languages did I become fluent. Even in German as the Germans were applauding the "perfection" of my language it was not difficult to see the slight twitching of their mouths that told me they were lying through their teeth just to be polite. The French didn’t even bother to be polite about it, nor did the Arabs. Charles Berlitz is said to be fluent in twenty five languages, and I have a grandson who is fluent in seven (although I think he pulls our leg a bit). So fluency in one or more foreign languages is another desire that I will have to forego.
CRAFTSMANSHIP — Most of you may not even know that I cherished the ambition to be a physician. How lucky is the local populace that this dream did not come true. I am no craftsman. I think I could learn the science of any trade, but the art is another story. I was at one time the Tool Engineer in charge of all welded and machined assemblies at TEMCO Aircraft. It was the assignment that meant more to my advancement in the company than any other task I ever had. I was spectacularly successful in this job as a welding and machining engineer. The CEO of the company introduced me for years as "the man who built the welded bulkhead". Children, the sum total of all the weld bead I have ever laid in my life is approximately one and one-half inches. But I can still quote nearly sixty years later most of the provisions of BAC5932 welding specification and only recently have lost the ability tell you the composition of 4140 alloy steel.
But all my life I have longed for the facility and ability to DO what I know about. I could tell by looking at a bead that the welder had carried too large or too small a puddle or had the wrong angle on the electrode or a dozen other faults in his technique, but I couldn’t lay that bead myself. I have a maternal uncle who could make anything with his hands and a paternal uncle who was a precision machinist. I think this experience was one reason that I wanted to build my own house out here on the Brazos, and with the exception of the fireplace and the tile work I did just that. Anyway, craftsmanship is not my long suit. Good thing I didn’t go into brain surgery. I can just hear myself making excuses to the grieving relatives.
OPTIMISM VERSUS PESSIMISM – I am an incurable optimist. By the time I have studied a project in detail and determined just how something should be done it is very difficult for me to allow that it might be impossible to do it. This is a management fault. A little pessimism is a good thing. It makes a poor mix with leadership, but it sometimes means that while you might not win on this project if you quit it now, you may live to fight again. There is a time not to swim upstream to the island but to float downstream to the log but I never liked to give up trying to get to the island.
So those are the most major faults to my composition that have plagued me these four score years. List all ye who read, and be wise. Now if it is in your mind to feel sorry for me because of the frequency and stringency of these faults, well just forget it. My list of attributes and good things is several times this long.
MODESTY – I will frankly admit that I am too modest in judgment of my capabilities and talents.
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NAMES
As most of you know I fiddle around with genealogy strictly as a pastime and as a matter of interest. In doing so I have been amazed at how flexible and changeable is the thing we call ”name”. Back even as recently as the eighteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds names were much more changeable than they are today. There were far less government dictated records of births and deaths. Even as late as 1905 when my father was born there was no organized way to record that birth and name other than in church records (baptism, confirmation, marriage and death) or more reliable really was the family Bible which almost invariably had a page to record births and one to record deaths. I once read in a family Bible at my great grandfather’s home a family Bible which had a list of the children of J.A.A. Turrentine and Jemimah Dora Turrentine and listed a George Franklin Turrentine and gave his birth date identical to my fathers. I remarked upon it to my great grandmother and she said, “That is your father but he didn’t like the name George and kept only the Frank.” But family Bibles were themselves fragile. They were subject to destruction by fires and floods and sometimes they were simply lost. Many people of that time were born with no record whatever of their birth. When my father went to work for the Atomic Energy Commission at Oak Ridge Tennessee he had to have a birth certificate and one did not exist. He had one created on the testimony of two individuals who were “personally aware of the birth” and his name was recorded on this birth certificate as Frank Turrentine only. It is also true that many marriages were made and consummated without any lasting record of the marriage. I don’t know when marriage licenses became a requirement but I do know that many pioneer people met at a church social, had their marriage blessed by a minister of questionable credentials and that no government agency recorded that marriage yet in their society they were acceptably married. It is also true that literacy was not as common in those days as it became later (and I fear is disappearing again). People spelled things including names as they sounded to them and there was no standardization or check to assure commonality of name from parent to child.
Let me illustrate just a little how this can be a problem to the genealogist—especially to the amateur such as me. I dearly loved my great grandmother Mary Ann Dennis nee Shipley although I was very young when she died. She was my playmate and she died when I was just four years old. She was almost crippled by arthritis–rheumatism as she called it–and she dubbed me “Dr. Flathead” and I spent hours rubbing her knees with a magic elixir of windmill water with a few drops of red cake coloring in it. She guided my pursuit and slaughter of savage Indians out the dining room window and consulted with me on the proper materials for bows and arrows. She was my buddy and hers was the first funeral I remember ever attending in my life.
A few years ago I begin to try to trace her back a bit to see if I could identify her forefathers. I knew that her maiden name was Shipley and that her father’s first name was Sterling. It wasn’t too long before I identified a Sterling David Shipley born in 1821 which looked promising and who had married as his second wife a certain Laurania Tansy Buttram on the first day of September 1850 in McMinn County Tennessee. I was doubtful about this because family legend held that Mary Ann Shipley’s mother was named “Luvena” the marriage certificate in Tennessee definitely held Sterling’s wife to be named Laurania Tansy. Laurania was born in 1825 in Wayne County Kentucky and she died on 6 May 1860 in Marshfield Missouri—but there was another link to family legend. Mary Ellen Dennis Hamilton, my grandmother, had told me that her mother lived and died in Marshfield Missouri. So I kept digging and eventually came across a reference in which Laurania’s sister had told someone that Laurania had intensely disliked the name Laurania and demanded that her family and friends call her “Luvena”-So this fairly well settled the fact that I had the right person for my great grandmothers mother—but then I began having trouble with her father’s name. Her father was Noah Buttram who was born in Kentucky on May 7 in 1804 and died in Arkansas on July 10 in 1851. The trouble was that Noah sometimes signed things and represented himself as Noah Bertram and he married a woman named Ann Huffaker in Kentucky on December 27, 1821 who sometimes spelled her name H-u-f-f-a-c-r-e and other times spelled it Huffaker. Noah’s father was consistently Jacob Buttram and Jacob’s father was consistently William Buttram (he was born in Maryland in 1735) but William’s father (Lo and Behold) was John Butterum. So we progress from Butterum to Bertram in four generations.
Second marriages give one quite a bit of trouble also. Mary Ann Shipley was evidently the only child of Luvena Shipley nee Buttram during the ten years that they married ---yet Mary Ann Shipley had talked of “her brother” and both Mary Ellen and Rowena had at one time met this gentleman whose name I believe was Price Shipley—an unusual first name which raised yet another question that I have not been able to verify as yet. There was a rather famous Confederate General Price of some heroic proportions who gained his fame in the Battle of Vicksburg in the Civil War. This General Price was from Marshfield Missouri—the home of Sterling David Shipley–Luvena Shipley’s husband. The question raised is whether Price Shipley was named for General Price and if so why? Sterling David Shipley was born in 1821 so he would have been 41 years old when the Civil War started—not at all too old to serve—there were lots of Confederate soldiers in their fourth decade but also there is no indication that I can find that Sterling David did serve in the Civil War. But it is something for me to keep my eyes open about. Also I have not yet dug out Sterling David Shipley’s parents or other ancestors. And the question still remains—did Sterling David Shipley have any other children other than Price by his first marriage and any other children other than Mary Ann during his second marriage to Laurania Tansy (Luvena).
So these are given as just a very few of the problems encountered by the amateur genealogist when he or she sets out to course through history and look for their ancestors. I am sure this might be the ultimate of Dullsville to a lot of people but I find it exciting and exhilarating and I intend to clear up all these mysteries before I go on to meet these people in the great beyond—or those of a certain kind that is.
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I think this will be the end of the listing of activities that I and my companions did for fun in those dim dark days of the early thirties. I will not have covered all of the things we did but I will have tired I presume of talking about them and go on to something else. Remember that the motivation for doing this is the conviction which I have that the children of this day don’t DO enough. They may be busy, or entertained, or occupied but if you look closely they are most likely WATCHING someone else do something which is a different thing from doing it yourself.
Below is another list of things that we children of the early thirties did to amuse ourselves.
HULLY GULLY — For some reason it became a matter of pride around school among us boys at least to be the possessor of the hardest pecan in school. For those of you who do not live in the pecan belt I will state that the most normal way to crack a pecan is to grasp two of them in the right hand and squeeze them until one breaks. Mostly if one is interested in eating pecans they have selected a pocket full of "paper shell" pecans but if you are interested in playing hully gully you carefully select a native pecan with a shell as hard as iron and if you want to be a champ at the game you go all over town and down to the creek and out to the farm and pick up native non-grafted pecans. Then you test them carefully to find the absolutely hardest one and you subject it to a series of tests and preparations and ointments calculated to make it even harder and more unbreakable. Soaking a pecan in 30 weight engine oil was believed to be helpful as was a good soak in asafoetida water followed by drying for a week or two in a cool dark place. There were some incantations also that were supposed to be helpful. Then you swagger up to some guy you don’t like at school and say "Wanna hully gully?" and if he agrees you each take say five pecans from your pocket and comingle them with five from his pocket and you then submit your "hully gully" pecan to the test with his "hully gully’ pecan by putting the two together in his hand (because you are the challenger) and letting him squeeze the two until one cracks. If your pecan cracks he picks up all ten pecans and goes sneering on his way and will tell everyone in school that he "hully gullied" you this day. Of course if his pecan cracks you do the same thing. Like many other ventures of my childhood I participated willingly but did not often succeed. My hully-gully pecans rarely lasted the day. Do your kids make hully-gully pecans?
HIKES — Just plain walking. We boys did a lot of hiking and walking. In Austin Texas it was nothing to walk out to Mount Bonnell and back – a distance of 14 miles from the Congress Avenue bridge. Trips to what was then called Tom Miller Dam up the north bank of the Colorado and across the low-water bridge and back along the south bank of the river were common — probably twelve miles for the round trip Even as late as the Fifties and Sixties my boys used to hike all over Irving, Texas either alone or in groups. On the farm near Plainview the nearest child my age was about two and a half miles across pastures and fields, and I walked that several times in a day after my horse was "lost". Walking just for fun was very common. I have the impression that if a kid is going to play soccer over at the edge off town these days that he expects his mother to take him over in the SUV and stop at McDonalds on the way so that he can tank up on Diet Coke in anticipation of the debilitating nature of the game. If we kids wanted to play soccer , or softball, or sandlot baseball or little league football, we could jolly well get ourselves over there and our parents didn’t often come for the game — and there was no such thing as Diet Coke or diet anything else. Now I will admit that in my generation there was an impression held by most west Texas males that anytime a man walked. anywhere he could ride a horse that he either had boils on his backside or was just a little crazy. This did not apply to boys however. Do your kids walk a lot?
HOMEWORK — Am I wrong or is there a general educational philosophy rampant today which holds that homework is bad and unfair? I have frequently stated that I attended twenty-six schools — let me emphasize that all of them had homework as a regular thing and during the school year there was a period right after the evening meal at my home when the table would be cleared and it was mine to do my homework. Normally my parents did not help me with my homework — nor did I have a computer with Google at my command. But for one semester after I had skipped the seventh grade and entered the eighth grade about three weeks late my mother helped me with my algebra homework. She was a whiz at it. All the other time though I had homework and I had to do it myself. Of course there was no TV then, and we did not have the radio on during homework time. Do your kids have homework?
SLEEP — There was a general consensus when I was growing up that children needed lots of sleep. As a rule although it varied from home to home children under 10 went to bed about 8:30 PM, children 10 to16 went to bed about 9:30 to 10:00pm on school nights and by 11:30 on any night. As a general rule high school students of 15 to18 could date on Friday and Saturday nights only and were usually in violation of curfew after 11:30 PM. Even college students had curfews. The girls dorms at the University of Texas had room checks at midnight. I remember being quite startled when I called my daughter’s dorm room one night and a man answered. But things have changed in the relative value of sleep and entertainment among teenagers and when I was growing up sleep was required. Do your kids have a bed time? Do they have a curfew?"
JOBS – When I was growing up I got no allowance. I was given money for bus fare and food at the school cafeteria and anything I needed–and much that I did not – I was given the money to buy. But I was encouraged to work when I was a teenager and did so I was an apprentice butcher at a meat market located at 12th and Chicon in Austin Texas and worked there every Saturday from 9AM to 10 PM under the tutelage and direction of Jim. Jim was a black butcher who had worked in the store for years. I went suddenly from being a kid who had never seen an African American until he was six or so and had seen darn few since to a work situation where both the patronage of the store and the employees within the store were 100 per cent black with the exception of the owner. Jim made a journeyman butcher of me and after leaving Austin I worked as the only butcher in a couple of other stores in Michigan and in Texas. Jim is long dead by now because he was ancient when I first met him but he taught me much not only about a beef carcass but about people. Incidentally I was known in the 12th and Chicon area as "Jim’s boy" and I walked from the market to my home on many a Saturday night all alone and had no worries about being bothered by anyone. I also had jobs mowing lawns when I was a sub-teen and picking up coke bottles at the cattle auction and a yearly job of delivering telephone directories that lasted about three weeks to a month and was quite profitable. After graduating from high school there has never been a period longer than two or three weeks that I did not have a job. Even when I was going to the University I worked at part time jobs. I think that jobs are very useful and educational. Do your kids have jobs?
EXPLORING – It was a lot kinder world prior to the 1960's than it is now. I know that statement will get some argument but it never-the-less is very true. Nothing impeded a subteen kid from walking all over town and being away from home all day or even hitchhiking ten or twelve miles over to the next small town if it appealed to you. As a generality I could go anywhere I liked as long as I was home before sundown. If I did anything unusual I was instructed to call "Central" who always knew where my mother or Dad was and report my plans. Sex crimes against kids were almost unknown in my part of the world . There were many poor and destitute during the great depression but generally speaking there was not a large criminal element. So I and my buddies spent a lot of time either singly or in groups exploring the very small universe in which we lived. Even small West Texas towns have cattle auction barns, cotton compresses, cotton gins, feed mills. grain elevators, cheese factories, telephone pole yards--all of which were wonderful places to play and watch our adult friends work. Blacksmith shops were terrific entertainment. Farriers (we just called them horseshoers) were entertaining for a morning on a hot day--especially if they had an obstreperous horse for a client. Courthouses were terrific to explore. The sherrif's office was there and we could sit quietly underneath the open window and listen to the deputies talking all about all the criminals and whores in the county--many of whom we knew on another basis. We had better sense than to report the news we picked up there at the dinner table. Or we might even attend a couirt trial. In Carlsbad I ran around with a bunch of Mexican kids and was amazed that they had church every day and at the oddest hours and went to several masses where we sat sedately on the back row of the chapel scared to death of the black-robed nuns who glared at us if we made a sound or moved. I never understood until many years later why we "unconfirmed" couldn't participate in the Holy Communion. The nuns would always have cold goat's milk for us if we came to the kitchen door at the convent. Since my parents were Protestant I didn't burden them with my Catholic adventures. By the time I was eight my parents would let me take four hundred mile bus rides alone. I don't think that today's kids have the freedom that we had at that age. Do your kids explore? Alone? At age six?
SMOKING – I didn't smoke tobacco until I was about seventeen and out of high school but we sub-teen and low-teen kids never-the-less smoked. Cedar bark, corn silk, dry grass, corn shucks and several other things made us feel appropriately wicked and of course we had to hide down in the cellar or in the bin of Uncle Curt's grain combine or on the barn roof so that our parents or grandparents wouldn't know about it---that was part of the appeal .Once I started smoking tobacco though it was 2 1/2 packs a day for the next 48 years and will probably be the reason I die young. I haven't used tobacco in any form now for 15 years come next month.
PIPE BOMBS – I hate to report this but we regularly made pipe-bomb hand grenades when I was in high school. We would get a piece of two inch steel pipe four inches long and threaded on each end and make a bag of explosive from potassium nitrate, powdered carbon, sulphur and whatever other new mix we wanted to try and would empty a five cent tube of BBs into the pipe , screw the pressure end caps tight and go throw it off a cliff at Campbell's hole about two miles upstream on Barton Creek from Barton Springs swimming pool. Ostensibly we were up there to hunt squirrels and each of us had a .22 cal rifle along. It was wild country then but is expensive mansions now. Was it smart? NO!
Our ring leader in this endeavor was Jack Williams who only a couple of years later was a US Marine acting as a demolition expert blowing up caves full of Japanese on Pelilieu. Those pipe hand grenades made very satisfactory noises
when they hit the rocks at the cliff base.Do your kids make pipe bombs? I hope not---it is a stupid thing to do!
BOARD GAMES – Cards were forbidden at my grandparents because it might teach we children to be gamblers but my parents and I used to play poker with matches for chips. But dominos, checkers and chess were common diversions. Monopoly came along when I was about ten and there were several other board games. Do your kids play board games?
TREEHOUSES – We didn't make tree houses where I grew up mainly because there were very few trees.
RADIOS – My cousin WD and my Uncle Willie Elven made a crystal set receiver and razor blade detector receiver in the barn loft of Elven Brown's barn. It was housed in a cigar box---each of them--- and we got a lot of static and just a few instances of intelligence from the ether from them. I remember thinking that they were geniuses and stood in much awe of them for years. Do your kids tinker with things electronic or mechanical?
That about ends the "What do Your Kids Do For Fun? quest. It is not anywhere near all we did, but I have plowed the memory field long enough for today – and tomorrow. But let me urge you to let your children be busy and to independently and alone develop their diversions and entertainment.I think that we hold our children too tightly now.
My mother used to say "We should hold our loved ones tightly – with open hands"
love
dad, granpa, et al
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My good friend Tip has sent me a whole list of things that he did for fun when he was a kid and that occupied his time and kept him out of trouble—well nearly. All but about three of his things were things that I also did as a kid but that my advanced state of geriatric decay had kept me from remembering yesterday when I sent you the first list of things that kids used to do that I don’t seem to observe or hear about them doing these days and cause me to ask myself again, What Do Your Kids Do For Fun?
So here are some of the things that Tip mentioned that we can add to the list:
Annie-Over, Alley–Oop, Anti-Over — I’ve heard it called all of those names and probably some more – and there are many variations of this game – but it was universal throughout the five state area where I grew up. It was a form of catch and involved throwing a ball up on the roof of the house and your playmate catching it as it came down, or I have seen it played where one player is on one side of the house and his opponent is on the opposite side and the person throwing the ball over the pitch of the roof so that it comes down on the opposite side of the house where your opponent must catch it before it hits the ground. This version is best played with four persons in teams of two, so that you have members of both teams on both sides of the house to prevent lying and cheating by your opponent. There are a dozen ways to score this game also. Tennis balls, basket balls, baseballs and even your sister’s jacks ball can be used to play Annie -over. There were a dozen different little jingles that you yelled at the top of your voice before you threw the ball over so your opponent could be warned that it was coming — throwing before you yelled the jingle was dishonorable. The sound of the ball hitting the roof drives adults mad, which is another advantage of the game. Do your kids still play Annie-Over for hours on end?
Just Plain Catch – or Burnout – Two kids twenty yards or so apart with a baseball and each kid having a baseball glove that almost always started with each kid throwing the ball softly then progressively harder until someone yelled, "calf-rope,", or, "I give up". This version is what we used to call Burn Out. Do your kids play catch or burnout?
Firefly Lanterns — Catching fireflies and putting them in a quart mason jar and watching them close up lighting their abdomens was always a good July and August activity and I spent many an evening dashing barefoot through the lawn or garden trying to catch fireflies gently enough that they still retained their luminescent ability .Tip notes that fireflies are more rare than they used to be. I wonder why this is? We must protect a national treasure. Do your kids chase fireflies on hot summer evenings?
Digging Caves — The house where my kids mostly grew up sat on a city lot that was almost a full acre, and the back part of that lot had a few cedar trees and the ground there was good friable sandy loam. My kids referred to the very back of the lot as "camp", and they dug some pretty ambitious pits and caves and dens back there. I was not invited to go back there by them, and I respected their desire for privacy but inspected it when it was unoccupied to see if it was developing into anything that might resemble a coal mine disaster. As a kid who grew up entirely in rented houses where the landlady was generally on the premises I was usually forbidden to dig on the property, and I loved to dig in the dirt. My parents bought their first piece of property when I was in the Navy, and when I came home in 1946 mother handed me a short shovel and said, "You dig holes anywhere you wish." So I was attuned to the basic need of children to dig. Do your kids dig caves and dens and forts in the dirt? It is hard on clothes but it is much more fun than having one built for you.
Fighting Wasp Nests — There was a general belief among us boys when we were about six to nine years old that wasps wouldn’t sting you if you held your breath. We were brave – and not very smart – and tested that theory several times and always rationalized the reason that it failed to leave us sting-free. We reckoned that we picked the wrong kind of wasps and that hornets WOULD sting you but wasps would not, and we weren’t too sure about yellow jackets. I remember once in Carlsbad, New Mexico that I climbed up in a tree to attack a yellow Jacket nest, and I knocked it down and got stung repetitively and developed a rather high fever. Mother took me to a doctor, and when Dad came home from work he gave me the real low down on the "wasps won’t sting you if—" theory, but it lasted for several years. Do your kids fight wasp nests?
Making Paper Airplanes — We boys whiled away many an hour making paper airplanes and flying them competitively to see which boy had the plane that would stay aloft the longest. Boeing and Lockheed would have been envious of the design and modifications that we tested. And I am sorry to admit that more than one or two of us ended up in some trouble with the school administration for flying them in class while Mizz Struthers was writing on the board. Someone’s airplane went astray and hit Mizz Struthers rather ample posterior, and I had been stupid enough to use a piece of notebook paper with my name on it. Do your kids make paper airplanes in or out of school?
Riding My Horse – I got my first horse when I was five as a birthday present, and what an animal he was. His name was Popcorn. He was a paint stallion and was trained to herd and cut cattle. He came from the Pitchfork, Matador, 6666 and Swenson ranch country, and I am not sure which ranch he was foaled on. He was small for a cow horse, but he made up for it in meanness. That horse hated all adults – my Dad, my Uncle Weldon, my Aunt Rowena and the mayor of Lubbock’s daughter were all injured by that horse either biting or kicking them. He never offered any injury to any of us kids, and I rode him almost day and night for about three years. Once I attended a very rural school on the Plains called Bellview near Plainview and rode Popcorn to school every day and stabled him at the school and rode him home in the afternoon — about three or four miles each way. I always rode him bareback. I never had a saddle with him. I had a childish thought that Popcorn should go wherever I wanted to go. I rode him into Halsey’s drug store in Lubbock, tried to get him through the revolving doors of the Lubbock General hospital so we could visit my cousin Dick who was there but couldn’t do it. Finally he — and I — caused enough trouble around Lubbock that Dad insisted that we take him up to Plainview and retire him on Granddad’s farm — there Dad finally arranged for him to get lost. Do your kids have a horse to ride?
Crawdad Fishing — Tip added all of these. I have done my bit of Crawdad fishing but it was down in the Ellis and Dallas County area — the high Plains just isn’t crawdad country. But fishing for crawdads is something that every kid should do. No hook. Just a piece of bacon tied on the end of a string and swung into some shallow water and when you feel him pull just ease him out of the water and lift him onto the bank and put him in your bucket and you’ve got some mighty good eatin’. My sons were great crawdad fishermen in Irving in Dallas county. Do your kids spend hours fishin’ for crawdads? Someone said that the time a man spends fishing is not charged against him in the Book of Life. There was a sort of a slough of water over near the Rock Island railroad line and the boys used to fish for crawdads over there and bring home dozens of them You have taught your kids to fish for crawdads I hope...and how to cook and clean em? And teach them the crawdad song...you know..."Yonder come a man with a sack on his back honey—Yonder come a man with his sack on his back, Babe. Yonder come a man with a sack on his back He’s got more Crawdads than he can pack, Honey, Baby mine" Surely your kids know the Crawdad song — you have to sing that softly while fishin’ for them or they won’t bite.
Marbles — Every boy played marbles. Every boy sought and generally found a "cat-eye agate" or as we said then an "aggie" as a shooter or a "taw". Marbles had a complex and fluid set of rules that changed from one location to another and you had to be pretty good at it or you lost all your marbles pretty quick. I wasn’t too good at it but I was fairly lucky. Do your kids play marbles? Do they play for keeps?
Tops — Every boy had a top — one that was activated by throwing off a string wound around it and had a sharp metal point at the ground end which could be used to damage if not actually split another boys top while it was spinning on the ground — usually causing a fight. I wasn’t too expert at tops either but joined in on all tops contests. .Do your kids spin string tops?
Corn-cob Fights — I mentioned rubber gun fights but fights with corn cobs were frequent also. Those things hurt when they hit you, but they didn’t really cause an injury. None of these fights in my experience were racially motivated. Race was not a factor in my life until I went to the University or a little later. There were no African-Americans in West Texas and there were very few Latinos in the Panhandle. The fights we had were with boys just like us and that on some days we played with in perfect peace and that would be sitting next to us in history class at school next Monday. .Do your kids have corn cob fights?
Washers — Tossing washers at a line and scoring who could get closest to the line was what I thought the lines were put in sidewalks for until I was grown. And if there wasn’t a sidewalk nearby why just draw a line in the dirt. And if you have no washers use coins.
Now off Tips list that leaves Spool Tractors, clothes pin match shooters, match rockets that I am not familiar with and must get back with him on and about three more that I will put on the next edition of "What do your kids do for fun?"
One I must remember to discuss next time is "snipe hunting"
Love
dad, granpa, et al-
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My parents and my grandparents were firm believers in the adage that an idle mind is the Devil's workshop. The concept of just sitting around twiddling one's thumbs just wasn't in their lexicon. My maternal grandmother, Mary Ellen, was perhaps the greatest proponent of staying busy and keeping our hands as well as our minds busy. Many of the things that we did as kids--very frequently joined by any adults around seem to have passed out of practice. It is difficult for me to determine what it is that kids do these days---and adults too really. My grandmother never laid a punishing hand on me but I believe that she would have if I had said "I am bored." Being bored was not allowed. Mary Ellen held that God had given us this great big wonderful world to live in and it was up to us to work with it, explore it, use it and preserve it to have a full and useful life. I was also an only child and spent much time alone or in the company of adults. To my parents and Marry Ellen this was no excuse for being bored---it was up to me to entertain myself. But adults in that day seemed to be involved in more things than they are today. Many of the activities I cite below were joined into with adults as well as attempted alone.
Let me list some of the things we did as children or as adults:
Making Kites – You know who taught me to make a kite? My grandmother, Mary Ellen. Not only that but she did a fairly good job of explaining the aerodynamic principles involved and why a tail was necessary and how the design of a kit was a trade off between weight and lift. I don't think I ever bought a kite in my life. I made simple kites, box kites, round kites – not all of them flew well. Many were wrecked on first launch but the value of making kites was in the making. Mary Ellen would always cheer from the kitchen window when I got a new kite up in the West Texas sky. Your kids make their own kites these days don't they?
Snow Ice Cream – Making snow ice cream was a ritual my mother introduced me to when I was very young and many times I wished for snow so that I could go gather snow off the ground and make snow ice cream. I believe that high plains snow (it is drier than hill country snow) and fresh Jersey cream separated a few minutes before (it has a higher butter fat content) make the best snow ice cream. But if you have a young audience snow ice cream made with any snow and any cream will be deemed delightful and occupy four-year-olds for hours. Do people still make snow ice cream and teach their kids how to find clean snow and separate cream from milk and how much richer Jersey milk is than Holstein milk? Your kids make snow ice cream don't they?
Button Whizzers – It has been a long time since I have seen a button whizzer. If you take a big button (I mean really big--like an inch in diameter or approaching that) from your Mother's button box (she has a button box doesn't she?) and put about a yard of string through two diagonally opposed holes on the button and then slip the string over a finger of each hand and saw back and forth with it you can cause the button to rotate at great speed and make a whizzing noise. This is a button-whizzer, and it is excellent for boys to use to chase a girl around the house threatening to get the button tangled in her hair and listening to her scream most appealingly. An excellent way to pass a rainy morning when you can't get outside. The little girls scream a lot, but they actually like to be chased around in the house by the boys. Do your kids know how to make button whizzers?
Making Cottage Cheese – I didn't know that they sold cottage cheese in stores until I was an adult; and then I didn't approve of it, for it was not nearly as good as my Aunt Rowena used to make and hang on the back porch to drain. Cottage cheese is easy to make and good, and good for you, and your kids will get a good feeling out of making some of their own food. It is almost pure protein and has almost no trans fatty acid content. Why don't you teach your kids how to make cottage cheese? Of course there is a problem now. All the milk you buy in a store is homogenized, reconstituted to a fixed butter fat content, and pasteurized so it really isn't milk any more. It is a manufactured drink. But maybe you know someone with a cow. If so, teach your kids to make cottage cheese. They will like to do it, it is simple, and it is good and good for you.
Making Candy – I probably can't sell this activity on a health basis, but we use to make candy at home about one evening a week. Fudge (loaded with pecans), divinity (loaded with walnuts), taffy (pulled until it was brittle almost), pralines (chewy and brittle), and the candy was not only good it was fun to participate in the making. You do make candy with your kids don't you?
Singing on the Front Porch – We used to sit on the front porch and sing songs. Actually my best contribution to music in any form is an attentive ear, but it was a get-together that was comfortable for children to be in and around. When I visited my Way cousins there was a chance that Uncle Ott would get his guitar and play, or they had visiting uncles from Snyder (one, a young man who always sang "Sippin Cider Through Two Straws”). Out on the farm there was only us for an audience (and the dogs), but we used to sing on the porch when we lived in town too and passers-by and neighbors would frequently stop and join in the sing-song. It was a relaxed, neighborly sort of get together and I am not sure we do much of that any more. Your kids have sing-songs on the front porch?
Apple Butter – My grandmother (Mary Ellen) used to make apple butter so thick you could slice it with a knife and pick up the piece. Over-spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg and held at 55 degrees constant by water from the Ogallala Aquifer running through the milk trough where it set in a crock jar – you talk about good slathered on a piece of homemade yeast bread or sourdough.
Papier-mâché Vases – If things got really dull around the farm – and they rarely did – my grandmother would say, “Why don't you kids make me a couple of vases?,” and this would keep us busy for several days. First, we had to find old newspapers or other newsprint paper and tear it into tiny shreds by hand and then put it in a wash tub with barely enough water to cover it. Then we’d locate two mason fruit jars and wash them clean. And then came the great day of putting the mushy papier-mâché cover on the fruit jars and making it stick and carefully and slowly drying the completed vase. We would artistically mold the papier-mâché around the jar and press depressions in it with our thumb in random patterns. Then after drying we painted them with water colors and this took several days. Your kids do get to make papier-mâché vases don't they?
Poke Salad and Dewberries – If I happened to be at my paternal grandparents in the early spring, I would be sent to the creek bottom to seek out Poke salad (or is it Polk salad?) and gather wild dew berries and blackberries. Your kids do know how to identify Poke salad and dewberries don't they.
Donkey Baseball and Rodeo – In the summer from the farm we went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Prayer Meeting on Wednesday night, and attendance at other events was not too frequent; because, after all, gas cost 13 cents a gallon, and we had to drive about twelve miles to town and just couldn't afford to go to town that often. However, there was a traveling team of baseball players called The House of David team, and they were all bearded – it was a religious sect of some kind. My grandparents didn't take too kindly to any type of religious observance, except what Brother Apple led every Sunday at Aiken, but they did tolerate going to the House Of David baseball games when they either came to play the local scrub team or when they put on a donkey baseball game. In donkey baseball a batter after hitting the ball had to ride to first base on a donkey tethered near home plate. This donkey was trained to balk, buck, kick and be generally obstreperous, so it was actually a comedy routine. Also, rodeos around the Fourth of July were considered good wholesome entertainments. You do take your kids to donkey baseball games and rodeos don't you?
Swimming – I don't remember when I could not swim. The farm was a glorious place to swim. I swam in the exit pool of the irrigation well which was about 25 or 30 feet in diameter and about chin deep to a 12 year old in the center. The water coming into the pool was at a constant 55 degrees and entered at about 1200 gallons per minute straight up from the Ogallala aquifer. Wonderful place to swim. If I was at my paternal grandparents I swam (sans suit) in the clear waters of Ten-Mile Creek and had it all to myself usually. I was an excellent swimmer. If I was in some west Texas town with my parents there was rarely such a thing as a swimming pool but if there was a river or creek nearby I'd find a place to swim. You do send your kids off to the creek to swim don't you?
Bows, Arrows, Rubber Guns and Sling-Shots – Every boy I ever knew made his own rubber guns, bows and arrows, and a device which we did not call a sling shot but which served the same purpose as one. These were pretty sophisticated things by the way. There were rubber gun pistols, cannon, machine guns, sniper rifles all laboriously made with what tools one could steal from his father's tool box. Some of us made animal traps. The rubber gun arsenal has been sadly depleted however by the advent of synthetic rubber inner tubes which are not nearly as good as the old natural rubber inner tubes for making rubber bands to fire from these devices. Your kids do make rubber guns and have rubber gun wars don't they?
Sleepin' Out – When people came to visit there was rarely room wherever I lived to accommodate another family, so as a rule all the kids in the house were handed a blanket or a quilt apiece and told to go sleep in the front yard on the Bermuda grass or if it existed on the front porch. No tent. No sleeping bag. Just a quilt and space to spread it. I tell you there is nothing as clear and brilliant as a sky full of stars on a west Texas farm. It almost seems that you can reach up and touch the stars. Any kid who grows up without sleeping on the ground under a west Texas sky is missing something they can get no other way. Sometimes we kids would sleep out when there were no visitors. You do let your kids sleep out in the open once or twice a month don't you?
Political Rallies – I use to go to town in the summer with my granddad when he made his weekly trip to sell eggs and cream and buy "necessaries". It was always a hard decision for me whether to go to town on Saturday with granddad or stay at the farm with my grandmother. Saturday was her baking day – she didn't believe in baking on Sunday – and she made cakes, pies and about ten loaves of light bread plus buns. This activity offered great opportunity to boys to scrape the bowls and pans and to try the finished product to see if it was edible. On the other hand, if I went with Granddad, I could go to the western movie-show and get a hot fudge sundae and a bag of popcorn all for quarter. In addition, if it was an election year, I could go to the political rally at the court house square. I used to stay well up on politics and would discuss with Granddad who he should vote for on the way to and from town. Your kids do go to political rallies don't they?
In addition to these desultory little amusements we kids did have our regular chores. At home in town I had to wash dishes, make my bed, keep my room picked up and clean, and I usually had yard chores depending on when and where we lived. At the farm I worked at hay-baling time (usually driving the pick up rake), I rode the go-devil, I harnessed my own team and I milked one cow morning and night and separated all of the milk with a hand-turned centrifugal cream separator and then meticulously washed all of the multiple parts of the separator.. Now don't get to feeling sorry for me. None of that was back-breaking or even strenuous work, but it taught me a lot and gave me a pride of doing. I was also usually delegated to feed the pigs and calves. Your kids have chores don't they?
Do your kids ever go snipe hunting?
Well it just seems that kids these days spend an awful lot of time in watching things rather than in doing things. I am not sure that is good.
More soon on over-supervising your child.
Love
dad, granpa et al
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I like to read what I call "small scale history". That is history that concerns some small or minor event yet is written with a great amount of detail that allows the reader to put himself in the place of the historical characters and assess if the outcome of the event would have been different if history had been required to deal with the reader—sort of a self-aggrandizing type of history. That is what I have been doing today in reading about some events with the Pawnee Indians in 1806.
In 1806 the Spanish authorities in Santa Fe got wind of a rumor which said that an American military officer was off on a patrol up the Red River of the South (now the border between Texas and Oklahoma) to explore the country and convince the world that the Louisiana Purchase did not have the Missouri River as its southern border but rather extended to the Red River. Now the Spanish didn’t agree with this at all and felt that Spain’s territorial right ran all the way to the Missouri at the very least and really should go beyond that. As a secondary mission objective Lieutenant Malgares was instructed to search out and make friends with as many Indians as possible and to assure their loyalty to the reign of Charles IV and to impress upon them their duty to obey the King of Spain and Almighty God as interpreted by the Jesuit priests which were to accompany him.
The Spanish authorities in Santa Fe therefore sent a rather strong body of troops—6oo men–under the command of Lieutenant Don Fernando Malgares to the Pawnee and Comanche country of the Red River with orders to keep a sharp look out for an advancing group of American soldiers and if they could be found to order them out of Spanish territory and jolly well see that they went. Their advance up the Red River was an obvious affront to the sovereignty of the territory of His Most Catholic Majesty Charles !V. In order to provide Lieutenant Malgares with the necessary mobility and make his task easier the officials gave the Lieutenant a remount remuda of 2000 healthy Spanish horses.
Now it seems a little odd that The Spanish officials would put such a large group of men—battallion strength—under the command of a mere lieutenant. Not only that but Malgares
was for the duration of the mission to be in the status of "a man alone". There was no way that Malgares could communicate with his superior offices and the accomplishment of the mission as well as the safety of his troops was to be his responsibility alone. Malgares would get no advice from the head-shed while on this mission.
So Lieutenant Malgares and his 600 men and 2000 horses rode off to the northeast until they struck the Red River and journeyed down it putting out scouts by day and pickets by night to assure that they were not surprised and overcome by the vast horde of Americans which rumor said were surely there—but Malgares spent the whole spring and summer riding around Red River Valley and never saw even one American soldier nor trace thereof and Malgares decided the rumor was just in error—there was no American military body in the area. So he proceeded to devote the last few days of his patrol to the secondary objective of the mission—making friends with he Indians and assuring their loyalty to Spain. His scouts had already located the main camp of the Pawnee which numbered about 1300 adult Indians and he rode into the encampment and hailed the chief of the Pawnees and made a long speech in which he assured the Pawnees that they were sons and daughters of Charles IV and that every Pawnee owed loyalty and servitude to the King of Spain. Malgares told the Chief of the Pawnee that there was rumor that an American detachment was on its way to the land of the Red River and that the King of Spain would be grateful if the Pawnee killed the lot of them when they showed up. As a token of their loyalty to Spain Malgares presented them with a flag of Spain and a staff and suggested that it would be wise for them to fly this flag at all times to show their loyalty to Spain. We actually have no record of exactly what the Chief of the Pawnees replied to all of this but we do know that he accepted the flag and lashed it to the opening serving as an entrance to the tepee and probably remarked that it was a colorful and beautiful addition to the decor of his home and "thank you". And with that Lieutenant Malgares made his way back to Santa Fe and everyone patted themselves on the back and said what a wonderful thing they had done to scare off the Americans.
But the Americans were not scared off—they were just late in leaving St. Louis and they reached the Pawnee village about two months after Malgares left. They were a bit of a different body of men. There were 20 of them plus their commander Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomnery Pike and every one was afoot. There was not a horse in the group. There were no priests and the twenty men were obviously living off the land because there were no wagons or carts to carry provisions. Lieutenant Pike was aghast at seeing the Spanish flag flying from the Chief’s teepee and to hear the tale of the recent visit of the Spanish. He gently lectured the Chief and told him that no son can have two fathers and that the father and protector of the Pawnees was not some King distant in Europe –"across the great waters"–but merely just down the road in Washington DC. Whatever he said it changed the hearts and minds of the Pawnee. They tore down the Spanish flag and presented it to Pike and he found a US flag just as big and it was lashed in place at the teepee entrance. The Pawnee were back in political place and Zebulon Pike had done with twenty men and no horses what the Spanish could not do with 600 men and 2000 horses.
Lieutenant Pike went on to a successful career in the Army and is best noted for having Pikes’s Peak named after him and for stealing California and the whole Pacific Coast from Mexico. Pike was killed in the War of 1812. In April of 1813 he was blowing up a British powder magazine in
York Ontario (now Toronto) when a rock from the magazine structure hit him in the head and killed him.
Now how I would have done it if I’d been there....Gotta go feed the dog.
Charles Turrentine
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So It Is Columbus Day
Today is the second Monday in October and that officially in the US is a holiday—my question is why? For most of my life I have thought that the Saint Christopher of Catholic veneration , the patron saint of travelers and bookbinders was one and the same with Christopher Columbus. Such is not the case. The Saint Christopher of Roman Catholic veneration was a sanctification of a Samothracian named Offero (Offerus) who in the third Century AD was martyred by Dagnus of Samos—a minor Roman under-king. How or why he was killed I have not been able to determine. Offerus was quite a person all right. According to Jacobus de Voragines he was twelve cubits tall and according to the conversion factors in my "Marks Mechanical Engineer’s Handbook" that is just barely short of 18 feet tall. As a result of this stature Offerus made a living by carrying people across a ford in the river which was just barely a ford but which served as one for his eighteen foot height. Once while engaged in this occupation he was approached by an infant who asked to be carried across the ford and Offerus obliged him but as he advanced into the river the weight of the infant became more and more heavy until Offerus just barely made it across and then asked the infant "Why are you so heavy" and the baby replied "I am Jesus Christ and the weight of the sins of the world are upon my shoulders". I am unable to find out which prior pope canonized Offerus and changed his name to "Christophorus" (which is Greek for "Child bearer" but it was way back there in the early history of the Catholic Church and carrying Christ across the river was the miraculous event that was necessary to canonization. Now I am not Catholic and I didn’t know any of this until this morning when I got to wondering why we have Columbus Day and I thought that the Columbus Day holiday and the Saint Christopher observance were one and the same thing—taint so. Saint Christopher was decanonized by a twentieth century pope and declared not to be a Saint but rather a run-of-the-mill martyr because Dagnus had him put to death. I presume that this disqualifies "Saint" Christopher from being the Patron Saint of travelers and bookbinders (which seems to be an odd group together) and makes me wonder what is happening to the world supply of Saint Christopher medals for travelers. Why travelers AND bookbinders?
In 1792 a bunch of Italian immigrants (probably illegals) got together in New York City and decided to celebrate the life and death of Christopher Columbus (not Offerus of Samothrace). Again in 1869 there was a rump celebration and the Italians in San Francisco who were protesting the number and prominence of Irish immigrants in the area (my ancestors were Italians who came to the US through Ireland so I don’t know where they fit) threw a party. In 1937 Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared 12 October to be Columbus Day honoring the Genoa born Italian who was working for the King and Queen of Spain and blundered into an island in the Caribbean–he never actually set foot on the mainland of the US I am told and he was decades if not centuries behind the Vikings and maybe even the Irish and a few years behind the Chinese it now appears in discovering America.. Bear in mind though that FDR did not declare October 12th a holiday–he just declared it to be Columbus Day. Congress on the other hand in 1971 declared the second Monday in October to be an official Federal Holiday and earned the lasting appreciation of Postal Clerks, bank tellers and maybe school teachers in areas densely populated by Italian-Americans and so I can blame the Congress of 1971 for why I don’t get any mail today.
I am not a Catholic as previously stated, I am not an expert theologian , I am not a historian and I am sorry if I have messed up some of the info above—but I did want to find out why the mail; person was not coming around today and I have to drive all the way to Dennis (six miles) to mail some bills due last week and that I had calculated could be held for payment until this week without major consequence and now they won’t even go out of there until tomorrow ---it is a cruel world.
Charles Turrentine
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