A true Texas fact

Wildthings

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I love the translations per Google:

Schnelles reiten über dieses Brücke ist verboten! Fast riding over this bridge is prohibited!

Anda despacio con su caballa, o' teme la ley. Go slowly with your mackerel, or 'fear the law.
 

woodman6415

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Traces of Texas reader George Richeson's father, G. Leland Richeson, was the first employee of HEB, before it even was HEB. He was employed by the company when it was still C.C. Butt grocery Here he is with Howard E. Butt (for whom the grocery chain is named) in one of the company's first motorized delivery vehicles.

I just love this image. Look at that car! To think that a chain that now employs more than 85,000 people came from such beginnings. It's a pretty remarkable story.

4A60C89B-49B7-4905-AABF-6D3A5B2D3A59.jpeg
 

Tony

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These eleven states combined could fit inside Texas with room left over: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey, and Ohio.
 

woodman6415

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The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: If you go to Dallas' Greenwood Cemetery, you'll find the grave of William Stewart Simkins. It is generally believed that William, as a 16 year-old private, fired the first shot of the Civil War. While serving under General J.E. Jackson, he heard the Federal gunboat "Star of the West" creep into the harbor at Fort Sumter, SC in April 1861, awakened his comrades, and fired the first shot. He later became professor of Law at the University of Texas from 1899-1929, writing many law books that became standard textbooks in Texas and beyond.
 

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The Texas Quote of the Day:

"We gathered the heads growing in the middle of the mescal plant. This had the color and almost the shape of a white cabbage head. A hole was dug, a fire built in it, and after the whole cavity had been heated, the coals and ashes removed. The bottom was lined with cactus leaves, from which the thorns had been burned. The mescal was deposited and covered by cactus leaves; a layer of dirt was placed over them, and a fire built on top of all. It should have been burning all night. We judged it had been allowed to wane; the mescal was not properly cooked the next morning. We ate it nearly half raw. The writer was in the possession of a first-class appetite. He could not eat horse meat. It tasted like a sweaty saddle blanket smells at the end of a day's ride. The liver had an offensive smell; by holding his nose he forced down some of that strong-scented viand. He made a hearty breakfast on mescal and, as a result, suffered from colic."

---- Ranger John Salmon Ford describes some of the hardships he encountered on the trail from Austin to El Paso, 1849. Makes me wonder why he didn't stop at that Flying-J in Fort Stockton. ;)
 

ripjack13

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Ok...the loser with the shortest straw eats it first...
 

ripjack13

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You gotta wonder what they're thinking when you read this.
**hmmm...lets cook this plant and eat it. See what happens.
 

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I guess when there's nothing else to eat...
 

woodman6415

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I have always questioned who was the person that watched a hard white object fall out of a chickens rear and decided to crack it open and eat it ..
 

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I have always questioned who was the person that watched a hard white object fall out of a chickens rear and decided to crack it open and eat it ..

Somebody that didn't have a dam thing else to eat.
 

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A 154 years ago today, January 8, one of the largest Indian battles in Texas History took place southwest of present day San Angelo, along the banks of Dove Creek (pictured below).

A unit of about 150 combined Confederate and State militiamen attacked a much more superior force of around 300 Kickapoo Indians. Unknown to the Texans, the Kickapoos had no intentions of attacking the isolated settlements and settlers, and were on their way to Mexico from Kansas in order to avoid being caught up in the Civil War.

Since the Kickapoos were going to be passing directly through the heart of the Comanche Empire, the Federal government in Kansas had given each male member of the tribe a confiscated Enfield musket for their protection while en-route to Mexico. Because of the Comanche’s ferocity, the Kickapoos had been training with their rifles since departing their reservations. All of these factors were unknown to the Texans and Confederate troopers at Dove Creek.

The Battle of Dove Creek lasted five hours, with heavy losses on both sides. At around 4 pm on the evening of January 8, the fight had finally lulled enough for the Confederates and Southerners to begin retreating to a fall back position on Spring Creek (which was to the north of where they had entrenched themselves along the bank of Dove Creek).

Lying on the prairie between the Confederates and the Native Americans, as well as on the bank of Dove Creek, were 20-30 men dead. To make matters worse, one of the heaviest snowstorms in West Texas history dropped 15 inches of snow on the area in only a few hours.

The following day, January 9, 1865, the Texans began a daunting 30-40 mile march towards the nearest settlement, hauling the wounded in strechers of wood and blankets the entire way. Many more died along the route and are currently buried in unknown locations along the Concho River.

In the years following the Civil War, the Kickapoo people began extracting their revenge on the Texans with a raging fury. When the Union Army began re-establishing their occupation of Western Texas, the Kickapoo were some of their fiercest enemies.

The Battle of Dove Creek had been spurned on by fear and poor reconnaissance. Many of the militia members in Brown, San Saba, and other western regions had declined the choice of joining the expedition because of the lack of evidence that the Indians were indeed hostile.

There has yet to be uncovered an accurate number of causalities that the Kickapoos sustained in the battle. But, based on all the sources available, their numbers were far less than those of their opponent. However, the 1865 battle had lasting consequences on the residents and soldiers in the post-war years.
 

woodman6415

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The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is unbelievable:

If you go to the Pioneer Cemetery in Fort Davis, Texas, you will find a grave that contains the bodies of seven children belonging to the Bentley family, all of whom died of diphtheria within a two-week period in 1891. The seven Bentley children, who are buried together in a common grave, ranged in age from two months to seventeen years and their parents watched helplessly as, one by one, their precious offspring died of the disease. Death by diphtheria is unbelievably cruel: it's a highly-contagious upper respiratory disease that is frequently caused by bacteria in unpasteurized milk. Those afflicted suffer sore throats, raging fevers and increasingly impaired breathing as a membrane grows across the trachea, eventually resulting in death by suffocation.

The story goes beyond this, though. In Fort Davis there is a large pecan tree that was planted in 1873 by Flora, the oldest of the children who died in this tragedy. Her father, George Bentley, had been a private who had first come to Fort Davis as a Buffalo Soldier in 1868 and, a couple of years later, when his enlistment expired, returned to that fair town to become a teamster and a civilian packer. George married a woman named Concepción Rodríguez, acquired some cattle, and had seven children. Then the tragedy struck and George and his wife lost all of their kids to diphtheria. As if burying their children was not enough heartbreak, a vicious rumor was spread that their deaths had come as the result of a curse that had been placed upon George for bayoneting an Apache child while he had been in the Army ---- a rumor that does not appear to be true and that is totally unsupported by the historical record.

I believe that this sad series of events would have crushed me, but it did not crush George and Concepción: they went on to have three more children, all of whom survived. One of them, George Bentley, Jr., was born in 1900, passed away in 1987, and is also buried in the St. Joseph Cemetery in Fort Davis.

Pecans normally live for only about 75 years or so, but Flora's tree has been alive for nearly twice that long and is still producing bumper crops of pecans. I have noticed that, properly tended, things can live a long time in West Texas. This tree is certainly testimony to that.

I have a call in to the Fort Davis Chamber of Commerce, requesting the address of the tree. If they are able to provide it, I will edit this post.
 

Wildthings

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Please do add it to the post!! I did find a waymark which talks a little about the Pioneer Cemetery

Cemetery

edited to add link
 
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