A true Texas fact

[woodman6415]

One of our favorite places to visit ..
Last year rode the bike

How to get to Big Bend from Fort Davis:

"You go south from Fort Davis
Until you come to the place
Where rainbows wait for rain....
And the river is kept in a stone box
And water runs uphill.
And the mountains float in the air.
Except at night,
When they run away to play
With other mountains."

Directions from an old vaquero, as told to Dallas journalist Frank Tolbert. One of my own photos.
Traces of Texas

 

[Wildthings]

Great Photo, Wendell. Never been there but planning to go sometime

 

[woodman6415]

Great Photo, Wendell. Never been there but planning to go sometime

It is a great photo .. wish it was mine
The guy that has the Traces of Texas page on Facebook travels all over Texas taking pictures .... you should go to big bend ... it’s a beautiful place ... spring and fall are the best times ... it gets really warm in summer

 

[woodman6415]

Have been to the springs many times .. still run clear

Traces of Texas
The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The trail from Boquillas, Coahuila north into the United States [Big Bend] has been in use since Indian times. There have been many horse thieves, soldiers and outlaws, both American and Mexican, that have used it since back in the '80s. The Indians used it centuries before that. I have followed the tracks of stolen cattle and horses that were taken down the trail. Some of them I caught, some got across the Rio Grande into Mexico. McKinney Springs, the only water on the trail for over 60 miles, still runs clear and cold. The deer, panther, bobcats, javelina, coyotes and blue quail still water there, as they have for thousands of years. I have laid down on my belly on top of their tracks and drank the cold water countless times. Many a time, I have rolled out of my bedroll and spent the night in absolute solitude with no sound except [my horse] ''Old Red" eating the bunch grass, and now and then, a coyote barking.

The drumming of the blue quail will wake you up at daylight, and occasionally a panther coming in for water will cause a little disturbance if you have hobbled your horse too close to the water. I don't know of any place on earth where the air is cleaner and the moon shines brighter than the McKinney Mountain area in Big Bend National Park. I don't blame the Indians for fighting for country like that. If I owned it, I would be damn hard to root out of there. There are graves beside the trail that attest to the fact that all that rode over it didn't make it. But I don't know of a better place to roost now. I like the sound of the desert wind, the sounds of the wildlife, and I like to hear the owls hoot."

----- C.M. "Buck" Newsome, retired border patrolman, "Shod With Iron," 1975

 

[woodman6415]

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I was just turning my sixth year when I had my first biscuits. It's a fact, and I was lucky to get 'em then for flour was not in general use until I was about 20. People all raised little patches of corn and bread made from that was all we had. Father took a trail herd up the year I was 6 and when he delivered it and collected the money he spent some of it for a wagon and flour enough to load it to the full. When he drove home with all that flour it was some sight. All of the neighbors came to see and share in it; for of course he let them have their part. I'll never forget it if I live to 100, how anxious I was to taste bread made of that white soft flour. Nor how good those first biscuits were. We saved every tiny crumb, for corn bread had never been plentiful enough to waste and biscuits were on a basis with cake those days.

I was 16 years old before I had a pair of shoes that I could actually wear all the time. Rawhide was our only shoe material and all you could say for it was the hair was taken off. Talk about hard, dry, stiff, unbendable leather ------ that rawhide had the world beat and a mile to go on. If they were big enough to avoid all this trouble you couldn't walk in them, especially hunting, and we just had to hunt, for it was no trick at all to kill a big buck deer or antelope, a buffalo or all the wild turkey we could carry. And it was too much fun to give up just to wear shoes. A fellow with a grain of sense would rather trust to the calluses on his soles than to risk losing a shot and rubbing blisters on his feet with those rawhide hobbles. I might say honestly that I never did have any real shoe or boot comfort until I got my first pair of high-heeled, high-topped, hand-made cowboy boots. I still wear that kind, too, and always will for they are as much a part of me and every other open-range cowpuncher as his leather leggings, spurs and broad-brimmed hat."

----- Cowboy/rancher Jim Rose, quoted in the Dallas SemiWeekly Farm News, April 8, 1927

 

[woodman6415]

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"The mesquite is an erratic tree. Instead of seeking the sky and competing with its neighbors for height, it crawls and wallows in the sand. Its trunk never grows straight up, nor does it limit itself to one trunk only. It may have several trunks, snaking along on the ground, suddenly leaping upward for a few feet only to duck down again or circle in another direction.

Unpredictable, extravagant in space and growth, unexplainable, it is like a snake in many ways. Its leaves are forked and thread-like as a serpent's tongue, with branching petals arranged like ladder rungs, reflecting sunlight in a bewildering variety of directions. The shade of green thus created is rich and delicate beyond that of any other foliage in the world. In the spring it is spangled with yellow blooms destined to mature into long bean pods.

Sometimes the mesquite is almost like a vine, so dependent does it seem on the ground for the support of its whole serpentine length. The trunk can support a vast spread of limbs because the wood is tough and strong; and, though flexible enough not to break under a strain, it is hard to bend at will. From a distance, the mesquite does not resemble a tree, but looks like a huge half-grove of green, bubbling out of the ground. Its most outspread branches usually scrape the sand.

Under, or rather inside, this living dome is a sort of cove where cattle can find protection not from the sun, for the foliage is too thin to keep out many rays, but from the rope, the dehorning tongs, the branding iron, and other human instruments of pain.

In the sandy land of the vast river bed between Norias and the Gulf coast, mesquites grow close together, sometimes no more than three feet apart, each shooting its harum-scarum branches into the midst of those of its neighbors. In places, they are impossible to get through on horseback. In the loam around Sauz, below the southern boundary of the sandy area, they also grow in abundance, providing a safe haven for the successors of the longhorn cattle that had originally brought them there."

----- Frank Goodwyn, "Life on the King Ranch," 1951

KingRanch

 

[Wildthings]

What a great, accurate description of a cool tree

 

[Tony]

Somewhere over yonder, just at the edge of the horizon, a tall, gangly man in a dirty cowboy hat stumbles around, muttering to himself. He appears to be searching for something. A closer inspection would reveal that he is sunburned, cactus-punctured, and caked with mud and dust and dried cattle spit and margarita salt and horny toad blood and only God knows what else. His sunglasses are shattered and his breath is a mixture of old coffee, warm beer, and stale Allsups burritos. His muttering becomes clearer as he approaches. "A laptop," he is saying, "a laptop ... my kingdom for a laptop ...." :) ;) :)

 

[Tony]

The Texas Quote of the Day is so, so good: "In 1876, as an incident of the Taylor-Sutton feud, Dr. Philip Brazell and son George were called out of their home in Clinton, DeWitt County, by a number of masked riders and killed. Shortly before Christmas, Lieutenant Lee Hall of the Rangers was sent into the county with warrants for the arrest of seven men charged with the murder. On the night of December 20, Hall discovered that the men he was looking for were attending the wedding of Joe Sitterlie at the home of the bride's father, near Cuero. He set out with his troop in a driving rain, got to the scene and surrounded the house. Then, unarmed, he went to the front door of the house and announced himself. The music stopped. Frightened women ran off the dance floor as Bill Meador and other men moved forward. "What do you want?" Meador asked. "I have warrants for seven men," Hall answered. And he read the names. "How strong are you?" demanded Meador. "Seventeen, including myself," said the lieutenant, following the tradition of telling the exact truth. "Meador snorted. "We've got seventy!" he announced. "That's about the right odds," the Ranger said. "We'll fight." "Listen, all of you," he called out. "You people in the house have three minutes to move out your women and children, starting now. . ." You Rangers," he shouted at the men he had posted in a circle about the house, "at the end of three minutes, fire at will. Now you gentlemen in the house, get the women away. . .'' "I don't want to go killing," Meador answered in a shocked voice. "I'll surrender." And the rest of the wedding guests quickly joined him in handing over their weapons. Hall collected his prisoners in the gallery at the end of the house and the Rangers were bringing up horses when the bride suddenly ran up to him. "You're breaking up my wedding party," she accused him brokenly. "Why can't you wait for morning with your old law business?" "Now that you mention it, no reason at all," Hall assured. "Go ahead with your dance." He sent the prisoners back into the house, reassigned the Rangers so that, turn and turn about, half of them could mount guard while the other half danced, and then joined the party himself. When day broke, he bade goodbye to his hostess and rode away to put the chiefs of the Sutton faction in the county jail. There were no hard feelings between the captors and the captives. Meador and his men would have had no compunction about killing the Rangers if the job could have been done gracefully and safely. If compelled, Hall and his troop would have killed the assassins of Dr. Brazell with no qualms whatever. But until necessity arose for the departure from good social usage, there was no reason why they shouldn't all act like gentlemen." ----- Robert J. Casey, "The Texas Border," 1950

 

[Tony]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: Regarding mesquite trees: the seedpods or beans of the mesquite can lie dormant for up to 40 years waiting for conditions to be just right for sprouting. Early-day ranchers like W.T. Waggoner called mesquite “the devil with roots” because they absorb all of the water in their surroundings, causing other plants and trees to wither away and die. This, in turn, allows more mesquites to move in and take over. Yup.

 

[David Hill]

About the Taylor-Sutton feud---that's my neck of the woods---happened right here in Cuer0! It really did happen. My SIL is of the Taylor line and one of my favorite neighbors is a Sutton----and yes they get along.

 

[Tony]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum.

 

[Wildthings]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day: McLean, Texas, the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I-40, was once known as "Uplift City" for the large brassiere factory, Marie's Foundations, which used to employ a good percentage of the area residents. The factory is long gone now, but the building was renovated and now houses the Devil's Rope Museum.

Been There Done That

 

[Tony]

 

[Wildthings]

Holy crap man!! Don't put New Jersey right on top of me. I feel nasty now

 

[woodman6415]

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery and paradox. Any observations of mine can be quickly canceled by opinion or counter-observation. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."

----- John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley, 1962

 

[woodman6415]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The highest point between Dallas and Houston is Tehuacana, Texas, at an altitude of 640 feet above sea level. Tehuacana is six miles northwest of Mexia in Limestone County and has a population of 283 hearty souls, plus a mess of dogs, cats and horses and one Vietnamese pot-bellied pig named "Lo-retta."

 

[Wildthings]

YEEEEHAAAWWWWWW!!!!! Wendell back on this thread!!

 

[Eric Rorabaugh]

Great to see you back to "your" thread oke buddy!

 

[ripjack13]

A True Texas Arcane fact of the day.....
This damn yankee was missin you....
Good to see this back on track. @Tony was a little short on facts, but he's forgiven.