Opinions

by Bartee Haile

Mary Austin Holley landed at Galveston on Feb. 6, 1843 on her fifth and final visit to her dead cousin’s former colony.

When Stephen F. Austin was 11 years old, his father Moses sent him back east to stay with relatives the boy barely knew. From 1804 until 1807, the future “Father of Texas” studied at an academy in New Haven, Connecticut and got acquainted with his kinfolks.

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It was one of those two o’clock mornin’ calls: “Looked like everything was comin’ jes fine, Doc, then he got stuck! Could you come?”

On the way out to the ranch I put the truck on autopilot while my foggy brain sifted through the possibilities. Hip lock, more than likely, I figgered. I walked into the calvin’ barn, shook the snow off my coat and surveyed the scene. Fairly peaceful. Two unshaven cowboys playin’ cards in front of the space heater and a good-sized heifer standing in the chute looking no worse for the wear. “Good,” I thought, “The boys haven’t worn the heifer out before they called.” Or themselves either, for that matter.

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Tumbleweed Part Owner of Texas

Greg Smith of Brady makes shaving soap and after-shave in a variety of flavors.

“Grandpa’s Barber Shop is a traditional, clean, old school kind of barbershop scent,” he says. “We’ve got Cherry Pipe which is a sweet cherry and tobacco scent. Weekend Rodeo is a pretty popular one. It’s a mixture of tobacco and leather fragrances. We have a scent called Mr. Pepper and it flies off the shelf. It, of course, has the Dr. Pepper soft drink flavor.”

He tries to think of flavors that would be commonplace in Texas.

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This Week In Texas History

For the second time in less than a year, Alexander Dupont set out on Feb. 2, 1789 in search of the storied silver mines of San Saba. The French-speaking adventurer was born in Flanders in the second decade of the eighteenth century, around the time his native country was conquered by Napoleon and disappeared forever from the map of Europe. That would have made Dupont between 50 or 60 years old, when he wandered into Texas in the 1770’s.

What is known of the footloose Flemish comes from his diary. Although the journal begins in the summer of 1787, it is clear the author had been in Texas for ten years or longer and knew his way around the Spanish province better than most Europeans.

An unnamed gang of unidentified outlaws robbed a train two counties west of Fort Worth in the pre-dawn darkness of Jan. 23, 1887.

“Two masked men got into the cab at Gordon and presented their revolvers at the engineer and commanded him to ‘pull out,’” the Dallas Weekly Herald reported five days later. “They ran the train about a mile from Gordon and…commanded the engineer to stop the train on a bridge with high trestle-work, which prevented any communication from the passenger coaches to the mail and express cars.”

Plainly impressed by the bandits’ expertise, the newspaper noted, “They had chosen an admirable place for their work, and had carried their plan into perfect execution.” The chronicler might have been even more impressed had he known that the hold-up was carried out by two brothers, who until the previous month had led crime-free lives.

“How ya doin’ Skip?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess,” he said. “Remember my good rope horse?”

I remembered. Skip, like me is left-handed and therefore requires a left-handed heelin’ horse. Whenever I’m in southern New Mexico he lets me borrow ol’ Roanie.

Last time I had been to his place to rope I got there early so I saddled up and was warmin’ up the horse. I didn’t remember him bein’ quite so belligerent and feisty. He made a couple stops where I had to grab the horn!

When Skip arrived he explained why Roanie was actin’ up. It wasn’t Roanie. It was the other horse.

The other horse, which had a big scar on his shoulder, was also a roan. He was the flotsam of a relationship gone bad. Skip had wanted to sell him but the now departed love interest had insisted he keep him so they could go on romantic rides together. Skip roped on him now and then but it was always a risky venture. He kept thinkin’ if he roped on him enough, he might make a good horse.

Prejudice is a funny thing. When a city slicker or a dude comes meanderin’ into the Montana bar in Glasgow he’s liable to get a lot of hard stares. But, I’m here to tell ya, when the shoe’s on the other foot, it can be mighty uncomfortable.

Years ago in Kansas City, I set out one night to find one of them ‘down home guitar blues pickers that I had read about in the Sunday paper. I was drivin’ around Saturday night lookin’ for Walter’s Crescendo Lounge.

I had some ribs at Money’s on Prospect and asked directions. The feller told me not to go over there after dark. Then, after thinkin’ about it, he scribbled his name and phone number on a piece of paper and said, “When you git in trouble, have’m call me.” Nice of him, I thought.

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This Week In Texas History

The month after bringing home the Nobel Prize for Physics, Jack Kilby found himself back in the spotlight on Jan. 16, 2001 as the Texas legislature honored the creator of the microchip. Everyone who has ever used a calculator, cell phone, digital camera, pacemaker or the multitude of other high-tech gadgets that present-day inhabitants of this planet take for granted owes a debt of gratitude to the unassuming genius who made it all possible. But he would have been the last person to remind anybody of that.

Although many sources cite Jefferson City, Missouri as his birthplace, Jack St. Clair Kilby clearly disagreed. In the autobiographical statement requested by the Nobel Committee, he wrote, “I was born in 1923 in Great Bend, Kansas.”