Opinions

Part Owner of Texas

Mason is a hill country town of 2,500 residents with a courthouse square that’s hard to maneuver. It has an extremely dense population of characters.

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Cow Disturber

McGraw posed an interesting question. If a cowboy herds a herd of cattle, we call him a herder. If a sheepman herds a flock of sheep, he’s still a herder. Why isn’t he called a flocker?

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I confess to not owning a tractor. I have plenty of friends nearby with tractors. But in a lapse of good judgment I borrowed one to brush hog a patch of weeds. Experienced farmers, even an 8 yearold farm kid knows that you always drive a tractor thumbs up. I didn't remember.

As I was farming around I managed to hit a post with the front wheel. The steering wheel spun like a helicopter blade and jammed my protruding thumb! It swelled up so big it wouldn't fit through the neck of a quart jar.

I only mention this humiliating self-inflicted injury because Dr. Willis sent me a scientific report regarding wound response in plants. It said, in effect, that localized injury in one part of a plant causes a protective response in another part of that plant. For instance, when a caterpillar gnaws on a near leaf, a change occurs in a far leaf that inhibits that type of caterpillar's digestive enzymes.

The groundbreaking ceremony on Jan. 3, 1962 for the first-of-its-kind domed stadium ended with a bang as Roy Mark Hofheinz celebrated the occasion by firing his Colt .45 into the air.

Born in Beaumont and raised in Houston, Hofheinz grew up fast died not by choice but out of necessity. Just 15 when his father, a laundry truck driver, suddenly died, he finished high school in a year and went to work to support his widowed mother.

Despite the demands of being the breadwinner, young Hofheinz continued his education at a breakneck, sleep-deprived pace. He accomplished what most full-time students thought impossible by graduating from law school and passing the bar exam at 19.

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Part Owner of Texas

So many Texas cities really put on the glitter and lights around Christmas.

Big Spring, with a population 28,000 lights up the city park with displays and giant lighted poinsettias (it’s the lighted poinsettia capital of Texas) that attract some 20,000 visitors every December.

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BAXTER BLACK

He got his first horse at Christmas this year from good ol' Uncle Stephen. For Wrangler-in Charge, he looked pretty young but looks can be deceivin'.

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When the Reconstruction constitutional convention reconvened on Dec. 4, 1868, Radical Republicans sharpened their knives in eager anticipation of carving up Texas like a Christmas turkey.

Any Texan, who passed the required courses in junior high, knows that as a condition of admission to the Union the Lone Star State retained the right to subdivide into as many as four separate parts. Less well known is how often the idea of two, three, many Texas’ was tossed around and how close the state came to being dismembered during the post-Civil War occupation.

Division was first suggested in 1844 during the acrimonious debate over annexation as a way of maintaining the delicate balance between free and slave states. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri recommended slicing the giant applicant in two, but the novel notion was not taken seriously.