~ Telling the Truth, Mainly
What is a road trip you would like to take?
I want to sit on a bale of hay in the bed of a 1950 Chevy pickup–
Scratch that–
I want to stand on the running board of an old Chevy pickup, which I never got to do because I was just a little kid and only the teenagers were trusted to hang on–
And ride so deep into a mesquite-filled, prickly-pear-dotted Texas York Creek pasture that only the Whiteface Herefords can find their way out.
*
Image courtesy of morguefile.com
Jack Cowherd (NOT Cow-erd) has just been elected Governor of Texas when he learns that Texas is no longer part of the United States—it happened fast, and not the way you think—and he’s actually President of the brand new Second Republic of Texas. After a ceremony at the State Capitol, Jack, his wife Nadine (well endowed, but not with brains), his chief of staff Tasha Longoria (overqualified in both brains and common sense), newly dug-up chauffeur Rusty. and “fuzzy-cheeked” aide Shane arrive Austin’s Camp Mabry to inspect the Texas Freedom Militia. When you don’t have an official military, you go with what you’ve got.
They arrived at Camp Mabry, once home to the Texas National Guard; now occupied by the Texas Freedom Militia. Rusty slowed the Lincoln and turned into the main entry drive. Two camo-clad militia members immediately stepped out of a small booth in front of the gate. One held up his hand. Rusty braked to a stop.
The militiaman with his hand up ambled over to the driver’s window. Rusty lowered it and stuck his head out. “We’re here for the inspection,” he said.
The militiaman said, “May I see your papers, please?”
“We don’t have any papers,” said Rusty. “We’re not with the militia.”
“I know that, sir. That’s why I need to see some identification.”
Rusty smiled. “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” He handed over a card from his wallet.
The militiaman scrutinized the plastic card. “This is your Costco membership, sir. I need your driver’s license.”
“Uh, the thing is, I don’t have it on me.”
“What?” said Tasha. “You’re the driver and you don’t have a license?”
“I have a license. I just don’t have it here, is all.”
“Well, where is it?”
Rusty furrowed his brow. “You know, I think I left it at the bowling alley last night when I rented these shoes.” He pulled a foot onto the seat to show Shane. “See, I’m still wearing them.”
Shane said, “He’s right, ma’am. Those are bowling shoes.”
The militiaman leaned in toward Rusty. “I can’t let you in wearing bowling shoes, sir.”
“What difference does it make what shoes I’m wearing?”
“What I mean is, you can’t come in without identification.”
Tasha opened her door and stepped out of the car. The second militiaman jumped back, whipped out a Glock pistol, and pointed it at her. “Get back in the car right now!”
Tasha glared at him. “Or what, you’ll shoot the president’s chief of staff?”
The militiaman lowered the gun in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Look in the back seat. That’s Jack Cowherd, president of the Republic of Texas.”
The man peered into the car. “Shit, Lonnie, she’s right. They could have told us.”
“Well I’ll be goddamned,” said the man called Lonnie. “What brings you to Camp Mabry, sir?”
Jack got out of the car. “General Cummings invited me to inspect the troops You boys don’t want to keep him waiting, do you?”
“No, sir!” said Lonnie, saluting. “Nate, put that gun away.”
Nate quickly holstered the pistol. “Sorry, sir . . . ma’am. Just trying to be safe, you know. Just last week they caught a Muslim terrorist over in Copperas Cove.”
“That wasn’t no terrorist,” said Lonnie. “That was a Mexican woman at the swimming pool with a towel on her head.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t know that until they pulled it off and she yelled something in Spanish.”
Tasha said, “I’ll bet it was ‘Give me my towel back, you idiot.”
“No, I think it had more cuss words.”
“Excuse me, boys,” said Jack, “y’all are doing a fine job but I wonder if we could go meet the general now.”
“Yes, sir!” the militiamen shouted in unison. They stepped away from the car and raised the gate.
Jack and Tasha got back in the Lincoln. As the car rolled trough the gate Tasha noticed both guards snapping iPhone pictures of the vehicle. Rusty said, “Damn, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing they caught that Isis woman in Copperas Cove.”
***
Jeffrey Kerr. The Republic of Jack.
Says the author, “The Republic of Jack is a whimsical imagining of a world in which modern Texas secessionists get their way, only to learn that Aesop was right so many years when he wrote, ‘Be careful what you wish for.'”
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
~ A. E. Housman, “Loveliest of Trees”
Image by gmoyer via pixabay.com
Today is Juneteeth, the holiday commemorating the announcement of the end of slavery in Texas. Because it was relatively isolated from the rest of the Confederacy and had not been a battleground, and because word traveled slowly, news of war and politics known in other Confederate states was slow to reach Texas. News of Lee’s surrender in April 1865 didn’t reach there until May.
On June 18, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived with troops in Galveston to occupy the state. On June 19, Granger read “General Order No. 3,” which announced the emancipation:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
As is well known, things didn’t go as they should have after that. Black people weren’t allowed to use public parks for celebrations. Some pooled money and bought land for parks where they could celebrate (such as Houston‘s Emancipation Park, Mexia’s Booker T. Washington Park, and Emancipation Park in Austin.) (Austin’s Emancipation Park has had a difficult history: Read “Staring Down Development, Neighbors Seek Historical Recognition for Emancipation Park, by Syeda Hasan, KUT Austin (NPR), January 19, 2017.)
The Texas Supreme Court finally recognized emancipation in a series of decisions between 1868 and 1874. But Texas and other former Confederate States wrote Constitutions disenfranchising black people and, during the 1920s and ’30s, passed Jim Crow laws that lasted until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.
Over the years, Juneteenth celebrations spread to other states. The day was made a holiday in Texas in 1980. Now forty-five states observe it as a state or a ceremonial holiday. In 1997, Congress recognized the day through Senate Joint Resolution 11 and House Joint Resolution 56.
***
Some of this post was drawn from memory; Wikipedia helped me with the rest. Find much more information at Juneteenth.com.
Current Conditions
Forecast
Average Snowfall (in Years When Snow Falls)
Finally I have something that fits the category.
I posted one of these shots several years ago and promised to say more about it later, but after some thought I realized I didn’t know what to say. So I let it go.
Now, however, is the time.
The photos were taken at the Dishman Museum on the Lamar University campus in Beaumont, Texas, where David and I attended the Boomtown Film and Music Festival for a screening of one of his videos. We walked into the Dishman to register and found this piece of Art looming over us. It reached out and pulled my camera from its bag. I began snapping.
My first thought was, It’s from The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, a picture book I love even more than my second-graders did. The pink, the snouts, the little house, the flowers. Pigs.
Then I realized the pink shapes were more wolfish than piggish. Rabidly wolfish.
Fascinating.
Nightmarish.
And cute. Darned cute.
***
WordPress Weekly Photography Challenge
By No machine-readable author provided. Johntex~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons
Remember when Murphy Brown and her colleagues cooked and served Thanksgiving dinner at a shelter, and Miles brought in a bunch of live turkeys in his BMW (nobody had specified they were to be ready for the oven, and on arrival the inside of the BMW was not in good shape), and the turkeys ran all around the kitchen, and no one wanted to kill them anyway, and the turkeys refused to stick their heads in the oven so Murphy could turn on the gas (her suggestion)?
I don’t know what happened next. I was laughing at the turkeys and couldn’t pay attention. All I remember is the whole thing slid downhill fast.
Well. It could have been a whole lot worse. To see how, read “When Turkeys Strike Back,” by K. B. Owen, historical mystery writer.
And, Texans, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Today’s sighting: Miles and miles of Texas
I am not hiding. I’m just a tiny bit snowed under, a major accomplishment in Texas, especially right after the summer solstice.
The Cottonwood community lay along Cottonwood Creek, Guadalupe County, across the San Marcos River from Fentress, Texas. The photograph above was taken at the Cottonwood School Reunion in–I believe–the 1930s. The people I know are identified in the caption. Some of the other surnames represented are probably Gregg, Rector, Daniels, Ward, and Fleming. I would be grateful for help in identifying individuals I don’t recognize. (The faces here aren’t exactly clear, but more of these pictures are out there in albums and attics, so if you find one with IDs, share the info, please?)
The picture was taken in front of the skating rink at the Fentress Resort. The skating rink now resides on Hwy 183 just south of Lockhart. It looks a lot smaller now than it did when it was in its proper home on the bank of the river.
I believe my grandfather, Frank Waller, is wearing a necktie. That didn’t happen often, at least when I was around.
In the caption, I note that Maurice Waller is partially hidden. I knew he was in the photo but had difficulty finding him until I realized he had to be beside Aunt Bettie. He was always beside Aunt Bettie. And partially hidden would have suited him just fine.
Mama was livid.
“Judge Dunne proposed and you refused him? Minna, I’ve been sewing your trousseau since Christmas. You said you had him hook, line, and sinker.”
I did say that. But during six months of parlor-sitting with Milroy Dunne, I started thinking about Papa. When he was Colonel Veazey of the Texas Militia, he took the whole family to the war down in Cuba.
Milroy would never measure up to Papa. Marrying him would be like marrying a legal brief.
In June, Judge Dunne and I were outside watching fireflies when he dropped to one knee. I helped him up and told him I was taking my new teaching certificate and heading west.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” I said. “The Judge will survive. And I’ll be the best-dressed teacher west of the Pecos.”
As it happened, I was the best-dressed anything west of the Pecos. Around Wrangle, Texas, at least. Tea gowns didn’t serve for mopping floors or comforting a child with a revolted stomach. White linen didn’t serve for battling Harvey Lubeck.
Harvey was sixteen, too old for school but he’d been kept back. He was smart but idle. He proposed to drive me crazy.
Not overtly, of course. Dirt in the water bucket. A snake in Imogene Culpepper’s desk. Ink spilled on the floor, a permanent stain. A string of disasters, and Harvey’s blue eyes always twinkling from across the room.
Then one day he asked to be excused. Suspicious, I followed. He disappeared behind the boys’ privy and returned carrying the biggest, nastiest vinegarroon I ever saw.
“You hellion.” I grabbed his ear and dragged him inside, vinegarroon and all.
“Bend over.” I unhooked the board of education from its peg and whacked him three times on his backside. Then I stood panting, my knees all wobbly.
Harvey’s lower lip trembled. “You’ll git it now, Miss Petticoats. My daddy’ll fix you.” He tore out of the building.
“His daddy’s mean,” said Imogene.
After school, as usual, I swept and straightened. Then I sat down to wait.
Two hours later, I heard hoof beats. I was alone in a gray waste of cenizo and prickly pear.
When I heard boots ascending the steps, I willed myself to stand and hold my head high.
A burly, red-haired man opened the door. “You the one whupped my boy?”
I nodded.
He lumbered up the aisle, then stopped and removed his sweat-stained hat. “Ma’am, I thank you for what you done. Boy’s been needin’ a good whuppin’.”
He stuck out his hand. We shook.
“Harvey says you’re pretty as the Jersey Lily. We seen her when she come through Langtry a few years back. B’lieve Harvey’s right.” He put his hat back on. “You keep that boy in line, now. Make him act proper.”
Nodding, he headed for the door.
I sank onto my chair.
When my hands stopped quivering, I took up pen and paper and began: “Dear Judge Dunne.”
According to Mama’s last letter, the Judge was still pining.
***********
“Minna” first appeared in Chaos West of the Pecos, vol. 15 (2011), under the title “A Day in the Life of a One-room School Teacher.”
Image of Lillie Langtry by John Everett Millais [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Let’s get one thing out of the way: The little white flakes you see floating across the screen don’t mean a visit to the ophthalomologist is in order.
They’re snowflakes, courtesy of WordPress. After January 4, they’ll disappear. If our weather doesn’t change radically, they will be the only snowflakes most Central Texans see this year.
We’re finally getting some 50- and 60-degree weather during the day. It was supposedly in the 40s when I left home early this morning. It’s now back down to 48.
I didn’t hear the forecast, so I don’t know whether to expect William and Ernest to sleep with us tonight. If the temperature dips into the 30s, the bed will be crowded.
One day last week, we had a high of 87, which I consider excessive even in summer. After a day like that, the cats won’t even sleep in the same room with the humans.
This being Texas, of course, nothing is certain. To quote the adage, “If you don’t like the Texas weather, just wait.” Christmas Day could bring icy streets and frozen water pipes, but we could as easily be running the air conditioning. Been there, done both. And no matter how much I grouse about the heat, I prefer AC to frozen plumbing. But most of my Christmases have fallen somewhere in between.
When it does snow–as it did two consecutive Christmases in the mid-80s, measuring twelve inches when packed and iced over–things stop. Most natives don’t know how to drive on snow and ice, and automobiles aren’t equipped for it. Road maintenance crews do what they can, but they’re not equipped to deal with streets and roads that need attention perhaps once in five or six years. It’s safer to keep drivers at home.
I speak from experience. When I was a college senior, I hit a patch of ice and ended up in a ditch facing the wrong direction. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I landed right across the four-lane lightly-traveled (that morning) highway from my father’s workplace. He didn’t appear surprised when I straggled in wearing a sheepish smile. Having driven from Normandy to Cologne under less-than-ideal road conditions, he calmly drove the car out of the ditch filled with slick Johnson grass, and twelve miles later deposited me at the bottom of College Hill. Getting up the hill to comparative anatomy was my problem.
The fact that I remember that incident is significant. It’s the only driving-on-ice story I have.
But this far south, we like to pretend. News anchors and meteorologists (I’d rather write weathermen, but I won’t) speculate on the possibility of a white Christmas. We sing “White Christmas.” Shoppers trudge through malls to the strains of “Sleigh Ride,” “Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland,” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” We hang tinsel on fir trees to simulate icicles and put cut-outs of snowmen on lawns. We do much of this wearing cotton t-shirts.
Our friends Greg and Maryellen have the right idea. They bring a cactus plant in from the patio and string it with lights.
When we get all excited at the prospect of a white Christmas, they smile and let us talk.
They’re from Ohio. They know exactly what we’re talking about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My high school English teacher read the Day 7 post, the one in which I wrote that she told students we had important and relevant things to say.
That is the problem with blogging. At some point, you make a remark, a perfectly innocent remark, and the person you remarked about happens across it and reads it and calls you on it. Especially if you link the post to Facebook, and that person is one of your friends.
Anyway, said English teacher (who taught me in grades 8, 10, 11, and 12, so you see what we were both up against) asked whether she really said relevant and important, or whether she said, “Hush up and write.”
I admit it. “Hush up and write” was more her style.
And I really went overboard with relevant. I don’t think anyone I knew said relevant. It was one of those television words, ubiquitous and meaningless. The curriculum wasn’t relevant. School wasn’t relevant.
Relevant isn’t complete in itself. It needs something more. Relevant to what? And in whose opinion?
The 60s didn’t get to my part of Texas until late. And being as contrary then as I am now, I rebelled against the rebellion.
According to my husband, people should never send e-mails they wouldn’t want Ted Koppel to read on the air. David is correct. That goes for Facebook and blogs and all media, I’m sure.
Although I agree with his policy, however, I don’t follow it. Anyone who has read this blog knows that.
My one hope is that any potential employer who googles me and reads my work understands self-deprecating humor.
In other words, I’m neither as dumb nor as ditsy as I portray myself. Fiction is fiction and fact is fact, and in between there is irony.
If hired, I will be on time, work through breaks and lunch and do overtime, meet deadlines, take a personal interest in my work, and play well with others. I will spell correctly and use the serial comma. And I will not write about you on my blog.
I’ve been thinking about starting every post with that paragraph. Especially the post about my hereditary tendency to burn toast.
Although I write about my flaws, or pseudo-flaws, I am a private person. I want to choose what I tell and when and to whom. I don’t appreciate Facebook’s rabid desire to help me extend my social circle. I really really don’t appreciate Facebook’s sharing my information and not telling me, or making it difficult for me to lock down information I don’t want to share with people I don’t know.
There are days when I would like to close the account completely–as if that were possible, given FB’s determination not to delete it–but I’m in too deep. Closing out of FB would be like disconnecting both the telephone and the television. I don’t use either appliance very often, but giving them up would put me completely out of the loop.
No more pictures of Kenna wearing her little pink hat and grinning.
No more surprise messages from students I haven’t seen in years.
I’ve had the good fortune to “connect” with two women I first knew when they students. They were back-to-back winners of the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest, Young Adult Division. One has signed a book contract with a publisher. The other recently signed with an agent.
When their books come out, I’ll be jumping up and down.
I hope the high school from which they graduated will honor them by inviting them back to speak to current students. I hope the elementary and middle schools do the same.
I hope the school district makes a BIG DEAL of their accomplishments.
Let me say that again.
I hope the school district makes a BIG DEAL of their accomplishments.
Not for the writers’ sake, but for the sake of children who need to see that telling stories is important, that publishing a book is an event to be celebrated, that kids who once sat in those same classrooms grew up to be writers.
Kathy Waller 