Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Retreat

A bright, bright morning here in Georgia, if a bit cool for my taste. It is clearly springtime – the blooms come on and on. Squirrels rattle the bird feeder. The birds tell each other about it. (Ever notice that the smallest birds make the most noise? Like people…).

When I was a little boy in south Texas, I woke from a nap and wandered outside, looking for my mother. A beautiful spring morning, all aglow. I found Mom working in a little flower garden. I didn't know it was there, a spot I’d never noticed. She was laughing, chopping weeds, perspiration dripping from her face. Rows upon rows of blossoms, and Mom had done it, her own labor, happily spent. “Come in, Sonny. Look at this!”

I hold onto that image of pure, distilled joy. I close my eyes and bring back the splendor of that garden, Mom swinging her hoe and humming those tuneless tunes of hers.

That image is my retreat. When troubles find me, pain grabs, or I can’t see my way out of the darkness, I bring that memory to the fore, picking out the light, the warmth, the morning sounds. And my mother’s pleasure in it. I think the best, the happiest memories, are the quiet ones.

Each of us needs a retreat, a secret place, to get away from the overwhelming demands of life. In youth we looked to a physical place, maybe a cabin on a lake, as I once had (and Wes P. and Bob G. did, too). We are now of a certain age, and maintenance of a cabin becomes problematic. So, we find retreat in a quiet memory, a soothing of the soul, an appreciation of what life has given us.

Where is your retreat?

Dac
3/29/2010

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.” – Poet Rabindranath Tagore

Re-writing Texas History -- Again???

Maybe it isn’t true. What we are hearing, over here in the hinterlands of Georgia, is that the Texas Board of Education is at it again. This time, it’s downplay Thomas Jefferson and the separation of church and state. And ignore the contributions of Tejanos – Hispanics – during the Revolution of 1836. Juan Seguín’s company at San Jacinto. Or Lorenzo de Zavala, Vice President of the Republic of Texas.

What are you people thinking? Texans have always been a little bit nuts (I know; I am one) but this is off the edge.

Well, I’ll bet the Texas Board of Education won’t ignore today’s date – March 27th – because of the Massacre at Goliad.

James W. Fannin had a troop of 500 soldiers quartered at Goliad, a Spanish colonial mission. Fannin just couldn’t make up his mind what to do. March to the defense of the Alamo? March into Mexico and attack Matamoros? Or hurry north and join Sam Houston? He made a start toward San Antonio, but his wagons broke down after a few miles and he returned to Goliad.

Then, he received word that Urrea’s Mexican army approached Goliad. Fannin packed up again and moved out. Nine miles down the road he stopped for the night and found himself surrounded by the Mexican army. After a bloody day’s fighting, Fannin surrendered. Now prisoners, his army returned to Goliad.

On Palm Sunday, March 29th, the prisoners thought they were being released. Instead, the Mexican army marched them out and massacred them. By direct order of General Santa Anna. The result of Fannin’s indecision and Santa Anna’s madness.

That’s the way we learned it in Texas History – back when I was a child. What are today’s children being taught?

Texans! It’s 2010! Do you know where your children are?

Dac Crossley
March 27, 2010

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein.

A Personal Note -- Shingles!

This is an apology to all my friends and family who had outbreaks of shingles, and I just snickered at them. It’s just a rash. Get over it.

No, it isn’t. It’s not just a rash. It hurts like bejezzus. Doesn’t itch a bit. Those little nerve endings keep firing. I can stand it, thanks to Oxycodone (“Hi, Rush!”). To those of us of a certain age: hie thee down to Kroger’s and get that shot!

I don’t recall having chicken pox in the first place, but I’m sure I did. Medical practice has come a long way in the past 75 years and I’m not sure all of it is an improvement.

I recall two doctors from young Kingsville, Texas. Dr. Sublette (the railroad doctor) and Dr. Jones in private practice. My family preferred Dr. Jones. And Dr. Jones did it all – diagnosis, treatment, house calls, surgery. And you could see him at his home at night, in an emergency.

My baby brother had an infection of the mastoid process; very dangerous in those days before penicillin. We took him to a doctor in Corpus Christi. Walter survived when they removed most of his mastoid process.

And today – well, forget house calls, as you know. I had a trip the ER and took advantage of all their equipment. Blood and urine were auto-analyzed. X-ray showed no problems with my hip and A CT scan found nothing wrong, no kidney stones or such. It took a second trip to the ER to diagnose shingles. Thank you, Mary Freeman.

And thank you, Medicare.

Are we ahead with today’s medical practice? Surely we are, in most ways. I would have liked a house call from my personal physician. But I am reassured by the results of all that measurement and analysis in the ER. Insurance covers all; no digging deep to pay for it, either.

I’m tempted to make some remarks about the recent health care bill. Maybe I will later; right now, the topic is too volatile. Forgive me.

Dac
3/25/2010

“Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.” – Addison Minzer

Our Ancestors?

Recently I’ve been plowing through my father’s notes, trying to piece together a coherent picture of my family tree. When I’ve gone as far as I can, I’ll try some web-based resources.

Coincidentally, I enjoyed Brian Fagan’s latest book – Cro-Magnon. How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans. He brings together recent findings and speculates on the lives of our remote ancestors. I found it fascinating that DNA evidence shows Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals did not interbreed. And Neanderthals had a gene for red hair.

Fagan spins his story from the changes in their weapons through the ages, their cave paintings, their food middens, and comparisons with primitive tribes in remote places of today. It is a good read, perhaps a skimmer but Fagan will draw you in.

I was intrigued by his discussion of climate change during the past 500,000 years. These were in essence a cold time with a few warm spells interspersed. Why? And 70,000 years ago a major volcanic eruption nearly exterminated our ancestors. Our earth’s climate engine isn’t very well understood. The Cro-Magnons dealt with it.

How far back could you reasonably expect to trace your family tree? Look at it this way – you have two parents. Four grandparents. Eight great-grandparents. Sixteen – well, you see where this is going. In ten generations you could have a thousand ancestors.

How long is a generation? Let’s say, for argument, 25 years. So, 250 years ago – about the time of the American Revolution – you could be looking for a thousand ancestors.

There’s more. This is a geometric progression. 500 years ago – European discovery of America -- you might have a million progenitors. By this line of argument, you are descended from more people than there were alive in 1 AD!

The answer, obviously, is intermarriage. Not all of those lines of descent are independent from each other.

How remote an ancestor might we expect to be able to identify? As DNA analysis improves and data bases grow – who knows?

Ultimately, we are descendents of those hunters who became farmers. Cave painters who inspire us still.

Dac Crossley
3/20/2010

“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.” – Winston Churchill

Those Comanches

I think my generation of Texans is just flat ambivalent about Indians. We started out, didn’t we, with childhood storybooks with Indians as heroes? In Flato School in Kingsville we put on plays about the First Thanksgiving, how the Indians saved the Pilgrims. Remember those classroom dramas, Pilgrim and Indian costumes?

When did it start to change? The Saturday morning movies, with Indians attacking the wagon train? My grandfather’s Indian stories about pioneer days?

And then history classes, more reading, novels like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Andrew Jackson’s removal of the Cherokees from Georgia. (“Removal;” what a spineless word!) Epics on TV – “Centennial.” We really shafted the Indians.

Mirabeau Lamar was the Texas version of Andrew Jackson. “The Red Man and the White Man cannot coexist.” The second President of the Republic of Texas made war.

The best account of the Texas Indians, I believe, is Comanches. The Destruction of a People, by T. R. Fehrenbach. It’s a good, detailed highly readable account of the Indian wars in Texas (see my Shelfari page). That tribe was a far cry from the Indians who aided the Pilgrims, or the Cherokees in Georgia. The Comanches were brutal savages with no redeeming virtues that I can see.

The historian Andrés Tijerina, who writes extensively and persuasively about Tejanos, makes the interesting point that the Spanish government encouraged intermarriage with the Indians in Mexico. As we know, today’s population in Mexico arises from a mixture of races, including Indians. Such was not the case, Tijerina says, with the Anglo settlers on the US east coast. Intermarriage was not an official policy.

Nevertheless, intermarriage was not uncommon. I think of the Scots on the Georgia coast and in the Tennessee Valley. Sam Houston’s Indian wife had a Scottish father. Recently I stopped at the gravesite of Nancy Ward, Beloved Woman of the Cherokees. Intermarriage with Cherokees in Georgia was happening at the time of their removal. And today -- are we all Indians now?

There was to be no blending of the races in Texas. The Comanches were far too savage. They added captives to their tribes, true, but not voluntarily.

Lamar’s policies eventually succeeded. Most reservations in Texas were failures. The history of American treatment of Indians is a sorry one. After reading Comanches I’m left with some understanding of it.

What clashes of cultures are we pursuing today? Where opponents square off with little understanding of the other? Where common ground is obscured by battle? Really -- who are the Indians anyway?

Dac
3/13/2010

“Every now and then, an honest man is sent to the legislature.” – Kin Hubbard.

Sunday the 6th of March – Victory or death!

March 6, 1836. The assault on the Alamo began before sunup and lasted until nearly noon, ending with sporadic firing of muskets. As school children we learned of the heroic acts of the Alamo defenders. Giving their lives for freedom and Texas. Delaying the Mexican general Santa Anna until Sam Houston could muster a Texas army. Never surrendering, fighting until the last, brave men all.

The battle of the Alamo, the valiant struggle against overwhelming odds, is now part of Americana. For much of America, for better or for worse, Texas IS the Alamo.

What really happened inside the Alamo during those ten days of preparation? Accounts told by eyewitnesses, recorded years later, are contradictory. Some are clearly embellished. Did Travis really draw a line in the sand? Did Bowie, struck down with typhus, kill his attackers from his bed? And what about Davy Crockett? Does it matter, except to us Texans?

Texans have been slow to accept the story that Crockett attempted to surrender. The last movie remake of the Alamo Story, with Billy Bob Thornton as Crockett, took that approach. Account taken from the diaries of Mexican officers say that he did. Cautiously, today’s historians are beginning to accept Crockett’s surrender.

Maybe there is more to come. Somehow, I hope not. The Alamo battle still resonates with me, as it did when I was a child. I think we all need myths of human sacrifice for a larger purpose.

Someplace (wish I could find it!), I read of a recent encounter between an “activist” and an Hispanic gentlemen, outside the Alamo chapel. The activist pointed out that the Alamo is NOT a shrine that celebrates a Mexican heritage, and he (the Hispanic) should shun it. The answer was (I paraphrase):

“Listen, White-bread! If Santa Anna had won that war, this place would be a shit-hole like Reynosa is now. I’m a Texan. Beat it!”

Ole!

Dac
3/6/2010

“Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” – Malcolm Forbes.

…the People of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent Republic…

When Sam Houston arrived at Washington-on-the-Brazos on February 29, 1836, he was greeted with an enthusiastic celebration by delegates to the newly-formed Constitutional Convention. Houston was acclaimed as the savior who would lead the Texas armies to victory. At that time he had no army.

The Convention assembled formally on the next day, March 1, to approve a Declaration of Independence. It had been hastily penned by George C. Childress, based loosely on Jefferson’s declaration. By acclimation, the document wasn’t signed until March 2, to coincide with Sam Houston’s birthday.

At least, that’s the story. The Document is dated March 2, but the actual signing took place March 3, according to historian Stephen L. Moore.

The Delegation was wildly enthusiastic (Walter Lord, A Time to Stand, 1961). They expected Houston to depart immediately for Gonzales, to take command of troops. But Sam had slipped into his old habits and fortified himself with grog, staying in Washington until March 6, when the Convention received what turned out to be Travis’s final appeal for help at the Alamo.

I wonder – what thoughts ran through the minds of those delegates? Men from all parts of Texas (as it existed then), breaking away from an inconsistent government first praised and then despised by their founder, Steven Austin. A new Texas President and Cabinet hastily elected, in full knowledge of the imminent approach of Santa Anna’s army. Within a few short weeks the new President would flee ahead of that victorious Mexican leader.

The Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. A bold, gallant step or a foolhardy one? A turn of fate, a twist of fortune, the outcome of the revolution could have been so different.

History is written by the victors.

Dac Crossley
March, 2, 1836

And a Happy Birthday thought for General Sam.

“Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.” – John F. Kennedy.