Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Off to San Antonio!

My mother would grin and say, “Who’ll go into San Antonio with old Ben Milam?” Mom never got very far away from the history of Texas.

This weekend I want to see some Spring wildflowers, visit some of the old sights, and just get the feel of San Antonio and Texas under my toes once again. See the Alamo. Hear some music.

Maybe somebody will perform my favorite Western Swing tune, “San Antonio Rose.” Everybody knows that one, Bob Wills’ million-seller record. Recorded by – oh, by Bing Crosby and by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Lots of people.

It started as a fiddle tune. During a 1938 recording session, their agent asked for one more fiddle tune. Wills had tinkered with an earlier composition and threw bits of it into the mix. The agent suggested calling the song “San Antonio Rose.” It was an immediate winner.

Where did the words come from? Not exactly clear; maybe several people added parts. Wills and his trumpeter Everett Stover collaborated on the final version. It was recorded as “New San Antonio Rose.” Bob Wills was in his big-band phase. The Playboys had grown into a full-blown swing band with eighteen musicians in the recording session at Burrus Mill Studio, April 16, 1940.

I kinda prefer the fiddle duet in the original version, but I’ll sing it any time.

Dac Crossley
March 23, 2016

“The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not music?” – Lou Reed.

Living in the Panhandle

We arrived at Lubbock, Texas, Larry C. and I, to begin our biology careers at Texas Tech. Lubbock isn’t actually in the panhandle – that Texas extension with Oklahoma borders on the east and north. Lubbock is in the South Plains, so they say, but it all looked the same to us.

It shocked us to see a such a broad expanse so absolutely featureless. Quite flat, barren of trees, only tufts of scraggly grass. A western wind that began to blow about nine in the morning and never quit. A wind that carried a sand so fine it seeped through the tiniest cracks. Sand was a notable presence in our daily lives at Texas Tech.

We soon discovered the edge of the Caprock over to the east. Springs broke forth and streams yielded a swath of greenery. The canyons themselves held a biological bounty for us fledgling scientists. And of course there was that big prairie dog colony in Yellow House Canyon in Lubbock itself.

And I wonder – are the prairie dogs still there, with their burrowing owls and rattlesnakes? Do you still taste sand with every meal? Does the wind scour the Tech campus?

When we Americans invaded the Texas Panhandle we first adapted to the harsh conditions, but we soon began to alter those landscapes. We brought the plow, deep water wells and irrigation, our own trees and our own version of buffalo. How much have the South Plains changed, in these 70 years?

The Panhandle, has a long, long history of climatic change, from the cool wet era of the late Pleistocene to gradual warming and drying through subsequent years. Humans adapted right along with the animals that they hunted. I’m reading “The Texas Panhandle Frontier” by Frederick W. Rathjen, born in Clarendon, who taught history at West Texas College in Canyon, Texas. (The College has been integrated into the Texas A&M system. That’s another story).

Will those of us now living in the southeast learn to adapt to a warmer, drier climate, as our ancient ancestors did?

Dac Crossley
March 17, 2016

“St. Patrick's Day is an enchanted time - a day to begin transforming winter's dreams into summer's magic." — Adrienne Cook.

“An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth.” — Irish saying.

The Book Versus The Movie

When I was a boy down in south Texas I learned to love the movies. The fancy Rialto Theater, where you took your Friday Night Date if you could get one, was the only air conditioned spot in town. For me, the Rialto was more than a destination. I was one of those youths with long, long thoughts. Motion pictures offered me another dimension to my life. Yes, I read and I wrote, even then. Movies were something else. In US Navy boot camp in San Diego – my first shore leave I saw three different motion pictures. At the University I’d slip off for an afternoon and let my mind vegetate in a theater.

I don’t go to movies today; it’s too much trouble, and besides, you can see them all on TV at home in your pajamas. I’m a writer and I read, of course, but not often in the evenings. I can watch The Lord of the Rings over and over. The Bourne flicks. Old ones on American Movie Classics. That’s my favorite way to unwind in the evenings.

Does that make me a traitor to the published word? I don’t think so. What I read, what I write, those are movies playing in my mind. It’s all of one piece, reading, seeing, dreaming.

Yes, I know, TV viewing is supposed to have low value, like bad daytime TV. Years ago, when I worked at Oak Ridge National Lab, a big TV set in the living room was considered low status. And high status was when you met visitors at the door and announced, “The TV is broken.”

Dac Crossley
March 10, 2016

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.

A Day of Celebration at the Alamo

On the evening of February 29, 1836, the Gonzales Volunteers slipped the wall into the Alamo compound. Yes, 1836 was a leap year, too.

March 1, 1836 was a day of celebration. Colonel Travis had hoped for more than the 32 men from Gonzales, but at least they made it through the Mexican forces without incident. Travis was certain that more defenders were on the way. In their honor, Davy Crockett broke out his fiddle and John McGregor his bagpipes. Travis ordered two cannon shots in celebration. (No more; ammunition was short). One shot fell in Military Plaza. The other, according to historian Stephen Hardin, crashed into a nearby house where Santa Anna had his headquarters. If he’d been home….

The Texian defenders were confident that Colonel Fannin was on the march from Goliad with 400 men. Travis didn’t know that Fannin’s column had bogged down with broken carts, and had returned to the old mission at Goliad. That news would reach Travis soon.

In the meantime the Mexican bombardment of the Alamo continued. The adobe wall fell prey to cannon balls. At night, under the moonlight, the Texians shored up the walls with whatever materials were at hand. What would Santa Anna do next?

Today the voice of my historian mother rings in my ears.

Dac Crossley
March 1, 2016

“A man who has made no enemies is probably not a very good man.” – Antonin Scalia.