Dac Crossley's Western Blog

What's in a Name?

A little snatch of odd history today. Nothing to do with Texas.

Animals have their scientific names, genus and species, and those are pretty well fixed. Common names are another matter, and can be wildly inaccurate. We all know what a butterfly is, right, and realize that it isn't really a fly. Any more than a buttercup is a cup.

The German name for a bat is Fledermaus, literally "flying mouse." A shrew is called a Spitzmaus for its long snout. Neither of these animals is a mouse, not technically. So, in the 1930s, curators at the Berlin Museum of Natural History decided to do something about it. They issued a decree, stating that henceforth the name for a bat would be "Fleder" and for a shrew, "Spitz."

The changes didn't last long. Adolph Hitler himself was told of this, and he objected mightily.Der Fuhrer said "Nein!." It was a corruption of the German language. The curators wisely withdrew their decree.

Common names are what they are. We'll continue admiring the butterfly, and enjoy the titmouse at our bird feeders. And the overture to Die Fledermaus.

Dac Crossley
December 28, 2018

"Even when all the experts agree, they may well be mistaken." -- Bertrand Russell.

A Fragment of Personal History

Mom gave birth to me on Sunday, November 6, 1927. My father was in the room with her, unusual in that era. So was grandmother Baird, who said, "Please forgive me," when she saw my red hair.

Grandmother Baird hied herself down to the First Methodist Church to place my name on the Cradle Roll. She bested grandmother Crossley, who never appeared at her Presbyterian Church before eleven, when it was appropriate. That's how I started life as a Methodist instead of as a Presbyterian. A switch of faiths came later.

So I was raised on Bible stories and Mom's Methodism. Mom was a story-teller all her life, and she brought the Bible to life. Sometimes she'd cast me in a role as young David or the boy Samuel. Old Testament heroes were her meat and potatoes. She brought to her little family the Methodist rules of her own mother: No smoking, no tobacco use, no dancing, no gambling. Somehow, my uncle Mitchell the artist got a pass from those rules. Uncle Chick, the youngest of the boys, was the only son who inherited Lalla Baird's genes for religion.

Methodist Sunday School was taught by church ladies and my mother was right in there among them. Some of the teachers were forgiving of us youngsters when we misbehaved. Mom kept us in our seats. But she did tell the best stories.

The pot finally boiled over when I was about eight years old. We children were assigned to memorize the Ten Commandments. When called upon to sand up and recite them, I couldn't do it. "Ashton," said the teacher, "You will have to repeat this grade."

I'd like to think it was some kind of higher criticism, but the truth of the matter is, I just didn't pay attention in a Sunday school or any kind of school. Today, I'd put my money on a conflict between my over-bearing mother and the other teachers. I have never in my life found another child who failed a class in a Methodist Sunday School. Was I that special?

The memory stays with me. My mother in full stride, holding my hand with my little brother on her other side, the clack! clack! Clack! of her shoes as she marched us down the street to the First Presbyterian Church. Where Sunday school was not so intense. We kids didn't have to memorize anything except how to spell "Presbyterian." We learned a little song -- "P-R-E-S-B-Y- terian."

That's how I became a member of Grandmother Crossley's Presbyterian church, which delighted her although it would have been quite rude to say so. My Mom joined the ranks of Presbyterian Sunday School teachers and never missed a beat.

Dac Crossley
December 15th, 2018

"God may have had fun at creation, but he didn't really think things through." - Lars von Trier.

Beginning my Memoirs

Kingsville was a railroad town. You can find it on the road map, down in south Texas near the Gulf, a bit west of Corpus Christi. Kingsville called itself "The Home of the Famous King Ranch." Grandma King herself donated the land for the townsite. If you took to the air in one of those little two-seater airplanes of the 1930s, you'd look down on a neat little rectangle of streets, bisected by north-to-south railroad tracks. See, there's the east-to-west main street with two city blocks of businesses. Look at those cars angle-parked along main street -- Fords, Chevys, Plymouths of the day. A few Model-A's and Model-T's thrown in to boot. Across the tracks there's the railroad General Office building and the railroad shops and roundhouse. A railroad town, despite all those automobiles. If you took a trip in your car, you'd have to drive north. No highways south, east or west. Passenger business was good, on the railroad.

In the early 1900s the St Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway Company drove its rails south through the Wild Horse Desert to reach the Rio Grande Valley. Kingsville became its headquarters and home to its employees. The King Ranch benefitted from Grandma King's gift. No more long cattle drives, up through San Antonio. Cattle cars were loaded at Kingsville.

Let's turn our little airplane to follow the railroad to the south. A few little fields of cotton, scattered here and there. Some truck farms, mostly watermelons and cucumbers, crops that survive in sandy soils. Patches of grass and mesquite trees, a few rangy cattle. Some twenty miles to the south we begin to see sand dunes. No more farms; roads disappear. Only sparse desert vegetation as far as we can see. Look, there's a windmill, and cattle trails radiating away from it. This is ranch country.

Now turn back to Kingsville and let's fly to the west. We'll see some tiny farms and homesteads that abruptly give way to the vast expanse of the King Ranch. Look, that large white building over there is Ranch Headquarters. Turn the airplane around; they don't like visitors.

Swoop low to spot a dirt road that approaches the high wires of the King Ranch fence. The road shines white from the caliche that fills its ruts. And down there is my father's little house on four acres, a chicken farm. My childhood home.

Not much of a house, my father says and laughs about it. Four rooms sloping away from a central chimney, he says. Yellow clapboard walls with the cracks sealed by wallpaper. Indoor plumbing, yes, a tiny bathroom tacked onto the kitchen. I go back to that house in my dreams, walking through doorways much taller than I, my mother smiling down at me, my baby brother at my feet. That's my "happy place," where I go when I must retreat from a troubled reality.

Hey, get that airplane outa here! Chickens think it's a big hawk. They crowd up in a corner of the hen house and some of them get smothered.