Christmas in the Davis Mountains, Texas, 1839

Dec3

On Christmas Day in 1839, frontiersman Kit Carson allegedly carved his name and the date on a huge boulder on Sawtooth Mountain in the Davis Mountains in Texas. Carson was born in 1809 in Kentucky and grew up in Missouri. He ran away to Santa Fe in 1826 and subsequently embarked on an arduous and wide-ranging career as a fur trapper. As a guide and hunter for John C. FrÃ©mont in the 1840s, he gained national fame through FrÃ©mont’s published reports. Carson was an Indian agent in Taos, New Mexico, in the 1850s. He served in the Mexican War and in the Civil War, commanding a New Mexico volunteer regiment in the battle of Valverde. His connections to Texas history included helping foil the Snively Expedition in 1843 and leading the attack against a large number of Kiowas and Comanches in the first battle of Adobe Walls in 1864. He died in Colorado in 1868. Engineers of the State Department of Highways and Public Transportation discovered the inscription on Sawtooth Mountain in 1941.

Hiking Davis Mountains from Flickr via Wylio

The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton

May16

If there was ever a piece of fiction that should be adopted as a manifesto and banner for the conservative/libertarian movement in American politics, it’s not any of that nonsense by Ayn Rand. (I never could get through either of her most famous tomes although I tried . . once . . each.) Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained is a Western classic, a conservative classic, and a cracking good story. It should be recommended reading for all little conservatives-in-training.

So, in the 1950’s, about the time I was born, West Texas ranchers and farmers endured a seven year drouth. Seven years with little or no rain. Seven years. Charlie Flagg has lived through drought before, and he’s sure he can make through this one. But seven years is a long time, and no one, of course, knows that the drought will last so long or when or even if it will ever be over. Charlie, cantankerous and set in his ways even before the drought begins, only becomes more so as he faces the loss of his cattle, his sheep, his family and friends, and finally most of his land. Still, Charlie never gives up, never gives in to what he believes is wrong.

And one thing Charlie believes is wrong, at least for himself, is accepting government aid and price supports. As it turns out, the government aid offered to the ranchers to help them feed their animals and survive the drought comes with strings attached, and artificial prices confuse the free market so much that the ranchers can’t make a living even when the rains return. Charlie must change, accepting the idea of raising goats in addition to the sheep that have been his mainstay, but he never compromises his principles.

Charlie Flagg isn’t perfect, and the author shows us his faults as well as his strengths. Charlie and his wife have grown apart, mostly because Charlie is the strong, silent type, not much of a communicator (Charlie’s attitude: He told her he loved her when he married her, and he’d be sure to let her know if anything changed.) Charlie is an old-style patron to his Mexican American workers, and he sometimes patronizes them and treats them with the kind of “separate but equal” attitude that was the trademark of the fifties relationship between Anglos and Latin Americans, as we used to call them. Charlie doesn’t hire illegals, but he respects them for their work ethic and their willingness to cross the border to find work. He wishes the government would just leave everybody alone, including the Mexicans who come to work in the United States, and especially including the ranchers who are just trying to make a living raising cattle and sheep and goats.

That’s the typical attitude of the typical West Texan that I knew growing up. I grew up in San Angelo, Mr. Kelton’s hometown. And most people there, at least thirty years ago, would have told you they just wanted the government, state and federal, to leave them alone. Some older men and women I knew were “yellow dog Democrats” and others were newly-coined Republicans, but all of them shared the desire to be left alone to raise their families and do their work without interference or help from the government.

QOTD: How do you respond to adversity or failure? How do you want to see yourself respond to hard times?

Christmas in Gonzales, Texas, 1835

Dec4

Friday, December 25

“I awakened before the sun was up and saw that Mama was still by the hearth. I think she stayed up all night. The turkey was roasting on a spit over a low fire. It must have been the wonderful smell that woke me up. I hugged Mama’s waist and said Merry Christmas. She reached into her apron pocket and gave me a little gift wrapped in a scrap of blue velvet and told me to go ahead and open it before the menfolk got up. It was a beautiful ivory button, carved to look like a rose. It came from her mother’s wedding gown and I knew that it was precious to her and worth much because over the years in emergincies, Mama had sold all the other buttons like it. I threw my arms around Mama’s neck and kissed her face, still warm from the heat of the fire. It didn’t matter what else I got; this was the most precious gift I could receive.” ~A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary of Lucinda Lawrence by Sherry Garland.

Z-baby (age 11) and I have been reading this Dear America book together as an assignment for her Texas history class at co-op. I thought it showed quite well the hardship and indecision of individual families in the face of the war for Texas independence. Lucinda’s father is against fighting, against the Mexican army, partly because he knows the cost of war. Lucinda’s brother, Willis, goes off to San Antonio to help defend the Alamo. Lucinda herself is conflicted, proud of her brother and her new nation of Texas, but also unsure whether Texas independence is worth the deaths of brave men and the loss of homes and friendships and families.

Bravely stepping over that “line in the sand” to fight against tyranny isn’t an easy decision, and there’s always a cost.

Texas Tuesday: The Blood of Heroes by James Donovan

Sep11

The Blood of Heroes The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo–and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan.

General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna: “If I were God, I would wish to be more.”
“In this war you know that are no prisoners.”

Oath Davy Crockett and his men signed on February 12, 1836: “I do solemnly swear that I will bear true allegiance to the provisional government of Texas or any other future republican government that may be hereafter declared, and that I will serve her honestly and faithfully against all her enemies and oppressors whatsoever.”
Crockett inserted the word “republican”, stating that he was only willing to support a republican government, and after signing Crockett and his men became part of the new Texian army and proceeded to the Alamo.

Travis’s message to the alcalde (mayor) of Gonzales, February 23, 1836: “The enemy in large force are in sight. We want men and provisions. Send them to us. We have 150 men and are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance. P.S. Send an express to San Felipe with news night and day.

Colonel Travis to the People of Texas and all Americans in the world, February 24, 1836:

Fellow citizens and compatriots–
I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken— I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls— I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch— The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—

VICTORY OR DEATH

William Barret Travis,
Lt. Col. comdt.
P.S. The Lord is on our side. When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn. We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves. Travis

Portion of Travis’s last letter from the Alamo, March 3, 1836:

Col. Fannin is said to be on the march to this place with reinforcements, but I fear it is not true, as I have repeatedly sent to him for aid without receiving any. Colonel Bonham, my special messenger, arrived at La Bahia fourteen days ago, with a request for aide and on the arrival of the enemy in Bexar, ten days ago, I sent an express to Colonel F. which arrived at Goliad on the next day, urging him to send us reinforcements; none have yet arrived. I look to the colonies alone for aid; unless it arrives soon, I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms. I will, however, do the best I can under the circumstances; and I feel confident that the determined valor and desperate courage heretofore exhibited by my men will not fail them in the last struggle; and although they may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy, the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse to him than a defeat. I hope your honorable body will hasten on reinforcements ammunition, and provisions to our aid as soon as possible. We have provisions for twenty days for the men we have. Our supply of ammunition is limited. At least five hundred pounds of cannon powder, and two hundred rounds of six., nine, twelve and eighteen pound balls, ten kegs of rifle powder and a supply of lead, should be sent to the place without delay under a sufficient guard. If these things are promptly sent, and large reinforcements are hastened to this frontier, this neighborhood will be the great and decisive ground. The power of Santa Anna is to be met here, or in the colonies; we had better meet them here than to suffer a war of devastation to rage in our settlements. A blood red banner waves from the church of Bexar, and in the camp above us, in token that the war is one of vengeance against rebels; they have declared us as such; demanded, that we should surrender at discretion, or that this garrison should be put to the sword. Their threats have had no influence on me or my men, but to make all fight with desperation, and that high souled courage which characterizes the patriot, who is willing to die in defense of his country’s liberty and his own honor.

Juan Seguin, April 25, 1837: “They preferred to die a thousand times rather than submit to the tyrant’s yoke.”

Cry of the men at the Battle of San Jacinto which won Texas’ independence:

Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo!

Texas Tuesday: A Personal Country by A.C. Greene

Sep4

I didn’t quite finish this travel homecoming memoir by a Texas author who hails from my neck of the woods, Abilene, Texas, where I went to college. However, I did find some gems in the book before I had to return it to the library, and I’ll probably come back to it and finish the journey someday.

“Rainfall or the lack of it, the thing that may have killed my great-grandfather, puts its mark on all West Texas life. . . Uninitiated radio and television weather experts will get called down by the natives (assumed or born) when they speak of ‘it’s a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, the forecast calling for fair weather . . .’ This may be pretty in one sense, but not nearly so beautiful as a black overcast day with the clouds threatening to shed tears at any minute, or a strong, wet wind scudding the dark masses overhead.”

Oh, yes, a lesson I learned early in life: never complain about a rainy day.

And windy days: “Then the girls clutch their skirts, not just for modesty but for survival, feeling the wind to be altogether capable of lifting them up bodily and dumping them, at best, in an undignified sprawl.”

I absolutely remember a day when I was walking down the sidewalk at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, and the wind picked me up and I flew for about 10 feet down the sidewalk. I felt like The Flying Nun.

“West Texans are not adventuresome food eaters. Until enough servicemen from other parts had been stationed there in World War II, steaks were customarily cooked until dark gray throughout, and roast beef with a tinge of pink was regarded as raw. My grandmother Cole sent back more than one hamburger for recooking because the meat ‘wasn’t done’—a term that implied a uniform brown quality. Even now most cattle ranchers will have their steaks no way but well done.”

Yep, me too. I don’t want to eat any pink meat, except for ham. If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

Happy Tuesday, everyone, especially those of you who live in West Texas. I hope it’s raining or threatening rain for you today.

Texas Tuesday: Goodbye to a River by John Graves

Jul24

Published in 1959, this nonfiction narrative tells the story of a November 1957 trip down a piece of the Brazos River in central Texas, just before several dams were built along the river to change its course and character forever. Hence, the title: Goodbye to a River.

Mr. Graves grew up along the Brazos, in Granbury, Texas or nearby as best I can tell, and his writing reflects his love for Texas, the Brazos, country living, and history. It’s also a nature-lover’s book and a chronicle of a lost way of life, the Texas of the 1800’s and early twentieth century. I enjoyed the book immensely, even though it wasn’t exactly about MY part of Texas, too far east for that. It was, nevertheless, about the kind of people that I knew when I was a kid of a girl growing up in West Texas among the fishermen and ranchers and hunters and wannabes. My daddy hunted deer during deer season and fed them out of season (I never really understood that). He also went fishin’, but he never paddled a canoe down the river.

The book and the journey it tells of are a taste of Texas and solitude and reminiscence and homely encounters with classic Texan characters, alive and dead.

“We don’t know much about solitude these days, nor do we want to. A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness, and that to seek it is perversion. Maybe so. Man is a colonial creature and owes most of his good fortune to his ability to stand his fellows’ feet on his corns and the musk of their armpits in his nostrils. Company comforts him; those around him share his dreams and bear the slings and arrows with him.” (p.83-84)

“Mankind is one thing; a man’s self is another. What that self is tangles itself knottily with what his people were, and what they came out of. Mine came out of Texas, as did I. If those were louts they were my own louts.” (p.144)

“I used to be suspicious of the kind of writing where characters are smitten by correct quotations at appropriate moments. I still am, but not as much. Things do pop out clearly in your head, alone, when the upper layers of your mind are unmisted by talk with other men. Odd bits and scraps and thoughts and phrases from all your life and all your reading keep boiling up to view like grains of rice in a pot on the fire. Sometimes they even make sense . . .” (p.151)

“If it hadn’t been for Mexicans, the South Texas Anglos would never have learned how to cope right with longhorn cattle. If it hadn’t been for Texans, nobody else on the Great Plains would have learned how either.” (p.199)

“Neither a land nor a people ever starts over clean. Country is compact of all its past disasters and strokes of luck–of flood and drouth, of the caprices of glaciers and sea winds, of misuse and disuse and greed and ignorance and wisdom–and though you may doze away at the cedar and coax back the bluestem and mesquite grass and side-oats grama you’re not going to manhandle into anything entirely new. It’s limited by what it has been, by what’s happened to it. And a people . . is much the same in this as land. It inherits. Its progenitors stand behind its elbow.” (p.237)

The moral of the story, and I think it’s true, is that I carry Texas and Texans and the Texas landscape in my bones. Even though I’ve never once paddled a canoe down a Texas river or lived rough in a campsite beside the river or caught or shot my own dinner and cooked it up, I am still somehow the inheritor of something that my ancestors, many of whom did all those things and more besides, passed down to me. I’m a city girl, but the Texas wildness and independence and what sometimes turns into a lack of respect for authority and a heedless devil-may-care attitude–all that lives in me, and more besides. I am a daughter of Texas, and Goodbye to a River was a wonderful tribute to some of the places and stories that make Texas great.

For more books about rivers, see last week’s edition of Book Tag with the theme of rivers.

For more books about Texas, see my list of 55 Texas Tales or past editions of Texas Tuesday.

If you love the essays and the localism of Wendell Berry, and especially if you have some connection to Texas, I think you would enjoy Goodbye to a River.

55+ Texas Tales: From Galveston to Amarillo to Brownsville to El Paso

Jul10

I must admit that I’m a proud Texan with a mild Texas accent and a whiff of Texas braggadocio. And I think reading books by Texan authors or books set deep in the heart of Texas is a great way to spend a summer afternoon.

Adams, Andy. The Log of a Cowboy. Semicolon review here.

Anderson, Jessica Lee. Border Crossing. YA novel about an Hispanic teen who is dealing with paranoid schizophrenia. I will be looking for a copy of this novel soon.

Appelt, Kathi. The Underneath. Animal story from the Big Thicket of East Texas. Semicolon review here.

Baker, Betty. Walk the World’s Rim. The tragic story of a Native American boy named Chacko and of Esteban, the slave who accompanied Coronado on his search for the Seven Lost Cities of Cibola.

Baker, Nina Brown. Texas Yankee. A children’s biography of inventor Gail Borden.

Beatty, Patricia. Wait for Me, Watch for Me, Eula Bee. Captured-by-Indians fiction set in West Texas, 1860â€™s. Semicolon review here.

Bertrand, J. Mark. Back on Murder. A murder mystery/police procedural set in Houston. Sequels are Pattern of Wounds and Nothing to Hide. Semicolon review here.

Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights. The book that started it all, led to a movie and then a TV Series. I read that the people of Odessa are still mad at Bissinger for his portrayal of their town. I’m not mad, but I do think he probably misunderstood a few things. Semicolon book review here.

Brammer, Billy Lee. The Gay Place. This novel is supposed to be about LBJ in disguise. I haven’t read it, but I’d like to check it out.

Brett, Jan. Armadillo Rodeo. A picture book about Bo the Armadillo who longs for adventure.

dePaola, Tomie. The Legend of the Bluebonnet. A picture book telling the Native American legend concerning Texas’s state flower, the bluebonnet.

Dobie, J. Frank. Up the Trail from Texas. This book, published in 1955, is one of the Landmark History series from Random House. J. Frank Dobie wrote over twenty books about the history, folklore, and traditions of Texas. If anyone was qualified to write a Landmark history book about the history of the cattle, cowboys, and trail drives of Texas, it was Mr. Dobie.

Donovan, James. The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo–and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation. Semicolon review here. Al Mohler recommends it.

Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Semicolon review here.

Erdman, Louella Grace. The Edge of Time. Newlyweds in North Texas build a farm and a marriage in the middle of ranching country.

Erickson, John. Moonshiner’s Gold. Great action-packed adventure with engaging characters and a lot of history sneaking in through the back door. John Erickson is known for his Hank the Cowdog series, but this stand-alone adventure is just a good as the Hank books and should be just the right reading level for most sixth graders.

Erickson, John. The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog. Early and middle grade readers will enjoy this series of tales about a lovable cowdog.

Ferber, Edna. Giant is really a fantasy. I just don’t know very many people in Texas who live like the Benedicts or who ever did. And Ms. Ferber was from Michigan. But Giant is a fun Texas fantasy, and it does manage to give the sense of how everyone in Texas wants to at least pretend that Texas and all its cultural appendices are bigger than life.

Fritz, Jean. Make Way for Sam Houston. Semicolon review here.

Garland, Sherry. In the Shadow of the Alamo. This YA novel set during the Texas Revolution is different because it’s told from the perspective of a Mexican boy, Lorenzo, who’s conscripted into Santa Anna’s army and forced to fight the Tejanos at the Alamo and at San Jacinto.

Garland, Sherry. A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary of Lucinda Lawrence Gonzales, Texas, 1836. A Dear America series book set at the battle of the Alamo.

Gibbs, Stuart. Belly Up! Semicolon review here.

Gipson, Fred. Old Yeller. Classic. (I once had Mr. Gipson’s ex-wife for an English teacher in high school. I think. At least that was the rumor in my high school.)

Graves, John. Goodbye to a River. A story of the author’s canoe trip down the Brazos River.

Greene, A.C. A Personal Country. Memoir/essays about the culture and people of West Texas, Abilene in particular.

Harrigan, Stephen. The Gates of the Alamo. Adult fiction. Semicolon review here.

Hemphill, Helen. The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones. An engaging Western novel about cowboy life for middle school readers. Semicolon review here.

Hoff, Carol. Johnny Texas. Sequel is Johnny Texas on the San Antonio Road.

Hoff, Carol. Head to the West. A Christmas excerpt from this story of Galveston immigrants.

Holt, Kimberly Willis. When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. National Book Award winner.

Janke, Katelan. Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas 1935. Another Dear America journal-style book for middle grade and young adult girls.

Jiles, Paulette. News of the World. Excellent adult novel takes place in post-Civil War Texas, about 1870.

Karr, Kathleen. Oh Those Harper Girls! Semicolon review here.

Kelly, Jacqueline. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Middle grade fiction set in 1899. Semicolon review here.

Kelton, Elmer. The Day the Cowboys Quit. Kelton was born in Crane, Texas, and he used to live in San Angelo, my hometown.

Kelton, Elmer. The Time It Never Rained. Top ten Texas novels that I have read. This one should be on every Texan’s reading list.

Kelton, Elmer. Lone Star Rising: The Texas Rangers Trilogy. The Buckskin Line, Badger Boy and The Way of the Coyote. Semicolon review here.

Lake, Julie. Galveston’s Summer of the Storm. Semicolon review of this children’s fiction book set before and during the Galveston hurricane of 1900. It starts with a very lazy Texas summer with Texas foods and hot weather and front porches and grandmother’s house. Then disaster!

Larson, Eric. Isaac’s Storm. Semicolon review of this nonfiction tome about the man who was the chief weatherman for the U.S. Weather Bureau on Galveston Island in 1900.

Matthews, Sally Reynolds. Interwoven. A memoir by a pioneer woman about life on the Texas frontier.

Meacham, Leila. Roses. Tumbleweeds: A Novel. I haven’t read these “family saga” novels by a Texas author and set in East Texas and Amarillo, respectively, but they sound intriguing.

Meyer, Carolyn. Where the Broken Heart Still Beats. YA historical fiction about Indian captive Cynthia Ann Parker.

Meyer, Carolyn. White Lilacs. Early 1920’s, segregation and racial conflict. Here it is reviewed at Becky’s Book Reviews.

Michener, James A. Texas. Typical Michener, somewhat mythologized, but sprawling and readable.

Moss, Jenny. Winnie’s War. Semicolon thoughts here.

Murphy, Jim. Inside the Alamo. This nonfiction account of the famous Battle of the Alamo is a good introduction for grown-ups, too.

Owens, Virginia Stem. At Point Blank: A Suspense Novel. A very satisfying little murder mystery set in rural Texas just outside Houston. Sequels are Congregation and A Multitude of Sins.

Reading, Amy. The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, A Cunning Revenge, And A Small History Of The Big Con. I haven’t read this nonfiction book either, but I saw it recommended at NPR’s website.

Rinaldi, Ann. Come Juneteenth. Slavery in Texas during and after the Civil War.

Sachar, Louis. Holes. Set in a sort of mythical, contemporary Texas, this Newbery-award winning novel is just right for a sweltering hot Texas afternoon.

Shefelman Janice. Comanche Song. Semicolon review here.

Shefelman, Janice. Spirit of Iron. Semicolon review here.

Smith, Sherri. Flygirl. YA WWII fiction about an African-American girl who “passes” for white and becomes a WASP (Women’s Air Force Service Pilot). Semicolon review here.

Stokes, David R. Apparent Danger: The Pastor of America’s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920’s (aka
The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial that Captivated America) Semicolon review here.

Thomason, John W. Lone Star Preacher. “Traces the life and times of a fiery Methodist preacher in East Texas during the Civil War era.” This novel joins my lengthy TBR list.

Tinkle, Lon. 13 Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo. You can never read too many books about the Alamo, and this one is classic.

Valby, Karen. Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town. “The book is a portrait of a small town in transition, a town that is growing globally and perhaps even philosophically, if not physically.” ~Booklist

Wisler, G. Clifton. All for Texas: A Story of Texas Liberation. 13-year old Thomas Jefferson Byrd gets caught up in the War for Texas Independence.

Wisler, G. Clifton. Buffalo Moon. Semicolon review here.

Wisler, G. Clifton. Winter of the Wolf. Semicolon review here.

Wisler, G. Clifton. The Wolf’s Tooth. Semicolon review here.

Wood, Jane Roberts. The Train to Estelline. From this list at Texas Reads.

Tour of Texas Towns

May4

Nimrod, Ding Dong,
Zipperlandville,
Needmore, Seymour,
Dime Box, Gill.

Dripping Springs, Argyle,
Red Lick, Thrall,
Rosebud, New Hope,
Zionsville, Rawls.

Sour Lake, Big Lake,
Runaway Bay,
Smiley, Snook, Shamrock,
Buffalo, Fate.

Nazareth, Noonday,
Oyster Creek,
Mount Calm, Moscow,
Trinidad, Wink.

North Zulch, Happy,
Lazbuddie, Crow,
Chester, Lovelady,
Lollipop, Grow.

Muleshoe, Oatmeal,
Eldorado, Maud,
Paradise, Eden,
Maybelle, Claude.

George West, Tom Bean,
Bug Tussle, Rusk,
Loco, Looneyville,
Noodle, Lusk.

Melvin, Marvin,
Jot’em Down, Joy,
New Home, Mountain Home,
Cut and Shoot, Troy.

Carthage, Dublin,
Naples, Brushy Creek,
Athens, Paris,
Maple, Caddo Peak.

Nameless, MaryNeal,
Circle Back, Draw,
Byspot, Cherokee,
Sacul, Recklaw.

Gun Barrel City,
Fly Gap, Rhome,
Okra, Placid,
Weeping Mary, Nome.

Strange names dot Texas map by Roy Bragg.

Texas Tuesday: The Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton

Feb21

Elmer Kelton is from my hometown, San Angelo, Texas. I’m not much of a reader of westerns, but I thought I should at least sample the work of Mr. Kelton, seeing as he’s a hometown boy and was the farm-and-ranch editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times. Also, for five years he was editor of Sheep and Goat Raiser Magazine, and for another twenty-two years he was editor of Livestock Weekly. He wrote more than thirty western novels, set mostly in Texas, and he was awarded several Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America. In 1977, Kelton received an Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement, and in 1998, he received the first Lone Star Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Now that’s a resume to be found only in West Texas.

The Buckskin Line introduces us to Rusty Shannon, a red-headed orphan who is nearly captured by the Comanches in the first chapter. The Comanches do kill Rusty’s parents as the story opens in August, 1840 during the Comanche raid into south central Texas during which the small town of Linnville in Victoria COunty was sacked and burned. “The surprised people of Linnville fled to the water and were saved by remaining aboard small boats and a schooner . .. at anchor in the bay.”

In the story three year old Rusty is carried off by the Comanche raiders, but rescued by a ragtag group of pursuers, including Mike Shannon, an Irish-Texan wanderer who farms the land he finds until it wears out and then moves on. Mike has a wife, but the two have been unable to have childen. So they adopt the orphan boy and keep his first name, Davy, the only thing the young boy can tell them about himself. Davy grows up to be called “Rusty” in reference to his red hair.

Most of the book is about the adventures of the young adult Rusty Shannon, as he joins the Texas Rangers on the Red River border with Indian Territory just before and after the outbreak of the Civil War. Rusty is a brave and honest young man, but somewhat rash in judgement and too ready for revenge when someone hurts the people he loves. The Buckskin Line shows how Rusty Shannon matures and learns to temper his judgement with faith and patience.

I liked it enough to want to read the other two books in Kelton’s Texas Rangers Trilogy, Badger Boy and The Way of the Coyote.

Kylie Jean, Blueberry Queen by Marci Peschke

Oct18

Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jennifer Glidden, Capstone Press.

Kylie Jean, who lives with her family in Jacksonville, Texas, has a lifelong dream: she wants to be a beauty queen. I’ve never heard of Jacksonville, but it’s a real town in East Texas, Cherokee County, and it has a population of 13,868 (2000 census). Jacksonville is “the Tomato Capital of the World”, but it’s blueberries that play the starring role in Kylie Jean’s journey to becoming a beauty queen.

In the story the big festival in Jacksonville every year is not Tomato Fest, but rather the Blueberry Festival. Kylie Jean wants to be Blueberry Festival Queen, and since Kylie Jean is not only pretty, inside and out, but also determined, she enlists some help and sets out to realize her dream.

I’m not much on beauty pageants, but I liked Kylie Jean. She talks and acts “Texas” through and through with her “right pretty” and her “hollering” and her “yes, m’am” and “no, m’am.” I liked the way Kylie Jean makes a list of the things she needs to do to enter the beauty pageant, and she goes right down the list, checking each thing off as she gets it done. And I learned a few things you might not know (I didn’t):

“Shouting is not ladylike.” Beauty queens don’t shout.

“Beauty queens always wear a slip because it is classy.”

“Pretty is as pretty does . . . means being nice to the old folks, taking care of little animals, and respecting [my] momma and daddy.”

I’ll just bet at least one of those pieces of information is new to you, too. Consider it a part of your free education in Texas culture.

Z-Baby: “I think all of the books about Kylie Jean look good: Rodeo Queen, Hoop Queen, and Drama Queen.”

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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