Goodbye To A Farm

From high on the hill the Brazos River Valley spreads out in the distance below the back porch of the ranch house.  A mile away the meandering path of the river is obvious from the tree line that splits lands on either side.  Bright green wheat fields are bordered by dry, brown mesquite pastures.  The ribbon of a blacktop county road travels straight south from the Throckmorton highway, at the gate makes a sweeping turn to the east and then heads south again.  Wells Farms covers most of the ground between the blacktop and the river.  Beginning at the curve, it includes the land on both sides—some in wheat, some in cattle pasture.

A couple of hundred yards down the slope, the barns, sheds and corrals are silent for the first time in 65 years.  Tractors, combines and harvesters with tires so tall that a grown man can stand inside the rim will never work here again.  Farm implements, present and past, sit idle with weeds growing through them.  No cattle are grazing.  No horses wait to be saddled.  The house is empty of people and locked.

The farmer who plowed these fields and raised cows here is resting peacefully in his fresh winter grave a few miles away in a country cemetery that bears my mother’s maiden name.  His 88 year old spouse is in a rehabilitation center, 45 miles away, recuperating from a fall.  Her doctors tell her she cannot return to this hill to live alone at her home place, but must move to town.  She is amazingly tough and may will herself back in defiance—but her active farming and ranching days have come to an end.

My uncle was born on this land his father’s family settled before 1900.  His wife was born on a dairy to a family who arrived when there were still present hostile Indians, thousands of buffalo and no mesquite on the natural grass prairies that ran on forever.  Married during World War II, after my uncle returned from Germany they bought a separate half section of land and built a little house on the hill.  Over time, they bought more land and added to the house in increments.  After inheriting the original farm, there are more than 3,000 acres under fence.  They had no children and there is no one in the extended family who will carry on—blame it on taxes, lack of an heir, or whatever, it is just a hard fact.  Following the fate of many Texas ranches with a long history of the same ownership, Wells Farms will sooner or later be sold to strangers.

The Wells family overcame the risks of weather, failed crops, animal disease and down markets to sustain successful operations for at least 113 years.  Today, the lands are worth more for recreational use than for agriculture or cattle.  The likely buyer will be a wealthy hunter from Fort Worth or Dallas who will have no interest in preserving what has gone before.  Or it will be broken into pieces.  Either way, change is inevitable.

Gazing across the valley, I view the bluff just across the Brazos where two Texas Rangers lie buried in the field where they were scalped by Comanches.  I remember floods that overflowed the road more than a mile from the bank of the river.  I see fence lines and draws where we hunted quail.  I see images of roundups, branding and doctoring.  I imagine waving wheat before harvest, the smell of grain in silos, and can still feel the struggle to breathe while shoveling in knee deep grain in the heat and choking dust.  I recall hay being baled, stored and, in winter, pushed off the truck to feed hungry Herefords..  I hear the sounds of cattle lowing.  With unease, I think of clearing snake dens and filling large coffee cans with rattlers.  I swell with nostalgia recollecting family gatherings each summer, and many Thanksgivings and Easters.  I see my uncle. driving to the fields long before daylight and returning after dark—years of long days.  My aunt was a full business partner, loyal wife and gracious hostess who dressed every day like June Cleaver, including the pearl necklace.

Another family ranch will soon be lost; no one is to blame and no sympathy is sought.  But it is worth noting its small place in history before it is gone.  Along with many thousands of other farmers and ranchers, Wells Farms filled the American breadbasket and continued a noble way of life for more than a century.  Family ranches are a dying breed.  I will miss this one especially and will better appreciate 

those that remain.

My Mother’s Lesson of the Broken Cake Platter

Our home on the back highway in Pharr was furnished for a 10 year old to live in.  I could sit on the couch with a baseball glove and ball, bounce a basketball on the living room floor or repeatedly toss a football toward the ceiling.  As long as I did not scratch or dent something, scuff the paint or knock furniture over, we neighborhood kids had free rein as we watched Dizzy Dean on Saturday afternoons.

We had few items of worth, but we knew what those were and gave them wide berth—with one disastrous exception.  My mother’s favorite possession was not something expensive but instead was of great sentimental value.  She had inherited from her grandmother a beautiful cut glass cake platter that was prominently displayed in the center of our dining room table.  

As the story unfolds I had just received a brand new Red Rider replica Winchester rifle.  It cocked and popped like a  real gun when I pulled the trigger.  It was not yet broken in and it was hard to cock.

As we were want to do, my good buddy neighbor Bobby Robie and I were playing cowboys, pretending to be in a running gunfight that started back in my bedroom and progressed through the living room into the dining room.  Urgently needing to reload as I passed the dining table and requiring leverage to cock the rifle, I placed the butt on the edge of the table braced by my left hand and pulled the lever with my right.  Things went horribly wrong.  The butt slipped on the slick surface and propelled by my downward push flew across with enough force to lift the precious plate toward the far wall like an airborne hockey puck. Upon contact it broke into a thousand pieces.

After the explosion of glass shards there was silence, absolute quiet.  Bobby gave me a look I understood and bailed out the side door.  I was thunderstruck.  I had destroyed that one material treasure my mother held dear.

I was alone in the house and dreading what was coming when mother came home.  Knowing I was caught with no escape, I confessed upon sight and offered genuine apologies.  I had never felt worse about any action taken.

Like most mothers of the late 1950’s, instead of immediately displaying overt sadness or anger, she attempted to comfort me in my distraught state.  She put on a good act by calling it an accident, but I knew my carelessness had wounded her.  I had deprived her of a family heirloom.  Later I sneaked a peak behind a partially closed door to observe her crying while sitting in a chair at her dressing table.  I tiptoed away unseen.

Her actions were typical of her life long sacrifice for me.  She knew I was sorry and regretted my disrespect of the cake platter.  But she also knew that her exhibition of loving forgiveness would be a much longer lasting lesson.  In deed, I will never forget my mother’s unselfish love.  Her example provided an invaluable resource of how best to parent.

America Fifty Years Ago Had its Own Troubles—We Overcame Them

Much of the current discourse with my septuagenarian friends is steeped in viewing the good old days through rose colored glasses and deeming the current culture as having gone to hell.  A closer look at 1973 reveals that 50 years ago America had turmoil not so much different from today.  We were just winding up a decade long war in Viet Nam which ended badly.  Many of my generation sacrificed for the rest of us; some paid the ultimate price.  The draft was cancelled, removing a cloud over young men without deferments.  National politics was in chaos as Watergate progressed with accusations, denials (“I am not a crook.”), firings, convictions and resignations.  Nixon left office in 1974.  

The world was not at ease.  The bitter Irish divide led to random bombings in Great Britain. Turkey invaded Cyprus. Berlin’s wall separated authoritarianism from freedom.  The Soviet Union had not yet disintegrated and included a powerful Eastern Bloc in Europe’s backyard. The Middle East experienced the Yom

Kippur War which spawned an OPEC oil embargo with international consequences. South American regimes were affected by our CIA intervention.  New countries became armed with nuclear bombs.

Domestically, Roe v. Wade became the law of the land despite much criticism in the Bible Belt.  Vice President Spiro Agnew stepped down amid a tax evasion controversy. The Alaska Oil Pipeline was approved and construction begun over the objection of environmentalists. Long closed relations with China began to thaw through diplomacy stemming from Nixon historic visit  to the Great Wall a year earlier.  At Wounded Knee there was a 71 day standoff between the American Indian Movement and federal authorities. In Houston, serial killer Dean Corll was shot by a teenage accomplice and the horrific facts about the brutal deaths and torture of 28 young boys became national news.  Despite the slow integration of public school, the ending of segregated lunch counters, restrooms and fountains, race relations were still on edge.  

1973 was not free of troubles, but as a nation we overcame most of them.  We will again 50 years later.