Jane Long----Self-Proclaimed Mother of Texas

      Jane Wilkinson was born in Maryland in 1798.  By 1813, she was orphaned and living with an older sister near Natchez, Mississippi.  At age sixteen, she married James Long, a nineteen-year-old Army surgeon who served with Andrew Jackson’s troops at the Battle of New Orleans.  The young couple bought a plantation near Vicksburg and Jane had her first child, Ann, in November of 1816. James, very industrious, operated the plantation, set up a medical practice at Port Gibson, and became a merchant in Natchez.

     Along with many of the South's landed gentry, James Long was upset about the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 (also called the Florida Treaty), which transferred ownership of Florida and established the border between the United States and New Spain.  At the time, New Spain consisted of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, California, and parts of Oregon and Utah.  The treaty was worked out by John Quincy Adams, the U.S. Secretary of State, and Louis de Onis of Spain. Florida was ceded to the United States and the border definition and other provisions of the treaty were very generous to the United States.  Spain was in a poor negotiating position, desperately fighting a revolution in Mexico and losing power in Europe.

     Prominent citizens in Mississippi, however, wanted the cotton land in Texas and decided they would take matters in their own hands.  They financed and recruited a three-hundred man army and placed James Long in charge.  A Mexican citizen, Jose Felix Trespalacios, joined the group and became friends with Long.  The politically astute Trespalacios had long been involved in the Mexican uprising against Spain, and shared his knowledge with the filibusters.  The Long Expedition set out in June of 1819 and, with little opposition, occupied Natchcogdoches.

     Jane Long did not accompany her husband because she was in the advanced stages of her second pregnancy.  Her new baby, Rebecca, was born on June 16, 1819, and two weeks later Jane left for Texas with her daughters and Kian, a slave girl.  After a difficult trip, she arrived in Natchcogdoches in August, only to have to flee in October.  The Spanish army decided to put an end to the foolishness in East Texas and sent a detachment to remove the filibusters from Spanish soil.

    During the ensuing travel, the baby Rebecca died and James Long took Jane, six-year-old Ann, and the twelve-year-old slave girl, Kian, to Bolivar Peninsula, just across the channel from Galveston Island.  Jane wrote of having dinner with Jean Lafitte on Galveston Island, as James tried unsuccessfully to obtain Lafitte’s help against the Spanish.

     After Mexico won its independence from Spain, James Long stubbornly continued his filibustering efforts.  He and Jane made a fund-raising trip to New Orleans and returned to Bolivar.  He left a pregnant Jane there in September of 1821, as he went on a mission to occupy La Bahia at Goliad.  He promised to return in a month and Jane promised to wait for him as long as it might take.  Unknown to Jane, Long was captured and taken to jail in Mexico City.

     Because of dwindling supplies, the other occupants of Bolivar abandoned the settlement, but Jane stubbornly stayed on to wait for her husband.  She and the girls fired a small cannon daily to make hostile Indians believe the fort was still occupied.  Near starvation, the women survived by pure determination, raw courage, and raw oysters.

     On December 21, 1821, Jane gave birth to her third daughter, Mary James. She claimed this to be the first Anglo child born in Texas.  It was bitter cold and the child was born inside an ice-crusted tent, with only Kian and little Ann to help.  The group stayed through the winter, vainly awaiting James’ return.  Twenty-nine-year-old Dr. James Long would not return—he was “accidentally” shot in a Mexico City jail and died on April 8, 1822.

     James Long almost certainly met Jean Lafitte when they both served under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans.  If James William Hayes, the first husband of Margaret Theresa Wright, died of wounds in that battle, Dr. Long may well have treated him.  There is evidence that Jose Felix Trespalacios paid a guard to “accidently” shoot Long in Mexico City.  No motive is suggested, but Long must have possessed embarrassing or compromising information about Trespalacios.  The world was a smaller place, there were fewer people, and politics makes strange bedfellows.

     When Jane learned of her husband’s death, she made her way to San Antonio and applied for a pension to the new Governor.  Guess who?  Long’s old friend, the wily Jose Felix Trespalacios.  After ten unsuccessful months, she gave up and moved back in Louisiana, where she lived with her sister’s family.  In 1824, little Mary James, the Texas baby, died and Jane and her family moved back to Texas.  Jane received a league of land in Fort Bend County and a labor in Waller County from Stephen F. Austin, but chose not to live on the property.   Until 1830 she lived in Sam Felipe, the bustling colonial capital of Texas.

     In 1832, Jane bought a boarding house in Brazoria and operated it for five years.  She claimed romantic connections with several prominent Texans, and these may have happened while she owned the boarding house.  Jane was thirty-eight years old when Texas won its independence, a lady of some means who owned a boarding house and several thousand acres.  That same year, Sam Houston was forty-two, Ben Milam was forty-seven, Mirabeau Lamar was thirty-seven and William Barrett Travis was twenty-six.  She suggested romantic ties with all of them.

     Ben Milam was killed by a sniper in December, 1835, but she knew him before the revolution.  They lived in the same vicinity for several years.  Buck Travis was younger than she, but he was a rounder who kept records of his sexual conquests, and was not the least bit discriminating in his selection of partners.  He and Jane certainly knew each other, and if she was agreeable, Buck would never let a little thing like age difference slow him down.  That union probably didn’t happen, because there is no record of Jane ever having contacted gonorrhea.

     According to Jane, Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar both proposed marriage to her.  No one can prove they didn’t.  Neither would have known her before the revolution, but both were in her vicinity after.   They were such different personalities, and so intensely disliked each other, it is hard to imagine them vying for the same woman.   Perhaps Jane was one source of their mutual distrust.

     Lamar spent a lot of time with Jane, working on his history of Texas book, which he wrote in 1837 while the revolution was fresh in his mind.  Jane, knowing her words were being recorded for posterity, might have embellished her stories with events that she felt should have happened.  She and Lamar might have had a real love affair, or she might have imagined one.   They were the same age, both unattached and lonely, and Jane was wealthy.

     Regardless of her wealth, life had been tough for Jane.  She almost starved during the winter of 1821, while she waited for her husband’s return.  She lost two baby girls before they were three years old.  She operated a boarding house, raised cotton and cattle, ran a prosperous plantation, traded real estate, and owned nineteen slaves at the start of the Civil War.  She did all this when women were considered second class citizens and not allowed to vote.   Frontier Texas was especially hard on women, and Jane didn’t need to embellish her story.  She was a strong-minded, strong-willed woman who lived in a colorful, exciting, and very dangerous time.  

      Kian, the faithful slave girl, had been allowed to marry and stayed with Jane’s family until her death.  She had four children, whose descendents may still live in the Richmond area.

       Jane died at age 82 in 1880 and is buried in Richmond, near the site of the league of land deeded her by Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and, according to Jane, another of her suitors.

Two Little Mothers of Texas

Believe me, you'd rather see a picture of a building than either of these women.

     While doing research on Jane Long, believed to be the “Mother of Texas,” I discovered that Sam Houston, in a speech in 1856 or so, named Margaret Theresa Wright the “Mother of Texas.”  I wondered how could there be two “Mothers of Texas.” 

     Upon further investigation, I learned that Jane Long had designated herself the “Mother of Texas.”  She based this claim on the birth of her daughter at Galveston on December 21, 1821, which Jane decided was the first Anglo child born on Texas soil.  I imagine she repeated the story so often that she got to believing it.  According to the census records between 1807 and 1826, Jane was way down the list of English-speaking mothers in Texas.

     We’ll get back to Jane Long.  For now, understand that almost everything we know about her comes from stories she told Mirabeau Lamar for his book about the history of Texas.  You should not doubt the veracity of this information, anymore than you doubt what I tell you about being a “hell of a man” when I was young.

     Margaret Theresa Wright’s claim to the “Mother of Texas” title stems from her activities during the Texas Revolution, immediately after the Goliad Massacre.  Maggie was an abandoned wife at the time, living alone on a league of land adjacent to the Guadalupe River, about five miles from Victoria.  A few of the Goliad survivors, wounded and hungry, hid in the woods near the river on her property.   A detachment of General Urrea’s Mexican soldiers camped near her house as they searched for the rebels.

     Maggie discovered the survivors and worked out a way to feed them and nurse the wounded back to health, virtually under the nose of the Mexican army.  In a hollow tree, the Texians left notes advising her of their needs, and she carried supplies for them in her buckets as she went back and forth to the river for water.  Punishment for what she was doing was death, and she risked her life daily to help the men.  She even stole a gun from the Mexicans and gave it to the rebels.

     Imagine the scene in the Mexican camp.

     Sergeant Lopez, noticing Private Arreando has no weapon.  “Private, you miserable s.o.b., just exactly where is your piece?”

     “Sir, which piece do you mean, sir?  The private thinks he has all his pieces right here, sir.”

     “You complete idiot!  Privates are not allowed to think.  I’m speaking of your rifle.  Where is your rifle?  You cannot have misplaced it.  That is against army regulations.  Where is it?”

     “Sir, the private don’t know, sir.  The private went in the woods to take a dump and leaned his gun against a mesquite tree.  When the private came back, the gun, she was gone, sir.”

     “All right, Arreando!  That’s it!  You know the drill.  Get out in the middle of the parade ground; hold your rifle out with your left arm, and your male part in your right hand.  Say, ‘This is my rifle, this is my gun.  This is for fighting, this is for fun.’  Keep doing that till Thursday.”

     “Sir, the private don’t have no rifle to hold out, sir.”

      After being abandoned by her husband in 1835, Margaret Wright lived in isolation on a land grant she had obtained as a widow.  She had been married twice previously—James Williams Hays, her first husband died in 1812, and may have been killed in the Battle of New Orleans.  Her second union, a common law affair, was with Felix Trudeau, the commander of the garrison at Natchitoches, Louisiana.  Trudeau died in 1822 and soon after, Margaret moved to Texas with her five children. 

     She applied as a widow for a league of land in the De Leon Colony near Victoria, and married John David Wright in 1828, before the final title to the land was granted.  She and Wright had two daughters, but the marriage was unhappy and he stayed gone much of the time.  He abandoned her in 1835 and moved to the Rio Grande valley and lived for seven years in Mexico to escape prosecution for bad debts.

     In 1842, Maggie’s errant husband returned to take over her ranch.  Wright was, in today’s jargon, a real piece of work.  He had secretly obtained title to her land grant before he left for Mexico.  Wright discovered, in his absence Maggie had purchased an additional half league of land and deeded six hundred forty acres of it to her son, Peter Hays. Wright was furious and filed suit to reclaim the property, even though he had never owned it.  He lost the suit and he lost the first appeal.

     Before the second appeal was heard, in 1847, Maggie’s son, Peter Hays, was killed in an ambush.  Margaret was convinced that her husband did it.  She filed for divorce on March 6, 1848, charging Wright with habitual cruelty, fraudulent land transfer, and the murder of her son.  Divorces were hard to come by back then, but after a bitter court battle and three appeals to the Texas Supreme Court, Margaret was granted a divorce and awarded half of the joint property, over 5,500 acres and almost 600 head of cattle.

     Margaret Theresa Robertson Hays Trudeau Wright may deserve the title, “Mother of Texas.”  Sam Houston bestowed the name on her in a campaign speech in Victoria as he ran for Governor.  She was probably the first female in Texas to register a cattle brand, the C T, which she registered with the Republic of Texas in 1838.  She risked her life to help Texas soldiers during the revolution.  In 1848, she was granted what may have been the first divorce in the new state of Texas.  She was a courageous Texas pioneer and patriot, a long suffering wife, and the mother of seven children.  She died at age 89 in Victoria on October 21, 1878. 

You may pretend Nicole is either Maggie or Jane.  Ain't she cool?

      We will examine Jane Long’s claim in the next post.

Panchita--Angel of Goliad--Conclusion

Present day view from a cannon port at the La Bahia Presideo near Goliad.

     General Urrea was away in Victoria when Santa Anna’s orders to execute the prisoners at Goliad were carried out by Colonel Portillo on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836.  A young German boy, Herman Ehrenberg, managed to escape the massacre by running behind the thick smoke caused by the executioner’s muskets and diving into the San Antonio River.  He had been shot at, slashed with a saber, splattered with the blood of his comrades, and shot at again, but he escaped into the river and the wilderness beyond.  About thirty other prisoners managed to escape the slaughter.

     Three weeks later, sunburned, disoriented, thirsty, and half starved, Ehrenberg stumbled into a Mexican patrol and was recaptured near Matagorda.  General Urrea recognized the young German in a group of captives, and was delighted to see he had survived.  The general laughed, “…my little Prussian!”  Herman Ehrenberg lived a long and prosperous life and his writings give us much insight into the massacre at Goliad and the disastrous Runaway Scrape that followed.

     Panchita was travelling with Captain Alavez as General Urrea’s troops headed east, finding little resistance.  Most American settlers abandoned their homesteads and were dashing for the safety of Louisiana in what was called the “Runaway Scrape.” The settlers who remained were Mexican sympathizers and welcomed the troops, telling them of rebel movements, feeding and watering their horses, and wishing them well. 

     When word of the defeat and capture of Santa Anna reached General Urrea, he vowed to continue the fight.  The Mexicans had over 2500 seasoned troops in Texas and Urrea had not met a single defeat at the hands of the Texians.  He knew it would be a simple matter to conquer Houston’s rag-tag little army.  He was ambitious, had no respect or affection for Santa Anna, and saw the opportunity to further his career.  General Filasola, an Italian mercenary hand-picked by Santa Anna as second in command, overruled the young General.  He issued orders for complete withdrawal, thereby saving the life of Santa Anna and ceding Texas to the rebels.

     After the withdrawal, Captain Alavez was sent back to Mexico City, where he quickly abandoned the intelligent, beautiful, and strong-willed Panchita.   This should come as no surprise--Panchita had amply demonstrated that she was not good for his military career.  As fantastic as she may have been in bed, she was too idealistic, too moralistic, too headstrong, and too out-spoken to be accepted as an officer’s wife.  Telesforo, very ambitious, eventually worked his way to the rank of Colonel.

     Women, then and now, tend to seek out attractive, worldly men who have much experience in affairs of the heart.  The more charming, handsome, experienced, and desirable to other women, the better.  Once they discover such a man, they latch on to him and settle down expecting to live happily ever after.   When their man continues his normal behavior and starts screwing the neighbor ladies, they are surprised and devastated.  Telesforo found a new playmate and dumped Panchita exactly as he had dumped Augustina and his two children.  Someone else was scratching that little place behind his ear.  Same place—same results--different toe. 

     Panchita, destitute, made her way back to Matamoros and was taken in by families who knew of her kindnesses to the prisoners.  She disappeared from history at this point and, for a time, no one knew what became of her.

     In 1936, Elena Zamora O’Shea wrote of her experiences while teaching school on the Santa Gertrudis Division of the King Ranch, during 1902 and 1903.  After class, two older Kineros came to visit with her once a week.  She read to them from Mexican newspapers and told them of the Texas history classwork her students were doing.  When she mentioned the Goliad massacre, they became very excited and asked questions about ”the Angel of Goliad.”

     One of the Kineros was Matias Alverez, who said he was the son of Telesforo and Panchita.  He took the teacher to meet his mother, Dona Panchita, the Angel of Goliad, who was then bed-ridden in her nineties.  According to O’Shea, “she died on the King Ranch and is buried there in an unmarked grave….Old Captain King and Mrs. King knew and respected her identity.”

     Matias Alverez, the son of Panchita, had eight children, among them a daughter named Rita who married a man named Quintanilla.  Their daughter, Tomasa Alvarez Quintanilla, married Lauro Cavasos, who would become the foreman of the Santa Gertrudis Division of the ranch.

     Tomasa and Lauro Cavasos’ son, Bobby, was an All-American running back for Texas Tech, a Kleberg County Commissioner, and foreman of the Laureles Division of the King Ranch.  His brother, Richard E. Cavasos, was the first Hispanic to become a Four Star General in the U.S. Army, and another brother, Dr. Lauro Cavasos, was president of Texas Tech University and Secretary of Education under Presidents Reagan and Bush.  Dr. Cavasos was the first Hispanic to serve in the U.S. Cabinet.

     There is little doubt that these are descendents of Panchita, but she was not pregnant when she returned, alone and penniless, to Matamoros.  If Telesforo was the father of this clan, as Matias claimed, then he must have returned and re-united with Francisca.   While there is no record of a wedding,  he may have visited often enough to have impregnated her between assignments in the army.  On the other hand, Panchita may have married a man named Alvarez at some later date and he may have sired Matias and his brother Guadalupe.  That could explain the change of name from Alavez to Alvarez.

     The story is fascinating.  All three of the Cavasos’ brothers spent some of their formative years in Lubbock, attending Texas Tech and absorbing the atmosphere of the High Plains.  I cannot help but wonder—was it Panchita’s genes or the clear atmosphere and fresh air of the Panhandle?  Perhaps the combination of the two.    

A Series on the Women of Texas--Francisca Panchita Alavez--The Angel of Goliad

The Presidio at Goliad.  Walls three feet thick and ten feet high.  Fannin abandoned this fortress and allowed his troops to be trapped on the open plains at Coleto Creek.

     

  If Santa Ana had stayed in Mexico and sent the very competent General Jose de Urrea to Texas with orders to “bring me the heads of Sam Houston and Stephen Austin,” the Texas Revolution would have stalled in its tracks. The skulls of Houston and Austin would be artifacts in a museum somewhere in Mexico City, probably next to the Texian flag taken from the Alamo.  The “Napoleon of the West” however, had far too much ego for such foolishness, and was determined to gain the glory involved in quashing the rebellion, no matter how many peons he had to sacrifice.

     To keep General Urrea out of the limelight, Santa Ana sent him and 1200 men to Matamoros, with orders to move into coastal Texas and clean up any pockets of resistance.  The emperor, in the meantime, would lead the bulk of his army to center stage at San Antonio and take out the twenty-six year old, gonorrhea-ridden Buck Travis and his garrison at the Alamo.  Santa Ana’s intention was to put all rebels to the sword—take no prisoners and give no quarter.  General Urrea, a much better soldier, disagreed and considered executing prisoners a blueprint for disaster.

     Telesforo Alavez, a young captain, was paymaster for General Urrea.  Alavez had enlisted in the Mexican Army as a private when he was eighteen years old and, by age thirty-three, had worked his way up through the ranks to captain.  Anyone with military experience knows this guy was special.  Moving through the ranks from enlisted man to commissioned officer requires intelligence, ability, ambition, tact, polish, and good luck.  Captain Alavez was devilishly handsome, immaculately dressed, and very charming.  Women loved him.

     The young captain was married.  His wife, Maria Augustina de Pozo, lived in Toluca with their two children.  In 1834, Telesforo abandoned this family and continued his career in the military, eventually going off to Texas to fight the rebels.  Documents show Augustina tried unsuccessfully for years to get some sort of pension from the army.  She and the children were penniless and starving.

   Free of family responsibilities, Captain Alavez still required that precious commodity only a warm and willing woman can provide. The Mexican army allowed some officers to bring travelling companions, and he was accompanied to Texas by a black-eyed beauty named Francisca, who was assumed to be his wife.  Francisca (Panchita) Alavez generated a lot of attention.  For starters, she was knockout good-looking.  According to those who wrote about her at the time, she was “a high-born, black-eyed beauty.”  Barely twenty years old, she was idealistic, moralistic, and had the kind of beauty that caused lonely soldiers to lie awake at night and bite tent pegs in two.

      Accounts of a high-born woman rescuing Texian prisoners from certain death during the march of General Urrea’s forces are well documented.   From military records following Captain Alavez’s movements, we can surmise that Panchita was most likely that woman.  She was called “Senora Alavez” by one survivor; “Madame Captain Alverez” by another; “Pacheta Alevesco, wife of Captain A.” by yet another.  Some referred to her simply as the “wife of a Mexican officer.”

     General Urrea’s forces fought and won skirmishes at Copano, San Patricio, Agua Dulce, Refugio, and Victoria before capturing the inept Col. Fannin’s entire command at the battle of Coleto Creek.  With the exception of Coleto Creek, Panchita Alavez  was present at all these locations and was almost certainly the lady who intervened on behalf of the prisoners. 

     In Victoria, she and a priest stood between the firing squad and a group of Texians, telling the Mexican officer in charge that he would have to shoot her first to shoot the prisoners. The prisoners were spared.  She was instrumental in having prisoners relocated to Matamoros before they could be executed.  Later, she saved more than forty condemned men at Goliad, then proceeded to harangue Colonel Portillo unmercifully as he marched almost four hundred prisoners to their doom.

     Imagine the scene in Captain Alavez’s tent that night.

     “Francisca, you must cease to interfere with army business.  We must follow the orders of Generalissimo Santa Ana and execute all prisoners.   I will not allow you to interfere again.”

     “You only call me Francisca when you are angry.  Oh Tele, I wish you would call me your little Panchita.  I would be nice to you if you called me Panchita.”

      “Pay attention to me!  You should not have called Col. Portillo a ‘scum-sucking dog.’  He is my superior officer and can make life miserable for me.”

     “I would make life very nice for you if you called me your little Panchita.”

     “You cannot continue to—how nice?”

     “Very, very nice.  How would you like that little place behind your ear scratched?   You know what I mean.  I'll scratch it with my toe”

     “Ooh—my little Panchita—you know what I like.  Just one thing.  Can we hold down the noise tonight?  The quartermaster tells me the army is running out of tent pegs.”

     To be continued.....

Fannin's last request, "Boys, I'd appreciate it if you would not shoot me in the head," was ignored.  He was shot several times in the head  while he sat blindfolded in a chair in this courtyard.  I expect the WPA added the sidewalks and grass about a hundred years later.

          

     

    

    

Carol McLaughlin Hardin March 4, 1940--November 30, 2012

     I had intended to start a series on Texas women with this post.  My plan was to start with Panchita Alavez and work my way through several interesting women—many of them were not exactly ladies—involved in the history of this great state.  The sudden death of my sister changed my plan.  I will start the series with a bit about her and continue later with more well-known people.

     My sister was four years younger than I, so I knew her all her life.  I watched her grow up—she was Carol Ann then—we all change identities as we grow older, and she was no exception.  She was a slender girl, a bit of a tomboy with dark hair, freckles, and brown eyes.  Carol Ann was vivacious and quick to laugh.  She was the baby of the family and grew up in the shadow of two over-protective brothers.

     By the time Carol Ann entered high school there wasn’t a lot of tomboy left.  She’d become a beautiful young lady, with a tiny waist and lovely curves.  My brother Jerry and I knew she needed a lot more protection than she wanted.  Carol Ann was strong-willed, stubborn, and determined to do things her way, which gave us even more reason to “protect” her.  We managed to survive that time, and, while in college, she brought home a young fellow from Central Texas named Mel Hardin.  Jerry and I were pleased.  Mel was more nearly acceptable than most of the other dudes she’d gone out with.

     I don’t remember most calendar dates, but I can tell you where I was on April 2, 1961.  I was at Mountain Home, Texas, watching Mel and Carol Ann become Mr. and Mrs. Hardin.  After that, I didn’t get to see my sister as often as I would have liked.  She had become Carol Hardin, young housewife.

     A year or so later, Jerry and I drove down to visit our little sister.  She and Mel lived in a tiny house on Elm Pass Road, near Bandera.  Mel worked on a dairy farm, getting up and milking cows at 3:00 AM every day and Carol Ann, eight months pregnant, fixed his breakfast.  I remember her shortness of breath as she worked around that gigantic stomach, bending over to take biscuits out of the oven.  What had become of my curvaceous little sister?

     Not long after the baby was born, Mel surrendered to preach and he and his little family started a series of moves.  He went from church to church and school to school.  Pastor Mel continued his education as they moved and Carol had two more babies.  During the next several years, they moved all over Texas; Three Rivers, Woodsboro, Blooming Grove, Canyon, Dalhart, and finally Roswell, New Mexico.  Our visits became less frequent when they moved to California, but we loved them no less and kept in touch.

     Carol had now become Carol Hardin, pastor’s wife, doing the things expected of someone in her position.  She cooked for various affairs of the church, helped with Sunday school and the nursery, and generally did whatever needed doing to help Mel with his ministry and his schooling.  As time passed, she developed the idenity that would become known as “Hardy” to her friends, her pupils and her grandchildren.  Hardy was a cross between a mother hen and a drill instructor.  It was a routine matter for her to plan, organize, and cook a meal for a hundred people.

     I got to know Hardy when she and Dr. Hardin returned to the Hill Country.  Her children have children of their own, and she and Mel moved here to be near them and to slow down and enjoy life.  Hardy continued her life-long role, supporting her husband.  She nurtured her children and grandchildren, entertained deacons, cooked meals that would make a chef jealous, and lived as she always had, in the center of her kitchen, her family, and her church.  Last year, in April, we went back to that little chapel in Mountain Home to celebrate Carol and Mel’s fiftieth wedding anniversary.  

      For other people, she has been Carol Ann, and Carol Hardin, and Hardy, and wife, and mother, and aunt, and teacher.   For me, she was not any of those people.  She will always be my little sister—the baby of the family.

    

It is a well-known fact.....

      I was going to tell you what I believe is a well-known fact when I realized that particular fact may not be so well known.  It may not even be a fact.  It may only be a figment of my imagination which I assumed was fact, or it may be a mistaken belief of mine that I have accepted as fact.  Some people may believe it and some may know it for a fact, but many others will doubt it, and look askance at me when I state it as a well-known fact.

     I like to read history, any history, but especially Texas history.  If you think history is a collection of facts, I have news for you.  History is a collection of stories.  Some are true, some are partially true, some are based on fact, and a lot are simply the product of a historian’s imagination, based solely on how the historian would like it to have been.

     Some of these “historians” have a viewpoint, an agenda, which they can’t keep out of their writings.  Their stories are constructed to conceal parts of history that they’d rather not talk about.  A good example of this is the treatment of American Indians in our history books.  My history books led me to believe that the U.S. Government treated the Indians humanely, like missionaries dealing with orphan children. 

      I hesitate to use the word “fact” here, but there is documented proof our government lied, stole, cheated, starved, separated, killed and otherwise decimated the tribes who occupied this country because we wanted their land.  This treatment began with the purchase of Manhattan Island for $24.00 worth of beads and systematically worked its way west as the country was settled.  Treaties were broken almost as soon as they were signed and were always broken first by the white man.

     Another crop of “historians” tell the same story from the Indian’s point of view.   According to these folks, the brave, noble Indians were tip-toeing through the tulips, peacefully smelling the roses and hunting buffalo with bows and arrows when the mean old U.S. Calvary came along and attacked with Gatling Guns.  Untold numbers of innocent, simple, child like beings were victims of officially sanctioned genocide, mainly because they were in the way, but also because they were of a different color and culture.  It was easier, and cheaper, to put the Indians on a reservation and starve them to death than it was to spend the time and effort to educate and assimilate them into our society.

     Did we, as a nation, with malice aforethought, set about to eradicate or enslave the native people on this continent?  Absolutely, and so did Spain in Central and South America, France in Indo-China, the Soviet Union inside its own borders, and England in an empire where the sun never set.  Are these well known facts?  Perhaps, but they were not stressed in my history books.

      Were the Comanche sweet, innocent red men, living in teepees on the High Plains, following the buffalo and minding their own business? Absolutely not.  Reams of documents plainly show the Comanche were the meanest sum-bitches in the valley, no matter which valley we choose.  All by themselves, they kept the white man out of the high plains for over four hundred years.  Their culture was such that all their captives suffered unspeakable torture and without fail, every female captive was raped.  Are these well-known facts?  I don’t remember them from my history classes.

     Enough of history—I intended to do a piece about outstanding women in Texas.   I have already done something on Emily Morgan and the two Electra Waggonners, but I have not even scratched the surface of this richly diverse subject.  Dozens of  intelligent, captivating, intriguing ladies enrich the history of Texas, starting with Panchita Alavez, the fallen Angel of Goliad, and Jane Long, who claimed she was seriously courted by Sam Houston, Mirabeau Lamar, and Ben Milam. 

      Moving on through the years, we have our first woman governor, Miriam (Ma) Ferguson, who was the twenty-ninth and also the thirty-second governor of Texas.  Bonnie Parker was notorious, and she was a Texas gal.  The impossibly sweet-looking and perfectly formed Candy Barr came from Edna, near Victoria.  We can’t skip Ann Richards, Cyd Charise, Janis Joplin, or Farah Fawcett.  Glenna Goodacre grew up in Lubbock.  Who could overlook Molly Ivins?  She was born in California, but grew up in River Oaks in Houston.  Though I disagreed with most everything she said, I could not wait to see how she was going to say it.

     That’s why people look askance at me—sitting here at this electric machine wondering about the difference between fact and fiction in our history books.  I had planned to start the Texas Women piece by saying, “It is a well-known fact that one writer’s courageous, strong-willed, independent woman is another’s uppity broad,” and I got mired in the idea of whether or not that statement was factual, generally accepted, or even true.  Either way, it sure is a catchy phrase.  I’ll find somewhere to use it.

Lubbock Boy's New Used Car

The man said I was real lucky I didn't have a car like this.

     I quit buying new cars a long time ago, about the same time I quit being rich.  Not that I have anything against new cars, I just hate to suffer the depreciation that occurs the first time I drive a new car around the block.  When a new car cost $4000.00, I could drive it around the block for about a thousand dollars, which was bad, but not prohibitive, especially when you consider the admiring looks from your neighbors.  At least I imagined I got admiring looks from my neighbors, and perhaps even some envy from the horse’s butt down on the corner.

     Incidentally, I didn’t quit being rich on purpose.  That happened due to circumstances beyond my control, but it happened, none-the-less.  So, with new cars costing over thirty thousand dollars and the first drive around the block running up around eight thousand, and not being rich anymore, and getting a bit long of tooth, I decided a new car was a luxury I could no longer afford.  Those long, admiring looks from the neighbor ladies and the blatant envy from the horse’s butt on the corner get to be less important as your teeth begin to get longer, and your hair ceases to grow.

     A friend observed that a young man wants everything to be stylish—his car, his clothing, his significant other, everything.  As he grows older, style becomes less important, and familiarity and comfort take on added significance.  Comfort really gets to be important, and, the way memory comes and goes, familiarity is necessary. 

     With a new car, it is no fun to hunt around for the windshield wiper switch while driving thirty-five miles per hour in a sudden downpour.  When feeling around for that switch, I always manage to turn on the blinkers, move the side mirrors, open the tailgate, and set the cruise control.  Stopping the car to locate the switch in relative safety is cheating.  The rules are that I must continue blindly down the street at thirty-five miles per hour and seek the proper control by touch only.  Slowing down or looking away from the road is not allowed, even when, without the wipers, the road is completely obscured by a driving rainstorm, and I couldn’t see a duck perched on the hood ornament.

     All this comes to mind because I recently purchased a “new” car.  I really didn’t intend to buy a “new” car; I was forced into the decision by a sweet old lady, a retired school teacher.  She was from Boerne, late for a dental appointment, and not familiar with our little city, so she was a bit late making a turn.  She turned left from the right lane, across her left lane, across her turn lane, and across my lane in the opposite direction.  She was very sorry my car was totaled, but I needed to understand that if she missed her dentist’s street, she might never find it again and would be late for her appointment.

     My “new” car is a 2004 Buick Rendezvous with all the latest electronic bells and whistles.  Really fancy stuff to a man with long teeth—stuff I haven’t had before and wonder how I lived without.  The vehicle has little sensors to tell me to change the oil, air up the tires, shut the doors, and fill up the gas tank.  All this information is passed on by a little sign in the middle of the dashboard.  It blinks, and if I ignore it, it dings or bongs.

     I have never been a fan of Ralph Nader.  I think he’s mostly to blame for the overabundance of “safety features” on our automobiles.  He is the one who took the responsibility for safely operating and maintaining a vehicle out of the hands of the driver and put it squarely in the lap of the manufacturer.  In so doing, he also helped push the cost of our vehicles out of sight. 

     I’ve always known that if I drive eighty miles per hour down the highway in a car without oil in the crankcase, I will burn up the motor.  After a few lawsuits by Ralph Nader, if I run eighty down the highway without oil in the crankcase, lights will flash, bells will ring, and buzzers will buzz.  If I don’t heed these warnings, the computer will turn off the motor, park the car on the side of the road, and North Star will give a tow truck my grid coordinates.  While I’m waiting, a sexy- voiced Australian beauty will softly ask what she can do to help.

     Last week, my car's early warning system suddenly came alive with a blinking light announcing “low tire pressure, low tire pressure.”  I pulled off the road at the first available station to fix the problem, thinking how great this “new” car was to give me warning before I damaged a tire or lowered my gas mileage. 

     The station had an air hose that I could use for seventy five cents, quarters only, but no tire gage at the hose.  I went inside and paid $4.00 for what appeared to be a disposable tire gauge from China and took my change in quarters.  I went back to the car and took all the caps off the tire valves, so I wouldn’t run out of time on the air compressor before I had a chance to fill all the tires.  I put in my seventy five cents and went to work.

     The first tire was full of air—thirty-five pounds exactly.   I hurriedly went to the back tire on that side and found the same situation.  Working quickly, I backtracked around the front of the car to the other side because the hose was too short to reach all the way around the car.  No air needed.  The back tire on that side was the same—all four tires were full of air—thirty five pounds each.  The compressor quit working, but that was all right.  I had spent seventy five cents to discover I didn’t need any air.  I went around the car to replace the little caps on the valves and was happy that I only lost one of them.

     One of the fringe benefits to always driving used cars is the number and variety of mechanics you get to know.  Typically, I run thru about six or seven of them before I catch one that I think is almost intelligent and semi-trustworthy.  He becomes my mechanic of last resort.  I carried the car to him, with the “low tire pressure” warning light flashing. 

     “No problem,” he says, after plugging his computer into my car's computer and letting them discuss the matter. “Bad sensor.  Sensors only cost about eighteen dollars each.”

     “Which tire?”  I ask.

     “Can’t tell.  The computer doesn’t give that information—only lets you know that one of the sensors is bad.”

     “Can you just turn off the light and I’ll check my own tire pressure?  I have a brand new $4.00 tire gauge.”

     “Oh, no.  Computer won’t allow us to do that.  All systems must check out on line.”

     Inside each tire, up against the steel rim, there is a little pressure sensor that works like a radio transmitter.  It continually transmits information to the on-board computer.  Evidently, not much information, just low tire pressure, but not which tire.  If the sensor goes bad, a tire man will replace it for about fifteen dollars, plus the cost of the sensor.  Sensors range from eighteen to forty-eight dollars each, depending on make and model.

     My tire man says, “We can’t tell which one is bad.  Simplest thing is replace all of them.  I suppose we could remove them one at a time and re-test until we got the right one, but that would require a lot of labor, and labor is real high these days.”

     “How much will the sensors on my car cost?”  That seems to me to be a simple and reasonable request, so I should get a straightforward answer.

     “We won’t know until we pull off a wheel, demount the tire, and remove the sensor.  I expect yours are pretty high end, but you’re lucky you don’t have a Mercedes.  Their tire sensors cost two hundred bucks each.”  I’m lucky I don’t have a Mercedes?

     I decided to live with the “low tire pressure” light and the occasional beep that goes with it.  Last week, one of my grandchildren failed to properly shut the passenger door, and a “door ajar” light started alternating with the “low tire pressure” light.  A ding started to alternate with the beep.  I stopped, got out, and closed the door.  The "door ajar" light went out.

     When the gas tank gets down to one quarter full, the “low fuel” light comes on, and alternates with the “low tire pressure” light, and a beep alternates with a ding.  When this happened last Tuesday, I stopped the car, got out and opened the back passenger door and didn’t close it properly.  I went around back and did the same thing with the rear lift gate.  I just barely engaged the emergency brake, and put on the hazard lights.

    I got back into the car, set the GPS for Junction, and went to pick up my granddaughter from dance class in Comfort.  The dashboard went crazy.  "Low tire pressure," "low fuel," "door ajar," "lift gate ajar," "hazard lights engaged," and "check brake system" lights flashed intermittently, and vied for attention.  Bongs, alternating with beeps, boings and dings created a regular symphony of computer music, accompanied by a sexy Australian cutie who kept urging me to make a u-turn at the next intersection.

     Screw you, Ralph Nader.

Nothing wrong here that a little TLC won't fix.

    

Art in Lubbock is not an Oxymoron Another of the Women In Texas Series

 "Riding into the Sunset" near the grave of Will Rogers in Claremore, Oklahoma

     In Lubbock, on the campus at Texas Tech, there is a life-size statue of Will Rogers mounted on his favorite horse, Soapsuds.  The statue was commissioned by Amon G. Carter, the Fort Worth philanthropist, and is named “Riding into the Sunset.”  Carter was a close friend of Will Rogers, and commissioned the statue in 1936, shortly after Rogers and Wiley Post died in a plane crash in Alaska.  The first casting was delivered to Fort Worth in 1940 and installed in front of the Will Rogers Coliseum.  For reasons unknown to me, but probably having to do with WWII, the statue was not uncrated or dedicated until 1947.

     The second casting, the one on the Tech Campus, was donated by Carter to Texas Tech, and dedicated in 1950.  I remember hearing about it and riding out to the campus on my bicycle to see this wonderful thing.  I examined it carefully and was impressed, but a friend who rode out with me, Carlton Huneke, didn’t think much about it--just a guy on a horse.

     The Statue faced due west, to simulate Will riding into the sunset.  Later, because an anal Lubbockite noticed the horse’s butt faced downtown Lubbock, the statue was turned 23 degrees south of east.  Legend has it that the horse’s butt then faced Texas A & M, but that was disproven by a group of students studying to become surveyors.  Whether by design or accident, the line through Soapsuds’ butt falls midway between Texas A & M and the University of Texas, and, by extension, passes near the campus of the University of Houston.  I can’t say exactly why catching all three of them with one horse’s butt warms my old Lubbock heart, but it does.

     A total of four castings of this work are known to have been made.  In addition to the two mentioned above, one is located at Will’s gravesite at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma, and I read somewhere the fourth is in Dallas, at the Anatole Hotel.

Will in the bushes at the Colesieum in Fort Worth

     This sculpture, 9 feet 11 inches tall and weighing over 3500 pounds, was done by slip of a girl, 24 year-old Electra Waggoner.   Amon Carter, a family friend, ordered the work when she was 20, and she delivered it four years later.  During the next several years, she became the most sought after sculptress in the country.  She did busts of many famous people of the time, including Knute Rockne, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and several Hollywood stars.  She was young, fresh, beautiful, talented, and very, very wealthy.

     Electra was born in Fort Worth in 1912 and spent her early years on the Waggoner Ranch, near Vernon.  She entered Bryn Mawr at the age of twelve, and later studied business law and accounting at Columbia University in New York City.  She discovered a love of art, found she was very good at sculpture, and attended art schools in New York City, Boston, and Europe.  Electra married John Biggs in 1942, and he became manager of the Waggoner Estate and ranch.  John applied himself to his work and was considered by many to have been the best ranch manager in the business.  He introduced the concept of herding cattle by helicopter that is still used on the Waggoner Ranch today.

     Electra's beauty was legendary.  In 1959, the chairman of Buick Motor Division, ‘Red’ Curtice, named the luxurious Buick “Electra” after her, and I read that Lockheed Aircraft Company named their new turbo-prop airliner after her.   (I also read that the Lockheed Electra 10B, an earlier model which Amelia Earhart flew, was named after a star in the Seven Sisters Constellation.   I expect that is nearer the truth.)  I know the play, Morning Becomes Electra, was written by Eugene O’Neil in 1935 and based on Greek Mythology.  It had nothing whatever to do with Electra Waggoner Biggs. 

     Because there were two Electra Waggoners and I want to tell something about each of them, a bit of clarification is needed.  Electra Waggoner Biggs, the sculptress, (Electra II) was named after her aunt, Electra Waggoner Wharton, the playgirl, (Electra I).  Electra I was born in 1882 and was named after her mother’s father, Electious Halsell.  She was the only daughter and favorite child of W.T. Waggoner, and grew up to become a head-strong, vivacious, spoiled, and beautiful girl--a regular “stem-winder.”  Electra I travelled the world, especially the Far East, and met her future husband in the Himalaya Mountains.  He was Albert Buckman Wharton, heir to a steel fortune and son of the man who founded the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

     Bucky and Electra I married in 1902, and had two children, Tom Waggoner Wharton, who died at an early age, and Albert Buckman Wharton, II.   Albert II and Electra II would eventually become sole heirs to the Waggoner Ranch and all the assets involved.  Will Rogers once said that each of the thousands of cattle on the Waggoner Ranch had sixty acres and an oil well of its own.  The ranch was over thirty miles long and twenty-five miles wide, and is still the largest ranch inside a single fence in the country.  The first oil wells on the ranch were centered near the small town of Electra, named after Tom Waggoner’s feisty daughter.

     Electra I is my favorite—bigger than life, spoiled rotten, flamboyant, beautiful, and unbelievably wealthy--everything it takes to become a legend in Texas.  In 1921, she divorced her husband, Bucky Wharton, and began to have too much fun.  She built a mansion in Dallas at 4700 Preston Road which backed up to Turtle Creek.   It became “Party Central” for the movers and shakers of the twenties.  She made annual trips around the world and bought a home in Hong Kong, to have a place to stay when she visited.   During a trip to Japan, she had a butterfly tattooed scandalously high on her shapely leg.  Girls just didn’t do that in the twenties.

     Electra I’s long standing relationship with Neiman Marcus is well documented.  According to legend, Electra I made her first visit to Neiman's barefoot and wearing a house dress.  The clerks ignored her until she plunked down $20,000.00 and asked to see some clothing.  She went back the next day and spent $20,000.00 more on shoes, purses, and accessories.  Electra set records for single-day-spending at Neiman’s, then promptly broke those records.  Once, during a party at the ranch, a new oil well blew in and soaked her guests with crude oil.  She loaded them up, bussed them to Neimans, and bought new outfits for the whole group.  She was a hard act to follow.

     Electra I died in New York City in 1925, at age 43.  By this time, Electra II had entered finishing school at Bryn Mawr.  Electra I had three ex-husbands, but only one surviving child, A. B. Wharton, II.  Electra I and Electra II’s heirs eventually owned the entire Waggoner Estate. 

      As things happen when a lot of ego and a lot of money are involved, the two families disagreed.  Animosity started in the sixties; lawsuits started in 1991, and unless I’ve missed a judgment or settlement, continue today.  Electra II died in 2001, in Vernon, Texas.  Her daughters and Electra I’s grandson, along with dozens of distant relatives and minor claimants, are deeply involved in a series of lawsuits that no one will ever win.



Electra Waggoner Biggs with her statue, "Riding into the Sunset".  The Texas Tech Administration Building is in the background. This picture was probably taken at the dedication in1950, when she was thirty-eight.



Melted Motorsickle

Yankee gunboats shell the city during the Seige of Vicksburg

                     

     Vicksburg, Mississippi, is not the prettiest town I’ve seen, but it is nice.  The way to see Vicksburg at its best is from the rooftop of the Cedar Grove Mansion at sunset.   Bar service is not available up there, but a few wrought iron tables with chairs are scattered about, and the bartender encourages guests to negotiate the steep, narrow stairway to the roof deck and watch the sun set.  Climbing that stair carrying an icy cold, straight-up Martini is daunting, but well worth the effort.

     Hugh and I timed our road trip to take advantage of this event.  We left Kerrville on our motorcycles at six am, rode diagonally across Texas on Hwy 79, picked up I-20 just outside Shreveport, and pulled up in front of the Beauregard House B&B in Vicksburg eleven hours, ten minutes and 619 miles later.  We checked in, briefly met the weird Beauregard family, hurriedly showered and dressed, and called a cab for the short ride to the Cedar Grove Mansion.  Neither of us is comfortable riding after dark and we flatly refuse to ride if we’ve been drinking.

     The sunset was spectacular.  A wet, foggy haze covered the wooded swamp that is Louisiana, and the waning sun bathed the whole scene with an iridescent golden glow.  The light glinted off girders on twin bridges which span the Mississippi River in the foreground, and the distant forest obscured the featureless plains behind a green/black veil of live oak and Spanish moss.  The warm, humid air was softly perfumed by magnolia blossoms.  Hugh and I, still high on adrenalin, discussed the first day of our ride.

     “What a great ride. Was that super, or what?  This is about as good a day as I can remember.”  Hugh said.  We clinked glasses and took our first sip, a ritual we have performed countless times before in countless other places.  

    “Damn, that Honda will run.  I had trouble keeping up.” Hugh said.  “How fast were you going when you passed those eighteen-wheelers outside Buffalo?”

     “Something over a hundred.  I didn’t mean to go that fast, but I passed the first truck and still had plenty of room, so I fogged it and passed the second, then I just cranked on down and went around the third one.  After I let off the throttle and got back in the right lane,  I glanced down at the speedometer and it was dropping down past 105.  I’d been afraid to take my eyes off the road before that.

     “You know, Hugh, this town has lots of history.  These people really suffered in the Civil War.  Grant surrounded the city and choked off all supplies—food, munitions, whatever.  Yankee gunboats shelled the city from the river and the people dug caves and lived in them for protection.  Most of the houses were destroyed.  The people starved.  Toward the end, they ate boiled shoe leather.  Pemberton finally surrendered on the fourth of July, 1863.”

     “You always learn about history, wherever we go.  Did you see those cannon balls in the dining room downstairs?”  Hugh asked.

     “One stuck in the floor and one in the wall.  They left them there so no one would forget.   The people here in Vicksburg haven’t forgotten.  They refused to celebrate the Fourth of July for almost a hundred years.  Ignored it completely.  Finally, in 1956, President Eisenhower asked them, as a personal favor, to at least recognize the national Independence Day.  They acknowledge it now, but I don’t think  they celebrate it.”

     “Enough history lessons.  What do you think about our boy, Jeffy, back at the B&B?  I’m not sure Jeffy is all here.” Jeffy was the only child of the owners of the Beauregard House, where we were staying.  He did odd jobs and cleaned the rooms, but his main occupation seemed to be timing the bread machine so the house specialty, date/nut bread, would be done in time for breakfast.

     I laughed.  “You noticed ole Jeffy too, huh? What would you expect?  The whole family is nuttier than that bread they make.  The daddy’s name is Jeb Stuart Beauregard, the mother is Miss Melanie, after a Gone with the Wind character, and they met at Ole Miss.  They named the poor kid ‘Jefferson Davis Beauregard,’ and she calls him ‘Jeffy.’  They’re all nuts.”

     “I don’t think it is all hereditary.  I believe that boy had some chemical assistance.  Did you see his eyes when he talked about the motorcycle melting?”

      Jefferson Davis Beauregard was about five-nine and shaped more like a bratwurst than a twenty-eight year old man.  His abundant dark, curly hair topped a head that seemed over-inflated.  His features were soft and rounded and his skin tone was smooth and uniformly pale, like the German sausages they sell in Fredericksburg.  He wore a plaid flannel shirt and rolled-up Penney’s Towncraft jeans, with Boy Scout moccasins.  No young man would choose to dress that way.  It was obvious his mother bought his clothing.

      Earlier that evening, as Hugh and I waited at the Beauregard House for our cab, Jeffy admired our motorcycles, parked under the porte-cochere.  “I had a motorsickle once, but it melted,” he said.  “It was a real wide motorsickle--a Harley-Davidson motorsickle.  Real wide.  Rode it all over everywhere--rode it to California on my way to Michigan once.  Didn’t tell nobody.”   Jeffy glanced warily back toward the house.  It was obvious “nobody” meant his parents.

     “Was it a Wide-Glide?”  Hugh rode a state-of-the-art Harley Convertible Soft Tail, with all the chrome bells and whistles, and could talk Harleys with anyone.  I rode a more sensible and more powerful Honda 1200 Gold Wing.  “What do you mean, it melted?” Hugh continued. “The whole motorcycle just melted?”

      “That’s it.  That’s what it was—a Wide-Ride Harley, metallic green with gold pinstripes.  It just melted and sank down through the sand in the Mojave Desert.  Disappeared, just like that.  Gone.”  Jeffy’s eyes had a far away look that replaced his usual vacant stare.  He was more animated than I’d seen him.

      “I was riding across the desert and I stopped to look up close at a Joshua tree.  Never seen any such-a thing up close.  All spiny and sharp—cool looking.  I was standing there on the sand looking up close at that Joshua tree and I hear this hissing sound behind me.”  Jeffy was becoming downright entertaining.
  
     “I turned around just in time to see my gas tank melt off.  The handlebars looked like chrome noodles and the front tire was half gone.  I just stood there and watched as the motor sank out of sight and those two big chrome shocks just dripped down between the melted spokes of the front wheel.  It was completely gone in less than five minutes.  Just a tire track coming across the sand to that little wet green spot.  Then the wet evaporated and there wasn’t nothing left but the track.”

     Hugh and I looked at each other.  This kid was serious as a heart attack.  I don’t know if his Harley melted or not, but he was convinced it did.  I tried to think of something to say.  Hugh had enough presence of mind to ask, “What did you do?  What happened?”

     “Oh, I thought about it for a long time.  Finally, I decided that I had to walk because I didn’t have a motorsicke to ride anymore.  I started following the track and these little puffs of sand poofed up behind my heels every time I took a step.  Poof.  Poof.  Poof.  Just like walking through talcum powder.  Poof.  Poof.  Only the powdery sand was light purple, with bright neon orange and green highlights on the black Joshua trees.  It was really cool.”

     Hugh and I again exchanged glances as Jeffy’s father, Jeb, came outside to join us.  Jeb was a big man who spoke with a deep southern drawl, “Jefferson, you need to go inside and set up the bread machine for in the morning.  You telling these folks about your motorcycle getting stolen by the highway patrol?”

     “You know it didn’t get stole, Papa.  It melted.  I had the keys in my pocket and they melted, too.  I showed you the empty key ring.”  Jeffy was hurt that his father didn’t believe him, and they obviously had this conversation often.  “I come out here to find out when these gentlemen want breakfast, so I can set up the bread machine for Mama’s date/nut loaf.  It’s not as good if it’s cold.”

      “We’ll be down for breakfast at eight thirty,” I said to Jeffy.  It was the fourth time I had told him and Hugh had told him twice.

     “Let’s see, then, I’ll plug in my formula.  Eight point five, minus four, plus point five.  Let me write that down—whatever the answer is, that’s when I set the bread machine to come on.  Mama’s date/nut loaf ain’t good if it’s cold.  Won’t melt the cream cheese.”  Jeffy went into the house, furiously scribbling on a note pad.

     “That is a good boy,” his father drawled as he sipped a bourbon on the rocks.  “Gets his talent for math from me.  Did I tell you I was a NASA engineer and should have been in charge of the whole Marshall Space Flight Center over in Huntsville, Alabama?  The big shots screwed me over and put an ass-kisser from MIT in ahead of me.  I promise you, I’ll get even one day.  Ass-kissers always get it in the end.  Heh, heh, heh.”  As Jeb relayed the story, he flashed a conspiratorial wink, as if we knew all about crooked people and the doings behind the scenes at NASA.

     “What happened to Jeffy’s motorcycle?” I asked.  I was almost afraid to bring up the subject.

     “Miss Melanie and I got a call from the Arizona Highway Patrol, saying they had Jefferson and we needed to come get him.  They said they found him wandering in the desert outside Yuma, stoned out of his gourd.

     “We told them that couldn’t be our son, because he was up in Michigan and he didn’t do drugs.  They put Jefferson on the phone and he was pretty disoriented, but it was him.  It took three days for us to get out there and pick him up.  I asked the captain about Jefferson’s bike, and he said there wasn’t any motorcycle.”  Jeb paused expectantly, waiting for one of us to catch the significance of his words.  Again, the wink.

     “You can see what happened, can’t you?  One of them laws found Jefferson riding across the desert on that fancy new Harley and decided he wanted it.  So they picked Jefferson up on a trumped-up charge, confiscated his Harley, drugged him, and called us.  They can’t fool me.  I’ve been around crooks like that my whole life.  NASA’s full of them.  You can’t ever take things to be what they look like.  They’s always a turd in the punchbowl, somewhere.”  He winked again.

     Thankfully, our cab pulled up.  Jeb followed us to the car, still talking.  “They haven’t heard the last of me.  I hired a private detective out in Phoenix to find that Harley and get it back.  He’s staking out that captain’s house.  We paid over $23,528.00 for that Harley.”  Jeb was getting intense.  

      “They just don’t understand who they’re dealing with.  I’m through letting people screw me over.  Just like them NASA suits, they’ll find out.   I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck.   When I'm getting even, I’m mean as a snake and I don’t ever forget.”  He finished his bourbon and pitched the ice under an azalea bush. 

     “You all have a good time now, ya hear?  All of a sudden, I'm dry,  I got to get Miss Melanie to put a half-sole on this here bourbon.”