My One Hundredth Post

     I first posted on this blog January 10, 2012.  This week represents my one year anniversary and I feel that I should do something to celebrate that milestone.  I searched my mind for some appropriate method of acknowledgement and came up with what I consider a brilliant idea.  I’ll post an essay.  This will be my one-hundredth post.

     During the past year, I have written about subjects near and dear to my heart.  I have tried to be honest, objective, and fair in my stories, but I admit I’m human and have my biases which might accidently show through.  I have written about Barbeque, oil fields, a road trip and my Uncle John Burleson.  I have discussed and included recipes for pecan pie, lemon velvet ice cream, enchiladas, guacamole, apple pie, and refried black-eyed peas.

     I did a series of articles about the Texas Revolution, the luck of Sam Houston and the egotistical arrogance of General Santa Anna.  A friend chastised me for mentioning that William Barrett Travis, the hero of the Alamo, was eaten up with gonorrhea.  My friend does not understand that I want to tell truthful things that were not in my history books.  Travis was no less a hero because of his propensity to dip his wick in tainted wells—he still wrote a mean letter and he wrote several beauties from the Alamo during the siege.  He was self-treating his affliction with mercury at the time, but I don’t want to infer that those fine letters were the product of a deranged mind.

     When I wrote about sweet Panchita Alavez, I mentioned the inept Col. James Walker Fannin.  Fannin felt he should have been supreme commander of the Texas army, based on twenty-one months undergraduate work he did at West Point.  He managed to leave the safest fort in Texas and allow his troops to be surrounded and captured in the middle of a pasture near Coleta Creek.  He did not do this by making an honest mistake.  He did it by repeatedly ignoring Houston’s orders through obstinacy, arrogance, indecision and stupidity.  The Mexicans forced him to watch the execution of his entire command before they shot him.  I’ll get back to him later.

     I have lately been involved with a series on the remarkable women of Texas, and there are many.  My reasons for focusing on the women are simple.  They are more fun than most of the men.  And tougher.  And better looking. This fixation on Texas women started when I looked at a family picture of my father’s parents, taken around nineteen hundred.

      In the picture, Amanda, my grandmother, was a wisp of a girl, twenty-four years old, maybe ninety-five pounds, surrounded by her husband and eight children.  The children were all dressed to the nines in homespun clothing, starched and ironed.  Mandy wore a lacey, fitted black dress and grandfather was decked out in a suit and tie.  Mandy made all their clothing and probably starched and ironed everything that morning.  She was radiant in the picture, contented and smiling.  She was most likely pregnant, but her waist was still tiny.  The pregnancy did not yet show.

     I mention that because Amanda went on to have six more children in the next six years.  Dad was the youngest.  I’ve often wondered if some sympathetic doctor tied her tubes then, because she had the last of fourteen children at age thirty.  By the way—in the picture I mentioned Mandy was radiant and smiling.  James, my grandfather, had a different expression.  He looked for all the world like a deer caught in headlights—he was scared to death, perhaps wondering how he could afford to pay the photographer.

     Oddly, my most popular post has been the Pecan Pie Recipe, with 180 hits, most of them during the recent holiday season.  The “Village Blacksmith Outed,” about my friend R.G. Box and his creation “Rowdy,” follows with 107 hits, then Tom T. Hall with 106, and the cute, transplanted little Texan, Gus Gaunt, with 74.  The road trip story about Fresno and Bakersfield is next with 66 hits, then the World’s Championship Barbeque Cook-off, and on and on.

       I have not counted, but I estimate that I have written over 125,000 words here in the past year, and it is still fun.  I indulge myself with my writing—no one is grading it, so I do as I please.  I always capitalize “Barbeque” and refuse to capitalize “yankee.”  Drives the spell-check crazy, but pleases me.

     I’ll wrap this up.  My blog is most popular in the U.S., with over 12,000 page-views.   Russia is second with 375, but Russia has quit hitting the last few months and I don’t understand why.  Guatemala is third, with 137 hits, I’m sure because my friend John Bacon spends time down there.  I had 13 hits from Spain while Hugh and Ken visited Andalusia, and a few from Costa Rica where Jack and Mandy Robbins vacationed.  The rest are scattered around the world, probably spread among insomniacs with computers in some third world country with electricity.

     One last observation—I have accrued $30.76 in my Google account.  They pay me based upon how many people view the little ads in the top corner of each entry.  When I get $100.00, they will send me a check.  I had hoped this to be a source of fun and profit, but it looks like I’ll have to settle for fun.  You all go back and read something I wrote last year and stay with me now, ya hear.