grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

T is for Texas!

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As a child, Texas held a certain mystique for me. Larger than life and certainly larger than our corner of Northeast Arkansas, the Lone Star State was home to giant belt-buckle-wearing cowboys, gun-toting Texas Rangers and ♫♫Davy, Davy Crockett… King of the Wild Frontier♫♫♫.

Texas was the place of tall tales where crude oil flowed like the Mississippi River.

historic White Elephant Saloon, Ft. Worth, Tx
Papa Creecy shot a wild boar while hunting in Texas. Like any proud hunter, he stuffed it and hung the beast on the wall of his den. The hog’s sharp teeth and wild eyes scared most of my friends but not me. I thought it was neat, just like Texas. 
I was planning to live there someday.
When Daddy gassed up the Oldsmobile and announced we were headed to Mexico for summer vacation, the drive through Texas took DAYS, as though we traveled by covered wagon. Our first night was always spent in Texarkana, a town that straddled both Arkansas and Texas.

Do you want to sleep on the Arkansas side or the Texas side, Daddy asked? TEXAS, we cheered! The air was different at the motel on the Texas side.
photo courtesy of bizjournal
Don’t say a word until we get through Houston, Momma warned us the second afternoon of our journey. Daddy was crazy-nervous driving in all that bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic underneath tangled overpasses that reached high into the hot Texas sky.  My little sister and I sat quietly in the back seat coloring. We barely moved or breathed until we came out on the other side of the city. 
Queuing up to drive across the border into Mexico, I was sure we would be arrested for smuggling. What we might have been smuggling, I wasn’t sure, but I felt certain we were guilty of something. After a lengthly wait and inspection by border agents waaaaay scarier than Papa Creecy’s wild boar, we entered and exited with no problema.
Texas always held a certain mystique for me. Someday I was planning to live there.
And then I did.
talya
“You can all go to hell; I will go to Texas” 
― David Crockett

Musical Pairing:

The Yellow Rose of Texas, c 1836-1858, became popular during the Civil War

Blogging my way through the alphabet. T is for Texas!

Easter Cigarettes

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One Easter morning while the Tate girls were at church, our house was robbed. Gone was the television. Gone was the eight-track player. Gone was our sense of security.
Daddy, who never stepped foot in church, not even the obligatory Easter and Christmas church services, had driven down to the corner grocery store for Sunday morning cigarettes. 
I was only gone ten minutes, he alleged.
In ten minutes our house was cleaned out.
Easter and cigarettes don’t mix.

Happy Easter!

talya

Musical Pairing:

Gone, Montgomery Gentry

Dear Daddy

By

Daddy - Thomas Tate
Yesterday you missed another birthday. Your 76th.
Nineteen years flew by in a blur. Tate is nineteen now. So much has happened in nineteen years—some incredible, some impossible to imagine.
Farming has changed. You won’t believe this but we now have………..round cotton bales! Craziness.
And other farming news, something I never dreamed would happen, the Wilson family sold Lee Wilson & Company. Sold out to a huge landowner from Missouri. The beginning of a new era for Mississippi County.
And speaking of home, Osceola has a gigantic, new Wal-Mart sitting in a field near the interstate. Yes, this means another tired empty building in town. I haven’t been inside the new store yet, but according to my Facebook friends, no one can find anything.
Yes, you missed out on the phenomenon that is Facebook. I’m not going to explain it, you wouldn’t like it anyway.
You were spared the tragedy of September 11. We were attacked by terrorists on our own soil, bringing the country together just for a moment before returning to bickering among ourselves.
And, by the way, our country and entire planet is suffering from global warming.
Oh, with respect to the planets, Pluto is no longer one.
There are nineteen years’ worth of regular, everyday, amazing things I could broadcast about your four grandchildren, too many for this letter. Just know you live on in them.
Many of your friends are gone now too—Clide, Bert, Charles Crigger…Maybe you celebrated your birthday with them? Maybe that’s why we’ve had this recent crazy weather?
Round Cotton Bales
 Grace Grits and Gardening

Musical Pairing:

Conway Twitty, That’s My Job

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!