A Porch of My Own

A Porch of My Own

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land






I moved to Texas when I was 14. I was glad to be there and had begged my dad to move us there for years. For 53 years I lived there. All of my kids were born there and most of my grandkids and great grandkids. 

I owned horses and learned to ride them and care for them. I groomed them, cleaned their stalls, fed them, saddled them, cleaned their hoofs, and taught my sons about them. I raised 2 longhorns from babies and was their chief caretaker for 8 years. I hauled hay and feed, set up stock tanks, and mended fences. 

With a couple of exceptions, I know more about Texas history than most people I know. I know the names of many native Texas plants and trees and planted native plants in my planting beds and landscape. I protected them on my property. I made prickly pear and agarita jelly. I’ve cut and burned piles of cedar as big as a house. I’ve cut live oaks for firewood. 

I know the habits of native Texas whitetail deer and turkeys. I can talk to turkeys and ravens well enough that they talk back to me. I’ve hauled tons of corn and milo and filled feeders. I’ve helped haul and unload and set up a deer blind and I’ve painted and maintained blinds. 

I’ve lived in a cedar cabin in the middle of Texas and owned 54 acres there for 28 years. I have a jar of caliche and one of soil from there on my bookcase. For years I kept a jar of caliche on my desk at work and I was the only person I ever ran into at the huge Houston area school district that knew what caliche was. I can tell it by smell blindfolded. I hauled a mesquite mantel from Texas to Colorado and moved it around for 2 years until it’s finally on my wall here. 

I made window curtains with material with Texas quotes. I made a fire pit with native Texas stone I gathered on my property. I know the way the constellations move across the Texas sky. I’ve traveled to just about every part of Texas there is. I have a library of Texas history books and I’ve read them all. I’ve seen just about every Texas singer songwriter except the very young new ones from the last few years. My walls are full of photographs of native plants and animals, photos we took. 

I can protect my family from rattlesnakes and skunks, though I always lost the war with raccoons. But I fought that war anyway. I’ve eaten more than my share of BBQ, Tex-Mex, and Texas chili. I’ve consumed many a margarita, and sat on the porch with a cold Corona and my boots propped on a cedar post after a hard day’s work outside in the Texas heat. 

I went into debt to send my daughter to the University of Texas at Austin and I’ve taken my grandkids to Barton Springs, the capital building, the tower at UT, to Del Rio and Cuidad Acuna. We’ve been floating down the Llano River, I’ve tubed down the Frio, and swam in the Guadalupe and the Gulf of Mexico. I spent a summer in Brownsville and made weekly trips to Matamoros. I’ve attended many an Astros and Oilers game, back in the day.

I’ve lived my life in jeans and boots and a pickup truck is my preferred method of travel. 

In other words, you can find some people that are more Texan than me - after all, I don’t have boots with a Texas flag on them - but you’ll find a whole lot more that are no where near as Texan as me. 

And yet people born in Texas do not not consider me a “real” Texan. I used to know a co-worker one generation removed from Italy that lived to remind me weekly that I wasn’t a real Texan. I was forced to be petty and tell her my grandfather fought in the American Revolution or she wouldn’t have a country to live in. I tell her Davy Crockett and Colonel Travis weren’t born here either. 

This morning I had breakfast with some of the dog walkers. One couple used to have a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Another couple came from Minnesota. The young waitress lived in Alaska for two years. One woman is from Missouri. One vet tech spend an internship in Oregon. One woman lived in New Mexico for 35 years. One woman is from Arizona. Missing was the woman from Washington DC and the one from California. Last week at the auto shop the tech was from New York. On a previous visit the man helping me was from Tennessee. 

No one here has ever told me I wasn’t a “real” anything. They say they are glad I came here. Even the fella at the post office, who I only know from there, told me yesterday it was good to see me again. There are some people born here that are mad about everyone else that wasn’t born here, same as the “real” Texans. But I haven’t run into those people. And for that I’m thankful. 


It was a beautiful day here in my new home, spent with interesting people. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky, the dogs were happy to be out and about, and I felt like a “real” human. 

This land is your land and this land is my land but it never really belongs to any of us, we just have the use of it while we are here. Enjoy your time. 



Monday, January 7, 2019

Ravens



It’s snowing again this morning. We had 4 inches yesterday, after the 2 feet we got last week. We’re not expected to get much today, maybe an inch, but who knows. Colorado weather forecasting is apparently difficult. 

There’s a lone raven flying high above the hills around me, flying toward and over my place, snow falling softly around him. It’s a beautiful sight and I’m privileged to see it. 

Bixby and I went to the grocery store a couple of days ago and as we were getting in the car, he heard a squawking and asked me what that bird was. I looked up and a raven was perched on the top of a light pole. They’re a huge bird and unless you see one close, sometimes hard to tell from crows. Strangely to me, a group of crows is called a murder but a group of ravens is called a kindness. 

We had ravens at the ranch in Texas and I’ve written about them before. They sometimes nested on the ridge behind the cabin and we named all the males Edgar and all the females Lenore. Along with wild turkeys, they were our favorite birds, intelligent and loyal. And if you talked to them, they would talk back. We would sometimes be in the cabin and hear them and go outside to talk with them. 

When Sarah and I were driving over so I could close on the house and move in, ravens met us on the road to Santa Fe, as we turned off the interstate, and we saw them all along the trail, each group of 2 or 3 passing us on to the next. As if they were saying “come on, we’ll stay with you until you’re safely home, don’t be afraid. We’ve been waiting and watching for you.”

And maybe that’s why they’re called a kindness.