God Bless Texas

 

The Chair

God Bless Texas

Comin’ Home

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            The continuing drama of the NFR was much more interesting than any of the news coverage this week.

            Each performance was opened with a prayer of thanks and continued blessing followed by the national anthem. During the seventh go-round version, the rodeo athletes filed into the arena on foot rather than horseback. It was an opportunity of direct comparison with other professional athletes.

            The difference was profound.

            Whereas the ball boys have made the national anthem a public display of discontent, animosity, and contemptuous behavior, the rodeo athletes offered a reminder of what the simple ceremony was intended to be. The men removed their hats and placed their hands over their hearts. The ladies kept their heads covered and placed their hands over their hearts. Not a single athlete selfishly called attention to themselves to share the moment of spotlight to denigrate the flag or our nation.

            Not one soul kneeled.

            The Chair

            On the 18th of March 1884, my great grandmother and her family left Lakey (sic), Edwards County, Texas bound for New Mexico Territory. The process wasn’t spontaneous nor was it easy or on a whim. There were many things that had to be worked out. The first was to sell the house, farm implements, and (the) furniture.

            In a chronicle some 57 years later, she remembered their neighbors, friends, and relatives gathered for days to tell (them) goodbye. The emotion had to be extreme.

            She remembered her aunt told her, Goodbye, Madie, I don’t suppose I will ever see you again. And she didn’t.

            With only one covered wagon, the collection of only the most essential was very modest. A rub-board, brass kettle and tub (hung on the back of the wagon), a few vessels to cook in on the open fire, tin cups and plates, knives and forks, wash pan dish pan, one gallon jug and two buckets, two water kegs (attached to the side of the wagon) two small cotton mattresses and quilts and pillows enough for two beds, and one trunk with extra clothes was the extent of the family’s personal effects. A tent large enough to make the two beds was loaded.

            That’s all they took save one mug and one toy for each of the four children and one old chair. Her toy selection was a waxed doll. The chair was intended for double duty. The springboard was removed from the front of the wagon and the chair served as the seat from where her mother, Emily Jane, drove.

            It was also a reminder of home.

            At night it was taken down, placed by the fire, and when supper was finished each of the children were taken, one by one, and briefly held and rocked by their mother. My grandmother was then only four years old.

            What a big, frightening world that trip had to have been especially at night. There is record of how little emotion the adults showed. It was important to keep a stiff upper lip and display confidence.

            We took everything as a matter of course.

            The worry and the pressures were extreme. Water was a constant issue as was providing food.  Pa and Ma were always smiling, but that was because they had to demonstrate courage and faith to not just the folks with them, but, particularly, the children. If there was doubt and fear they kept it to themselves, but there was one indicator of the immensity of the task and it was observed by Madie and recorded all those years later.

            In the evening after the children had been put down, Ma would be sitting in that old chair silently crying.

            Comin’ Home

            On September 1, 1884, the family arrived on the bench above Mogollon Creek, New Mexico Territory. The stock was allowed to graze as had been the pattern since the journey had started all those months previously in Texas. The horses were tied to trees for one simple reason.

            There was nothing else to tie them to. There was not a house, not a set of corrals, not an outbuilding. There was nothing but that very place and the hope that it represented became home and continues to be overseen as home and heritage existence to the continuing family to this day, 136 years later.

            That took grit. That takes grit.

            That is a common thread that winds its way through the ranks of those professional cowboys and cowgirls that have now concluded the 2020 version of the NFR. There is a visceral bond that did not happen by chance. It is mosaic of time, relationships, commitment to permanence, home, the land and the care of its bounty, and an enduring faith and relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

            In this circumstance, Texas was the genesis.

            God Bless Texas

            There are many of us who have long thought that Texas holds the key to America’s future. While so many of us exist in incomplete versions of the American Dream, Texas had demonstrated the foundation of permanence.

            At least in the present form, its citizenry controls not just his or her lands, but some degree of their own destiny. That is hugely important.

            At stake for much of the rest of us is not just the real risk of loss of original freedoms, but the absence of citizenry affected and shaped by that same mosaic of conditions. That is why this legal action taken by Texas in the aftermath of this brutish election thuggery is so important.

            Our national elections cannot be stolen by world order criminals!

            What is coming must be the next phase of the American journey. Individuals guided by their own sincere interests, may not be the preference of the elites, but they are the glue that holds our dreams together.

            God bless them, and … God Bless Texas.

 

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “None of us can take a knee on this one.”