Working Fools?

In the beginning, the word we used was “helping”.  Helping wasn’t a burden, a demand or an imposition. It wasn’t a curse or a condemnation, something to be avoided at all cost or valued beyond all reason.  Helping was something people did naturally, and it was the best way for a child to enter the mysterious and utterly appealing world of grown-ups.

Helpers garnered smiles of approval as they trailed behind Mother with a dust cloth or ventured into the yard to carry bundles of sticks for Daddy. Helpers cut flowers that made the house pretty and picked up their toys.  Helpers collected windfall apples in a bucket or pulled low-hanging cherries from the trees. Helpers set the table and dried the silverware, folded the wash cloths and put newspapers in their box. If a neighbor who’d been called away was worried about her thirsty geraniums, a good helper knew to borrow a bucket and carry water to the flowers.

Helping, I thought, was fun.

Daring to Make Our Own Groceries

She hangs in my kitchen, this nameless woman who holds a chicken in her lap.  She watches me as I move between stove and sink, and I return the favor. Over time, I’ve come to imagine I know a thing or two about her. The directness of her gaze tells me she isn’t afraid of being seen. She’s a busy lady – her apron tells me that, and her distinctly practical hair. She didn’t mean to be posing this morning, but someone came along and she cooperated, no doubt happy for a moment’s rest.  Surprised by her inactivity and suddenly wary, the dog presses protectively against her, but they’ve spent his lifetime together and her hand is enough to calm his fears.

Around her portrait, bits and scraps of ephemera hint at the realities of her life.  A letterhead from A.E. Want & Company, one of Ft. Worth’s premiere wholesale grocers at the turn of the last century, provides elegance to a simple invoice. The invoice is dated September 14, 1921, nine years after the company gained a certain noteriety by suing the Missouri,  Kansas & Texas railroad over a carload of frostbitten Minnesota potatoes.  The potatoes, valued at $155.87, were judged defective, and the railroad ordered to pay.

Follow the Muddy Dirt Road

Question: What do you get when you combine Italian immigrants, a bag of Louisiana acorns, some determined folk in a historically-minded Texas town and a California native who (along with his crew) moves trees with all the pride and competence you’d expect from an ex-Marine?

Answer: A feel-good story of the first order. Read on…

League City, Texas is growing. In the year 2000, the U.S. Census found 45,874 residents in the just-slightly-sleepy little town I call home, By 2010, I’d added myself and my mother to the new total of 83,560, and plenty of others have done so since.  Homes, schools and churches are popping up everywhere. New business is coming in, traffic is becoming an issue and we’ve earned the distinction of having the third-worst intersection in the Houston-Galveston area.

Road construction is a fact of life, particularly since so many streets no longer are traveled only by the people who live along them. Plans were well underway to convert such a street, Louisiana Avenue,  from an open ditch, rural roadway to a concrete-curbed storm sewer thoroughfare when some observant citizens realized a tiny obstacle stood in the way of all that progress – an uncommon and historically significant tree, the Ghirardi Compton Oak.

Those Books Before Facebook

In her latter years, my mother often seemed to be engaged in an on-going conversation with herself.  Her streams of thought flowed like a hidden river, subterranean and unnoticed until a few words bubbled to the surface, spilling over and inviting response.

We were folding freshly laundered towels one afternoon when she surprised me by breaking the companionable silence to announce, “We had Facebook when I was in school.”  “What?” I said. “Facebook? There wasn’t any Facebook when you were in school.” “Of course there was,” she said. “We just had another name for it.”

Bemused, I asked if she meant her high school annual, and heard the slight intake of breath that always signaled impatience. “No, we didn’t have those. I just can’t think of the word right now. I’ll think of it.”

Keepers of the Light

After more than thirty years, the place names of South Texas feel familiar as my own. Boca Chica, Cavallo and Copano. Carancahua. Tres Palacios. Espiritu Santo. The bays and passes, the long southward slope of the coast, the gritty beaches and wind-bent oaks embrace and hold the history of a rich and complex world.

There are stories and legends, told and re-told by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who lived them. Artifacts of an earlier time lie bleached and scattered like bones across the landscape. Spanish anchors turn up behind plows. French cannons surprise ranch hands in the field.  Tiny settlements cling to life, rooted in and named for the explorations of such men as René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, shapers of a land they barely understood.

At the water’s edge, the shadow of Indianola lingers. Wiped off the map by twin hurricanes, the port’s ghostly tide of immigrants ebbs away into forgetfulness.  Marvelous ships sleep mired in the bays and the Matagorda lighthouse, that great, silent sentinel, offers relief and guidance to those uncertain of their course.