To Do

Our notes after the Spring trip read as follows: 

"SHARPEN THE AXE"

Check.

"LOPPERS"

Vernon will bring the loppers because he is a horticulture professional. And you really don't want Jim Myers to bring the loppers from HIS job. http://www.kentmaster.com/product.asp?CatID=2&CtgID=140&PrdID=HC-4      Even more disturbing from that link is the list on the right. It's a nightmare menu of tools for evisceration...or building a Human Centipede.   Happy Halloween, everybody.

"ALWAYS GET MINI-KEGS WITH HANDLES"

This was on the list because it worked so well with the tripod.    Josh, will you be in charge of this again? Bring at least one extra to save for the Sunday Big Swan Creek ceremony even though you won't be there.

"IF WE EVER THINK THERE'S NO ROOM FOR THE WASHTUB BASS AGAIN, LEAVE SOME TENTS BEHIND." 

WTB is in.

"WE'RE MISSING THE PERK TOPS OFF OF BOTH COFFEE POTS." 

We found one of the perk tops and it's off the big pot.  That should be enough for a group of 10 so we'll just roll this to next year's list.

"LEARN MORE TRAIN SONGS."

We'll assign this to the Harrington brothers, but we won't be camped next to a railroad trestle this year.   And we can always just put Texas Eagle on continuous loop.


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If you're like me, you're having a hard time choosing the best passages to read from Goodbye to a River.   Maybe we should just act out the best fights between the hill country whites and The People of the Comancheria.   Full 5-on-5 skirmeshes on the gravel bar.

The Comanches (no, ma'am, I hadn't left them; when thou hast done thou has not done, for I have more) slashed and stabbed and twanged their bows and banged their muskets as merrily around here as they did on the rest of the Brazos frontier.  There were some good fights among the recorded ones and probably some better ones that never got written down.  They killed Benjamin Franklin Baker, his horse slowed by a big load of fresh pork, just to the north of the bend.  In the rough breaks at the tip a little group of Palo Pinto townsmen in '67, ired by the loss of horses from the village itself, caught up with the rusty thieves by using hounds, and when they found them they wished they hadn't; there were a lot of them. . . . The fight surged up and down the rough cedar-thick mountainside with little groups of cut-off citizens and Comanches meeting each other and fleeing and pursuing and dodging in a kind of Shakespearean comic confusion, nobody getting hurt much except a few horses.  At the climax of things, when friends had found friends and lined up together on two sides, an old Comanche chief jumped up between the lines and began to strut and shout in Plains-Indian fashion. . .

Henry Belding wrote forty-odd years later:

Directly I saw Buck Dillahunty shoot his six-shooter at the old Jabberer, but he never batted his eye, but came on like he was going to walk over us.  Then I took deliberate aim with my shotgun at his side and at the crack of the gun, he went off, all doubled-up, as though he had the cramp colic pretty badly. . . .

Or this one:

The People had run two Methodist preachers down the highway into Palo Pinto town without catching them, and citizend leaped at the chance for a cross-country chase.  Ward Mountain was where they caught up- so often, in such high, rough country that they had to battle afoot.  A man named Taylor, his aim confused by the dancing, squalling, retreating redskins, finally shouted after them in a fury:  "Damn you, why don't you stand still and fight?"

My Comanche heard, stopped, and looked around jusst long enough to holler back in good Fort Sill English:  "Damn you some, too!"

Goodbye to a River, pp. 110 - 12.