My Grandfather's Texas

How I Love My Grandfather's Texas

One of my favorite TV shows was Davy Crockett that first aired about the time we  as an Army family moved to Fort Devens, Massachusetts from Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. At age 7 or 8, I had all the “official items I needed to be Davy Crockett: a “pressboard ‘coonskin hat, the twin holsters (authentic enough for a kid) and of course, Betsy! My friends and I, if we didn’t play baseball, would engage in play wars made realistic by our guns. We fought the British, the Indians, the bad cowboys and WWII by fanning the hammer on our flintlock play pistols.

When my dad was sent to Korea, the family moved to that small Texas town of my grandparents and I loved it. We had already spend some great summers there and now I had my Grandmother and Grandfather and family almost full time, while my Dad was away. I could walk to school like kids in the Little Rascals the movies and during that first winter, I would walk to school wearing a short sleeve shirt, even in the couple of snowfalls we had. After school, I went home or to see my grandparents and my uncle Charles who is six years my senior.

My special person was my Granddaddy. He was a veteran of the sea in World War I & II. He was retired by the time I came along. In most summers we would visit from distant places where my Dad was stationed in the army and enjoy about a month each time.  It didn’t take long to learn that chasing his chickens had the consequences of meeting up with his almost rabid rooster. I learned how to collect eggs from the hen house for breakfast and I learned with eggs, like Newton with the apple, that gravity is everywhere, especially for a butter fingered kid on a wooden porch!

I was probably 10 when we went through the gate that separated his home from the Shelton Farm and into the woods a quarter mile away. Our goal was firewood for the winter and wood to build a smokehouse. Mr. Shelton didn’t live on the farm as he owned the only two story house in town. An added touch was the big “S” cut out of each shutter all the way around. We arrived in the clearing he had previously cut and after working awhile, he sat down and for the first time, let me use his double blade axe. Swinging that axe with a little less authority, I gave it all I had and when finished, it looked like the tree grew out of a huge pinecone about 2 feet up the trunk. In my mind, this 4” “redwood” had tough bark, but my grandfather dropped it in just a few swings and used that tree in his smokehouse. I was proud of my part of his smokehouse, but I was more proud of my grandfather. You don’t need stories of Paul Bunyan or other fabled lumberjacks when you had a grandfather like mine.

After a year, my dad returned and to my surprise, we moved to San Antonio and onto a path that would lead to high school graduation at Thomas Jefferson and the many chances to walk where my hero Davy Crockett walked years ago, inside the walls of the Alamo. I wondered how many times I stepped where Bowie, Travis, Dickinson had walked.

Years later, I learned that this small town of my grandparents had a hidden history. It was a stop on Davy Crockett’s journey in the winter of 1835-36. After having gained fame in Congress, he was asked to name that small patch of land. He called it “DeKalb”. In my youth, I had already walked many places in this town and am certain that I crossed the path taken by Crockett in his brief respite on his way into history. I just wonder how many times I stood where he did, away from his most courageous stand alongside nearly 200 others who believed that freedom was worth fighting for

At 25 years of age, my Alabama-born, great-grandfather who had moved to Red River County, enlisted in the 23rd Texas Cavalry on 12 Sep 1861 and served until Texas was cut off from the rest of the south. My grandfather came along 25 years later. My grandfather passed away while I was in my sophomore year of high school. After both grandparents had passed on, my uncle moved that smokehouse to his own land.

I sometimes wonder how much he knew of his ancestry. I am certain he knew of the Crockett visit, but I didn’t know to ask at the time. I wonder if he knew of his famous ancestry, or the places where they lived just over an hour’s drive from that Massachusetts military post where we lived. I could almost imagine that great, great….great grandfather who saw this land from a distance then stepped onto its shore as he departed the Mayflower.

Did he know he was a related to one of the first civilian POWs of the American Revolution who with his young daughter, Abigail were captured by Indians; turned over to the British in 1776 and not released for 6 years. Could he have known about John Alden of Plymouth Colony who landed in this nation 156 year earlier? Could he have imagined as far as a king?

Over the years, my Mom said I was more like my grandfather than anyone else in the family. I don’t know what my grandfather would say to that, but for me, being said to be like my grandfather, is a medal of honor I wear with pride!

 

 Larry W. Mayes