It’s not forever, but West Texas seems that way driving through. It’s a vast, often tedious, landscape.

Once you drive through the Grand Prairie and Western Cross Timbers regions west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, you’re into the West Texas Rolling Plains with mostly sandy soil dotted by scrub oak, juniper, live oak and pinyon pine. Doesn’t change much in the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. Same desert landscape with the addition of cottonwood, mesquite and prairie crabapple.

A New Yorker journalist once said, according to columnist Michael Barr, “I know all about West Texas. It’s the place with the most cows and the least milk, the most rivers and the least water, and where you can look the farthest and see the least.”

I left Fort Worth going northwest driving mostly on the two-laners. Soon I was passing not far from where my dad’s family farmed after moving from Mississippi to Texas in the thirties.

Stories my dad told me flashed back as I drove near the old farm; especially one. The one about the sudden death of his dad, my grandfather. He died from a respiratory illness that would be easily treated and cured today.

His death left my grandmother with five children. As I remember the story, my dad was still in his teens. He had one older and one younger sister, and two much younger brothers. As the oldest male my dad took on the responsibility of running the farm and making sure the family’s basic needs were met.

The Butler family cemetery plot was back close to their farm near Starkville, Mississippi. After a service in Ft. Worth, my dad was to accompany the body back on the train late the following day for another service graveside and burial in the family plot.

However, the morning after my grandfather’s funeral service in Fort Worth there was an unexpected and shocking surprise for the grieving family. An especial unpleasant surprise for my dad.  

In those days mules were used to work the farm, plow the fields. My grandfather needed extra mules and had purchased several from a neighbor. The mules were being paid for on the agreed terms with monthly payments being made till the first harvest was sold.

Dad said he woke up early the morning after the funeral knowing he had chores to do before boarding the train for Mississippi with his dad’s coffin. The events of the funeral and the pastor’s words still turning in his thoughts. He dressed. Put on his boots. Then ambled over to the barn to feed the mules as usual. Opening the barn doors he got the shocker.

The mules were gone.

The barn was empty. He called their names. He searched the fields, but the mules were nowhere in sight.

My dad said he soon learned that on the night of the funeral, under the cover of darkness, the neighbor, who had sold the mules to my grandfather, snuck over the fence and took the mules away.

Dad said, “Faced with no way to plow without mules and do the work in the fields that needed to be done … I only had one choice.”

He found the double barrel shotgun out of his dad’s closet. Loaded it with buckshot and proceeded to the neighbor’s house.

He confronted the neighbor in front of his barn. The mules were inside. My dad said he never raised the shotgun; just held it pointed at the ground. It was a show of force.

“Why did you steal our mules?” My dad asked him in as calm a voice as he could muster.

“You five kids and your ma,” the neighbor replied, “won’t be able to keep up that big farm and make payments on them mules with your dad gone,”

“Mister …,” my dad said he stated sternly while trying to control the anger he felt inside over the callousness of the neighbor, “we haven’t missed any payments! Every payment due has been paid in full … each month … none late. Not one payment has ever been missed … has it?”

“No, not yet,” the neighbor admitted.

“Then, like I said, you stole my mules,”

My dad said he felt like he was suddenly filled with authority beyond his years. The presence of the shotgun in-hand, by his side, also helped, he told me.

“Now, I’m going to take my mules back to our farm so I can finish plowing. If we miss a payment you can come get them. But we won’t.”

It was a difficult time over the coming months, but no payments were missed. And the mules were paid for in-full just a day after the first crops were harvested and sold. My dad was very proud of that.  

I continued driving on, passing through the little town of Decatur, not far from where I, in my youth, spent parts of my summers on my Aunt Dolly and Uncle Irving’s farm.

It’s where I learned to help around the farm, shoot a .22 rifle, watch out for rattlesnakes, fish and, well, just be a boy. A boy growing up in Texas.

It was an important part of my education. My dad had long left the farming and ranching life after he helped move the family to an easier life in nearby Haltom City, adjacent to the bustling "Cowtown," Fort Worth. That’s where he met my mom.

But he always maintained his love and connection to the land. He passed that along to me and my sister Cathy. He gave us a deep appreciation for the beauty of each of the seasons and the earth’s cycle of life. A respect for the birth and aging cycle of plants, animals and people.

My dad taught me a lot as we worked together in the yard of our home. He usually smoked a cigar while we worked.

Mowing, planting and tending. We would use some of the same tools he used on the farm. Same ones. Even the same wheel borrow with a forged iron wheel. These things reminded him where he came from. His roots.

For as long as I can remember, a weathered mules collar and harness hung in the back corner of the tool shed of the garage.

My dad showed me how to wield the long wooden arms of the old post hole digger to plant a tree. How to use the heavy iron bar to break up rocks as we dug deeper. Each year we planted a tree.

I had the satisfaction at the end of each of those days knowing I had put in a hard days work under the hot Texas sun with my dad. It was a gift.

 

"When you teach your son, you teach your son's son."   -The Talmud

"When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry."   -William Shakespeare

With sons and fathers, there's an inexplicable connection and imprint that your father leaves on you.   - Brad Pitt