5:41 a.m. - 2023-11-02
historic markers
As the weather was fair and I was in no special hurry, I took the back roads around San Antonio on my way down to the coast Saturday. The droughty landscape was drinking in a week's worth of rain, and the roadside weeds were rampant w/bacchanalian excess. Bluestem, Sprangletop, Buffalograss...Switchgrass, Horseweed and Bastard Cabbage, a motley, profligate mess punctuated by damp kelly patches of clover and the occasional upstart Huisache tree; climate survivors staking roadside claims in a year when TX highway department mowers sat idle. As I left the Edwards Escarpment behind me the sky widened, made somehow more immense by the clouds strewn evenly towards every horizon. Still fat with rain, they were keeping to themselves for now, motionless and independent against a bright blue backdrop.
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Drive for any distance in Texas and you’re bound to pass through an oddly-named town or two, and this stretch of road was no exception. I've always wanted to stop in Kyote and ask a local if they pronounce it like I fear they must, but as there's no filling station or post-office to be found, I reckon I'll never know.* Just beyond Kyote lies Bigfoot, home of the Bigfoot Museum. An experience guaranteed to disappoint any expectant cryptozoologist when, instead of giant plaster footprint-castings and inexplicable fur-samples, they encounter a humble replica of the cabin William “Big Foot” Wallace (a Texas Ranger and Pony Express rider of mild renown) built on the spot back in the mid-1800s...~ ~ ~
You pass other places of historic interest of course, as indicated by state-designated markers. I've never seen anyone else stopping to investigate these, which seems a shame. My grandfather knew where all the good ones were and would pull over on occasion. He'd taught Texas History back in his coaching days, so the plaques were just a formality. A cue to hold-forth while I read the thing, and then elaborate on-topic for the next 30 or 40 miles as a burning, untouched, cigarette ashed in his hand. But to be fair to the oblivious public speeding past me now as I pause to take these in; many of them do disappoint. So-and-so's forebear had a ranch here once, somebody else's founded this town and is buried over there...these reek of political favoritism and self-importance, and I hold that a better curated selection would increase engagement. Because the good ones are awesome.Sometimes they offer-up notable bits of regional trivia. Did you know that in addition to uranium mining Whitsett was once famous for beekeeping? And that the coveted queens they bred there were sold to apiaries far and wide? (How might one even go-about shipping a bee back in olden times? In a box packed w/some flower-snacks, sent off on a stagecoach with a note? And how do you “breed queens” anyway? These are the kind of intriguing questions I get to ponder as I resume my journey...) The best historic markers though, are the ones that recount an event on the spot of its actual occurrence.
I've yet to find any of that variety along this particular drive but...there is one within reasonable detour distance. If you cut west through the hills between Bandera and Quihi (another great name) you'll find the site of the “cow camp massacre”. It was there, in the winter of 1866, that three teenage boys on a search for loose livestock set up camp alongside Hondo Creek. Two of the lads were returning with firewood one morning when the third ran towards them with eight Indians in hot pursuit. (Presumably Comanche? The plaque just reads “Indians”.) Anyway, the eldest, 19, evaded capture by fleeing into the brush and lived to tell the tale, but his sixteen year-old friend wasn't so lucky, and his mutilated remains were found nearby. No trace of the youngest, age 12, was ever seen again... There's something about learning these things in-situ; looking around at the isolation and imagining it as even-more isolated, back when the road was but a horse-trail, when entire bands of Native Americans would move-camp seasonally and tensions over cross-fencing on traditional hunting grounds were high. What screams echoed through that boulder-strewn creekbed? And to what atrocities did these ancient oaks bear witness? Historical markers (and a little imagination) can turn the whole state into an open-air museum like that.
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That was kind of an underwhelming massacre I guess, by today's standards...almost quaint really, as massacres go. Unfortunately it's today's standards that have kept the Comanche and their savage brethren on my mind of late, vis-à-vis the violent dynamic between terrorist resistance (kidnapping, torture, rape) and imperialist expansion (occupation, disenfranchisement, collective punishment). But one of my goals for this brief trip was to ignore my news feed and NPR...so I went back to reciting the curious names of roadside weeds.(It came up in conversation of course...current events. My dad's knowledge of/professional involvement in military history makes him too good a resource not to tap on the topic. I'll spare this travelogue the specifics, though they'll doubtlessly inform future writing.)
It was a solid visit, and great to see my folks for no other reason but. No house repairs or medical procedures, no holiday hassles...I mean, their place was littered with witches and bats and gourds and shit, but Halloween is chill. Christmas is way scarier to me; haunted by obligation and expectation and increasingly-farcical refrains of “peace on earth”. Even Thanksgiving, so perfect on paper, devolves into a relentless cycle of food-prep and cooking and dish-washing...
There was some home cooking to be had this weekend too, of course. The old man made steaks, which I eat maybe twice a year (always at their house), and I put the hurt on his fancy bourbon collection. Also, as is the case with every Sunday dinner or special occasion, we had boiled shrimp to start. This is one of the (very few) benefits of living on our hurricane-battered coast, and apparently the shrimpers are having a good season. Because these were wild-caught browns; U-10 count and sweet enough to serve for desert. Mom sent me home with 2lbs, on account of I'm a perfect son and I deserve it.
On another culinary note: we dined on the eve of my arrival at one of the best Indian restaurants I've experienced. Which is somehow in Corpus Christi? This made zero sense, but with a dish of pungent-to-perfection Andhra Goat and a sublime side of Jeera Rice in front of me, I couldn't be bothered to ask for an explanation. Also, because I've had months of goat-conflict w/a certain herd on the ranch, my appetite for the Andhra was whetted by thoughts of vengeance, and I sucked the marrow from the bones with a primitive gusto that would have alarmed and upset my vegan friends.
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A cold front moved in on the morning I left for home, bringing with it precipitation, a 30-degree temperature drop, and winds well over 25 knots. The exhaust from the refineries on the way out of town blew perpendicular to the stacks, ragged streaks of smoke and flame against the glaucous hint of a rain-strangled dawn. The weather would not relent as my journey continued, a persistence that found expression in the wind-farms along Hwy 37. A surreally kinetic landscape of empty black-dirt cotton fields under giant blades...churning relentlessly in the stinging mist.~ ~ ~
* My mom was familiar with the town and confirmed my suspicions, it is pronounced “coyote”...but you need to hear it in her Texas drawl, “kai-oh-dee”, every bit of three syllables. Also, Kyote did have a gas station, I was told, back before it was bypassed by the freeway.
