Stirpes, Volume 39, Number 4, December 1999 Page: 55
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5TIRPE5 bECEMBER 1999
had very little to say. She had short, dark brown
hair and was wearing a starched cotton dress
made from a print in a subdued design similar to
those Mother wore. Opal and Della were pale little
bobbed blondes, the younger being a smaller copy
of the older, with permanent smiles planted on
their cute little faces. They were dressed in plain
little cotton print dresses.
Light from the coal oil lamp lent a certain
rustic charm to the living room which was
furnished with mismatched pieces of furniture and
accented here and there with articles of handiwork,
showing that Mrs. Harris had a desire to
make a pleasant home for her family. The red and
gold glowing warmth from a large log in the fireplace
added a comforting touch to the briskly cold
March night.
The females didn't need to concern themselves
with something to talk about, as the
dialogue taking place between Father and Mr.
Harris immediately mesmerized them.
Father wanted to know what "Harris" had been
doing since their last meeting. Mr. Harris said he
was immediately inducted into the Army and, in
spite of his clubfeet, was issued some ill-fitting
high-top army shoes and sent to basic training.
The sergeant ignored his congenital deformity and
tried to put him through the same grueling drills
as everyone else. Extensive marching in the wrong
shoes soon rendered him unable to even stand, let
alone walk, and he was sent to the dispensary
where the medic had him released from the army
with a medical discharge.
Since then, the Army had awarded him a small
service-connected monthly disability check and
furnished him with made-to-order corrective
shoes that allowed him to hobble around with a
cane. Before entering the Army, he had worn
specially fitted corrective shoes with which he
had functioned very well.
Mr. Harris told about meeting and marrying his
wife and moving around from one rented farm to
another as he was ill prepared to work at anything
in the city. His goal was to own a saddle shop and
spend his time making all sorts of western items
from leather for which he had a natural talent. At
present he was making bridles and belts, like theone he was wearing, and a few other things when
someone ordered them.
Then Father gave a brief run-down of his life
since the Army and told how he met Mother and
why we were on a farm in the Somerset area. He
said it wasn't the 4,000 acre cattle ranch he was
saving up to buy when he joined the Army, but it
was the closest he had come to same, and then
they started reminiscing about their life together
on the range and things really got interesting
I noticed that Father and Mr. Harris called
each other "Rife" and "Harris," completely disregarding
their first names, and apparently forgot
that others were present as they exhibited a
tremendous yearning for days of yore, while
recounting experiences they had shared.
In the years immediately before and up to
1919, they spent a lot of time around Del Rio and
the Devils River in West Texas herding livestock,
purchased for resale at a profit, from one place to
another. This meant they had to camp out, cook all
their meals over an open fire, and carry their gear
and supplies on several pack animals. They slept on
bedrolls under blankets with the ground for a
mattress and the ever-changing heavens for a
roof. They carried an old tent in case of rain, but
it rarely did.
Two of the foods they spoke of with obvious
craving were pinto beans cooked all day or night
with water and seasoning in a Dutch oven buried in
a bed of hot rocks, and the hot biscuits Father
put together and baked over coals with a wall of
hot rocks around them and a large lid on top
creating a makeshift oven. The biscuits were
especially light and tasty when made with milk
from a fresh cow or nanny goat that Father roped
and milked.
I asked how he was able to milk a range cow
without getting kicked in the head and Father
said, "I never came across a cow I couldn't coax
into letting her milk down and, if she kicked, I
hobbled her back legs together with a rope, no
problem."
The game they killed and dressed included
rabbits, quail, doves, deer, and now and then a wild
turkey, all of which were either roasted on a stick,
skillet-fried, smothered in gravy, or stewed with55
STIRPES
DE~CEMBER 1999
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Texas State Genealogical Society. Stirpes, Volume 39, Number 4, December 1999, periodical, December 1999; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth41412/m1/57/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Genealogical Society.