Jacksboro Gazette-News (Jacksboro, Tex.), Vol. 134, No. 27, Ed. 1 Tuesday, December 10, 2013 Page: 4 of 10
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Opinion
Page 4 • Jacksboro Gazette-News WWW.JACKSBORONEWSPAPERS.COM Tuesday, December 10, 2013
I among millions
I among millions
Accordii
Bureau, I
pie who moved between 2012 and 2013.
to information from the Census
ang3
;012 £
ling to
Bureau, I will soon be among 36 million peo-
ing industry, that can be challenging.
having our household upended durin
Cherry
Picked
By Cherry Rushin
Managing Editor
i set to close on our new-to-us home
in Jacksboro Friday. But like many business-
es in the area, the title office was close Friday
due to the weather.
lay
hopefully, we’ll get the deal done. We’re not
moving from far away, just 40 miles, but fig-
ures showed that’s typical.
“Relatively few of these movers traveled
long distances,” said David Ihrke, a demog-
rapher with the Census Bureau’s Journey-to-
Work and Migration Statistics Branch. “In
fact, nearly two-thirds stayed in the same
county.”
Even those who did leave their county didn’t
move all that far away either: 40.2 percent of
intercounty movers relocated less than 50
miles away. Only 24.7 percent moved 500 or
more miles to their new location.
Our family is looking forward to living in
Jacksboro, but we’re not looking forward to
the actual physically transporting our stuff
from there to here.
We were fortunate to find a suitable house.
I don’t know where we’re going to find
>r presents, as well as pac
ck everything. I joked with
pie of weeks ago that maybe \
>ack i
going to
time to shop for presents, as well as pack,
unpai
friend a couple
could just pack up the kids stuff,
boxes in gift wrap and let them open
pat
move and unpack everything. I joked witl
presents.
They probably don’t remember half the stuff
ley have anyway.
So for Christmas, our family is getting ;
■ than our old home, s
they
iey pre
’ have
’ home. It’s bigger t
re all very excited a
we’re all very excited about it.
The kids are looking forward to starting the
spring semester in the Jacksboro schools.
Being in fourth, sixth and ninth grade, we’ll
have one at each campus.
Though my husband and I were worried
about how they’d react to leaving the only
school district they’ve ever known, the kids
school.
ley're looking at it as an adventure, an op-
unity
The’
eager to try a
y’re looking;
According to my research of the local hous-
, that c
Also, having our household upended during
the holidays is going to be a challenge as well.
portunity to try something new and different.
Their enthusiasm has made the whole process
so much easier.
With that, while my living room is currently
piled with half-packed cardboard boxes in-
stead of garland, tinsel and brightly wrapped
packages, this might be the Rushin family’s
most memorable Christmas ever.
Twelve day
disaster detected
I saw on the news the other morning that
the cost of the gifts for the “Twelve Days of
Christmas” had gone up. It would cost over
$100,000 to buy all those gifts this year. It
was no surprise. With the cost of gold these
days, the five gold rings would have sky-
rocketed. The union wages for ladies danc-
ing and lords-a-leaping have really gone up,
and with the new health insurance laws af-
ter the first of the year, it’s could really be a
problem.
probl
Let
cop£
that
ing thi
j wise
5 night the baby \
re’s Mary right <
say this up-front for all those Epis-
ialians and Catholics in the bunch. I know
the 12 days came after Christmas and
were the days that the wise men took to travel
to Bethlehem. But most of us serial-Presby-
terians and Bible-beating Baptists envision it
being the 12 days before Christmas. We get
and the shepherds there on the
That takes care of the smell, but what about
the noise? Have you ever heard a frightened
goose? Put him in the room with lords leap-
ing after dancing ladies, drummers practic-
ing, and a bunch of young girls fighting over
rings. I taught junior high school for 30 years,
and seventh period could get a little loud ...
but nothing compares to thi
handing out “It’s a Messiah” cigars, and the
whole place crowded with cows and sheep
. There’s an angel on top and a par-
>ide th'
iry right out of recovery, Joseph
: “It’s a
5 crowc
here’s £
tridge in a pear tree right outside the door.
Although some of us have it a little mixed
up ... with Santa kneeling and his Harley Da-
vidson parked just outside the motel, we still
celebrate the season with great joy. Wheth-
er we think the 12 days are before or after
Christmas doesn’t really matter. Gift-giving
is a big deal.
Back to the girl who was getting all those
rings. The cost is not limited to the value of
the gifts when given. Just consider the num-
ber of trucks needed to haul them in and haul
It’s a good thing that the musicians don’t
get there until last: day 11, the pipers arrive
followed closely by those infernal drummers.
Whoever put a drummer boy in the room with
a sleeping baby was playing for the wrong
team.
There’s no mention of the 13 day. That’s the
day that all heck broke loose. The poor girl
was kicked out of her home by the neighbors,
the ASPCA arrived to rescue the animals, the
Easter bunny arrived to take care of the “egg
jroblem,” and t
he rings.
Late that afternoon, the police arrived on a
domestic violence call. It seems the girl was
sitting in the middle of the living room, cov-
ered in feathers. Her “fiance” lay dead in the
comer. Although the coroner would have to
make a formal ruling, it seems he was im-
paled by a pear tree branch, hit on the head
with a milk pail, and in possession of a flute
which had been stuck in a most uncomfort-
able place. She was humming a nonsensical
little ditty ... very repetitious. They took her
e poor
kicked out of her home by the neighbors,
ived to rescue the an
irrived to take care oJ
problem, and the pawn shop arrived to repo
the rings.
the poop out. Maids don’t come without each
having her own cow. Birds will need cages,
the goose eggs will pile up and seven swans
will take up a pretty good sized back yard
pool.
The moral to this story is to do your
in the catalog
tory
search. Just because it’s
doesn’t mean that it will make the
See BEGGS page 9
Jacksboro Gazette-News
212 N. Church St. • (940) 567-2616 • editor@jacksboronewspapers.com
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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Jacksboro Gazette-News, P.O. Drawer 70,
Jacksboro, TX 76458-0070.
Cherry Rushin
Managing Editor
Robert L. Krecklow
Publisher/Vice President
William Dean Singleton
President
{ TEXM PRESS T
ASSOCIATION
Award Y
Donna Jones
Advertising Manager
Kristi Jone:
e Clerk
Offia
Member Texas Press Association, West Texas Press Association, North and East Texas Press Association and Newspaper Association of America.
far
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION
PIE/^ETeLLME
'jcu&zffi&’C'
A RICKAGE
Braving the trail
for family
Charles Samuel Robinson didn’t go up the
cowboys did. More often than not, cowboys
who braved the dangers of Texas trail drives
went for the adventure. Robinson, on the oth-
er hand, didn’t have that luxury.
Bob Welch, a contributing editor to the
American Cowboy magazine, read the letters
written between his great-great-grandfather,
Charlie, and his wife, Mollie. From those
letters, Welch was able piece together why
a farmer would brave the dangers of the Ch-
isholm Trail.
Due to looming, desolate conditions in his
native east Texas, Robinson realized that be-
ing a farmer and father of four forced him
to look for a job farther west. The “Great
Drought of 1886” followed a severe winter
and lasted for almost two years, and farmers
and ranchers throughout Stephens County and
surrounding counties lost hundreds of cattle.
Another historical account of the drought
found in “Stephens County: Much to be Cher-
ished,” describes the desperate conditions:
“It was said a man could walk to Sandy
Creek on the carcasses of Muleshoe cattle....
cowhands organized and skinned the cattle
regardless of brand, receiving a dollar to a
dollar and a half each and skinned some 28
cattle a day,”
It was because of that drought that Rob-
inson was separated from his family during
the summer and fall of 1886 and 1887. Even
though they had been married for nine years,
the couple suffered from separation like new-
North
Texas Tales
By Gay Schlittler
Storms
took 1300 2-and 3-year-old steers to Kansas
to escape the drought. The outfit probably fol-
lowed the Western Trail in Texas and picked
up at the Chisholm Trail in Oklahoma for 400
miles. Earlier herds followed the Shawnee
Trail, a more easterly route, to the Red River
and picked up the Chisholm on to Abilene,
ite dai
Kan. Despite dangers from Indians and out-
laws, plenty of water and grass fattened i
the cattle £
I grass lattened up
lorthward. Histori-
nty of
: along the way 1
ans estimate that 5 to 10 million cattle went
up the Chisholm Trail from the 1860s to the
1880s.
Robinson wrote that he was proud to have a
good trail boss, cook and a good lot of
His wages were $35 a month, which he f
s prou
*ood trail boss, cook and a good lot of boys.
5 prom-
ised to send to Mollie as soon as he collected
them. He said that his only expense was blan-
kets. Although Robinson most certainly had
some perilous encounters along the way, the
only thing he included in his letters was that
night guard duties were from 12:15 a.m. to
2:30 a.m. Most likely, Robinson didn’t want
his wife to worry about him, as others’ de-
lyweds:
“Charlie, how much longer will it be until
you come home? I never look up the road but
when I think of you and wish I could see you
coming,” Mollie wrote to him.
Robinson joined a crew of trail drivers that
Certainly cowboys lived with days of mo-
notony, but a routine day could change in an
instant.
Welch’s article also describes how easily a
stampede could happen. Longhorns gathered
on the open ranges of Texas were not “trail
broke.” Just a cowboy’s cough at night could
cause a stampede. Lurking Indians — not to
I panther -- sent cattle
into a wholesale panic. What’s worse, a se-
vere thunderstorm complete with lightning
See STORMS page 9
mention the occasional
Wherefore art thou,
simpler stage?
Wherefore art thou, simpler stage?
In his play, “As You Like It,” debuted some
410 years ago, Will Shakespeare said “all the
world’s a stage.”
We can only guess whether theatre audienc-
es nodded in agreement or shook their heads
vigorously to object. Most of them likely
were ambivalent, much like “players” on the
world’s stage today, when we face more is-
sues than anyone cares to count.
So let us consider an addendum to his quote:
“and cameras as well as microphones.”...
We, the populace, may whimper, protest,
mutter, lament or whatever. We are now at
that place where sights and sounds are part
of public records. Such has been stuffed into
our collective pipes, ours to smoke, whether
or not we inhale.
Nations spy on nations, corporations on
competitors, political parties on each other,
and of course, traffic cameras on motorists.
We may “cry uncle” or not, but it is clear
that “uncle’s” intrusions have taken over like
kudzu, tentacles fully engaged....
More info whizzes about in cyberspace
than mere mortals can imagine. The US mail,
though, provides sobering reminders.
One came in a foreboding envelope from
the City of Fort Worth the other day. It was
addressed to me, and I opened it hastily, not
dreaming that its contents would apply to my
wife, not to me.
Lo—and throw in “behold,” too—the docu-
ment, somewhat harshly worded, alleged
that a motorist driving a vehicle registered
in my name “did then and there commit the
following violation.. .failure to stop at a red
light.” Supporting evidence included photos
Idle
American
By Don Newbury
shot from three angles, as well as a video.
The “knock-out” blow was unmistakable—a
picture “front and center” of my car’s license
plate....
I did what any spouse with 1
my cale
roof of my being other
any
would do. Racing to my calendar, I prayed
provide pr
fateful da’
:ing t
that it would providi
where
in Dal
alias—driving our
“committing” a speech in
md’s fami-
Hallelujah!
“good” car. !
the morning and visiting with a fri'
ly gathered in a hospital surgery waiting room
in the afternoon.
After establishing innocence, it was mine
to inform my wife that she had committed a
grievous traffic infraction and to contact the
county tax office. After all, it seems best to
get both our vehicles in her name. That \
open future such notifications
way,
her-
She doesn’t believe she had done anything
wrong, of course. After all, she’s been driv-
ing for a full half-century, NEVER having
received a citation.
Stopped just once for driving a “teensy-
weensy” bit over the speed limit, she cried
real tears that rolled down reddened cheeks.
The officer put away his citation pad, apolo-
gizing for causing any inconvenience.
Alas, while tears worked on the officer, they
do no good for an emotionless camera. The
$75 check for the fine has been mailed, so of-
ficially, the matter is closed. The saga contin-
See IDLE page 9
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Rushin, Cherry. Jacksboro Gazette-News (Jacksboro, Tex.), Vol. 134, No. 27, Ed. 1 Tuesday, December 10, 2013, newspaper, December 10, 2013; Jacksboro, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth707582/m1/4/?q=architectural+drawings: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Gladys Johnson Ritchie Library.