“Them days a feller had to load a rifle at the front end exclusive—no Henry rifles then. It was perlite for to lean your shooting iron against a tree and hang your powder horn on it before you went in to get religion. My pap always taken a drink of corn licker afore he set in; but he always put down a gourdful of cold water on top of it, so it didn’t hurt him none, he told me.
“I recollect when we built the first log school in the valley. It was about ten foot square. But come to style, the courthouse up to Sherman, twenty years ago, it made a ree-cord. I was there when that house was built. It was twenty foot square. That and a few furrows of plowed ground was all there was to the county seat. We dedicated her with a barbecue; a barbecue was the only thing Texas could afford then. Huh! It’s the only thing she can afford now. We all sot under a brush shed and everybody felt right good. There was a barrel of whisky and a tin cup and a nigger with a fiddle. That’s the way to start a county seat right.
“There wasn’t a foot of railroad anywheres in them days. Yet in Texas we’ve got over a hunderd miles of railroad built already. The Lord knows what’ll happen next.
“You talking about shirts, Len! Enduring of the war, three or four years ago, all my folks had to make their own shirts. The women folks had to weave and spin the woolsey. First thing I can remember was helping to braid hide and horse-hair ropes. Everybody tanned their own leather with oak bark. We made our own saddle trees out of forks and rawhide, and we covered them with our own leather—lastro, rosaderos, taps and all. We didn’t have no wells; we drunk out’n the creeks. Some neighbor had to make all the shoes we got. We ground our corn meal in a hand mill and we made our own wagons and ox yokes. If we got a loom or spinning wheel we had to make that too. Folks used to make hats out of palmetto; they braided them theirselves. What we got done we had to do; there wasn’t no one to hire nor nothing to pay them with.
“Shirt? Why a shirt, now, Len—a shirt in the old times used to last a feller for years. Has yores?”
“It shore has,” replied Len Hersey. “She’s been a plumb good one, too, and I’m sorry to see her go. My mammy made her for me, I don’t know how long back, but quite some time. Trouble about shirts is, anyways boughten ones, it takes so much for spurs and boots and saddles a feller ain’t got much left to buy a shirt. I wouldn’t be no ways contented with one of them homemade saddles of yourn no more. It don’t leave much for shirts atter you got a cow outfit paid fer.
“But as I was sayin’, I’m happy just to drift along over this here country. Ain’t she fine? This morning, along when the sun was shinin’ so perty, you’d orter seen old Sanchez’ fighting rooster! He natural flewed up on the cart and crowed to a fare ye well, he felt that good!”
“He’d ’a’ been a lot better off if he’d ’a’ sot on top the cart every night,” commented Nabours. “Anita, old Sanchez’ woman, she starts out with three roosters and eight hens, allowing, I reckon, to start a hen ranch somewhere up north in case we got busted and couldn’t get home. She can’t no ways start one now. The skunks and wildcats and coyotes has got ’em all excepting old Mister Gallina, and he shy part of one wing.
“Ain’t that rooster like a fool Texan? He’s lonesome and broke, and don’t know where he’s at, and part of his comb is tore, and he can’t fly much; but, ‘Praise God,’ says he, ‘I got both my spurs!’ ”
“Shore he does,” nodded Len Hersey. “All the whole state o’ Texas ever has owned has been a pair o’ spurs.