DYNASTY ON THE TEXAS PLAINS

DYNASTY ON THE TEXAS PLAINS
Author: Bonnie Faye James Gaston
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 651
Release: 2009-10-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1462824773

My son asked me to write the things I did while growing up. The two chapters I thought I could write became forty-four chapters. My memories are happy moments, as I grew up during the Depression in a wonderful Christian home six miles south of Littlefield, Texas. The moment my Father saw me, he called me his Plains Angel. My Mother was a kind and thoughtful person with a precious disposition and always spoke with positive words. Living with my brothers and sisters was like having my best friends with me at all times. Life was great even with the sandstorms turning our daylight to darkness, planting black-eye peas instead of cotton because of little rainfall, gathering eggs from tall haystacks, hoeing cotton from dawn to dusk, and learning how to preserve fruits, vegetables, and meat for our winter food. My Father was a great farmer and helped provide electricity and a party-line telephone system to our rural community. He is known as Mr. REA (Rural Electrification Administration) in Littlefield, Texas. I researched my Littlefield School system in 1913 and found Mr. George W. Littlefield had donated land for a one-room school building. Ms. Willie Armstrong taught school in April, May, and June with a yearly salary of forty dollars. My dream to help children and fill their lives with sunshine came true the day I began my teaching career in Plainview, Texas. After writing about World War I, World War II, and the following wars, I have a better understanding what my two brothers and other family members must have endured. I am thankful my three wonderful sons – Terry, Dale, and Randy with their adventures at home, church, school, Scout trips, did not have to experience the pain of war. My life has been blessed with a wonderful husband, three great sons that are successful, a great daughter-in-law, and two precious grandchildren, Trevor and Lane. My joyful memories growing up on a Littlefield farm with my wonderful family gave me the foundation I needed for my life’s adventures and accomplishment. Bonnie Faye James Gaston

Tales of Texas Cooking

Tales of Texas Cooking
Author: Frances Brannen Vick
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2015-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1574416189

According to Renaissance woman and Pepper Lady Jean Andrews, although food is eaten as a response to hunger, it is much more than filling one's stomach. It also provides emotional fulfillment. This is borne out by the joy many of us feel as a family when we get in the kitchen and cook together and then share in our labors at the dinner table. Food is comfort, yet it is also political and contested because we often are what we eat--meaning what is available and familiar and allowed. Texas is fortunate in having a bountiful supply of ethnic groups influencing its foodways, and Texas food is the perfect metaphor for the blending of diverse cultures and native resources. Food is a symbol of our success and our communion, and whenever possible, Texans tend to do food in a big way. This latest publication from the Texas Folklore Society contains stories and more than 120 recipes, from long ago and just yesterday, organized by the 10 vegetation regions of the state. Herein you'll find Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s Family Cake, memories of beef jerky and sassafras tea from John Erickson of Hank the Cowdog fame, Sam Houston's barbecue sauce, and stories and recipes from Roy Bedichek, Bob Compton, J. Frank Dobie, Bob Flynn, Jean Flynn, Leon Hale, Elmer Kelton, Gary Lavergne, James Ward Lee, Jane Monday, Joyce Roach, Ellen Temple, Walter Prescott Webb, and Jane Roberts Wood. There is something for the cook as well as for the Texan with a raft of takeaway menus on their refrigerator.

Interwoven

Interwoven
Author: Sallie Reynolds Matthews
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780890961230

Records one woman's response to pioneer life in Texas at the turn of the century.

Laguna

Laguna
Author: Michael Putegnat
Publisher: BookPros, LLC
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2017-01-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781933538211

John Magne, a powerful fourth-generation ranching patriarch, is faced with a financial crisis. Descended from a long line of masters of influence and manipulation, he deftly executes a plan that reaches deep into Washington, D.C. and state house politics and powerful New York Investment Banks. Against his overwhelming political power, stands one unwilling and unwitting ex-government worker, with a deep aversion to conflict and a record of running from it...and five determined women, each on different missions, all converging on a shocking conclusion. Laguna is a mystery set in our times, in a world where truth has become irrelevant, redemption impossible and murder is just business. Or so it seems...

Dukes of Duval County

Dukes of Duval County
Author: Anthony R. Carrozza
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 570
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806159553

The notorious Parr family manipulated local politics in South Texas for decades. Archie Parr, his son George, and his grandson Archer relied on violence and corruption to deliver the votes that propelled their chosen candidates to office. The influence of the Parr political machine peaked during the 1948 senatorial primary, when election officials found the infamous Ballot Box 13 six days after the polls closed. That box provided a slim eighty-seven-vote lead to Lyndon B. Johnson, initiating the national political career of the future U.S. president. Dukes of Duval County begins with Archie Parr’s organization of the Mexican American electorate into a potent voting bloc, which marked the beginning of his three-decade campaign for control of every political office in Duval County and the surrounding area. Archie’s son George, who expanded the Parrs’ dominion to include jobs, welfare payments, and public works, became a county judge thanks to his father’s influence—but when George was arrested and imprisoned for accepting payoffs, only a presidential pardon advocated by then-congressman Lyndon Johnson allowed George to take office once more. Further legal misadventures haunted George and his successor, Archer, but in the end it took the combined force of local, state, and federal governments and the courageous efforts of private citizens to overthrow the Parr family. In this first comprehensive study of the Parr family’s political activities, Anthony R. Carrozza reveals the innermost workings of the Parr dynasty, a political machine that drove South Texas politics for more than seventy years and critically influenced the course of the nation.

Petra’s Legacy

Petra’s Legacy
Author: Jane Clements Monday
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2007-08-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781585446148

The matriarch of one of the most important families in Texas history, Petra Vela Kenedy has remained a shadowy presence in the annals of South Texas. In this biography of Petra Vela Kenedy, the authors not only tell her story but also relate the history of South Texas through a woman’s perspective. Utilizing previously unpublished letters, journals, photographs, and other primary materials, the authors reveal the intimate stories of the families who for years dominated governments, land acquisition, commerce, and border politics along the Rio Grande and across the Wild Horse Desert. From Petra’s early life in the landed ranchero society of northern Mexico, through her alliance with Luis Vidal—an officer in the Mexican army to whom she bore eight children—until her move to Brownsville after Vidal’s death, Petra lived in Mexico. When she moved to Texas, having taken Vidal’s name, she represented a link to the landed families of the region. Mifflin Kenedy, a steamboat captain who had first come to Texas during the Mexican War, married into her world, acquiring local respectability and stature when he took Petra as his wife. The story of their life together encompasses war, the taming of a frontier, the blending of cultures, the origin of a ranching empire, and the establishment of a foundation and trust that still endure today, giving millions to Texas through charitable gifts. An attractive woman of business acumen, strong religious convictions, and intense family loyalty, Petra Vela Kenedy’s influence through her husband and her children left a legacy whose exploration is long overdue.

100 Classic Hikes in Texas

100 Classic Hikes in Texas
Author: E. Dan Klepper
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2009-01-12
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1594855404

CLICK HERE to download the ten mile hike "Canyon Lake Gorge" and the short but strenuous hike "Caprock Canyons St. Park Oxbow Trail" free from 100 Classic Hikes in Texas * Includes just the best-of-the-best Texas hikes, each with a special payoff * Up-to-date hiking information on land management regulations * Trail guides in this series are bestselling guidebooks in their states * Only 4-color hiking guidebook to the region The big sky country of Texas calls hikers of all kinds to its trails. With over 80 parks, 56 wildlife management areas, nine natural areas and 28 historic sites and parklands, Texas offers a plethora of hiking options to choose from. Regions covered include the Panhandle Plains, prairies and lakes, piney woods, Gulf Coast, South Texas Plains, Hill country, and Big Bend country. This full-color guidebook includes elevation profiles, sidebar tips, topographic maps, and a handy Hikes-at-a-Glance chart to help readers find the hikes and trails they want quickly and easily. Whether you're planning an extended backpacking trip through the northern cross timber or a short day hike just outside of town, this new guidebook presents a wonderful variety of iconic Texas trails.

Lawmen of the Old West

Lawmen of the Old West
Author: Del Cain
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2001-01-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1461625599

Some of the law officers who served the West during the last half of the nineteenth century drifted from one side of the law to the other and sold their talents to whichever side offered the most advantage. Others used their positions as cover for their criminal activities. The lawmen in this book were serious offenders against the laws they had at one time sworn to uphold. Their skills were honed in range wars and family feuds and polished along the cattle trails, in the saloons and banks, and on the trains of the West. Some of them did good work enforcing the law when that was their job. Others had equally successful careers on the other side of the law. More than one kicked out their lives at the end of ropes strung up by citizens who were outraged by their abuse of the trust that went along with the badge they wore. These are their stories.

Proof

Proof
Author: Byrd M. Williams IV
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1574416561

The Byrd Williams Collection at the University of North Texas contains more than 10,000 prints and 300,000 negatives, accumulated by four generations of Texas photographers, all named Byrd Moore Williams. Beginning in the 1880s in Gainesville, the four Byrds photographed customers in their studios, urban landscapes, crime scenes, Pancho Villa’s soldiers, televangelists, and whatever aroused their unpredictable and wide-ranging curiosity. When Byrd IV sat down to choose a selection from this dizzying array, he came face to face with the nature of mortality and memory, his own and his family’s. In some cases these photos are the only evidence remaining that someone lived and breathed on this earth. The 193 photos selected here are organized into thematic sections such as “Landscapes,” “Violence and Religion,” and “Darkness.” They are significant not just for the range of subjects, but for the inclusion of a variety of examples of the evolving photographic technology from the 1880s to the present. This book is an unprecedented portrait of both photographic history and the history of Texas, as well as a record of one unique family. Roy Flukinger’s Foreword places the photographs in a historical context, and Anne Wilkes Tucker’s Afterword discusses the ethics of memory and preservation.