A MESQUITE PASTURE
Ole Wylie, the rancher from
the Frio Draw, north of Clovis,
has been pondering a poem
or a story about mesquite
pastures---now onto I reckon,
about three years...
Billy, the skilled scientist, tackled
the job and is still "mulling it"
I think...and he found those grand
(almost extinct) Texas pastures
to be both "useless", ah...but also
"mysterious."
Another writer--me--walked them
a right smart seventy years ago,
and found them to be
"among the grandest miracles
of all creation."
"POP" had one, about twenty or
thirty acres, right across the road
from "the Old Home Place."
a never-to-be-forgotten-pasture
---the Creator's handiwork!
A young lad of the time, when "hunting"
had not been dubbed yet as
as "evil," would take the old
Cloverine Salve single shot .22
with a few fuzzy rounds searched
out of Grandma's ash tray (full
of straight pins, safety pins, buttons,
spools of thread, and lint)
and go across the road to Pop's
Mesquite Pasture
and roam his heart out "hunting."
He never kilt anything, and hardly
ever even shot the beat-up-rifle---
BUT, he was "hunting."
("Hunting" really means more
than "hunting," you know...)
That glorious wilderness was replete
with field- larks, mockingbirds,
chickadees, plain old sparrows, and
seemingly filled with singing birds,
of all kinds--answering, antiphonally---
as choral people would say.
The place was covered, in places
thickly--by big and small
mesquite bushes..."bear grass,"
yuccas, cacti, weeds, and various
grasses, some knee high...
Blue quail were sheltering from
soaring hungry hawks under
the thickest of these bushes...
and especially along fence rows...
Bull snakes seemed to be everywhere
to a young boy, to whom
all snakes .... were scary..
(a big one crwled right between
my feet once...and I ran for fifty yards!)
There were likely the ever-present
rattlers, but I never saw one.
Also there were plenty wildflowers
of various clumps and kinds,
some giving off subtle nice aromas...
Creatures that were especially fond
of these wild places were jack rabbits
and cottontails...the little 'bunny"
cottontails just scampered everywhere
it seemed...the jacks sat upright
and listened with their long ears...
Oh to be once more, in my
worn Red Wing boots
(acquired much later in life---they
have a thousand miles on them)
out on a cool, but sunny fall day,
walking Pop's mesquite pasture
one more time...watching
the wispy white clouds float rapidly
across the sky, as if searching
for the main cloud bank
which left during the night...
Walking with the old Cloverine
Salve .22 which one of Pop's
boys had earned by selling
a dozen cans or more of a
popular ointment of the time
But it is never to be, All are "gone
with the wind..."
POP left in '73, and someone
got the old .22, which ever rested
empty in the back BR corner
by the Philco Radio...
and many perhaps --most--
of Texas' mesquite pastures have.
been deep-plowed under. to
get more farming land for
cotton and maize.
As with many good things. American,
the mesquite pastures are mostly
gone, once and for all---
never to be seen again.
---------
Mil
3 APRIL 2020
