Download or read book The Cedar Choppers written by Ken Roberts and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, “. . . they looked hard—tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin.” When Roberts’s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers’ offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, “Who are these people?” The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts’s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
Download or read book The Cedar Choppers written by Ken Roberts and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, “. . . they looked hard—tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin.” When Roberts’s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers’ offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, “Who are these people?” The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts’s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
Download or read book Brush Men and Vigilantes written by David Pickering and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain dramatized, dissenters from the Confederacy lived in mortal danger across the South. In scattered pockets from the Carolinas to the frontier in Texas, some men clung to a belief in the Union or an unwillingness to preserve the slaveholding Confederacy, and they died at the hands of their own neighbors. Brush Men and Vigilantes tells the story of how dissent, fear, and economics developed into mob violence in a corner of Texas--the Sulphur Forks river valley northeast of Dallas. Authors David Pickering and Judy Falls have combed through court records, newspapers, letters, and other primary sources and collected extended-family lore to relate the details of how vigilantes captured and killed more than a dozen men. The authors' story begins before the Civil War, as they describe the particular social and economic conditions that gave rise to tension and violence during the war. Unlike most other parts of Texas, the Sulphur Forks river valley had a significant population of Upper Southerners, some of whom spoke out against secession, objected to enlisting in the Confederate army, or associated with "Union men." For some of them, safety meant disappearing into the tangled brush thickets of the region. Routed from the thicket or gone to ground there, dissenters faced death. Betrayed by links to a well-known Union guerrilla from the Sulphur Forks area, more men of the area were captured, tried in mock courts, and hanged. Other men met their death by sniper fire or private execution, as in the case of brush man Frank Chamblee, who for years eluded his enemies by clever tricks but was finally gunned down after the war, reportedly by one of the area's most prominent men. Anyone with an interest in the new history of the Civil War or Texas should find much to digest in this compelling book, whose authors Richard B. McCaslin congratulates for taking their place "in the ranks of Texas' literary reconstructionists."
Download or read book Rudder written by Thomas M. Hatfield and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudder From Leader to Legend Thomas A. Hatfield In this first comprehensive biography of James Earl Rudder, Hatfield covers Rudder's storied military exploits -- from years spent stateside training the all-volunteer 2nd Ranger Battalion to the unit's trek over the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc during the D-Day invasion. 540 pp. 68 b&w photos. 8 maps. Bib. Index. $30.00 cloth
Download or read book Goodbye to a River written by John Graves and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.
Download or read book Wanted Mountain Cedars written by Elizabeth McGreevy and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This controversial, eye-opening book by Elizabeth McGreevy suggests a different perception of Mountain Cedars (also called Ashe Junipers). It digs into the politics, history, economics, culture, and ecology surrounding these trees in the Hill Country of Texas from the 1700s to the present. Since the 1920s, reporters, writers, scientists, landowners, politicians, and cedar fever victims have characterized the trees as a non-native, water-hogging, grass-killing, toxic, useless species to justify its removal. The result has been a glut of Mountain Cedar tall tales. Yet before the 1890s, people highly respected Mountain Cedars. The Mountain Cedars they reported were large timber trees with strong, decay-resistant heartwood. Most were cut down and sold to boost the young Hill Country economy. The clearcutting of old-growth forests and dense woodlands and the continuous overgrazing of prairies that followed led to mass soil degradation and erosion. Acting as nature's bandage, Mountain Cedars morphed into pioneering bushes and spread across degraded soils. This book tracks down the origins of the tall tales to determine what is true, what is false, and what is somewhere in between. Through a series of revelations, the author replaces anti-cedar sentiments with a more constructive, less emotional approach to Hill Country land management.
Download or read book The Wind written by Dorothy Scarborough and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These copies were typewritten by the librarian of the Sweetwater Library, because no published copies were available. There was a demand for this title because of local ties.
Download or read book Texas Hill Country written by John Graves and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2003-11-01 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Limestone hills, cold spring-fed streams, live oaks and cedar, old German towns—the Texas Hill Country may well be the most beloved region of the state. Unlike West Texas with its dramatic expanses of plains and sky, or the eastern Piney Woods in their lush fecundity, the Hill Country never overwhelms. Its intimate landscapes of rolling hills, fields of wildflowers, and cypress-shaded rivers impart a peace and serenity that draws the urban-weary from across Texas and even beyond. In this volume, two of the state’s most respected artists join their talents to create an unsurpassed portrait of the Texas Hill Country. With an unerring eye for landscape photography, Wyman Meinzer distills the visual essence of the Hill Country—long vistas of oak-and-cedar-covered hills, clear streams running over rocks, bluebonnets turning fields into lapis-colored seas. His photographs also go beyond the familiar to reveal surprising contrasts and juxtapositions—prickly pear cactus delicately frosted with ice, black-eyed susans growing among granite boulders. With an equally true feeling for what makes the Hill Country distinct, John Graves writes about the land and its people and how they have shaped one another. He pays tribute to the tenacious German pioneers who turned unpromising land into farms and ranches, the Anglo-American “cedar-choppers” who harvested the region’s pest plant, and even the generations of vacationers who have found solace in the Hill Country. As Graves observes, “since well over a century ago, the region has been a sort of reference point for natives of other parts of the state, and mention of it usually brings smiles and nods.” Together, John Graves and Wyman Meinzer once again demonstrate that they are the foremost artists of the Texas landscape. The portrait they create in images and words is as close as you can come to the heart of the Hill Country without being there.
Download or read book Springs of Texas written by Gunnar M. Brune and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores the natural history of Texas and more than 2900 springs in 183 Texas counties. It also includes an in-depth discussion of the general characteristics of springs - their physical and prehistoric settings, their historical significance, and their associated flora and fauna.
Download or read book 1960s Austin Gangsters written by Jesse Sublett and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk hero status despite their violent criminal acts.
Download or read book Adventures with a Texas Naturalist written by Roy Bedichek and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic since its first publication in 1947, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist distills a lifetime of patient observations of the natural world. This reprint contains a new introduction by noted nature writer Rick Bass.
Download or read book Love Finds You in Calico California written by Elizabeth Ludwig and published by Ellie Claire. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seamstress Abigail Watts is a young woman ahead of her time as she determines to create the life she wants in a world dominated by men. After hearing news of a silver strike in Calico, California, Abigail packs up her needles and thread and follows her father out West. When he mysteriously dies in the mines, she's left alone and finds herself pressed into a marriage of convenience with livery owner Nathan Hawk. Determined to uncover the mystery surrounding her father's death, Abigail stays in Calico. But when the truth sets her free, will she leave Calico - or stay and make a life with Nathan?
Download or read book With the Bark Off written by Neal Spelce and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if you got a call from Lyndon Johnson to be in Washington DC tomorrow to take a trip around the world? If you are twenty-four-year-old broadcast journalist Neal Spelce, you buckle up. A two-week diplomatic dream trip turned into a lifelong rollercoaster ride. Spelce began his career as a part-time journalist in the LBJ family-owned Austin TV station in 1956, which vaulted him into a lifetime of memorable experiences with Johnson and many icons of the twentieth century. From his live reporting during the UT Tower shooting tragedy to his lifelong association with LBJ, Spelce found himself behind the scenes in many of the twentieth century’s crucial moments. The Austin-based journalist shares candid moments with LBJ and five other US presidents, including a rare interview with father and son presidents George Bush while the three were cramped together in a small bass boat on a Texas lake. During his lengthy media career, Spelce saw Austin grow from a college town to a thriving city. Along the way he interacted with Texas legends such as Darrell Royal, Willie Nelson, Dan Rather, and more, all part of entertaining stories that he tells, as LBJ liked to say, “with the bark off.”
Download or read book Hard Scrabble written by John Graves and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Goodbye to a River ruminates over what an “unmagnificent” Texas homestead has meant to him. “A kind of homemade book—imperfect like a handmade thing, a prize. It’s a galloping, spontaneous book, on occasion within whooping distance of that greatest and sweetest of country books, Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook.” —Edward Hoagland, The New York Times Book Review “His subjects are trees and brush, hired help, fences, soil, armadillos and other wildlife, flood and drought, local history, sheep and goats . . . and they come to us reshaped and reenlivened by his agreeably individual (and sometimes cranky) notions.” —The New Yorker “If Goodbye to a River was in some sense Graves’s Odyssey, this book is his [version of Hesiod’s] Works and Days. It is partly a book about work, partly a book about nature, but mostly a book about belonging. In the end John Graves has learned to belong to his patch of land so thoroughly that at moments he can sense in himself a unity with medieval peasants and Sumerian farmers, working with their fields by the Tigris.” —Larry McMurtry, The Washington Post Book World “Hard Scrabble is hard pastoral of the kind we have learned to recognize in Wordsworth, Frost, Hemingway, and Faulkner. It celebrates life in accommodation with a piece of the ‘given’ creation, a recalcitrant four hundred or so acres of Texas cedar brake, old field, and creek bottom, which will require of any genuine resident all the character he can muster.” —Southwest Review
Download or read book Hudson Bend and the Birth of Lake Travis written by Carole McIntosh Sikes and published by American Chronicles. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Along the picturesque shores of the Colorado River lies historic Hudson Bend. Established by Wiley Hudson in the 1850s, the verdant hills and abundant water attracted scores of farming families. Hudson's example was soon followed by still more settlers, who created their own thriving communities in the area. Discover the evolution of this cherished region and the courageous people who shaped it, from the Comanche tribes and Anglo settlers to the developers, cedar choppers" and construction workers who forged the lake in 1937. Author and hill country native Carole McIntosh Sikes offers a collection of essays that explores a history forever linked with hill country culture, New Deal-era programs and Texas politics."
Download or read book Native Time written by Lee Francis and published by . This book was released on 2000-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This chronological history of Native America, from 200,000 B.C.E. to the present, is indispensable for any library. Beautifully rendered & comprehensive, & containing 100 photos, it illuminates the history, literature, art, & philosophy of Native inhabitants, who have lived on this continent for over 200 centuries, casting a desperately needed perspective on the history of this land. Lee Francis, a Laguna Pueblo, is a national authority on Native American history & culture. The book is divided into chronological sections: Journey Time, 200,000 B.C.-A.D. 1679; Combat Time, 1680-1777; Ceremony Time; Treaty Time, 1778-1871; & Bureau Time, 1872-1994.
Download or read book Barkskins written by Annie Proulx and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Magnificent.” (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See) From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, marvelously dramatic novel about the destruction of the world’s forests. In the late seventeenth century, two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in Canada, then known as New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a seigneur, for three years in exchange for land, they become woodcutters—barkskins. Sel suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman, and their descendants live trapped between two hostile cultures. Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China and New Zealand under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence and cultural annihilation. Again and again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face-to-face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid—in their greed, lust, vengefulness or their compassion and hope—that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a superb marriage of history and imagination.
