Borders: A Fascination

I have always been fascinated by borders, and it is reflected in my writing and in my worldview. These borders may be physical, psychological, linguistic, cultural, or some combination thereof. Perhaps that is why my fiction often features immigrant stories. I am deeply interested in learning how culture, language, food, and traditions change when a group of people settles in a new land. In linguistic terms, loan words from the new land enter the mother tongue. Syntax may change, and the mother tongue as spoken by the community soon seems dated to those dwelling in the original homeland, for the community's access to the language's evolution has been severed. The old recipes are adapted based on what is available in the new land. Religious views may change based on contact with other communities, and holidays may take on new forms and narratives. Music can also be influenced by interaction with other communities.

This weekend is the polka fest in the Czech community of Ennis, which is about half an hour south of Dallas. Thus, I am including a music clip by Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians, who were quite well known in the 1940s and 1950s. The song is a polka, and it is sung in Czech, but listen to the elements of Western Swing in the piano and the Bob Wills-like styling in the vocals. Hofner, it must be noted, was an ethnic Czech from Lavaca County, and he is also a prime example of how immigrant communities impact the world around them. Hofner, after all, wrote one of the most quintessentially Texas songs of all time, "The Cotton-eyed Joe."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPKrJH8I0Q 

And here is Adolph Hofner's version of "Cotton-eyed Joe" in case you feel like dancing beside your laptop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PefVH7L0Tg0

  

Ranchman's Cafe in Ponder, Texas

Martina and I rode out to Ponder yesterday to have lunch at the Ranchman's Cafe, where Larry McMurtry ate dinner just before seeing the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church bus that would provide the name for one of the finest books of our time. For me, Ponder and Lonesome Dove have special meaning. My grandfather grew up around Ponder and attended school there. And some of my earliest memories are related to that little town. In fact, the first time I was ever allowed to carry a shotgun on my own, which was when I was eight years old, I was hunting with my grandfather and father in Ponder. As for the Lonesome Dove connection, my great-grandparents, the Cates, attended Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, and Cates have been buried in the Lonesome Dove Cemetery since the late nineteenth century, though my great-grandparents are buried elsewhere. Family and literary history aside, I enjoyed a fine lunch special of chopped sirloin topped with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, fried zucchini, and black eyed peas.

http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-kennedy/article69634787.html

Just for kicks, here is the Ranchman's steak butter recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ranchmans-steak-butter-recipe-1942728 

First Electric Instrument Ever Recorded

The first electric instrument ever recorded was Bob Dunn's steel guitar when he was a member of Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies headquartered out of Fort Worth. It is curious to consider that Bob Dunn's Hawaiian steel was actually recorded before Les Paul's solid body namesake had been developed. For the record, Dunn's original electric recordings were on a standard guitar played in Hawaiian style with a rudimentary pickup rather than on what is now called the lap steel.

Here is a link to some of the earliest steel guitar recordings ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tBeOCL8DK4

Quaker Parrots in Texas

One day last week while entering the building where I work, four parrots flew past in perfect synchronicity. They were green with grayish chests, and they moved swiftly, so swiftly that I could not get my phone out of my pocket to record them before they were gone. Had I not heard about the Quaker parrots of Texas before, I would not have believed my eyes.

Seeing the birds reminded me of the time Martina and I witnessed wild macaws in flight in Costa Rica. Encountering those large, colorful parrots in the wild was a challenge to my mindset, for my mind almost could not imagine them being anything other than domesticated.

But parrots flying through Fort Worth challenged my mindset in a slightly different way. The Quaker parrots, also known as monk parakeets, just seemed strangely out of context, though I now know that places like the DFW Metroplex and East Austin have become home sweet home for these feathered fellows. In fact, these formerly domesticated birds from South America have adapted so well to the Texas environment that they even have their own Facebook page.

Here is a link to a very informative article about the Quaker parrots of Texas.

http://www.austin360.com/lifestyles/recreation/true-wild-parrots-live-here/rJLTQgA5GYo6qRllqiaThI/

Chief Red Fox in a Jumble of Books

Driving through what could still be considered the country, Martina and I happened across a rummage sale in front of a halfway house for ex-convicts. Among the piles of clothes and stacks of obsolete home goods was a jumble of books. The books looked like they had all been kept in pristine condition until arriving in that pile, which made me believe that they had been donated by the relatives of someone who had recently died. In the pile was Tales of Old Time Texas by J. Frank Dobie, a collection of stories by Franz Kafka, The Making of Mankind by Richard Leakey, Michel Foucalt's Discipline and Punish, the Basic Writings of Nietzsche, a Spanish language field guide to the mammals of Colombia, a writer's handbook, and a copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous bible filled with margin notes. Judging by the books before me, it seemed pretty clear that this was the library of a dead writer. This jumble of books seemed to be further evidence to support the axiom, "A man's library is a window to his soul."

Martina reached into the pile and found a copy of The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox, which was signed by Chief Red Fox himself. Although I sometimes claim to be omnipotent, I, of course, am not, so I flipped through the book to find out more. Chief Red Fox was at Little Bighorn? Buffalo Bill visited Chief Red Fox at the Pine Lodge Reservation and asked him to join the Wild West Show? Chief Red Fox performed in London for the Monarchy? How had I not heard of this guy? So we bought the book.

Once we got home, I googled Chief Red Fox and quickly learned that he died in Corpus Christi, Texas, at the venerable age of 105. I also learned that he was a very controversial figure and the center of a major literary scandal in the 1970s when it was discovered that his account was not completely true and that a sizable chunk of his memoir had been lifted from a book on Wounded Knee. 

So I got to thinking about public figures inventing their past, cultivating their legends. Perhaps Chief Red Fox was acting in the spirit of Buffalo Bill. It is well-known that Buffalo Bill tied fact together with myth. Buffalo Bill knew what the public wanted, and he gave it to them. It seems that in the penny Western tradition of the nineteenth century, the public really did not care if everything they read about the Wild West was actually true. Buffalo Bill, and the writers out West, gave people what they wanted to believe. Perhaps Chief Red Fox was simply furthering that tradition. 

Holding the book by Chief Red Fox, I wanted to believe that he was a medium between the past and the present. I wanted to believe that the man who signed the book really was a nephew of Crazy Horse. I wanted to believe that he was present at Custer's Last Stand. But lamentably, it seems that these things are not true. Yet there is some truth in Chief Red Fox's story. He really did play in silent films. He really did travel with Buffalo Bill. And whether or not the chief was a charlatan, a huckster, or simply a showman does not really matter to me at this point. I will not jump on my high horse and say that I won't read a book written by a liar. I will treat it like a novel, which is, essentially, a book of untruths disguised to resemble the truth. I will simply accept this miscategorized memoir as "a work of faction" and go along for the ride.   

Chief Red Fox NYT Obituary