Here is the original clay of “Texas” by Scott Rogers.
TEXAS
‘Texas’ is a ‘mindset.’ Imagine generations that dealt with scratching a living from a mesquite thorned, flash flooded, hot kaliche, rattlesnaked land…all the while never knowing “if and when” the Comanche would raid their homes or towns, knowing that when that happened it would, most assuredly, be too late to do anything about it. The steeling of folks’ physical bearing, for generations, being a natural consequence.
It’s my experience that the people of Texas are the treasure of the Lone Star state. Courage to develop the land’s resources (oil & gas) on a wing and a prayer – or betting the farm. From the time of Sam Bowie’s courageous stand at the Alamo, to San Jacinto, an identity was born that lives in the hearts of Texans’ to this day. From Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving seeing a financial opportunity to get meat back east and inventing the ‘trail drive’ by rounding up cattle to drive beeves north to the railheads, to my Grandad ~ George Franklin Speed ~ planting pecan seedlings on 8 acres off Fruitland Farm Road in San Angelo Texas and watching them grow from the porch of his shotgun house to a height of eighty feet, there is a ‘DO IT’ and get the hell out of my way mentality I feel in the air every time I go back for a visit.
Please allow a bit of reminiscing and my using this Texas Longhorn sculpture as a physical representation of my formative years. Here is what TEXAS brings up for me: I lived in Waco from 1969-1970 and McKinney from 1974-1997. I grew up in an 1890’s Sears mail-order farm house…with no central air conditioning and Dearborn heaters – we lit with a stick match – to warm the nights. On hot summer nights, my brothers and I would play chess – the winner getting to sleep by the one open window…with the hope of a breeze. We bought steel traps from Hope Hardware to trap raccoons, squirrels and possums, then skin them to line our bedroom walls with their tanned hides. Kerosene lamps hung from the walls ~ to be lit when the electricity went out. Sitting on the porch swing, from 2:00-3:00am, watching the non-stop electrical storms that kept the sky as light as noon day. Every winter, stapling up thick plastic, on the entire north side of the house, as an attempt to keep the kitchen pipes from freezing and the wind a bay. It often didn’t help as ice came from the sky and laid 2-3 inches on everything.
As a twelve year old, I hoed cotton, moved irrigation pipe, sprayed and ticked cattle in Childress. At age eight, I won a watermelon seed spitting contest in Lubbock, at age ten I learned to play football in Waco. I raised hogs, sheep & goats in FFA, and showed them at the Texas State Fair, and learned to love a Fletchers Corny Dog. At age fourteen, fell in love with a beautiful redhead from Garland. I watched my brothers take frog gigs and walk up muddy streams to their wastes looking to skewer water moccasins. I became a man in 1978 in the Dallas Convention Center ~ after winning the Golden Gloves Heavyweight Division at age sixteen ~ on the ride home, and with my septum sticking out of my right nostril, I asked dad, “How’d I do?” To which he responded, “I’ll never have to worry about you again…as long as I live.”
God bless the years I spent in this amazing state. I could go on for a while…but I pray you get the gist! I once asked a man if he was from Texas to which he responded, “No, but I got here as soon as I could.”
SCOTT ROGERS
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