One of the cypress cisterns out at the ranch collapsed. I got all the boards and ran them through the planer and the jointer. It took the old bleached wood off and the bevel but they were still random width. I arranged them and made our kitchen table from that cypress. It's a trestle type 7' long. Nice light colored straight grained cypress, trees cut probably 150 years ago.

I was recycling and repurposing long before it was cool to do that.

After 1930 and the oil boom, my great-great grandfather took grandma and moved to Corpus Christi never to return to the "Garden Spot of South Texas" and my uncle got the Humble Co. to pipe gas to the house. He used it for cooking, a bit of heating and lighting. It was some number of years after that they put in one of those dodads that added the smell to the gas. Folks used to blowing out kerosene lamps lived dangerously with natural gas piped into the house.

They had that gas up until I was about 10. I can remember going out with my grandfather on Thanksgiving morning in the freezing cold and warming up frozen gas pipelines with a torch and pear burner to get gas to the house to cook that turkey. They put in propane not long after that.

I don't know when they got electricity. Water came from the ground brought up by the efforts of an 8' Aermotor as was every drop of water within 5 miles. The cisterns evolved from cypress to clay to concrete. They did put a bird/bat proof roof over the one for the house.

Of course early on the kitchens were separate from the house and a steady supply of wood kept the hearths and stoves going until the gas stage. 12 people require a lot of cooking.

Grandpa (my Great-great grandfather) had come from Italy, settled in North Carolina at first and then participated in the Oklahoma land rush. He had a 32 Colt revolver and a C.D. Bonehill 10 gage shotgun (which I have). I wish I had the Colt too but ....

In 1903 he saw a flyer "Sweeden Farm Lots" near Piedras Pintas Texas, "The Garden Spot of South Texas". He sold his Northwestern Oklahoma farm and bought 160 acres sight unseen in Piedras Pintas (Soon to be Benavides, Texas). He bought a train car load of lumber and he and the boys got in the wagon and headed South. He was likely disappointed by "The Garden Spot of South Texas". It wasn't hardly that. But they cleared two 30 acre pastures, built a house, drilled a well and scratched out a living for 30 years. Then the Humble Oil Company changed their lives. It changed the way they lived but it did not change who they were, and I thank them and God for that.

I've got more stories than y'all want to read, so I'll stop till I just can't stand it any more.

Alan

Last edited by A R McDaniel Jr; 03/12/19 02:33 AM.