Walter Prescott Webb
ISBN 0-8032-9702-5
Read 2001 March 24 – 2002 October 10
I took five kinds of reading material with me on the trip to dadÕs funeral thinking I might want to do some reading in an off moment and not knowing what type I might be in the mood to do. This book was one type. The L.A. Times for December 9, 2000 was another. The Times was the only thing that I finished, on the flight home. There are no off moments at such times. One is either coping or sleeping.
My flight back had a stop in Denver. We flew nearly exactly over Amarillo and Panhandle Cemetery about half an hour out. It had taken us all day one day to drive up there and all day another to return from the burial. Only after we passed out of Texas could I take out any of my reading (the Times) and start trying to get on with life.
Earlier in 2000, in an occasional effort to get us interested in moving home to Texas, Elizabeth (Skemp) had sent an insert from the paper talking about this book and its author. A high school teacher, Webb had worked on it on his own and when he presented it at the University of Texas, he was awarded a PhD virtually on the spot. A book like that was in scope for me at the time, I bought it.
Using a series of arguments, Webb shows how the Great Plains are unlike other timbered and well watered lands that were settled before. He demonstrates how certain inventions were necessary to tame the land to white manÕs standards, most notably barbed wire, the windmill, and the Colt revolver. Perhaps today one might add asphalt and the Cadillac.
He describes the failed attempts to legislate homesteading conventions and water rights from places that were more traditional (i.e., wooded and riparian) into this new area. In a strong argument for states or even local rights, he claims that government is neither interested nor qualified to deal with these issues remotely. Only the locals can begin to do so and even they are in an experimental phase at this point in history.
Indeed, the water battles go on in the plains and in the west in general even today.
It is a good book with relevant information. I learned much about the life of cowboys, that they each had a stable of perhaps a dozen horses, something you never see in the movies, that they were so indirect interpersonally that they would make even me look gregarious. There is much about the history and development of barbed wire, the Aeromotor, and the revolver.
It had been my fantasy to retire to West Texas (and the West Texas section of the ARRL, the rarest) until I studied the precipitation maps and read contemporary material about the decline of the aquifers that have greened the land for now. There will be no subsistence in West Texas without significant culture, which may not exist in twenty more years.
Still, my family is from there, well, northwest Texas. Dad is (and mom will be) buried there. And, for Viann, it is Texas.
Of course, there are hazards and hardships everywhere. ÒChoose your poison,Ó as dad would have said.
I read the book on the way out to see mother that spring and finally finished it off a year and a half later. My views and fantasies have changed much in the four years since that first article about Webb and his work. Much has happened.