A Little Bull

When you live in a town the size of Walburg, there’s not much else to do after a hard day’s work but chat about the latest goings-on and gossip. My grandpa is an excellent verbal storyteller. When I man the front of the gas station, as I do when Grandma and Grandpa go on vacation or, lately, to my cousin Morgan’s baseball games, people come in only to hear a good story. A look of disappointment crosses their face when I have to tell them that they’re out of luck today. I’m much better putting things on paper than telling them verbally. My verbal stories often in a look of confusion and people asking, “So, was that it?” I have to nod and try to backtrack and explain more, but by the time, the essence of the story is ruined. My grandpa, on the other hand, has perfected his verbal storytelling. Now it’s up to me to make it pop on the page.

When we were little, my grandpa used to make up stories for us, like the old tale of the Cocklebur Indians who lived on our property in Walburg. Imagine that! My grandpa is famous for his stories, but infamous for his tall (and sometimes long) tales.

“When I first bought this land, as a result of gullywashers, there were sinkholes—one of which you could drive the pickup into and not see it. That big of a hole washed out. In the spring when there was plenty of rain, it had water for some time and crawfish. Because of the crawfish, there were also snakes and fish cranes. When it turned dry, the whole strip down by the trees was solid cocklebur. One of the most unwanted weeds is cocklebur. The reason I say the most unwanted is because it could grow three foot tall in good soil and be almost as wide, and it could produce thousands of seeds. Each one of these seeds would be a ball surrounded by hooks. If you step on it, it’s hard to pull out. When you walk through it, it will go through your clothing. If you’re pulling barehanded, it will stick your fingers.

I knew about the Tonkawa Indians of Central Texas, and I wondered what kind of Indians could be here? Cocklebur. They were so called because, at that time, only the high class had moccasins and the rest were barefooted. The Indians would scatter cocklebur behind them, so that anyone chasing them on foot would run into the cocklebur and it would stop them. They were growing the cocklebur thick for harvesting.

You did a lot of bullshitting and storytelling in those days too. Indians would sit in a big circle where they would do their stone making. The technical word is flint napper. A napper would have leather on his lap and a special deer antler hammer to shape that stone just right so eventually he would have an arrow or an axe head. The Indians had a fire in the middle. The reason for the circle was for bullshit, naturally. In this circle, you had this old boy chipping away and damn near finished and he screwed up. It would be thrown aside. This circle is where you found all of these good quality discarded arrows that weren’t quite perfect, and that’s where they find the artifacts today.

There is also a thicket back on the land behind St. Peter’s church, which borders on our land. There weren’t a bunch of Indians, only about 30 or 40, and that thicket is where they ran into to hide. You can only see five feet inside, and by the time you think you see something, you got an arrow and you’re dead. They had the horses on the other side of the hill but they were fast on their feet; they could run. If they get to the horses, then they’re gone.

The mulberry tree in the pasture that is over 100 years old. Most of my grandkids knew it only as the Cocklebur tree. The Indians would blow into the hollows and holes of this tree in order to make the branches grow so all their children could sit. The tree still sits in the pasture out back.”

In the end, there’s always time for a story. Every time I’m in the shop I’m still amazed at the people who take the time to sit, listen, and shoot the bull. My grandpa told this tale last week, and it’s also all too appropriate.

"Three bulls are sitting in a pasture, a big one, a medium one, and a small one. They are all looking longingly at the other side of the fence, wanting to get out and explore. They stay close to the edge of the pasture, and finally the big bull finds a place to escape. The medium bull and the little bull keep roaming, but soon the medium bull also finds a way out. Now it’s just the little bull scaling the pasture’s edge. He had all but given up hope when he found a place to squeeze through. The moral of the story: There’s always room for a little bull."