By Old Hoppy Feb 5, 2010 in Memorabilia, Pioneers and Settlers, Ranching and Farming | 0 Comments
Winter’s snows and ice storms around here always bring back memories of my Grandma’s kerosene lamp, or I should say kerosene lamps, because she had several in her small apartment that were left over from her and grandpa’s decades on their old farm.
If you’ve been getting smacked around by the many snowstorms, ice storms, and near-blizzards that have been sweeping across the Southern Plains into the Northeast this year, you probably appreciate the “wise old ways” of the kerosene lamp days. Namely, a good old-fashioned kerosene lamp stored away for winter can keep glorious light and even wonderful heat around in your home when the weather snuffs out “newfangled” power sources like electricity and sometimes even steady flows of natural gas.
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By Old Hoppy Jul 8, 2008 in Ranching and Farming | 0 Comments
When I was a small boy, we made a few trips to visit my paternal grandparents in southeastern Colorado and went out of town about 20-25 miles to the original family homestead and were shown the remains of the house my father grew up in — a genuine sod house. The house (completely gone except for parts of one wall by 1970) was built sometime just after 1900 and my grandparents continued to live in it until sometime around 1940-45.
Read more on Not so long ago, people on the more remote Plains still lived in sod houses…
By Old Hoppy Jul 4, 2008 in Ranching and Farming | 0 Comments
Longhorn cattle, identified early in the history of the Old West with Texas, New Mexico, and the region of the American Southwest, were earlier “settlers” in this land than the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower — and had a reputation for being dangerous critters.
The Longhorns’ ancestors came from the Andalusian region of Spain, and first landed in Mexico in 1521. Since most of what is now the American Southwest WAS Mexico, they merely spread northward and were there waiting when the earliest “Anglo” settlers and pioneers entered the region. The earliest ancestors of the modern-day Longhorn were called “cimarrones” — Spanish for “wild ones.” And they really were. One source I have suggested they were as feared as the Comanches by early Anglo settlers. Indeed, a battalion of U.S. soldiers during the Mexican War in the 1840s actually fought a battle with a herd of these cimarrones in Arizona, with the bulls charging out of the brush right into the face of heavy musket fire!
Read more on Longhorn cattle added danger, source of meat to life in the Old West…
