Lone Star Trail
Texas themed hunting and fishing interviews featuring experts and real tales from the field.
Lone Star Trail
Ancient Texans and a Coon Attack
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Ancient Texans were hunters and the remains of their tools and weapons are scattered across the state. Rebecca Shelton with the Texas Historical Commissionjoins the show to give context to the artifacts and gives a glimpse back in time. Dayton recounts a tale of a horse that could pull nails with his teeth and a coon encounter gone wrong. The show brought to you in part by TFRWS. They are the go to source for professional trapping services in Texas.
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Welcome to Lone Star Trail, a new outdoor show aimed at bringing you hunting and fishing updates and compelling stories from around Texas and right here at home. Get ready to join us down the trail. Now, here's your host, Nathan Smith.
SPEAKER_03Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of the Lone Star Trail. I'm your host, Nathan Smith. Glad you could join us again for another episode. On today's show, we talk with the Texas Historical Commission. Rebecca Shelton is an archaeologist with that state agency and share some insight on some of the earliest Texans and some of their hunting tools that they used, some of which you can still find all across the state today. On house rules, Dayton shares a story about his father and a horse who had a knack for carpentry or maybe demolition. All this and more right after the break. Support some more coffee, and I'll see you soon. Whether you're looking to buy your next hunting property or have acreage to sell, you need Brian Clark and Ranch Pro Real Estate in your corner. Use the latest in technology to make listings easy for sellers to maximize value. In the market to buy that perfect ranch or hunting getaway, call Ranch Pro Real Estate at 325-642-3630. That's Ranch Pro Real Estate at RanchProReal Estate.com. Land is their life. Let's face it, whether you farm or ranch or ranch wildlife, you encounter problems with predators, no doubt. My friends at Texas Farm and Ranch Wildlife Solutions have the answer to your predator nuclearment problems. They specialize in taking care of those pesky raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, beavers, whatever wildlife issues you're having, Texas Farm and Ranch Wildlife Solutions is your answer. Call my friend Philip Wood at 713-208-3517. That's 713-208-3517. You can find him online at TFRWS.com. He's a professional trapper. He knows what he's doing. He has the right resources and the right techniques to get the job done. If you don't believe him, look at his website and see all the happy customers he's racked up over the years. Phillip Woods with Texas Farm and Ranch Wildlife Solutions. Give him a call. You'll be glad you did. Let them help protect your land and livestock. You're listening to the Lone Star Trail. We're glad you're here. Now let's get back to the show. Welcome back to the show. We're honored and privileged to have Rebecca Shelton with us. Rebecca is a regional archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission. Becky, thanks so much for taking time to visit today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_03Okay, first of all, uh most people probably don't realize everything that archaeologists do. You may only think of Indiana Jones or some kind of, you know, like movie kind of reference when it comes to archaeology or or just from articles that people have read. So before we get into the weeds on our discussion today, I'd love for you to kind of give us a picture of what your job entails. Um talk a little bit about the Historical Commission and and kind of give us a picture of what it is that you do day-to-day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds great. Um there are there are definitely different types of archaeologists that you know the public can see. You know, there's academic archaeologists, there's people that work in cultural resource management, which is um the for-profit and uh in advance of developments being done. There's state and federal laws that uh environmental clearances need to be conducted before you know that road can be built or that pipeline can be put in. I work with the Texas Historical Commission as a regional archaeologist, which means it's more public-facing. So we um we do state and review compliance projects, but we also do a lot of public archaeology, which means working with students in schools, children, and communities. But we also recognize landowners' efforts to preserve and protect state historic and prehistoric resources on their land. And so we provide landowner assistance and education, and um we also partner with volunteer societies to help make this happen because our organization, our agency has a handful of archaeologists, I think it's eight to ten archaeologists for the entire state of Texas. And so we really partner rely on our partnerships with volunteers throughout the state to help make all of this public archaeology happen.
SPEAKER_03That's great. That sounds like a lot. It keeps you busy, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01It is it is. Um the Texas Historical Commission is the state historic preservation office for the state of Texas. And what that what that role is, in addition to you know, maintain we maintain an inventory of all the sites that are recorded within the state of Texas. Um we know which ones are significant to the state's history and culture. And we you know, one of our main goals is the preservation of these places. And um we do that in order that like through preservation, they can be used for future education. Public enjoyment, we have several historics that you can go visit. Um, Caddo Mounds in East Texas and Felipe de Austin, um outside of Houston. And uh there is, you know, there's a benefit for the the entire state of Texas through this preservation.
SPEAKER_03So uh you and I kind of got acquainted uh a few months ago. I I called you to talk about some some some things that I had found on our property in uh northern Brown County. And um since then it's been a really cool uh journey, and really we're just still in the early stages of that. But as a landowner, uh we'll talk about this first. I was I was a little hesitant because of really because of mostly lack of information on my part, but I was hesitant to uh allow allow the state or state government agency to come out and and look for artifacts, look for signs of Indian camps, look for uh look for those pieces that uh you know I've I've picked up in the last decade because I'm a anybody that knows me knows I'm a arrowhead, arrow point uh artifact nerd, and so I love uh looking for all kinds of artifacts anywhere I go. In fact, when I'm out hunting, I would probably do a lot better uh hunting if I wasn't looking at the ground as much. But the point being is that I was a little nervous, and uh, after a couple conversations with you as a landowner, uh you really put those fears uh to rest in terms of hey, the state's not going to come in and claim imminent domain authority or power over your property just because of some significant archaeological discoveries. Now, there's some caveats to that, obviously, that we you and I discuss, but uh I just I bring that up to say if there's other landowners listening that you know maybe you're aware of an area on your property that's got a lot of points on it. You found over the last, you know, however many years or whatever. You found a lot of what looks like really good flint or really good um maybe pieces of pottery, maybe pieces of other types of artifacts. Um you're really doing a disservice if you're not contacting the Texas Historical Commission because uh one thing I've already found out is I've learned so much already about the Texans, and well, they weren't called Texans, obviously thousands of years ago, but the people who inhabited the property that I'm blessed to live on, you know, there's a connection there. And if it wasn't for the resources that your agency provides, you know, it would just be some cool artifacts, maybe, but I wouldn't know anything more about it. So uh I say all that to say encourage anybody listening, if you've got those kind of sites, uh, to give your office a call, because man, it's just been great. The experience has been great. You guys have been out twice now to the property, and um, you know, it's just been a really awesome opportunity for education and learning and uh and connection with people who've been on the land, you know, thousands of years ago.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you. And it's it's been an honor to be able to be invited to come out and visit with you guys and to help start recording the sites on the property. Um you there are quite a few significant archaeological sites we're finding uh points and material that probably date at least six to eight thousand years ago. Um you've got you know a natural habitat, a spring fed great and wonderful stone tool material that uh was a huge draw. And so I think the landscape was used over and over again for thousands of years. But as landowners, you know that you know a good place when you see it, you know where it's an ideal place to live and to hunt and uh um find resources. So I think humans humans like uh the same types of places, right? Like they we we know where the good water is, we know where the the good resources are. So you definitely have that. And there's a there's still a lot to learn on your property. Uh I think that's the draw for us is that you know we like look working with landowners who are preservation-minded, who want to learn more about their property and the archaeology on it, and and then take it to the next generation. I mean, teaching your kids and the local communities uh more about that, the state's history and in Brown County.
SPEAKER_03I think it's really interesting because on this show, you know, we're gonna get into the weeds on uh the latest technology in terms of thermal and night vision and you know the new calibers of rifles that are coming out, and all that's really really cool and great. But one thing that also is exciting to me is is uh discovering the different kinds of artistry that was involved in the crafting of these of these points. So you've seen some of my collection. I've got some some very primitive looking uh basically sharpened stones, and then and then there's some that are uh man intricately uh made. I mean, they're pieces of art, they're not just tools. So as we talk about the kind of tools that people used that lived right here in Central Texas area um you know several thousands of years ago. Tell us a little bit more about the I guess the evolution, if you will, from from those real primitive tools to the the more uh intricate type type points that we've we've seen. Talk about the maybe some of the reasons for that, the the discrepancies and those kind of types.
SPEAKER_01What give us some insight there well with stone tool ta stone tool technology um form indicates function. And so Ancient Man um started using tools almost like the choppers or, you know, knives to break open nuts, to smash, you know, they would cook bone and break the bone to to get the marrow out. Um you know, take a rock and knock a creature on its head, and um you've had a successful hunt. But as as humans evolved and their hunt, their tools evolved along with the refining of their techniques. And so that's where we start to see the development of spear points. And so those are the the more refined, sharpened points. Spear points are larger than arrow points. And spear points were used for tens of thousands of years. Arrow points are really just a blink in time. Um about 880 or 1200 years ago is when the peace when the arrow points really started to be using the hunting toolkit. But back to spear points, um over 10,000 years ago, you're changed they were hunting large game, um, lice and antiquous, antelope, deer across the plains, even even mammoths. And um a spear uh is not a very large uh weapon against a very large beast. And so a term a spear point was then attached to a tool called an adult addl, and that's spelled ATL ATL. And it actually created um very much increased force. So when the spear is thrown out of the addl, it is projected much further, much faster, and it was a much more successful hunt for the Native Americans. And so that technology hung around for thousands of years. And then again, like I said, we evolved into moved into the air points to hunt smaller game. So if you're not hunting large large bison on the plains anymore, you're going after rabbits and squirrels and birds, um, you need a smaller point to catch a smaller game. Um those aren't the only types of stone tools that we find at archaeological sites. You have scrapers that were used to uh clean hide. You have drill points and awls to make clothing or leather sacks out of hide. You have bone needles, um, that's not stone, but that's just another type of tool that you might find. You also find what we call groundstone. So stones more like quartzite or basalt, um, that type of material that is used to grind nuts and grind pigment or you know, maybe possible rock art or that type of function. So when you think about a monoimatate, which is a groundstone tool technology, you think about grinding corn. Corn came much later again in the record. Most uh production with groundstone tools was, you know, nuts, pecans, uh hackberries, uh, and and different types of vegetation that they would cook.
SPEAKER_04Stay tuned, right here.
SPEAKER_03Lone Star Trail will return after these messages. If you follow the podcast, or if you're new, either way, we talk a lot about trapping. You're gonna find that out. Uh we've got our own predator issues out here in Brown County we try to mitigate, but I want to talk a little bit about Texas Farm Ranch Wildlife Solutions. My good friend Philip Woods out in East Texas. Uh he's an expert when it comes to managing predation on Texas farms and ranches. If you've got trouble with coyotes, with bobcats, with uh beaver, if you've got nuisance predators impacting your bottom line, you need to call my friend Philip Woods, 713-208-3517. It's his number. That's 713-208-3517. You can email him at woodscattlecompany at gmail.com. Uh Philip Woods out there in East Texas. He does a great job, but he's statewide. If you got problems in South Texas or the panhandle, uh professional traffic services, Texas Foreman Ranch Wildlife Solutions, that's who you need to call. Whether you're looking to buy your next hunting property or have acreage to sell, you need Brian Clark and Ranch Pro Real Estate in your corner. They use the latest in technology to make listings easy for sellers to maximize value. In the market to buy that perfect ranch or hunting getaway, call Ranch Pro Real Estate at 325-642-3630. That's Ranch Pro Real Estate at RanchProReal Estate.com. The land is their life. That's really interesting. So going back to the Adolatle, you know, it almost offered like a slingshot type propulsion. I mean, you're getting a lot of power uh with with not a not a lot of effort uh through that that tool. And uh, you know, going back to the the smaller points, so I've I found some smaller true, I call them arrowheads, and that's wrong. I the the bigger ones that are actually spear points. I everybody calls them arrowheads, they're not arrowheads, they're actually, like you said, spear points. Uh but I found a few of those, smaller, what I call bird points that are that are actually a lot smaller. Uh, and it really is amazing when you can can run across you know one of those. One of the things that that is interesting to me is um the prevalence of different kinds of points, different kinds of materials all across Texas. If you're on Facebook or social media and you're a part of any of those groups that you know you see tons of different kinds of pictures, and it it also speaks to the range of travel and trade that occurred um you know for thousands of years. Talk a little bit about that, some of the some of the different kinds of of material that has been found in Texas.
SPEAKER_01So within Texas, there is the Edwards Um formation, which is a large geological formation that extends upwards towards Sterling and Cote counties and all the way down to the Balka Scones Escarpment, you know, down in the Travis County, Williamson County area. And um within within this formation is a stone tool material called chert. It's a silicate, it is very fine. Uh in in Europe it's called referred to as flint. That's the type of geological stone there. But in here in the Americas, we call it, we refer to it as chert. And chert occurs throughout the Edwards Plateau, um, this Edwards formation. It appears like a nodular, like rounded cobble. It also forms in tabular formations, so like weighted plates that you can sometimes see on hillsides and mesa edges. The chert is um very fine in on your property. The chert's very high quality. It's um it doesn't have a lot of inclusions in it. It's easy to tip or nap is a term that's used for making stone tools. And because this resource is so large and throughout the state of Texas, um the Native Americans knew where it was, they knew where the good the good deposits were, the high you know, the higher quality versus the other uh lower quality. And it was highly traded. So um we find Texas chert, we find that material um you know further north up towards Kansas, we find it in Mexico. So it was it was widely traded. But you know, early early peoples of America were very they were mobile. They they followed, they followed the herds and they followed um the resources. Um, you know, if you had a drier year, you would move from one part of the country to another in order to um you know sustain your living. And so we find chert caches, um you know, stone tool, um, making kits, just very widespread. And then there's an other material that was traded into Texas. Obsidian was traded into Texas from other sources, you know, New Mexico, Guatemala, mostly New Mexico, but and there's I can't go into the specifics because it's really detailed, but there are there is there are some scientific uh processes which you can actually source um the material, such as obsidian. And chert is uh harder to source, but you can uh using black light, you can actually tell, and sometimes the way it fluoresces under black light, that chert that comes out of the Edwards formation, uh, fluoresces differently than some other churts that are through you know found throughout the US.
SPEAKER_03So here's a basically impossible question to answer. How uh you know, we talk about discovering uh tools and surface funds is really what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about dig sites or sites that have been excavated. I've probably found, I don't know, 150 maybe pieces in my lifetime. And I look for it. But across the state, you know, as hunters are preparing to go into the field and be in the field a a lot uh this deer primarily deer hunting season. You know, that's something that a lot of hunters pick up and they've got lots of collections or bigger collections of just surface finds. The impossible question is what percentage uh what percentage still remains hidden? What what percentage do you think still remains yet to be found?
SPEAKER_01In the hundreds of millions of artifacts. Um the That is a really great question, and it it it is hard to quantify. There was a study that was done up on the Callahan Divide, um, in I think it's in Taylor County many years ago by he's now deceased um Professor Austin Toms. And he tried to quantify like how much was manufactured at a they're called a procurement site versus uh a core. Procurement site is where the stone material that we talked about, those chert nodules or those tabular beds are you know exposed on the surface versus you know deep underground. And their estimates of what was left behind was in. The millions. So then you ask the question, what's been taken away? And a very large volume. And again, this is a pretty significant formation here in Texas where the stone material is very good. And so when you see, you know, that you know volume of resource, you know that people are working the land, they're taking the material. One of the things that you, you know, so in addition to finding arrow points or spear points on the on the surface, you're going to find a lot of the debitage or the debris or the chipping that's left over from the manufacturing process. So when a stone tool is you start with a cobble and a flint napper starts napping it with different types of quartite pebbles to break it, to chip it, to refine it, to turn it into that point, there's a lot of material that's distorted. That's why it's called debitage. And so when you look on the surface, you may find 20 or 30 pieces of those flakes that have been chipped off, you know, for every one point, you know, complete or broken that you might find. Um there are there, you know, when large sites are excavated, the Gaul site is um a famous site in Bell County. There's a lot of information that can be found online about it. Um the artifact counts that they have from those excavations do run into the millions. And that's just from one location.
SPEAKER_03So what I'm hearing you say is there is a there is a sea of undiscovered artifacts under the ground. Possibly.
SPEAKER_01I I think that's a pretty fair way to state. Yes. Um I think the the re you know the reality is that there's probably archaeology almost everywhere. Um, you know, there's a lot hidden underneath the surface. Um it doesn't take long for vegetation to take over. Um, you know.
SPEAKER_03So true.
SPEAKER_01As a landowner, you know if you clear a pasture one year and then you let it lay fallow for a couple, the vegetation will will take over and what is exposed on the surface is is hidden very quickly. Um and once you have a little bit of plant matter and then some dirt blows in or is you know washes in from a little bit of erosion and just natural processes, um, whatever's exposed on the surface can be very buried very quickly.
SPEAKER_03So true. Exactly, exactly right. Becky, um we're gonna talk again uh because uh I I think this is so interesting, and so many people that listen to the program are are also interested in this this type of early Texas history. Uh so first of all, thanks for your information, thanks for your expertise. Um I look forward to visiting again more and and talking more as as you and I continue to work together on our place and uh what we may discover yet still to be discovered. So uh thanks for your time this morning, thanks for uh your input and your expertise. Uh thanks for what you do for preserving the history of Texas.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03You're listening to the Lone Star Trail, and it's time once again for House Rules with Dayton House. Dayton is a retired government trapper, a firearms expert, an outdoor detective, and a protectant that's 76 years old and still going strong, and enjoying sharing his passion of the outdoors with others.
SPEAKER_02I'll tell this on my dad. Uh we had an old Dunn horse that was unusually mean. He is bigger than normal, but uh you could rope the largest cow you had or bull, and this old horse could control it. His name was Dunn because he was a dun horse, and his lower teeth had a gap between them, and he could pull nails with that. And oftentimes he'd pull a nail on the uh granary where the oats were stored, and some of the other horses would come in and eat too much and get foundered. And I'm not a veterinarian and don't know much about it, but uh supposedly when they founder eat too much, well, it's possible for some of the foot to separate and the coffin bone turn around or does something and they're lame, the hoof grows out. Some I've seen some of them eight and ten inches, the front hoof, and it usually affects the front hoof rather than the back hoof, but the horses ruined from that day on. And so this whole done horse would pull the nail out of the latch and let the other horses eat. And he never got foundered. 20 years we had him when he he he learned not to eat too much. And hogs are smarter than that. You can take nearly any animal and pin them up without food, and the first opportunity they get, they'll either founder or bloat or overeat and die. And a hog will never do that. No matter how long he's gone without food, he's not gonna kill himself first chance he gets. And you can take the most modern watering system, and a hog will learn to operate it within six or eight hours. When they get thirsty, they smell that water and they nose around and they can operate all those automatic waters, and whether it's connected to a garden hose or a uh 55-gallon barrel. And I think the dogs, hogs, and ravens are the smartest critters they've got ever invented. But back to this old horse. Daddy got to where he'd have to nail sheet iron up to the granary or the grain bin to keep the horse from opening the door. And he had this claw hammer in his back pocket and he'd pull the nails out that the horse couldn't pull out. And one of the hay borns had a sheet iron door on it so the horse wouldn't get in there. And one morning Daddy went to feed the cows, and he pulled all the nails and put the claw hammer in his back pocket like he always did. Started bringing the hay out and putting it in the back of the pickup and moved the bale. An old coon crawled out from under that bale and attacked him and came up his leg, and daddy was fighting him off, and he backed up against the far wall, and he felt that claw hammer, so he reached back there and killed that coon with the claw hammer. That was the only good that came out of that horse was the the claw hammer. Oh. Several years ago, there was a lady at Star that was moving, I want to say, back to California where she'd come from. And she ran a little ad in the paper that she had cats and chickens and several things and live traps to sell. So I went over there and visited her and agreed to buy her live traps and her chickens. I didn't take any cages myself, and so I bought five or six live traps, coon traps, and filled it full of chickens. And she said, Well, do you want some cats? And I said, sure. And so we moved all the chickens, crowded them into two or three traps, and then she gathered up about 10 or 12 cats, and we put them in traps and said, Well, you've bought my traps, my cats, and my chickens. Said, Would you take my horse? And I said, Well, I don't want to buy a horse. She said, No, I'm going to give you this horse. We've had it for several years. It's an Indian paint pony and it has foot problems.
SPEAKER_03Tracks two and three right there. Paint. She said, paint.
SPEAKER_02Indian paint pony. And she said, if you'll take this pony, I'll send you money each month so you can buy apples and fruit and feed this horse. And I said, Okay, I'll take it. She brought it around there, and its whole feet were foundered, it just barely could walk, as fat as a town dog. And literally the front feet were eight to twelve inches in length. Oh my goodness. But the horse managed to get in the trailer the next day when I came over to pick it up, and the lady got my address and promised to send money that I never got a dime out of it. But I took the horse to my dad's and he called Billy Bob Dallas to come. Billy Bob was a farrier and would shoe horses, and dad said, Well, let's trim this horse up. And I wasn't there when they did it, but I don't know how they cut the hooves off. But Daddy said they took a saw of some type and sawed the front hooves off, and then Billy Bob cleaned it up and made it look normal and charged $25 to get the horse so he could walk. And the next week I took it to the auction in Brownwood and it brought $475.
SPEAKER_03And went straight to Mexico, probably. Or straight to the Mexico. I wouldn't have plant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, made dog food out of that. What years was that? About uh in the mid 80s, early 80s, perhaps.
SPEAKER_03That was still when you could do that. Yeah. When they could do that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And the expression never look a gift horse in the mouth, and that paid off because the lady had given me the horse with the promise of money, and I never got a dime out of it, but uh I got $450. I gave Daddy the $25 for having it trimmed.
SPEAKER_03Wow. It's $25 a hoof now, in case you're wondering what the rate is now.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't doubt it or more. Yeah, or more. Farrier has trouble making money.
SPEAKER_03But man, I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_02I don't either. It's back breaking. Yeah. I met a guy in Lomeda, he was 84, and he said he was the oldest horse shoe in Lampases County. And I wouldn't doubt it. At 84, he he was still trying to shoe horses. While I was working for the state, we hired a couple of trappers. First one we hired was uh Jesse James of all names, and he worked the Strong Brecking Ridge area and moved around to two or three different places. He was uh lazy, but he was likable. And there are three requirements for a government trapper, and I met all three of them lazy line like it. And uh I believe Jesse met all three of those as well, but uh we uh let him go years later because he got in a fight at a bar and there's some gunshots involved in it, and uh why we let him go was because on the sideline he was mowing the lawn at the Strong Cemetery and trying to load his lawn more and he hurt his back. He claimed he did it while he was on the job. But uh Jesse James was he lived up to the name Jesse. And while he was working, we hired his brother Frank James.
SPEAKER_03You're kidding. His name was Frank?
SPEAKER_02Frank. Wow, and Frank worked in Montag County, and up there there were just hundreds of coyotes compared to Mills County. And every time Frank had catch a coat in a snare, he'd carry it down to the next post and hang it on that bar. And some of the snare holes, he had 20 or 30 coyotes on each side of the snare. And I said, Frank, why do you put them here so close? He said, Oh, it attracts other coats. And I believe there's something to that because whenever you catch a coat in a trap or a snare, they're gonna pee and poop all over their cell, and the area's gonna smell, and that's an attractant. And then the dead coat hanging up there will uh believe it or not, they have piled some of them up and come back in a few days, and there would be coyotes eating the dead coats on the pile there. And that's too many coyotes when they're they go to eating each other in cannibalism like that.
SPEAKER_03But uh So hanging the coyote on your T-post doesn't ward off the spirit of the other coyotes.
SPEAKER_02That's correct. It it attracted them.
SPEAKER_03You know, that's the cotton farmer uh what Texas cotton farmer wives tell is you hang them on the fence post to warn the other coyotes off.
SPEAKER_02When I was working for TU Electric, uh some of the college boys had come down there and said, Oh uh hang a buzzard up in a tree and it'll keep the other buzzards from landing there. Well, to me it reverse. You hang a dead one up and the others see it, then they're gonna lighten that tree. I never chased any buzzards off by hanging them up. And I forget the name, they called it some name but and claimed it worked, but it didn't. But uh uh Frank and Jesse were a pair and uh lived up to their heritage perhaps. Uh Strong, that's brings to memory uh Rick Allen was a trapper there for the Copeland brothers. They Copeland had several sections and run a lot of goats and cattle, but uh they had quite a oil field. And this boy that they hired to catch cows, half a day he would was a pumper and would go to all their pump jacks and do oil field work, and then the rest of the day he'd do cowork. And it worked out real well. Uh the state didn't really care because Copeland was paying all of his salary, and since they agreed to it, well, he kept several years he worked for us. And they some of the pipeline back then had a low area, and this gas wells would condensate or drip, or anyway, it would turn to liquid, and they called it drip gasoline, and he'd go by there and release that, and then back then they could just run it out on the ground, or put it in a bucket and or a 55-gallon barrel, and a lot of those boys used it in their vehicles, and they would started selling it even, and now they're not allowed to do any of that. But uh he ran drip gasoline free of charge for years in an old pickup. But his downfall was some of these wells they had to re relieve the pressure to get them to continue to pump, or I don't understand all about it, but uh there was a two-inch galvanized pipe that came out of the ground that elbowed out and had a valve on it, and his job was to go by there every morning and open up that valve and let the pressure out. And one morning he opened the valve too quick, and the 90-degree elbow swung around and unscrewed from the pipe and hit him in the side of the head and killed him. Oh my goodness. And this was a preventable accident. All they had to do was drive a steel post in the ground to keep that from unscrewing. Yeah. But he had done it for years and just very carefully opened it up. I don't know why he opened it so fast that morning, but uh that's how they found him dead. Rick Allen, he was a a really nice guy. His wife worked for the Postal Service, was postmistress there in Strawn, and uh uh a terrible accident that could have been prevented. Uh while he was trapping, though, uh they came in with a helicopter one week and he killed a mountain lion that weighed 194 pounds and real tall cedar where he was beddied up, and they couldn't land to uh get him. So they tied a rope, catch rope, large rope, onto the helicopter, and he slid down the rope and tied that mountain line on there, and they flew out to where he could land, and then the Rick got back in the helicopter, and when they brought it back to the airport where we where we were with the fuel, there they had this mountain line on this 40-foot catch rope dangling down. And they mounted that thing, and the last time I knew of it and saw it, it was on a pool table in uh Mingus, Texas. Mingus was adjoining town and quite rough for uh barroom fights and drinking, but uh this cat, his tail and all, was on an eight-foot pool table, and just unbelievable how big 194 cat was.
SPEAKER_03That's a big cat.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Very big. And I don't know where whatever happened to it after Rick passed away. Well, I lost all contact with any of them up there. Mary's Cafe had a reputation. I looked on yesterday and she still has a website in Strong. She was known for her uh chicken fried steaks. Yes. And at one time they were nine to twelve inches in diameter, the large ones were, and I didn't enjoy chicken fried steak that well, but uh you could get a small one and it was a full meal for you. And all of these trappers flirted with Mary and enjoyed her for years, and I I'm assuming she's still alive or the cafe's still over.
SPEAKER_03Cafe's still going, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Mary's cafe, that's a good place to eat. Yes.
SPEAKER_03But uh Strawn was kind of a Mingus, you know, Mingus was even worse. When I went to Tarleton, even ever well, my act teacher was a Tarleton alum, and he told me the only the only good piece of advice he ever really gave me was don't ever go to Mingus. And I never did. Oh yeah. But I heard lots of stories out of Mingus.
SPEAKER_02I went there several times and enjoyed the food, but not the alcohol. Uh Nathan and I don't drink, we're teetotalers, so I don't mind telling that, but uh we're gonna live longer.
SPEAKER_03You bet, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Uh my neighbor, Carl Smith, I can tell this on him. He lived across the highway there just a couple of miles north of Mullin. And when he passed away, I believe he was 84, and I was he asked me to conduct his funeral, and he cussed real big. He never went to church anywhere. And I said, sure, Carl, I'll help you out. And he said, Well, you know, I don't go to church anywhere. They're all hypocrites there. He said, they don't like me drinking, and says, as long as I can afford it, I'll never take another drink of water. Poor old Kyle had drank two fifths of whiskey every day.
SPEAKER_03Oh man.
SPEAKER_02He'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning and go to drinking, and by nine o'clock in the morning, I'm sure he was well above the limit, but very seldom ever had an accident. He crossed the highway there at my house.
SPEAKER_03That's a bad spot.
SPEAKER_02It is, that hill. Yeah. You can't see a couple hundred yards. And slow as he drove, I'm surprised he lived to cross it. But uh Kyle was the best neighbor I ever had. He loaned me his tractor when mine was down and come over and plow for me, and he'd cuss me out and said, You're not plowing right, and he'd get on there and plow and come dinner time. He'd eat a raw onion and drink that whiskey and just keep on plowing the whole time.
SPEAKER_03He was a single man, I take it.
SPEAKER_02No, sir. Oh, wife Evelyn said she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a waitress in a cafe, and he's he was in the army at the time. And he said, if you marry me, I'll make you a millionaire. And probably had five or six million when he died. He had several hundred acres and was a really good farmer. A lot of old equipment that would wouldn't hardly work, but Kyle made it work. And uh I like Kyle. He'd come by and steal peaches, and the next week he'd leave a sack full of black-eyed peas or something from his garden. One day he took some cattle to Coleman auction, and on the way back, his pickup needed oil, so the first garage he saw open, he just pulled in there and rummaged through the garage and got a quart of oil and put it in his pickup. And the next time he went up there, he put a quart of oil back in that same garage. But no telling whose garage it was. He didn't ask permission to do anything. He'd help himself, but uh the best neighbor I ever had, I liked him. Got along well with him. And I didn't care whether he cussed me or not, but uh uh I like Kyle Smith. I don't mind telling. He had two boys, Larry and Craig, and Craig's passed away. The younger one, Larry, still lives in Brownwood. He was an ag teacher, and I don't know, may have had his whole career there in Brown County.
SPEAKER_03Well, that's all the time we have for this week's episode. Thanks for stopping by. Me and old Hank the Gardog will catch you next week at the same time, same place. If you can't join us on a local station, find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. Also, you can connect with us on Facebook and share your hunting and outdoor photos and stories with us at Lone Star Trail Radio at gmail.com. Until next time, for all of us here at the show, so long.
