Monthly Archives: February 2010

Ancestry

More Family History

This week, after forty-four years in hiding, a piece of my family’s history finally turned up in, very fitting, a gun case. In 1966, Sam W. Bryan, at the time, eighty years old, dictated the following stories about Brinson Bryan, his Father, my Great Grandfather, to Lenora Bryan Peters, his Niece. This correspondence filled a gap in Brinson’s life and is also very interesting.

In 1847 Brinson Bryan riding a formerly, wild mustang horse and packing a .36 cal. pistol, joined a wagon train heading for California. His pistol, a Paterson Colt with a nine-inch barrel was issued to him when, as an eighteen, year old, in 1845 he joined the Texas Rangers.

Brinson had just completed service in the Mexican War with Bell’s Rangers. They served along the Texas/Mexican border and their job was keeping the supply lines open to General Zachary Taylor’s army encamped south of Monterrey. Regularly they had scrapes with Mexican soldiers, Mexican guerillas and marauding Comanche and Apache Indians.

The wagon train, driving a herd of oxen along with them, averaged about twenty-five miles a day and all the way out and back they had scrapes with Indians. One funny, but dangerous, story was when a lone, young Indian jumped Brinson, threw a tomahawk at him and charged. He subdued him, just as the main body of the Indians arrived. Brinson wanted to fight the tomahawk thrower, but the Indian Chief said the young, Indian’s Father would whip him. Which he did, leaving the young Indian some major whelps!
On another occasion, as the wagon train was lumbering along, Brinson was out hunting, he shot a bear, took it back to the train, skinned it and the folks enjoyed the bear steaks. At the same time, he and the other hunters came across a bee cave, robbed the hive, put the honey in the bearskin and enjoyed it all the way to California.

In 1849, coming back from California, he stopped for a drink of water at a spring west of Waco, Texas. Up rambled a bear, Brinson wasted no time, shot it with his pistol, got his drink and headed on into Waco. At the time Waco had one saloon and one log cabin house.

Family stories have Brinson guiding wagon trains to California, but we “lost” him until 1855 when he purchased land in Hill County, Texas, after that, a blank until 1862 when he enlisted as a sharpshooter in the 40th Alabama Infantry Regiment. Sam’s stories also make no mention of the 1850-66 time frame.

Back then, things weren’t very easy, manual labor and hard work was the norm. Just think about walking and riding a horse from Texas to California! Men and women were tough and had to be strong just to exist from day to day. Where has all of that strength and toughness gone?

Random Thoughts

A Personal Update

You talk about “cabin fever”! The last day of our State’s special doe/spike season January 17th, one of our Army friends, SFC. Tim Albee shot a nice doe, a fitting end to the season. Things kinda’ went down hill from there.

On January 20th I visited the Fondren Orthopedic Clinic in Houston to see the “El Primo” knee repair doc. Hoping that I could get away with a partial knee replacement, in no uncertain terms he told me that either in 2011 or 2012, I could come back and get a full one. My knee hurt all the way home!

Luckily from the 20th through the 27th I was able to get a lot of things done around the place. Things like spreading fireplace ashes on the garden, trimming the peach trees, tilling the garden, cutting and splitting firewood and finally, getting my onions planted.

Then it rained on Friday, the 28th. It not only rained, it flooded! Four and a half inches of rain left everything in a mess. Then on Saturday I had a relapse of “cedar fever” that left me in bed until this past Monday.

Still not recovered from my malady, late Tuesday afternoon, I got myself ready to go predator hunting. I even blew on my predator call several times, didn’t wheeze or cough and quickly pronounced myself well! That is until I told Layla where she could find me. Promptly, she told me that in five minutes she better find me back in bed! End of hunting adventure!

It started a misty rain Wednesday morning and has continued through Thursday, one and a half inches worth. My malady is better, the chance of rain is diminishing and, if it’s not too wet, on Friday, Mickey Donahoo and I will try to get in some practice time, however, six inches of rain over the past seven days makes this unlikely.

Saturday looks good for some outdoor activities like softball or predator hunting, but, more rain, thirty through sixty percent daily through next Saturday. Wow!

You talk about cabin fever!

Hunting

A Potential Pulitzer

With the temperature hovering near eighty, Jake Schroder and I started the long walk back to our truck down Tom Mix Wash. The dogs, Jake’s, Candy, and my, Rooster, were “quailed” out and out of the four canteens we took along, we were down to less than one. Back then, early February 1973, the wash was rough country, now it is probably million dollar homes!

We had hiked, hunted and worked our way several miles up Tom Mix Wash. This was near where, supposedly, the actor, Tom Mix, was killed in a one car, wreck along a road that bisects it. Tom was killed prior to WWII and I barely remember it. Anyway, back then I was a Gene Autry guy.

Starting right after lunch we had headed east, towards the foothills and had bumped into numerous, large coveys of gamble quail and had considerably thinned out the population. That day we enjoyed some of the finest dog work and shooting of all my Arizona hunts. We missed some, the dogs busted a covey, a covey outran us, but within a little less than two hours we had two limits!

With our game bags full, two limits of birds, walking back to the truck Jake was excited, anticipating trying out his new camera with a “timed” shutter. He was going to set it up on a tripod, get it focused in, then we would rush around, kneel down, smile and the picture, certainly a potential Pulitzer winner, would capture the “thrill of our hunt”!

We pose, remotely, along Tom Mix Wash, north of Tucson. The camera worked fine except that most of our hoard of quail was cut off!

Fishing

Matagorda

A cold February afternoon in 1959, just before I entered the U.S. Army, my Dad and I met Dub Middleton, a neighbor and a good fishing friend, at a nondescript, bait camp, near Matagorda, Texas. The camp was about a mile up from where the Colorado River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. We were going to fish for speckled trout at night, under some bright, flood lights, a first for my growing obsession with trout fishing.

This old picture shows some of the specs we caught that night

The principle was simple, the reflection of the lights on the water drew small fish and shrimp in to feed on the minute sea life and the abundance of small bait drew the larger predators, the specks. The action could be fast and furious, and it turned out to be!

Starting about 8:30 PM, the three of us beat the water to a froth and our effort yielded only 4 small specks that were thrown back. After 2 plus hours with little luck, Dub and I choose to take a nap on the couches inside the bait camp. After midnight, my Dad woke us both up exclaiming, “Get up quick and come see all the fish!”

“All the fish” was right. The tide was coming in bringing with it stained, almost sandy, water. In the reflection of the large lights, the water was dimpled by hundreds of specks slashing through the thousands of bait fish being carried in with the tide!

Savoring the spectacle for maybe 5 seconds, our primal instincts kicked in, and we began casting into the melee. Using a Tony Acetta #7, silver spoon, with a yellow buck tail attached, almost every one of my casts resulted in a solid strike, a spirited fight and a nice speck flopping on the dock.

This action continued for nearly 30 minutes. Then, the tide changed heading back out to the Gulf, with the water movement, the bait and predator fish followed. As hot as the action was, it was all over now. Nothing remained except for us to clean and ice down the fish, collect our tackle, bid adieu to the camp operator and start our two-hour drive back to West University, a Houston suburb.

At the time, my family didn’t have a freezer, so all of our friends and relatives enjoyed the fish we happily gave to them