Great writers E

Although she was raised on Long Island, New York , Ellissa Brewster has been a Texan most of her adult life and has enjoyed the good Corpus Christi life since 2006.  She has worked as an organic farmer, a Montessori teacher, a journalist, a writing tutor and an ESL tutor. Most of her writing experience has been based on personal interviews related to public relations. Her work has been published in Tierra Grande magazine, The Business Journal of Corpus Christi, and Inspire, Coastal Bend Magazine.  Ellissa’s hobbies include bird watching, gardening, book club, registering voters, and writing about her family’s history. 

When you are a kid, things just are the way they are. You don’t have the perspective to judge if things should be different, nor do you know at the time which experiences are so unique that you will remember them 60 years later. 

I grew up in Corpus Christi as a second generation Mexican American. I realize now that my family did not have as much as some people did, but we were happy. I did not feel as if we were suffering—life was the way it was. Sometimes I overheard my parents worrying over the bills. Sometimes we had a car; sometimes we didn’t. 

I was the oldest boy in a family of eight. I worked at my father’s shoe-repair shop after school and on Saturdays. I helped out: took out old stitches from shoes, removed heels, cleaned the machines, swept, got change, ran errands, things like that. I was six when I started. It was a job. It was expected. 

But on some Saturdays, I got a break to go to the movies with my friend Jerry. I earned the money for the movies from shining shoes with my shoeshine box. On the side, I had painted my slogan, “Best Shine.” In the summers or on breaks from school, I carried my shoeshine box to the local Wee Mart convenience store. There I shined shoes for men who sat on bar stools drinking beer in the “bar” section of the store. I charged 15 cents a shine (5 cents more than most boys) and that money was mine to keep or spend. 

From my father’s shop, Jerry and I walked to the less-expensive movie houses, such as the Grande or the Amusu, which showed second-run American movies in English, or the Melba, which had Mexican movies in Spanish. Admission was 15 cents at these theaters, and we usually had a nickel for candy or a drink. 

When I was 12, I got a new job as a paperboy. Before school, my dad would drive me on the route. We rolled down the passenger-side window, and I balanced on the window ledge with my legs inside the car. I hurled rolled-up Caller newspapers into yards, alternating over the car roof and to the side. In the afternoons, I tossed the Times from my bike. The rolled-up newspapers had enough weight to toss easily, but the Saturday Evening Times was so thin that my brother and I had to fold them into triangles—then they would whirl through the air like flying saucers. 

I gave the money I earned to my parents to help with the family’s expenses. A couple of times, when my parents could not make the $60 mortgage payment on our home, they used my paperboy money. 

On my first day of training for the paper route, the neighborhood manager took me along with some experienced paperboys on a tour of the neighborhood. I was the only Hispanic in the group. The boys were saying, “The Mexicans [customers] are no good, they don’t pay.” However, my manager Bill Carter was kind. He told the kids not to judge people like that. Before that day, I had not thought much about Mexicans being different from other people in a negative way. It was more a puzzle than an insult to me.

One year, I got a Big Box of Games, which included checkers, steeplechase, Parchisi, Chinese checkers, and other card and board games. However, my big present came from a man named Joe Simon, who owned the Nueces Furniture Store on Chapparal St. Now this was big. 

I got an invitation to attend dinner on Christmas Day at the Robert Driscoll Hotel. All the paperboys in town received invitations, and our managers encouraged us to attend. Joe Simon was footing the bill. Before noon, my father drove me and my brother, who was also a paperboy, to the Robert Driscoll Hotel. I will never forget the distinct aroma and the luxuriousness of this place. We walked into the plush lobby with its stuffed wine-colored chairs and thick embossed wine-colored carpet, and we were dazzled. The aroma of coffee and a turkey dinner greeted us. Christmas music was playing. A sign told us where to go, “Paperboys: Terrace Room.”

The entrance to the Terrace Room was to the right of the lobby. The room was huge with a stage and many tables covered with linen tablecloths and the biggest, most splendid Christmas tree I had ever seen. There must have been 300 excited paperboys in that room. The room filled with boys’ voices and the sounds of those on the stage. My brother and I sat where we felt most comfortable, with the other Hispanic boys. We had a good view of the stage from our table. 

I could not believe it. I had heard of the Galvans, renowned local musicians, and Bobby Galvan had even visited our school. However, I did not expect to see Ralph Galvan, the most famous Galvan Brother, playing songs like “White Christmas,” and other Christmas favorites to a group of paperboys on Christmas Day. Waiters brought us plates of food—a complete turkey dinner.

When we were finished eating, Joe Simon gave a speech. He told us about how when he was six years old, he had sold newspapers on a downtown corner in St. Joseph, Missouri. He had to be tough to defend his corner from other newsies and to bear the cold on snowy days. Like me, he knew what it was to take on responsibility as a boy. He said he made a vow in 1906 when he attended a traditional Christmas dinner that a local restaurateur sponsored for newsboys. “If I ever have a chance, I’m going to give such a party for kids,” he promised. 

He kept his promise after he started his furniture store in Corpus Christi in 1925. That year and every year after, for more than 30 years, he hosted a party and celebrated Christmas Day with Corpus Christi newsboys. After his speech, Joe Simon went around to the tables and shook all of our hands. He was a big, bald man with a persistent, genuine smile. 

We got presents from the publishers of the Caller and Times newspapers. I do not remember the presents except for one: The United Artists Book of Happiness. I had heard of it because it had been advertised on the KEYS radio program. It was a slender coupon book with balloons and stars on the cover. Inside were ten $1 coupons. 

This special book allowed you to go to movie theaters owned by United Artists. My brother and I had never been to such expensive theaters (where admission was 65 cents). For us to be able to go to the Ritz or the Centre was something special. 

Right after the party at the Driscoll, my brother and I walked through the pedestrian tunnel that led from the bluff to downtown and immediately redeemed some of those coupons. We saw Rio Bravo, a western with John Wayne, Ricky Nelson and Dean Martin. We used some of the coupons to make pigs of ourselves at the snack bar, wasting coupons on too much popcorn and orange soda. 

After the show, my brother and I waited by the newsstand on the corner feeling nauseated from all the snacks. My father drove up in his clunker of a car, we got in. My most memorable Christmas was over.

READ MORE GREAT WRITING IN CORPUS CHRISTI WRITERS 2020

Emma Helene Guerra grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. She works daily on her writing to promote the representation for women, the Hispanic community, and the LGBTQ+ community. More about Emma Helen Guerra at the end of this section.

I can feel my teeth rotting inside my mouth.

Brown-grey cavities jutting out in mangled bone

piercing my gums.

My tongue licking up the bitter taste of blood mixed

  with saliva, my spit turning a burnt orange against the

 porcelain sinkstained with mold and hair dye in shades

 of black and blue.

A bruise on the delicate skin of emotional stability.

I remember how jealous I was of my younger

brother who left each dentist appointment with a

 clean record, not racking up hefty bills for 

pulled teeth and silver molars. His brush

 remaining dry. Nightmares consumed my mind

of each delicate tooth falling from its spot,

my tiny pink hands unable to hold it all. 

Every word equaled another sacrifice

as I pay close attention to not swallow one, 

it would cut up my insides and I would simply

die. Soon enough, the pile would overflow

falling 

down 

slowly

into the black void of no return

I

wanted 

help

from the thoughts I could not control, and the

harm being inflicted upon myself. All by myself,

 but I did not want to die. Letting go was not an

option like the strangers online told me it was.

Despite the warning sign, physical and verbal,

my issues often went ignored and forgotten.

Brushed under the tethered rug of academic

achievement. Perfection was the unsaid bar I had

 expected myself to reach, a bar that a child’s

hands cannot touch. My brother did not feel the

need to reach that same height. I wonder if my

parents just heard his screams better

since they did not sound like mine. 

I remember how jealous I was of my younger brother.

The house I lived in was different than the other houses across

two main streets in my small town.

My House

One story, I watched its development from foundation to completion

in the memories of my five-year-old mind.

Plants overgrowing 

in the backyard my brother and I grew up in.

The dirt

turning to mud while water sloshed out of a faded green hose. 

It stuck everywhere just below the knees,

a cool relief to the sweltering days of early spring.

The garden itself never producing more than tomatoes and jalapenos,

the right ingredients for pico de gallo.

The front yard 

lingers with Christmas lights hanging fresh on a Bird of Paradise tree

beginning to wake up after a bitter cold snap

36-95 degrees in a matter of hours.

The house across the main road on the right

established with a dripping AC clinging out the side of a window.

Maps labeling this area as a 

Colonia.

I see it as history.

Two cars in the driveway,

one on the street.

Three generations of a family sharing a single bathroom.

Traditional charm in a different sense.

Chipped teal blue covers the wooden shingles

still as vibrant as the first coat in the 80’s.

Young children play soccer with one another behind a rusted chain-link fence,

dust devils emerging from their steps.

Grandmother’s watchful eye keeping them safe

from themselves and other.

The light on the porch always on, humming a soft yellow hue 

only broken up by the tapping of a moth hitting its bulb.

The house across the main road on the left

brings a wave of new development as my small town becomes a city.

Polished stone exterior covering both stories,

a miniature mansion in the making.

Concrete being poured over the soil fertile enough 

to hold the livelihood of an orange orchard.

16 years of that memory gone within a week.

Before the houses

Came towering concrete fences in an earthy pink paint,

keeping the secret of development inside for only those who can afford it.

The children in surrounding neighborhoods now excited

for this upcoming Halloween in hopes of the “good candy”.

They see it as a positive for now. 

Layers of fluorescent green grass clutters each yard.

Beauty, and sophistication.

A lawyer, businessman, major could live here.

How unassuming, 

the Elote man doesn’t even drive by them.

But such is growth.

The house I lived in was different than the other houses across 

two main streets in my small town.

The memories, though, stay the same.

all we seem to know

is how to count coins in the dark.

blind to where they come from,

blind to where they’re going.

we support those who speak the loudest,

it doesn’t matter the message that echoes,

the vibrations guide us none the less.

a dollar in penny’s clothing,

we think them as one of us.

although, our voices never did matter,

just the sound of pockets flowing into another.

big sounds, big words, empty promises,

angry results.

like birds trapped on their telephone wires in search of spring,

we move one way in hopes of prosperity, growth.

when you turn on the lights,

we never moved at all.

and those pennies, nickels, and dimes?

gone. 

I searched for another's love

but i couldn’t love myself. i 

wanted a man to hoist me, all 200 pounds, away, i 

wanted a woman with the touch of a goddess to heal me. 

touch reverts to sweet hunger pains, causing my body to ache

for that physical sensation of another’s presence. something

my hands could not 

recreate. 

where has she gone? that 

woman who opened her heart so freely. i’ve 

left her back in that year. she grew too heavy with 

the weight of the night to bring her with me. i 

simply do not have the strength.

simple lullabies

my true companion. notes hitting a minor key.

read the rest in Corpus Christi Writers 2020

Emma Helene Guerra is a current student at Texas A&M University – Corpus

Christi studying English with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. She grew up in Edinburg, TX within the Rio Grande Valley. Growing up within the RGV gave her a unique aspect on culture, traditions, and her Mexican-German heritage. Guerra was able to release her first book of poetry in July of 2019 titled “a singular experience: the love, pain, and life of a young adult” which detailed her experiences with newfound freedom after moving away from home and the rocky transition into becoming an adult.

She works daily on her writing to promote the representation for women, the Hispanic community, and the LGBTQ+ community.

F.E.I. prefers to write in an open room as if the stories emerging from the

process demand physical space. More about F.E.I. at the end of this section.

At his retirement party, I was told by the affable man that I cried all the way from Chicago to Corpus, and my mother had asked if he would like to hold the bottle for me so she could use the bathroom. He had rosy apple cheeks that make you believe Norman Rockwell was a realist. He was my mother’s boss, but I’d never formally met him until then. What a dizzy scene.

On perhaps the same exact short rattling plane, I was aware that I cried again. This would be my summer without Ian. He announced his engagement on an auditing trip, getting down on one knee with a Tiffany solitaire, on top of an Indian burial rock that apparently took them four hours to reach. Of course, I unfriended both. BUY CCW 2023 AMAZON or BUY CCW2023 BARNES AND NOBLE

It reaches over

Hands me a golden apple

That nightfall 

would soon wipe its

Sins and return it full blooded.

My car radio speeds

Amidst the brief

Warring peace

Toward the hero’s clamor:

This is for progeny.

The sea charges her crescent bay

The wind hollows the emerald mine

As I tear every breath clean from shore

Burning heart swims in deficit

Flying past the ambitious brow

History roped me in reverse

Knotted on familiar posts that

Assuage my ancestors and my birth

As swiftly as the opium loaded cannon

To the black ship gliding beckoning

The dignitaries, where carriages

Scattered the sparrows in tandem

The years towed the open current

Slicing through with breathing swords

Raised a thin line of pelican

To an increasingly diminished return

F.E.I. prefers to write in an open room as if the stories emerging from the

process demands physical space. Of all the places she has lived,

literature and philosophy remained her constant spring. After moving to

Corpus Christi, she found that it has more space than she had hoped. Her

educational background is in finance.

Frank Rodriguez is from Mathis, Texas. He is a full-time college stodent

That smile, that dang demented smile. It looms over the crevices of my soul. Shrouding the depths of my vision, blinding my reasons of existence. Why does nobody see it, what if I am going mad, mad as the devil. Am I yielding my tools of survival, and surviving off the sanity of my nemeses?

I know my thoughts and expressions appear disorderly, and that’s because they are. I cannot find an acceptable way to disclose what my eyes witness, my ears attend, or what my head assumes. There is nothing rational about it. I have not laid out entirely what I have endured and that is mainly due to recognition. I am scared of what I might face. An outcast, that is exactly what I am. There is no other way to label my existence, for it is unnatural and forbidden. I have kept these emotions and images to myself. If the world knew the reality of my unpleasant intellect, my world would simply perish. That’s it, my friends, my wife, and my children would disown the very depths of my existence.

I arose in the night, shivering in sweat, drenched in the memories created by fear of that smile. Closer, and closer, and closer. Footsteps approached. I closed my eye, my heart thudding, the steps closer and closer the. The question that looms over me is if I have in fact gone crazy or is my mind indeed playing tricks on me? What am I to do? If it comes out that I'm seeing this, it’ll be my end. What has become of me and why of me, and not anybody else. 

Do the neighbors see the teeth? Perhaps I should ask, for me to know I am not going mad. What will they think? What if they think I am crazy? They must believe me. They have been my neighbors for years. They are like friends to me. They are my closest confidants. I do indeed trust them with my life, our kids' friends raised together. They must believe me. 

Why do they not believe me? I am not going crazy. They have not talked to me since that day I told them. What if they told someone? No, they would not. They're my friends. They would not dare tell anyone. For they mustn't tell anyone; if my family finds out who knows what they

would do to me. If my wife was here, she would believe me. I do miss her dearly. 

My kids found out, my friends have betrayed me, they betrayed the trust I had in my closest friends. I’m not going crazy. Why does anyone not believe me? Have I gone mad? What is happening to me? Why must my mind play tricks on me? My kids say I need help but they don’t understand no one does. I am alone. 

The rambling of my mind reflects my loss. It is something I cannot contemplate. My family put me into this hospital, they said help is something I need but I know now that I am truly alone. As I talk to the therapist, I am forcefully told to talk too I see these big men coming towards me as I beg for my kids help I realize I am going away as the therapist suggested this to them.

Am I scared to face the fact that I need help? And if so, what am I doing to myself? As I talk to the counselor at the hospital, he asks me what I see, I cannot explain the horrors of the smile, because I do not know or understand. No matter how hard I try to admit I do indeed have to get help but to admit to this is hard for me.

I awaken to another day in the hospital cold and alone, isolated from everyone else. I ask the Doctor “When can I go home?”. And he tells me, “It is entirely up to me and my progress which at this rate won’t be soon”. Have I finally gone mad?.
 

Gerald Beckman was born and raised on a farm in West Texas and practiced law in Corpus Christi. More about Gerald and his novels at the end of this section. learn more at GeraldBeckman.com

Cecil parked his pickup beside his office. A strong north wind had blown in during the night – not all that unusual this time of year, except this one carried snow with it.

The snow wouldn’t amount to much, though. This kind of wind would sweep the fields and plains clean of snow no matter how much fell, piling it into drifts with fantastic shapes along fence rows and bar ditches and on the lee sides of buildings. None of it would add any moisture to the drought-stricken fields or pastures in this part of the Texas Panhandle. 

Well, let it blow. Neither drought nor blizzard slowed his practice down any. Legal problems proliferated in good times and bad, and that’s why he was in the office when the weather would have been a good excuse not to be. A problem solver is what he was. He rejected some folks’ notion that he made a living off the sufferings of other people, though there might be a kernel of truth in the contention. 

He hung up his coat and checked his calendar. The deposition of an expert witness at ten, a docket control conference at two. 

He glanced at the street outside his window. The swirling flurries seemed to be coming straight from the arctic ice cap.

He checked the call slips Rosie had stuck on his spindle. Standard stuff. A realtor, an adjuster, a court reporter – he’d return them after the two o’clock conference. He’d need to spend the morning preparing to depose the defendant’s expert. 

He liked deposing experts. He had a knack for finding the nugget in a witness’s testimony and felt like he could do it in his sleep, but he didn’t want to take a chance on this one. Most of his injury cases were small potatoes, but this one involved the death of a young father of four. It would mean a huge payday if the expert testified as expected on cross. 

He had just begun reviewing his notes when the intercom buzzed. 

“Better take line three,” Rosie said. “He won’t identify himself but says he won’t call again.” 

She had perfect pitch when it came to deciding which calls demanded immediate attention. He lifted the receiver. 

“Ain’t none of my business,” the caller said without preamble, “but I drive by your pasture every day, and I been noticing your cows crowding the fence bawling like they’re starving to death. Ain’t Otto supposed to be taking care of ‘em?” 

Otto was a fifty-year-old bachelor who earned minimum wages doing odd jobs for local farmers and ranchers. He worked hard when he worked but never let ambition get in the way of hunting geese or fishing for crappie in Buffalo Lake.

“Yes, as a matter of fact…”

“Well then, I guess you ain’t heard. The damn fool stumbled chasing after a downed goose, and his gun went off.. Shot three toes off his left foot. He ain’t been out of his house for nearly a week.”

A week? His cows hadn’t been fed for a week? Ah, Christ…

“Damn, I hate to hear that. Hope he’s okay. Know anybody willing to carry a pickup load of hay out there right now, this morning, maybe check the windmill? I’d be glad to pay whatever it takes.”

“I don’t know anybody like that, and it ain’t my call to find one.”

“Well…”

“Those damn cows need attention. If you can’t do it, you best get out of the business.” 

The caller hung up.

Cecil had spent his whole professional life standing up to intensely practical people who didn’t hesitate voicing aversion to his charging a hundred dollars an hour for examining leases and attending water district meetings, or a minimum of a thousand dollars defending a DWI charge. Even less was he inclined to defer to them in a matter of personal conduct. Yet this coarse, angry voice had stirred a flush of shame. 

Now what? He didn’t know anybody willing to face a blizzard to save the hide of an absentee land owner who didn’t have sense enough to take care of his own cows. He knew the opinion many farmers had of arrogant doctors and lawyers who bought up all the land they could get their hands on, then flaunted their ownership like an English Lord while paying bottom wages to misfits to do the dirty work, rather than leasing it out to self-respecting farmers like themselves. The caller was undoubtedly one of them.

What could he have been thinking, buying a 640-acre patch of dry caliche pasture with barely enough ground water to feed a windmill, and steep bluffs dropping a hundred feet all along the south half? 

The idea had been to buy a few acres, hold them till he got tired of practicing law, then sell the whole shebang and hope to make enough to retire on. But the land was worth less now than when he bought it ten years ago. So why not make a few bucks raising cows? Hire somebody like Otto to haul them a load of hay every other day and count them, check the windmill and make sure the fence stayed in good repair – it would be easy…

It might have been a crank call, but since Otto didn’t have a phone, Cecil couldn’t verify the story. He’d have to run out to check on his cows personally. Thirty minutes to the pasture, thirty back. If they really were short of feed, it wouldn’t take more than a day or two to find someone to take Otto’s place. The cows could get by on the scant pickings that long.

He put his coat back on and hurried out the door, assuring Rosie he’d be back in time for the deposition. 

The wind nearly jerked the door out of his hands.

His pasture was four miles south of the community of Bright, and Bright, sometimes still referred to by its German name Hell by people who saw the humor in it, was fifteen miles west of his office. 

The wind picked up on the way, buffeting his pickup and sending the snow flying horizontally. Visibility was down to a quarter-mile, and the temperature couldn’t be over twenty. Tumbleweeds blew across the highway like they were fleeing in terror. He pulled on his driving gloves and shivered. 

Thirty head of cattle. Three hundred dollars a head, tops, probably not that given the shape they would be in if they hadn’t been fed properly. Nine thousand dollars at most if they were all still alive, and the deposition was part of a case that would bring ten, maybe twenty times that, just for his fee. So why was he wasting time on a miserable bunch of cows? If he had any sense, he’d turn his pickup around and get his ass back to the office. 

Instead, he turned off the highway onto the section road running by his pasture.

What he saw nauseated him. The animals were skin and bones, heads hanging, necks scarred and bleeding from pushing their heads through the barb wire fence reaching for dry weeds; listless, facing downwind, visibly shivering. Clearly they had been hungry for longer than a week. He had assumed that even if the call were genuine, it would be an exaggeration. The cows had 640 acres, after all, and there were only thirty of them. Surely they could find enough pickings between the caliche rocks and prickly pear to survive on, but they looked like so many sacks of rattling bones. 

He called his office from his cell phone. 

“I can’t make the deposition,” he told Rosie, “and I can’t get hold of Joe. Call him for me, will you? Tell him…tell him I have to feed my cows.”

He detected disbelief in her silence. 

“I have to have more than that,” she said. “His expert is driving in from Tulsa – he’s probably already here – and you know what a jerk Joe can be. He’ll go for sanctions, and with Judge Harlan he might get them.”

“Well then, don’t call him. If I’m not there when he and his witness show up, tell him…tell him you don’t know where I am, but I’ll make it as soon as I can.”

Yeah, opposing counsel didn’t owe him any favors, and Joe was the type who believed his duty to his client obliged him to take every advantage. And Judge Harlan – Cecil wished he had never gotten involved in that particular campaign. Harlan was a vindictive son-of-a-bitch with a long memory. Cecil had already tasted the bitter fruits of choosing the wrong side of that race, and Harlan wouldn’t let a few hungry cows get in the way of his idea of justice, especially if their condition was the result of Cecil’s own neglect, which Joe would be sure to point out. Joe might even argue it was a case of cruelty to animals, and he might be right. How much of a defense would trusting a guy like Otto amount to? 

All of which was beside the point. These poor animals were suffering the pains of the damned, and his only choice was to get them feed immediately. He’d have to take his chances with Joe.

He had been buying hay from Edwin Wilke, a shrewd old farmer who had bought up all the wheat straw he could get his hands on for nearly nothing, then baled it for resale to cattlemen he knew would be in desperate need long before the drought ended. His farm was five miles north of Bright, but when Cecil got there, Edwin had taken a load of hogs to market, so Cecil had to load the twenty bales himself. 

Suit, tie, overcoat, low-top shoes, thin socks, and driving gloves of fine Italian leather – hardly the garb for loading hay. Thirty years since he had lifted a bale, but the feeling of the taut wire under his gloved fingers was as fresh as the wind in his face.

The load shifted on the way to the pasture, making it too unsteady to stand on when unloading in the pasture. He had to pull the bales off the tail end of the pickup from the ground while the hunger-crazed animals pushed and shoved against him, smearing their freezing and dripping snouts on his clothes. Then he had to jostle the animals to retrieve the wires so they wouldn’t get tangled in their hooves. 

He extricated his pickup from the melee and drove to the windmill fifty yards from where he dumped the bales. Six inches of ice had formed on the water in the stock tank. After thirty frustrating minutes of chopping with his lug wrench and producing a hole the size of a dinner plate, he thought to turn on the windmill. The wheel spun for five long minutes before water finally began pouring out of the discharge pipe to spread across the ice, hopefully faster than it would freeze.

By now, a thin line of cows was trotting clumsily toward the water, heads low, jerking from side to side, slinging saliva as they came. It broke his heart to see them. 

The day began to clear, but the wind, strong as ever, continued pushing wispy clouds across the sky. It forced bitter cold through his ruined clothes and tattered gloves, but he continued facing into it, numb, shivering, and dejected by what awaited him at the office. By now, Joe would have produced his witness, made his record, and dictated a motion for sanctions. What defense could Cecil muster against a hostile opponent and a judge nursing a grudge? 

He thought he remembered Rosie paying his E&O premium but felt a sudden need to be certain. With frozen fingers, he punched autodial on his cell phone. He turned away from the wind so he could hear Rosie’s voice.

“Rosie…”

“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said, “Joe called.”

Oh shit, here it comes. “I figured. What’d he say?”

“He wants to reschedule.”

“Reschedule? What does he want to reschedule?”

“The deposition. The blizzard has closed Interstate 40 from Amarillo to Shamrock, and his expert can’t make it through.” 

“What did you tell him?”

“Said I’d have to clear it with you.”

Suddenly the frigid air changed from bitter and biting, to clean, fresh, and friendly. He breathed it deep, savoring it. His gaze lingered out over the barren breaks and the range country beyond. It all now looked wild and free and oh, so lovely.

“You still there?” Rosie said. “This connection isn’t so good…”

“Yeah, yeah I’m still here. Tell him we can reschedule, but he’ll owe me one — no, don’t tell him that. Just…just reschedule the damn thing.”

Why tempt fate on such a gorgeous day?

READ MORE LIKE THIS IN CORPUS CHRISTI WRITERS 2021

Baseball as seen on television is the sport in its purest form. It’s where a superman makes a perfectly timed jump against an outfield wall to snatch a fly ball over his back; where a third baseman dives for an 85 mph grounder, scoops it out of the dirt, rolls to his feet and in the same graceful motion shoots it like a rifle shot to first in time to make the out; where a pitcher throws a ball at 100 mph to a target 17 by 30 inches over sixty feet away, almost never hitting a man hunkered six inches away from the target, while making the ball curve and jump, hop, drop, or rise; where hulking batters who can swing a bat nearly as fast as the pitch face those brain-rattling fastballs zipping inches past their skulls without fear; where every player knows instantly and exactly what to do on the next play, no matter what it is, and does it time and time again, flawlessly. That is what people call baseball nowadays. That’s what they talk about, that’s what they analyze, and that’s what they bet on while sitting in their living rooms sipping suds and nibbling nachos. It’s baseball to be sure, but it’s baseball in sanitized perfection. It’s nothing like the baseball I once knew and loved.

I loved the nitty-gritty, the wild, untamed, unsponsored and unorganized, almost totally infertile spawning grounds for professional players that thrived before the disappearance of tiny country schools, before unlimited school sports budgets, manicured playing fields, and helicopter parenting; where kids discovered the game on their own, where they played without adult interference for the pure love of it, where money and fame and free-agenting and endorsements were as immaterial, albeit unattainable, as the back side of the moon; where coaching was nil, rules unknown, or misunderstood, often, even, not applicable, even in the unlikely event a rulebook could be found and the pertinent rule pinpointed. I loved that version of the game so much that, forty-five years later, I still dream of playing it.

I was in first grade when I first swung a bat at a slow pitched softball. I remember it to this day. The ball was tossed by some chubby girl in the fourth grade from what must have been every bit of ten feet away, and I couldn’t hit it worth a flip. There was no backstop, no bleachers, no coaches, no organization, and no rules other than 1) try to hit the ball, and if you managed that, 2) run to first base, not third (a common mistake); 3) chase the ball (actually catching it was rare; even a slow grounder bouncing over the native pasture sod was harder to grab than a panicky ground squirrel); 4) throw the ball when you finally got to it, 5) run after it again, on and on until the bell rang at the end of recess.

Our equipment was one broken bat whose handle was repeatedly repaired by black electrical tape, and a ball whose cover kept coming off until some enterprising young lady had her mom stitch it back on. Rusty plow discs of different sizes placed at stepped-off distances forming a rough square served as bases, and a short piece of flat board placed somewhere close to the middle of the square was the pitcher’s mound — except, of course, there was no mound. In the early grades boys and girls played the game together. Later we played boys against girls, and because we were stronger (loading hay bales all summer long) and faster (endlessly chasing livestock from one pasture to another), the boys usually won. But not always.

As we got older, we got more sophisticated. We chose teams, taking turns, starting with the best, ending with the worst. That was usually Joey Saren, a poor kid absolutely devoid of anything approaching physical grace, but who bore his repeated humiliations with a different kind of grace and no apparent psychic scars. No longer were the games played only at school, where we were limited to a fifteen minute recess at midmorning, a one hour lunch break—wolfing down our sack lunches in less than five minutes so we could play ball—and another fifteen minute recess at mid-afternoon. Now, with the freedom afforded by a few additional years and balloon-tired bicycles, we could play for hours at a time in some farmer’s cow-pasture, using gunny sacks and flattened cardboard for bases. Still no coaching, bleachers or properly laid out diamond, but we did sometimes manage the side of a barn or storage shed as a backstop, and we had learned some of the rules, like a tie goes to the runner, a caught foul tip is a strike and not an out, and what a balk meant, though we could never agree exactly when it happened; and since the umpire was always the worst player (that’s why he was umpire) and knew even less about the rules than the rest of us, he wasn’t much help. It came down to which side shouted the loudest or was the readiest to quit if it didn’t get its way. 

Though these games lasted longer than the ones at school, they had a downside that made them less popular than they might have been. Dodging prickly pears and cow pies while chasing balls detracted considerably from the fun of the game. 

I was fifteen when I took the next step up the ladder. I was accepted to play for the Umbarger Blue Socks, one of seven teams made up of farmers from my age on up (some guys were pushing fifty) who got together and organized themselves into what they called the West Texas Irrigation League.

We played every Sunday, each team taking its turn to host the game in the town closet to their farms. Never any practice sessions, no warmups, just show up and play. Still no coaching, no grandstands, no snack bars, and mostly worn-out equipment, except for our gloves. Every player had his own glove, a significant investment, and he kept it clean and oiled. One player named Billy Tubman (more about him later), on the theory that if a little bit of oil was good, a whole lot of oil was a whole lot better, soaked his glove in a bucket of motor oil overnight. Like the rest of us, he had no money to spare, so he did everything imaginable to undo the damage, including backing over it with a truck tire to squish the oil out of it, soaking it in a bucket of gasoline to dilute the oil, stuffing flour in and around it, hanging it from a tree limb to evaporate whatever would evaporate, and washing it over and over in hot water and detergent. He finally got it back to a useable condition, and years later, when I got married and quit the team, he was still using it. True story.

The hosting team would provide two new baseballs for that day’s game, which we tried our best to make last. Young kids would race each other chasing the fouls, and if they returned it soon enough to use for the next pitch, we’d pay the winner a dime. Actually, we paid the dime anyway.

Our ball field was bounded on two sides by cow pastures, one along third base, the other beyond left and center fields. There was something about our games that attracted cows. They would start gathering along the fence toward the beginning of a game, and by the bottom of the ninth there were more cows watching than people. And since it’s not easy to housebreak a cow, lots of manure piles were scattered about. Sometimes a foul ball rolled through a fresh pile, which was one of the fastest ways to age a new ball. We had a sackful of used balls for such occasions. We all agreed that if spitballs were illegal, shitballs ought to be illegal too. I don’t remember who came up with that one, but everybody thought it was pretty funny.

But by then we did have a backstop. It was made of chickenwire mesh and cedar posts, and where the mesh overlapped, it was stitched together with baling wire. It didn’t take long for gaps to develop, which were patched, and repatched, and repatched again, until finally a good portion of the backstop was nearly impossible to see through. It made little difference though, since there were so few spectators. Human ones, anyway.

The quality of play was pretty pathetic. Pathetic: how else describe hitting a slow grounder to the shortstop, the shortstop scooping it up to throw to first, overthrowing the first baseman, the ball bouncing off the bumper of a parked car, careening into a patch of pigweeds, the batter rounding first and heading for second while the first baseman looks frantically in the weeds for the ball, finds it, hurls it to third, which by now is the destination of the runner, who rounds third and heads for home while the third baseman, figuring on a sure out, grips the ball to throw home for the tag, only to learn the hard way that a goathead was stuck in the ball which is painfully transferred to his hand, causing another wild throw, all of which results in a home run?

How else describe the visiting team showing up only to discover it forgot its sack of bats, so we, ever the gentlemen, offer to share ours, until the home plate umpire, which they supplied, calls a strike on one of our guys when the pitch was so wild it went behind the batter, and later called another strike when the ball bounced six inches in front of the plate with enough speed and power to cover home plate in dust, which the ump duly swept off with his little brush, and in neither case would change his call, so when their time came to bat we repossessed our bats and forced a forfeit?

Or the time one of our players who had been in a month-long slump hit a solid line drive down the third base line which should have been an easy base hit, but, in an excess of elation, tossed his bat up in the air and when it came down hit his head, dropped to the ground in front of him causing him to trip and stumble, and while he’s picking himself up, the left fielder throws the ball with all his might to first base, which doesn’t quite make it, so the first baseman runs to pick it up, dashes back to first base just as the runner gets there, they crash head on, both collapse to the ground, the first baseman drops the ball and a huge argument ensues as to whether or not the runner is out. It was a complicated question: did the first baseman beat the runner or vice-versa? And what about the dropped ball? Was it dropped before the collision or after? The runner and the first baseman were in no mood to be toyed with and both had already been humiliated beyond tolerance, so the umpire, fearing for his life, refused to make the call. Some genius solved the problem and saved some broken noses in the process by suggesting a coin toss. I don’t remember who won the toss, but everybody was satisfied.

And one more: How about the time during wheat harvest when everybody on the other side was busy cutting wheat (they were from a town a hundred miles south of Umbarger, so their harvest was in full swing and ours was just about to begin), and when their team showed up they were all girls! A high school girl team of fast-pitch softball players. Well, there were rules about who could or could not play on a West Texas Irrigation League team, one of which was, you had to be on the team’s official roster for a certain amount of time, and none of these girls were on that roster for any amount of time.

And they were girls! Sweet innocent little high school girls. So what the hell, a sure win, right? Not exactly a macho thing to do, but the possibility of another mark in our win column trumped any notion of chivalry lurking in our black hearts, so yeah, okay, we’d waive the rules, hee-hee! We‘d even let them pitch to us underhand. From forty feet away instead of sixty? Sure, why not? As long as our side could stick with the overhand style from sixty feet. Let’s get it done and over with.

Who knew they were tenacious, single-minded, organized, coached, trained, talented, dedicated, determined, capable, fast, agile, coordinated, and for this game, particularly motivated? Ever try to hit a baseball thrown underhand at 70 miles an hour from forty feet away?

They beat our pants off. 

We had only two pitchers, Sammy Nelson and Billy Tubman, he of oiled glove fame. Sammy was a tall, lanky kid, clumsy and slow as a milk cow, but had a fastball that could suck the whiskers off your chin. And he was wild; oh man, was he ever wild. We won more than one game because of the fear he instilled in at least half of all opposing batters. I can still see the pose of the terrified batters: absurdly open stance, gingerly crowding the left back corner of the batter’s box, crouched, butt sticking over the edge of the box, front leg poised to collapse in a twisting plunge to the dirt, holding the bat at an impossible angle; what made it so fearsome was, the batter never knew whether a plunge toward the plate or away from it would give him the better chance. It’s hard to hit a pitch from a stance like that, but those that did, and the ones brave enough to squelch their fears, were the ones that regularly beat us. Vengeance of a sort was ours though, because a good many of them went home with saucer-sized bruises on their hips and arms.

When he was on, Sammy would whizz the ball so straight down the center that the catcher didn’t have to move his mitt a single centimeter to catch it. Sometimes he could do that several innings in a row, then something deep inside his control center would snap, and the walkathon would begin. A batter would be doing his jittery ready-to-dive dance at the corner of the batters’ box, suffer through four or five, sometimes six pitches flying in his general direction, then, with great relief, trot off to first. Same with the next, and the next. Soon a slow, musical-chairs sort of shuffle was milling around the bases as one player after another took his place in the queue heading for home.

Five walks in a row wasn’t unusual. That’s two runs, assuming no one was on base when the first batter walked.

That’s when Billy would take over.

Billy was a hulking bachelor who lived by himself on a farm about six miles west of town. His hands were the size of boxing gloves and his fingers the size of bratwurst sausages. His regular position was right field, but when he pitched, his specialty was the knuckler.

We all know that when you throw a ball, it spins, and if it spins fast enough in the right direction, it curves, rises, or drops. The reason is that the spin, in combination with the stitches, causes uneven air pressure on one side of the ball or the other. A good pitcher can control the spin so as to make it go up, down, or sideways. 

But what if you throw the ball so it doesn’t spin? When that happens, the air makes the ball wobble and the stitches to randomly change positions relative to the direction the ball moves through the air, with the result that it floats like, to quote Willie Stargell, a butterfly with hiccups. It’s nearly impossible to hit. It’s called a knuckle ball, or knuckler, and Billy, with his oversized hands, had the knuckle ball down pat. I always believed that if he had thrown the knuckle ball exclusively, we could have won every game we ever played.

But he wouldn’t do it. He’d generally use it to strike out however many batters remained in the inning he relieved Sammy in, but then, no matter how much we badgered him, he’d revert to throwing what he considered his fast ball and his slow, sissy curve ball. Only problem was, his fastballs were as straight and pretty as the sunrise and not at all fast, and his curve balls had no more curves than a girl marathoner. That’s why he never started. Nobody could persuade him to throw his knuckler if he didn’t want to.

All that was the soup, the unitdy, unholy morass, the confusing, confounding, and endlessly fascinating and mostly unproductive breeding grounds where on rare occasions, true genius nevertheless germinated, and on even rarer occasions came to fruition. I saw it happen. One of our players, a kid named Barry Sizemore, two years younger than I, joined our team when he was fifteen. We went to the same small country school (total number of students including grades one through 12, hovered around fifty. That’s fifty, five-o, fifty), so I knew he was pretty good, but what the hell; he was just a skinny little twerp. He wouldn’t jeopardize my team standing any.

Then in one season he must have added five inches to his height and twenty pounds of muscle to his frame. Long story short: he showed enough promise that his daddy sent him to a month-long baseball school somewhere in Oklahoma, and when he returned, not only did he dominate every game he played in, which was all of them, but scouts began showing up around the League’s dilapidated facilities, not quite believing the five carat diamond they had found in the detritus. Whatever the rules were that governed professional recruiting, they prohibited scouts from even talking to Barry until he graduated high school, but when he walked off the stage on graduation night, he, under his daddy’s wing, signed with one of the majors. I think it was Brooklyn. Later that summer Brooklyn played a demonstration game in Phoenix, and the first time at bat, Barry hit one out of the park.

His mistake was marrying the wrong girl. She didn’t like him gone all the time, so he quit baseball after one year, bought a farm with his bonus money, fathered eight children, lost the farm, divorced his wife, remarried, and now lives in some small West Texas town pumping gas and bemoaning his lost chance. And what a chance it was. He was a natural. The only coaching he ever got, from anybody, was during the month he spent in Oklahoma, where he beat Mickey Mantle’s record for time from home plate to first base. True story.

That’s the baseball I remember and love. Is today’s version of the game better? Undoubtedly.

But it’s not as much fun.

Copyright Gerald Beckman

A South Texas lawyer gets sucked into the seamy underworld of drug dealers. Read the first chapter

or

BUY ON AMAZON

Two youngsters try to find their way in a clannish West Texas town. Read the first chapter

or

BUY ON AMAZON

 An aging drug lord needs an ally with a particular skillset to help him win an ongoing war with competing cartels to supply America’s illicit narcotics market. One of his minions finds a prospect, a high school senior who’s smart, follows orders, has no fear of the Man, and proves himself by tackling a job no other man would dare undertake. What forces compel a young man to embrace a world where torture and murder are commonplace, where love and loyalty are considered the marks of weakness? 

Read a sample

Buy on Amazon

Gerald Beckman was born and raised on a farm in West Texas and practiced law in Corpus Christi. Since retirement he has written numerous novels. He writes, travels, and does all those things he always wanted to do but never had time for. He serves on numerous committees and boards, and enjoys volunteering in community activities such as World Affairs Council of South Texas, International Education Committee at TAMUCC, the Building Committee at St. John’s Catholic Church, and Beautify Corpus Christi.  

learn more at GeraldBeckman.com

Grant Mays is an electrical engineer.  An ardent sci-fi fan, he started randomly writing this unnamed journal  

14:30 Hours 2:30.

Doesn’t matter that it’s well into day planetside in N.A. To Eric 14:30 felt as shit as 04:30 would. The dull hum and vibrations, creaks and lurches and occasional flickering of light, the ship felt like 04:30 no matter the hour. 

Of course, in space, the day/night cycle isn’t set by the stars but by the duty roster. The wonder of humanity’s greatest accomplishment was marred by its faults; its propensity to place the human in a situation so estranged from its evolutionary comfort zone that they almost lose sight of what it means to be human. 

Eric sighed. Another shift (not day, shift). After 14 months they blurred so completely that the Magna Soviet–Fed border was more clearly defined. 

Mr. Sardan’s thoughts weren’t this articulate; a blip intuitively understood and processed but lacking the specificity that this articulation gives. 

Time for caffeine. 

14:31 hours, Engineering Specialist II, Petty Corporal Eric Sardan, Serial No. 1823947265-C12B, 

Federation Frigate operating under Federation Charter §74.6.13.2, research and exploration in sector Archimedes, onboard the vessel Leibniz. Nothing going on today. 

End Log. 

Eric Sardan got a kick out of sounding overly formal in logs, only to be followed by the inevitable nothing that permeated this region of space. Much like most of space, actually. Maybe that’s why they call it space? Either way, little quirks and bits of sarcasm kept him sane. 

14:34

Eric slipped into his fatigues. He put on his larger pair. I look like shit in these, he thought. Actually, I always look like shit. But the more form-fitting ones look less shit. 

14:39 

Conduct of Federation Personnel While Deployed 

§18.3.2 

Comradery & Fraternity 

§18.3.2.1  To foster community and comradery, personnel shall take First Meal prior to beginning shift. 

§18.3.2.2  Further, personnel shall—

(because, according to the psychological Board, attaché to the Grand bitch Admiralty, Personnel on extended deployment are at risk of developing mental health issues to monotony, confinement, and general boredom)—socialize during First Meal to alleviate psychological fatigue.

Did they consider that sitting with Jacob—with the charisma of a fucking goat—and Armando, who only seemed to talk about the faults of the Pan-Solar Soviet, or the Primary Gladis, or the latest nutjob theory lost colony ships that were stolen by monastic radicals, or football. 

God, fuck football. 

He was seated with extremes from the platonic spectrum of shitty table conversation. 

Of course, Jacob, when he did chat, only ever talked about the latest human rights violation of the Pan-Solar Soviet.

Mr. Sardan recognized the benefit of organized society. Processes and procedures pertaining to the minutia of society kept the bacteria out of the Verts, and made sure another Hercules doesn’t happen. 

Sure, he had opinions on politics. On what humanity should aspire to (such as leaving him alone), and recoil from (i.e., table conversation with Armando and… fuck… who – Jacob. A man almost as easy to overlook as one’s own flaws), but he had little interest in the ideologue minutia. 

He felt he was neither unprincipled, nor overzealous, just reasonable! 

The irony of this self-praise, that everyone probably sees themselves as the sole practitioner of reason, and the lack of introspection that required, was not lost on him per se, but was an ugly thought he was cognizant of for a flash, before subduing and rationalizing his thoughts. 

I want to shit, but don’t want the hassle of undoing my fatigues. Does the ship smell funny, or am I having a stroke? Nah, probably burning insulation. Maybe that will give me cancer? Fuck, maybe space radiation will. Maybe Rebecca’s a bitch. Maybe Rebecca’s bitchiness will give me cancer – 

“ENGINEER SARDAN! THAT INSULATION IS BURNING!”

Oh shit, that was burning insulation. 

Usually the fire alarm goes off if shit’s burning, although his curiosity regarding the lack of an alarm was superseded by the burning shit. 

Okay, at least this is an easy fix. Ship’s power provides anywhere between 28 VDC and 75 VDC, which requires buck regulators to step down the voltage to power the mess hall subsystems. But, there is a manual cutoff—fortunately, it’s easily accessible (Per AN-1083, §12.4.1.3, manual cutoffs for all power supplies powering secondary subsystems must be readily accessible by authorized personnel and conform to §34.5.1.2 of AN-1011 PANELS AND EQUIPMENT INTERFACES), so I can just cut power to the mess subs. 

Eric jogs over to the corner of the mess, keys in his 8 digit PIN, and disables power to the mess subs. 

The insulation is still smoldering, but since the overtemperature condition in the circuit which caused the insulation (which, he now notices, was not regulation but a shitty repair. Probably Jack. Or Uladzimir?) to burn has ceased, the insulation cooled and – 

Tschhhhhhhh! 

Eric collapsed to the ground, his lungs filling with the foam from the extinguisher that Jacob was now bravely operating. 

That fuck. That boring fuck. 

Eric passed out, his last moments of consciousness lamenting the lack of air in his longs. 

What a shit day for Eric. 

 Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisition arrived in New Spain as early as the 16th century, were founders and settlers of Monterrey and other settlements. They were the ancestors of many South Texas families. Herb Canales, a former Director od the Corpus Christi Library System, is researching this.history 

My interest in family history placed itself within historical context to create a broad narrative when I was in high school. My mother one day commented that a lady at work would go to La Retama Library in Corpus Christi at lunch time to work on her family tree. 

I found that fascinating and wanted to do the same. So, one summer day, with time on my hands, I boarded a bus at Louisiana Avenue and Alameda and headed down to the library. Arriving in the Local History room I located just one relevant book – “The Romance of Spanish Surnames,” by Charles Maduell. That was it. The rest of the genealogy collection consisted of works of Southern ancestry and English heritage. Understandably so, as the library depended largely on donations for its genealogical collection. 

Also, as I would find out later, works on Hispanic genealogy were literally few and far between. The research and publishing boom had not begun, the Internet was decades away, and what little that had been published in Mexico was difficult to acquire. 

The next point of inspiration was the series “Roots” which ran on the ABC television network in 1977. Who can forget LaVar Burton’s portrayal of Kunta Kinte? At the time the series ran, Alex Haley, author of the book upon which the series was based, but not without controversy, appeared on the Johnny Carson Show and presented Johnny with a genealogy of the Carson family which had been compiled by the LDS Library in Salt Lake City. Intriguing!

But still, it would be years before I would be able to advance research, one among others. That opportunity came in 1985 when Corpus Christi City Manager Ed Martin appointed me as director of the Corpus Christi Public Libraries. That was a critical time as a new library to replace La Retama Library was in the planning and construction stages and would open the following year. 

To expand and create a Hispanic genealogy collection I enlisted the support of Dr. Clotilde P. Garcia, otherwise known as Dr. Cleo, sister of Dr. Hector P. Garcia who had recently been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. She provided financial support which helped acquire a growing body of work. 

Dr. Cleo also funded the computerization of 18th and 19th century records from early border settlements, the culmination of a sort of Oregon Trail, but in this case from south in New Spain (Nueva España) to the frontier at or near the Rio Grande. This is where many South Texas Hispanic families originated. 

From this research we learned of early land grants of vast acreage of as much as 8,000 acres in elongated strips north of the Rio Grande that our families were awarded by the King of Spain as early as the mid-18th century. They brought traditions with them as vaqueros that would later be adopted by the mega ranches of South Texas. This was history not taught to us in Texas history classes. 

Since the time I began to build this collection so much has been published. What might have remained hidden history, i.e., the land grants representing the earliest land ownership in present day South Texas, received ample and official treatment in “New Guide to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in South Grants,” published the Texas General Land Office under Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Thus far I have personally found five ancestors who owned lands as early as the 1760s in South Texas. 

But history is not straightforward. It can be inspiring, fascinating, messy, horrific – sometimes all at once. Such is the case of the Sephardic Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. The word Sephardic is derived from the Hebrew word for Spain, Sepharad (and variations). In 1492 the Catholic Kings of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabel, chose to expel its Jews, who had arrived very early on following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the first century CE. They could remain if they converted and would be called conversos or New Christians. Portugal would be pressured to follow suit. 

I am researching the arrival of these Jews in present day northeastern Mexico who were founders and settlers, but hiding their heritage, in the 16th century of Monterrey and other settlements – right next door to us in South Texas. 

This story is, as I said earlier, fascinating.  

Of what befell Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, a converso, and his sister’s family, Crypto-Jews, that is secret Jews, is indeed tragic. His story began with him as a rising star at court in Spain and would end with his death in prison, and with his sister’s family executed in Mexico City for relapsing to Judaism, or what the Spanish called, observing the Law of Moses.

Carvajal was born in Mogadouro, Portugal near the Spanish border around 1537 and was educated and partly reared in the home of an aristocrat in Spain. So thorough his education must have been that he learned to speak the Castilian of the upper classes such that he could function at court in Spain and later granted access to King Phillip II of Spain.

In 1579 the king appointed him governor of the newly established province of el Nuevo Reino de Leon, today, Nuevo Leon, with Monterrey as its modern capital. 

This province included large areas of Texas and New Mexico as well as the modern Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas and Coahuila. And because his post included Texas I submit that he should be considered the first governor of Texas.

It should be noted that Carvajal as a New Christian, would, under official policy, be forbidden to enter the new colonies in the Americas and would much less be given a high position. The concern of the crown and the church was that new converts could not be trusted not to return to their Jewish faith, settling in the hinterland, as they came to do. Only Old Christians were officially sanctioned. 

But there was a pressing need to settle the northern reaches of New Spain, Christianize the natives and seize treasure. Carvajal convinced the king that he was the man to do it.

At the same time of the appointment the king authorized Carvajal to raise cattle. As many settlers would have some cattle for their personal needs this would seem to have been for the purposes of establishing a large operation, thus requiring the king’s signature and seal. Many cattle would over the centuries become free-roaming and be gathered by later settlers. Thus, the genesis of the cattle industry.

Also unusual was that in authorizing Carvajal to recruit 100 families to colonize the new province that no questions would be asked of them, such as their status as Christians, by Spanish officials. This can only mean that many who arrived in the Carvajal flotilla at Tampico, 300 miles south of present-day Brownsville, were either New Christians or still of the Jewish faith, officially barred.

Included among the colonists was his sister’s family. 

By all accounts Carvajal carried out his assignment thoroughly. But as with many leaders he engendered envy and resentment even among officials. Some may even have suspected that he was a New Christian, again, forbidden in the Americas. But they could not pin anything on him. That he practiced the Catholic faith, at least outwardly, was unquestioned. 

But that did not hold true for his sister’s family as the case unfolded. Francisca de Carvajal and her children Luis the younger, named for his uncle, Isabel, Leonor and Catalina were arrested in Mexico City on the charge of being Crypto-Jews, secretly practicing Judaism. They underwent years of trial, release following contrition, re-arrest as a result of new accusations, and were eventually executed in 1596. Years later, two other daughters, Mariana and Ana would be executed on the same charges.

Carvajal’s crime was that he did not report his sister to the Inquisition. He died in prison in 1591. 

His heir, Luis the younger, has received attention recently. He kept a journal with religious thoughts and prayers. That provided the evidence needed to convict him. Decades ago, the journal disappeared from the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City. In 2017 it showed up at auction in New York. A collector of Judaica purchased it. Once realizing from experts what it was, he had it digitized by Princeton University where it can be downloaded free, and then had it repatriated to the Mexican archive.

This is one area of my research which will hopefully result in a book. I am studying other families and tracing Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal to New Spain, as well as their ancient story in Iberia. Suffice to say now that many South Texas families can trace their lineage to these Sephardic Jews, victims in Iberia and New Spain of religious intolerance of the worst kind.

I can trace my interest in this history to one individual who I met in graduate school at Columbia University in New York – Jackie Kamerow, now Ben-Efraim, a linguist and librarian at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. She introduced me to Sephardic history of which I knew nothing about. As it turns out she was correct in that I, and I must say, many others, share this lineage. 

EXCERPT

Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisition arrived in New Spain as early as the 16thcentury, were founders and settlers of Monterrey and other settlements. They were the ancestors of many South Texas families. Deep research in family history will lead you there.