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THE FOUR SEASONS OF MY YOUTH
T. W. Loessin
III. AUTUMN:
The Winds of Change Arrive
"This land is
your land,
this land is my land,
this land was made for you and me."
-- Woody Guthrie, 1940.
"The Season"
My German paternal and Czech maternal ancestors both immigrated to the United States in the 1850s, arriving seven years apart through the Port of Galveston. They inched their way across The Great State before finally locating the treasure they'd been promised -- the rich, fertile black soil of central Texas. Here, for successive generations, they raised the types of crops that were the engine of this region's economy -- cotton, corn, and sorghum.
My maternal line of planters and pickers, at some point in the 1940s, began bringing their cotton to the gin that, twenty years earlier, had been passed down to my paternal grandfather. And so it was that I, an eventual product of this interaction, would grow up working in these busy rotating fields and this two-story monstrosity that was our family's gin in that small community of Circleville, all of which were situated along the tranquil San Gabriel river east of Georgetown, Texas. That river's banks and flood plains, as well as the small family farms that dotted its path, were soothingly shaded and sheltered by lush, meandering groves of tall and stately native pecan.
~ Paternal Side ~
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| Left: Hermann Ludwig Loessin was 14 when his father was killed in Germany's 1848 Revolution, 19 when his widowed mother brought him and his 7 siblings to Texas. On their property near Black Jack Springs they would construct a cotton gin that would become the family enterprise. It was the first steam-driven cotton gin / saw and grist mills in Fayette County. Right: His son, my great-grandfather, Oscar Waldimar Loessin would grow up working in that gin but would fall in love with Martha Templin of Thrall in Williamson County (the two are shown in front of their Thrall home). Oscar would find a gin of his own to operate in nearby Circleville, purchasing it in 1925 from A.C. Stearns. The Stearns family were among the earliest 19th c. settlers in Williamson County. A.C.'s daughter, Clara Stearns Scarbrough, would author Land of Good Water: A Williamson County History, which laid the foundation for a preservation movement that sprung up across the county in the 1970s. Below: Oscar and Martha's three sons who would jointly inherit the Loessin Gin in Circleville. The youngest, my grandfather Oscar "Sug" Loessin would later buy out his two brother's shares. |
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To this day my favorite season remains Autumn. Don't listen to those who suggest Texas has but two seasons: "Summer and about two weeks of winter." Those of us who grow up in the rural parts of The Great State abiding by the Farmer's Calendar certainly know when Autumn arrives. It becomes known to one in a number of ways: A mental note arrives that morning your heirloom quilt is no longer found on the floor but instead, thanks to a refreshing new breeze crossing through your south facing window, is now serving its original intent. The arrival in your child's hand of the flyer announcing the Booster Club's annual football fundraiser is always a sure sign. Field mice, fleeing the machinery of harvesters blazing across the terrain, have now invaded your barn and gotten into your feed bags. Or, for those really in touch with the cycles of Mother Earth, when the meat inside the gradually darkening, hardening shell of the pecan you just picked up, cracked open, and sampled -- turns out tastin' just right! That, my friends, are sure signs Autumn's arrived in Texas.
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| The pecan -- our quintessential harbinger of Fall and most familiar garnish in Holiday meals. Image: Winn Myers |
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| Me with Mario's Uncle aka Lil' Luis Mendoza, 1967. |
"The Season" saw us sharing in the work that had to be done and sharing in the laughter as the young and old, working side-by-side, took it upon ourselves to chide one another or play the fool -- all for our own mutual entertainment. Perhaps most important of all in strengthening those bonds that connected us, was the sharing together of a great number of meals. What fond memories I have of "breaktime!" or, in our native Czech, "svacina." It was a blessed reprieve from the hoe, the cotton-picking sack, or the itchy corn fields when we'd collapse beneath some cluster of nearby trees and out would come the mid-day sustenance -- kielbasa sausages, chorizo, burritos, kolaches, cheese slices, and fresh fruit -- all wrapped tightly in paper bags, newspaper, butcher paper and twine. Oh, and then there was the cold Dr. Pepper bottles lifted out of ice chests, into which we'd each pour our small bag of Planter's peanuts! How many times I heard my grandpa say after that first sip of soda, "Who knew somethin' this good could come out of Waco!"
~ Maternal Side ~
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| Left: My maternal patriarch and matriarch Pavel and Rozina (Trlica) Machu were in their mid-30s when they departed Moravia (Czechoslovakia) and arrived in the Port of Galveston. Pavel would contribute to the establishment of many institutions in Granger Texas and the “Machu” homestead (now beneath Granger Lake) was commonly recognized as its own community east of Granger and is reflected as such on early |
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Mario's dad, Señor Mendoza, would pull out his accordion from the back of his truck along with my grandfather's, and together they began to play the happy Czech polkas and Tejano rhythms -- that's right, together they played the songs of the other's inherited repertoire. I can still here this amazing example of cultural diffusion in my head today. Just as I can hear the "ah-ha-ha's" and clapping hands of the men and women gathered around the shade of those great trees - some of whom could sing in the other's tongue, others who could not would shout out affirmations, but what did it matter anyway when the language being heard was universal. I don't recall language ever being much of an issue. There was always someone who could interpret if the moment deemed it necessary. But, in the work we did together, communication took many forms. At day's end, for instance, a gentle hand placed on the shoulder of your partner who'd been your sidekick most of that day in between row after row instinctively would lead to you both gazing off into the distance at the setting sun. Each would heave a heavy sigh, "Yeppers," affirming the day was done and, turning toward the truck, began your loading up while still humming the tunes heard earlier that day. What more need be said?
At Thanksgiving time we joined at both the Catholics' and the Protestants' Harvest Festivals where we youngsters enjoyed a dunking machine or dunking for apples, throwing a string attached to a pole over a tri-fold wall divider into a "fish pond" in order to acquire our Cracker Jack prizes, or one of those notoriously vicious rounds of volleyball out on the yard. There were domino competitions -- a game called 42 mainly, Cake Walk, Baking contests, and usually a dance late into the evening. Or we'd venture under the gazebo adjacent to the Catholic Rec Center where the sounds of "B12!" and "G56!" were coming from. We'd scope out the prizes laid out before the loudspeakers and squeeze through the adults seated before their own insane numbers of Bingo cards spread out before them -- - regularly a number of cards exceeding the limits of any mortal to sanely monitor. Good luck trying to find an available seat that provided available space for at least one card of your own. "And, we have another Bingo!"
Home observances often meant crowding your extended family members into the garage. Tables and folding chairs were made festive with harvest decor and after all had gotten their full while seated around them, the function of these tables became more diverse - board games for the young, poker for the adults, and a fun family game the ladies would cackle around - C.I.X. - my, how those women would love to "kill" one another!
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| My maternal family is one very large, loving, and laughing bunch. Our gatherings today require a large hall where you'll find us engaged in rapid punch conversation peppered with Tex-Czech slang. Jedanecky! And all this is due in large part to this wonderful lady, Vlasta Machu, who along with my grandfather, raised nine remarkable children, including the eldest, my Mom. I would spend much of my summers as a youth at their home, occasionally being recruited to drop the spoonfuls of poppyseed into the wet dough of future kolaches, or engaged in memorable mischief and adventures with Mom's younger siblings -- my aunts all near my own age. To this day our bonds remain stronger than ever. Grandma Machu had everything to do with that appreciation for family and disdain for taking one's self too seriously. |
Both the church gatherings and home gatherings during that particular season were meals punctuated in every way imaginable with pecans! After all, we had all - young and old - been dutifully shelling them in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, often late into the evening while seated around our kitchen tables or out on the patios where fireflies circled and often the homemade ice cream maker would appear. And then came the baking -- oh, what wondrous familiar smells come to me as I reflect! From out of the ovens came large baking sheets on which were spread the beautifully toasted morsels. For this purpose the long Mahan variety were preferred, heavily seasoned with someone's special recipe of spices or sweet candy coatings. Mario's Mom produced the hottest ones I'd ever tasted employing her 'muy caliente' seasoning mix. Lined perfectly in a circle were the short, squatty variety garnishing the vibrating surface of Grandma's cranberry relish. Even in the large roasting pans that housed the host's impressive batch of stuffing, or dressing, were oft times chopped pecans. And the chopped bits made their way into the sweet potatoes with cream casseroles, filled our cookies, breads, and even adorned the well-buttered tops of our delicious Czech pastries - the kolache!
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| (Left) On a single day in November 2017 my parents shelled this many pecans. Professionals! (Top right) Recipe for Mom's fudge. So addicted to it each year was I that one Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gifted me a cutting board with the recipe burned into its surface. Certainly one of my most special Christmas gifts ever! (Below) I was always eager to come to Mom's aid in the kitchen, especially when time to roll out the pecan pie dough! |
"The Winds of Change Arrive"
I often wonder what happened to Mario and his wonderful family. They stopped coming to our area those six or so months of each year at some point in the late 1970s., just around the time something I would later learn was called a Recession led to what was phrased back then as "the bottom falling out of the farming market."
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| This interesting graphic from farmdocdaily.illinois.edu shows gross farm income spiked with the spike in commodities prices in 1972 and 1973 but farm debt kept growing steadily over time. As income began to fall after the spike, debt continued increasing at a steep pace, debt bypassing income in 1977. Debt remained above gross farm income through 1985. It provides a clear indicator of the unmanageable financial stress that was overwhelming many farmers and, eventually, the Farm Credit System. By 1985, estimates were that nearly a quarter of the farm debt could not be repaid from income. Arguably, farmers were able to borrow too much (and at high interest rates) on the back of inflation which drove up the value of the land; asset inflation rather than repayment capacity fed the borrowing and as inflation, prices and incomes fell so did the value of the farmland leaving farmers with little ability to pay off the loans. The result was the farm economic crisis of the Eighties. |
Courage was mustered up by those men who had never known anything but farming. You damn right it took courage - of a kind that comes when faced with no options. Courage, foresight, and determination had to be found within those men who, in mid-life many of them, embarked on strange new paths that would forever alter the way of life they'd known. I don't mean simply an adjustment to a 8-hour day, 5-days a week rather than the 15-hour day that began at pre-dawn 7-days weekly, but the bigger adjustment of all -- no longer working for themselves but instead, as it was said, "now working for 'the man!"" Some successfully made that transition, some never did. Many of the latter would be spoken of in certain quarters in whispers tinged with sadness, with words like "penniless now", "miserable", "bless their hearts", and "drunk all the time."
My own father struggled through this period, ultimately making that transition. He went back to school in order to acquire some type of professional certification -- a course many of the men in the area set out upon -- and suddenly Dad was an electrician, a skill he had first been introduced to in high school, while working in the family gin, and then while in the Army. He and my grandfather would collaborate on the assignments as part of a Texas A&M correspondence course and, after marrying my Mom, Dad would talk Grandpa into opening up a TV & Radio Repair Shop down by our front gate near the highway.
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| My grandparents and Dad at their early TV/Radio Repair workbench shown here still in their home, 1960. It would still be several years before they finally ended the family's ginning enterprise of 4 decades and constructed the actual TV Repair Shop down by the front gate. I still have my grandfathers ledgers from this business - all in his beautiful cursive, including the "No more credit to be given" written beside quite a few familiar family names. The Shop was only open 9 years before my grandfather's passing from cancer. |
With an ache lingering in his heart Dad got up from the kitchen table one day and, moving with intention to step out of his depression, began taking down the TV Repair sign that hung out front of our place. The Shop that he and his Dad had proudly built themselves from the ground up he now locked up for good. "I knew I had to find something that could provide for my family, one that provided insurance and that sorta thing." He worked at several local industries before landing in the maintenance department at a local private college. Again a strategic move done with intention, for it would allow me to earn my under-graduate degree at this nearby college with tuition costs significantly reduced. I am eternally grateful to him for that opportunity that his foresight -- along with the scholarships I had pursued with parental encouragement -- made possible.
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| In 2021 I found it! Stored above the rafters in one of my Dad's old sheds was the old TV Repair Shop sign that he and grandpa hung out front of our property for the first time in 1961. |
Life was moving us unapologetically forward. Yet, in the midst of the perpetually changing characters and plot were the ever-present reminders of a very different and increasingly distant chapter that was our past.
Down on our property's river bottom stood the most prominent of these reminders - the abandoned gin. Its operation had ended a couple of years after the new TV & Radio Repair venture had begun. The 60-year old, two-story wooden structure had begun leaning precariously and, as a young adult now, I found it to be strangely smaller in appearance than I had ever thought of it as a child. For four years I would make the turn off of Highway 95 and on to Highway 29 that would take me to Southwestern University some twenty minutes down the road and, in making that turn, I could not help but see it looming up from the neglected underbrush on the San Gabriel river's north bank.
Its windows long removed or shattered, it had become nothing more than a giant pigeon house with an exterior encrusted by some crazy, crawling ivy that seemed determined to bury it along with any historical significance it once might have had. Without fail, each time I glanced upon it I would hear all that once emanated from its inner core -- that great cacophony of sound made by the cast-iron artifacts still sitting in the Engine Room -- whirring belts, grinding pistons, coughing exhaust, and metal plates with loosening screws bang, bang, banging against the integral parts they were meant to protect. And, rising well above the roar, I could still hear the sounds of voices as well -- of Grandpa "Sug" and Dad hollering at one another or toward Senor Mendoza and his sons, including Mario. "Get those bales off the platform and on to that goddamn truck!" "Move that trailer outta here and bring in the next bastard!" "Kill the engine! Now, dammit now! Kill it!"
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| Trailers filled with cotton can be seen circled around and lined up at the Loessin Gin, Circleville TX, 1940. |
Another reminder of that previous era came along each year when I'd notice the ground covered with all those neglected pecans. There was a time when it would have been unheard of to simply mow over such a precious commodity. But, like the cotton and the corn, you could no longer get a decent price for them on the Feed Store's scale. Seeing those poor trees all loaded down with the weight of them or picking up as many as my hands would hold, my mind would naturally wander back to the way things had been. That era when "the season" was a phrase still with a meaning that it no longer seemed to have and, standing somewhere high among the branches of these now forgotten trees -- trees once thoughtfully considered, annually pruned, and cherished by ancestors for their gifts of shade and bountiful harvests -- there would be that skinny, laughing kid, that special friend I no longer had as well.
I think often now about those old and worn out faces there in our church pews, greeting us in the post office, bringing us their cotton to gin or TV to repair, standing in the kitchen at the church socials waving at me as I passed down the line of covered dish fare, or sitting around the domino tables in the VFW hall. The Cervenkas, the Dloughys, the Trlicas, the McFaddins, the Kovars, the Volciks and my own Machu kin. I mourn the absence of those traditions and ancestors as I do the vanished fields that once defined the land of this region that they once all occupied. For miles around, county after county encircling our own, fields filled with the crops I've described stretched endlessly toward every horizon, unimpeded by hectic highways and taxing tollways that effectively hem us all in today. The rich, black soil of those fields having been unremittingly paved over with asphalt and concrete in order to make way for the suburbanizing visions of greedy developers, their shopping centers, and that burgeoning "blessing" that was first Heavy industry and then the Tech industry that, it is said, "saved our region from certain economic ruin" and now provides for the countless number of covetous new arrivals continuing to migrate to this corner of the "Promised Land."
I wonder.
I wonder a great deal these days about the causes and consequences of "ruin" -- the personal sort, the societal type; about the contrasting motivations and values that I have discovered exists among the various types of "migrants" encountered throughout my life; and, about the qualities my own ancestors -- and, for that matter, Mario's people -- would have considered true when defining a people or a land as "rich" and then in my mind I compare that to what many of these newcomers describe as "rich."
A century after their arrival here,
this child of those migrant ancestors from eastern Europe
-- whose fate it seems was to stand upon the bridge that linked the bank of their receding past with that of an unpitying future --
witnessed the wiping away of so much they had been promised
and cared for
and that they, in turn, strove so hard
to promise and pass on to me.
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| (Left) It makes me happy that so many of the new home owners along the stretch of Highway 29 running parallel to the San Gabriel where I grew up have elected to retain on their properties such wonderful reminders of our area's past - old barns, tractors and windmills. This particular windmill (right) is one I pass daily on my commute into Austin and I love the juxtaposition found in the scene. The early 20th century relic stubbornly still stands, surrounded now by the gigantic steel transmission towers that were erected in the early 21st century concurrently with the arrival of the new 130 toll road. (Below) I often pull over and walk across the new bridge that crosses over the Gabriel at Rowe Valley in Circleville just so I can gaze upon the iron trellises of the old Rowe Valley bridge, one our family crossed dozens of times on our way to the scenic area for picnics, outdoor weddings, and extended family reunions. I would always close my eyes and pray the Our Father when Mom or Dad drove us across it. |
I find myself still standing on that 'bridge' today, tearful at times when spotting the debris of that which vanished -- the rusty blades of an old windmill lying in the field where it once proudly stood, a fallen wagon of scarred and broken wood that once carried a group of us Christmas Carolers on an annual Hay Ride sitting now collapsed upon its own flat tires in an old barn that's finally collapsed upon itself as well. Upon this 'bridge' I've stood and watched as so much was cast off, without care, by the rising current called "progress" -- and
I wonder.
The gin, too, has since vanished. A local developer in the early 80s who wanted "that old, rustic look" for his own new home being built on the (also new) Lake Georgetown would approach Dad about acquiring the "wonderful and interesting" hand-hewn beams that supported the floor and crowned the ceiling of the gin's second story. Dad caved and practically gave it away.
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| In 1980, the Taylor Daily Press interviewed my grandmother and dad for their piece on the Loessin Gin's history and its imminent departure from its setting of 65 years - a tribute that our family deeply appreciated. |
I would mourn the gin's absence for some time, releasing heavy sighs each time I turned on to 29 and glanced upon the empty spot where it once stood. So many times in those moments wishing that my niece or nephew could have known the ol' gin. I wish they could have stood beneath the canopy where, decade after decade, so many trailers made their way through or heard the wind that whistled through the rusted tin upon that canopy's roof. I wish they could have climbed the narrow wooden stairs that led to the second floor where the sun's rays poured in through the cracks of wall and ceiling like carefully angled stage lighting and seen the dancing dust mites and zooming mud wasps swirling around that huge open space in quiet choreography. And I wish I could tell them both -- there, on that open stage -- about the only whipping my grandfather ever gave me after finding me, air pistol in hand, gleefully blasting away at the nests of those mud wasps -- completely insensitive to the splintering impact my BBs were having on those "wonderful and interesting" hand-hewn timbers up above.
For sixty years the gin had stood as a familiar landmark on the north bank of the San Gabriel where travelers, crossing the Highway 95 bridge, often miss the turn off for Highway 29 leading to Georgetown. Locals provided directions using the gin as a guidepost, saying, "Make the turn when you spot the ol' Loessin Gin in Circleville." Today when I hear about yet another poor sod who "missed the turnoff" I simply hang my head in sadness and think, "if only the ol' gin still stood."
The gin had stood firm against the San Gabriel's devastating floods of '57 and '59. Both of which had thrown the home Dad grew up in right off its blocks -- which is why, by 1960, he and Grandpa relocated it a mile north of the flood plain on adjacent property Dad purchased when he got out of the Army. "Still at a vantage point where your Grandma could enjoy the view of the pecan groves all along the river's bottom," Dad would explain. Did that smooth- talking developer in the '80s know it was the '57 and '59 flood waters that aided in the evolution of that ol' gin's "rustic look?" I'm guessin' not.
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| Left: Dad with my grandmother on the old Highway 29 bridge that made the curve directly behind the Loessin Gin and took passerbys 5 miles down the road to Taylor. The awful Flood of '57 took this bridge away and the following year the state highway department began construction of the new T intersection - 29 would now dead end into a newly redirected 95. All of their equipment and progress in this project made through 1958 was for naught, wiped out by the Flood of '59. Right: This second flood did significantly less damage to the family's home than the one in '57. |
It was the two consecutive floods that led to the initial discussions in the '60s and eventual construction in the '70s of the two dams that would create Lake Georgetown and Lake Granger on opposite ends of the San Gabriel. Our own property, sitting between these two sites, did not benefit in any way from this major metamorphosis of our region's landscape. The once rapidly flowing section of the river along which our property sat quickly transformed into a stagnant stream, algae-laden and, worse, became the recipient of sewage waste product courtesy of the City of Georgetown. Almost 30 years after they cleaned up their act another culprit- the Liberty Hill Wastewater Treatment Plant - would be discovered doing the same thing.
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| Left: My grandmother Elizabeth (Komandosky) Loessin holding the 40 lb. catfish she caught out of the San Gabriel River on whose north bank the Loessin Gin and home were situated in Circleville, TX. As Dad would say, "this was back when you could still catch 'em big and it was safe to eat out of the Gabriel." Right: My grandmother began her nursing career at the old Johns Hospital in Taylor where she spearheaded Red Cross fundraising and blood drives and taught Civil Defense classes. She would find a new home for over 20 years at the Villa Siesta Nursing Home in Austin. Standing in the foreground of this pic of her crew, 'tall Betty' stands behind her. The near one hour commute in those days she often said was made bearable by her carpooling buddy 'tall Betty' who she picked up in Hutto each morning and would "have your grandma in stitches all the way in and all the way home!" |
Yet, I wonder. Seems to me a great many of those farms they refer to are now buried eternally beneath two great lakes -- including that of my own maternal family.
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| Before there was a Granger Lake! This photo shows the completed Laneport Dam on the San Gabriel River. The original Machu homestead and family's cemetery lay at the top of this photo, an area now under the waters of Granger Lake. |
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| My maternal grandfather Albin E. Machu treated his large family each Sunday after church with his amazingly tender and juicy barbecue. Shown turning the brisket in this pic, he said the secret to his meat was not only his secret basting sauce recipe (which only one other person knew - his wife) but knowing exactly how often to turn it on the grill. |
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| Ready to enlist? My dad and a cousin in the uniforms of American armed forces are standing outside the Loessin Gin in Circleville, likely on their way to a parade in nearby Granger or Taylor. Patriotic celebrations, parades, the annual Memorial Day service at the WWI & II monument where all bowed their heads at the sound of Taps, the presentation of colors at the opening of civic functions - I mourn the loss of such traditions. |
How do I know this? Because I believe there really are some things that are eternal.
About the story: The excerpt above titled
III: AUTUMN, The Winds of Change Arrive
is taken from a larger work I have tentatively titled
The Four Seasons of My Youth.
This particular chapter explores a major turning point that occurred in the economic sector of the central Texas region our family has called home for over seven generations. Beginning in the late 1970s a combination of factors would forever alter the region's landscape and the effects this transformation would have on our family as well as the larger community is described.
As well, the impact three different groups of migrants have had on this single place over time is considered. These include our own European ancestors, migrant farm laborers from Mexico, and the more recent wave of northerners who continue migrating to the region following the pivotal economic shift examined in the story.
As a social studies educator for many years, I was always fascinated by the factors that caused change over time in a single geographic place and how the people in that place found ways to adapt to that change. This type of examination I often led my students through in my World Geography or World History classes and it always stirred within me the urge to embark on this type of exploration of my own regional landscape. This semi-autobiographical work evolved out of that endeavor.
Enjoy looking through my Library
______________________________Terry’s “Good Living” Guide:
Body:
Avoid the 3 PsBsSs
Processed Foods, Phthalates, Plastics;
Beef, Butter, Breads;Sedentary activities, Sugars, Salt.
Trust me,
you’ll be feeling better in no time!Mind & Spirit:
Avoid the 3 F’sManufactured in these mediums are
misinformation, fear, anger and hate!
Terry’s “Good Living” Guide:
Avoid the 3 PsBsSs
Processed Foods, Phthalates, Plastics;
Beef, Butter, Breads;
you’ll be feeling better in no time!
Avoid the 3 F’s
misinformation, fear, anger and hate!
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