Retired Drifters: Windy and Cold

Glen Rose, Texas

Weather: The high was early this morning at 68 degrees. It cooled off quickly from 0900 hours, to a low at 2100 hours of 37 degrees. The wind was blowing hard all day at 25-40 mph.

Carolyn added to the exercises for the vertigo that she is doing at home. She does them twice a day, and they take about 30 minutes each time. Some of the exercises don't seem to cause her any problem, while others cause nausea. She continues to be hopeful that what she is doing will help her control the vertigo.

We have some housekeeping chores that we want to do, but the weather was too windy today. One thing about retirement is that if you don't want to do something today, put it off until you do want to. If you wait long enough, the urgency goes away. It is surprising how little urgent stuff there is.

My friend Bo Garrett will be glad to know we are keeping up the tradition of going to Dairy Queen for a hamburger. We went there for dinner, and it was the usual fine cuisine that we have grown accustomed to.

Our story today concerns something that happened about 165 years ago. As most people are aware, Davy Crockett was one of the heroes of the Alamo that was killed there in 1836. He left a wife and children behind in Tennessee when he came to Texas seeking his fortune. Unfortunately for him and his family, he got caught up in the battle for the Alamo. On Dec. 2, 1854, the state sent Mrs. Crockett a check for $24 for Davy's service to the republic.

Though Davy's paycheck came 17 years late, on Dec. 23, 1837 the Republic of Texas had given Mrs. Crockett 1,280 acres in North Texas near Acton in return for her husband’s government service, but the Comanches who roamed the area saw the land as theirs. Finally, eight years after Texas became a state, Mrs. Crockett left Tennessee in 1853 with her two children – a grown, married son named Robert Patton Crockett and a daughter, Matilda, to claim her land. A surveyor determined the boundaries of her land in exchange for half the property. What Elizabeth ended up with was 640 acres on Rucker’s Creek, about six miles from present day Granbury. Living in a log cabin built by her son, Elizabeth spent the last six years of her life in the place her husband had come to make his fortune. On the morning of Jan. 31, 1860, wearing the widow’s black she had worn since first learning of her husband’s death, Elizabeth left her cabin to take a walk and shortly fell dead at the age of 72.

Mrs. Crockett's gravesite is the smallest state park in Texas, and has a statue of her looking to the west with her eyes shaded, watching for Davy to come home.

This post is not quite as quirky as the last two, but the history in here just touches something in me. I hope everyone is enjoying the posts. Tomorrow, we'll get back to some real quirky stuff. Such as in Billy, The Kid.