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On The Ranch With The Truitts

published: November 12th 2009
by: Murphy Givens
source: Corpus Christi Caller Times

The Truitt family packed up and left Corpus Christi in the summer of 1902 for the Rio Grande. The Truitts were moving to Rancho Capisallo owned by Brownsville political boss James B. Wells, who also was the attorney for King Ranch. Alfred Levi Truitt had been hired to manage Wells’ ranch.

The Truitts left with two wagons, a buggy, eight mules, two buggy horses, and four saddle horses. From Corpus Christi they traveled west for 10 miles, then turned south. They followed the same route Zachary Taylor’s army took when it left Corpus Christi in 1846. After they passed King Ranch headquarters, they came across a flock of geese and the vaqueros accompanying them raced among the geese, using long rawhide whips to bring down several as they took flight. The popping of the bullwhips sounded like gunshots. The mother, Molly Truitt, cooked the geese, seasoned with salt and pepper, flour and water, in a Dutch oven covered with hot coals. For supper they ate roasted goose with pan gravy, camp bread and coffee.

Going south, they passed cattle bones bleaching in the sun, skeletons from an old drought. They watched as the Alice-Brownsville stage passed and at one point saw the stagecoach driver change horses at Encino del Poso. They traveled through isolated country; there was not a village or post office between Sinton and Brownsville in 1902, before the coming of the “Brownie” railroad. They stopped at El Sauz, a division of King Ranch, where they were guests of “Uncle Josh” Durham, ranch foreman and former member of the famous McNelly’s Rangers.

They turned southwest to reach Rancho Capisallo, straddling Hidalgo and Cameron counties. Rancho Capisallo was 100 miles from the nearest railroad. Not long after they arrived, the ranch was sold and the Truitts moved on to another owned by Wells, the 146,000-acre ranch in Starr and Hidalgo counties named Rincon Medio.

The ranch house at Rincon, in the shape of a T, had 18 rooms but no indoor plumbing. Each bedroom had a washstand and white enamel chamber pot. When the weather was cold, the Truitt children bathed by the fireplace. On the ranch, everything stopped for siesta at 2 p.m., the hottest time of the day, when horses stood under a big mesquite, lazily switching at flies. About 3 p.m., they would awaken to the sharp smell of mesquite smoke mixed with the odor of roasted coffee beans coming to a boil.

They got mail by horseback from Sam Fordyce, 35 miles south. They would get the Sears Roebuck catalog and the Kansas City Packer. For entertainment, they had a gramophone on which they played the songs of Caruso and the band music of John Philip Sousa. Later, a salesman whose mission in life was to sell pianos to Texas ranchers sold them a piano. Mrs. Truitt could play; she had taken music lessons from the Catholic sisters in Corpus Christi. She would play “Give My Love to Nell” and “A Package of Old Letters.” They got books for Christmas, Kipling’s works, “The Light That Failed,“ “Captains Courageous,” “Kim.”

Ranch days began early, at 4:30 or 5, with the sound of the coffee mill grinding followed by the smell of freshly brewed coffee. The coffee mill was nailed to the wall. The green peaberry coffee beans came in 100-pound sacks and the beans were roasted in black bread pans. They had venison, cabrito and beef. The beef was cut in thin strips and hung on clotheslines to dry in the sun for beef jerky. Crusty loaves of bread were baked in an old wood stove. There were tortillas, pan dulce and buñuelos.

On wash day, mesquite wood fed a fire under a big black wash pot in the yard. Shavings from a bar of Crystal White soap were added to the boiling water. As clothes boiled in the pot, they were “punched down” with a broom stick. For ironing, rows of flat irons were heated on the wood stove. Even after washing and ironing, the clothes gave off the strong odor of mesquite smoke.

A frequent visitor was a neighbor rancher from Hebbronville, W.W. Jones. He would ride over in a two-wheeled cart pulled by mules. It had broad-rimmed wheels for pulling through the sand. In crossing through pastures, he would take down fences and tell Mr. Truitt where he took them down so fence riders could go make repairs. Jones would sit on the porch gallery, chew black-horse tobacco and spit, indiscriminately, into the yard; the cat learned to keep its distance. He would stay several days until he was talked out or ran out of tobacco.

Those were the ranch times described by Maude T. Gilliland in “Rincon (Remote Dwelling Place),” published in 1964 about her life when she was young Maude Truitt, the daughter of Alfred and Molly Truitt. The book has long been out of print, but if you are lucky you may run across one on eBay or at Half Price Books. There is much more to “Rincon” than what I have condensed here — more about the influx of wealthy refugees from Mexico after the Madero Revolution in 1910, more about John J. Pershing’s Expeditionary Force and the mobilization of U.S. troops on the border, more about the bandit troubles of that era. Mostly, though, Gilliland’s book is about the unique life on a South Texas ranch after the turn of the century.

Maude Gilliland writes that those who have never lived on a ranch have missed something in life. “It is nice to have ranch memories stored away to draw on when the looking-back period comes ... memories such as the lace-like shadows of the mesquite under a noonday sun ... the paisano folding back his wings as he skims across the road ... the yip-yip of coyotes ... thirsty horses drinking from a wooden trough ... the sound of creaking saddle leather and the clinking-clanking of spurs. All these make looking back a pleasure.”