We're Having 'Company'"

I have been reading and rereading various accounts of the lives of the early white pioneers in their settlement of the frontier of Texas from the 1850s on. I am embued with an emotional attachment to them and their lives in that country. Some of my earliest and most lasting memories are of being taken by my daddy to Fort Belknap in Young County, Texas as a six year old. He rehearsed the old stories of the old people in my young ears; they stuck. To this day, after over fifty years, my blood gets up when I read or hear tell of that place and time.

It was a grim and harsh time in a stark and unforgiving place. Not that it isn't beautiful, because it is. The Texas Cross Timbers meet the prairie there. The sky is an azure bowl over it all. The bird life fills it with song. But, it is riddled with all manner of things that sting, bite, pierce, nettle, and generally aggravate the human animal. Some of these things can be deadly-it is filled with Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes- "coontail rattlers" the old people called them because of the distinctive black and white stripes on the end of their tails just before the rattles themselves start.

When the earliest white people came there it was the home of various Indian tribes, and the hunting raiding territory of two of the most dreaded and dreadful- the Comanche and Kiowa. The white people were, thus, intruders. And for this, they paid dearly. Attacks were common. The Comanche in particular indulged in brutal acts of blood-letting and rape. They also took young captives to raise and "Indianize," the most famous being Cynthia Ann Parker from farther south and east, who became the wife of Peta Nocona, and the mother of Quanah Parker, one of the last warrior chiefs of the Comanche. When she was recovered and returned to her surviving family, she withered away and died in East Texas, a relatively young woman. She pined away over her lost children and her lost life on the high plains of West Texas.

So, in addition to the brutish living conditions of 19th century pioneers, the harsh climate, the isolation that drove people mad, there was the constant threat of Indian raids and the sheer brutality these involved. Fear and caution were the every-day stuff of life.

One of the only sources of relief, of pure joy, of life-worth-the-living were the occasional social gatherings they were able to enjoy. Not that these allayed all the fear and caution. John Graves remarks that even at brush arbor revival meetings (that would sometimes go on for weeks), the Henry rifles and Colt's revolvers would be stacked outside these brushy temples of salvation.

Whether it was a birthing, attended by a few women, a hog killing, a counter-raid on the Indian predators, or a dance, the pioneers took every opportunity to be together when they could. These times, whatever their form, were times of friendship, joy, and play- in a word, "love." The old stories were rehearsed, the new ones told; food was shared; laughter, tears, sighs were exchanged. For a time, albeit brief, the troubles were pushed outside the circle of fellowship. We can understand, therefore, why the words, "We're having company," "We've got company coming," would brighten their eyes and relieve their spirits.

It is this, in the stresses of modern life which we face, that can bring a similar renewal of spirit. The "crazy little screens" that fixate us- the social networks, the video games, and all such-like, are paltry substitutes for real people and real friends, real "company."

"It is not good for man to be alone."