Stories of Christmas and the Bowie Knife [Illustration] Stories of Christmas and the Bowie Knife BY _J. Frank Dobie_ ILLUSTRATED BY _Warren Hunter_ The Steck Company Austin, Texas Copyright 1953 by THE STECK COMPANY, PUBLISHERS Austin, Texas All Rights Reserved PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE U.S.A. Preface In wanting to bring you a distinctively different Christmas greeting for 1953--as well as one that is typically Texan--The Steck Company turned quite naturally to Texas’ most distinguished folklorist, J. Frank Dobie. His writings of the past quarter century have turned the attention of people in many lands to the rich folklore of the Southwest. Dobie’s recollections of three boyhood Christmases begin this volume. As an added fillip, his colorful story of the Bowie knife is included. Warren Hunter, one of Texas’ outstanding artists, has provided striking illustrations that catch the spirit of the stories and recall days quite remote from the modern scene, yet separated from us by only a few decades. Thus, with a glance backward, The Steck Company brings you warm greetings for the 1953 season. In the words of Dobie, “Generous feelings and cheering words are never trite. Merry Christmas!” [Illustration: Christmas and Remembrance] 1 It is a benediction of nature that generally we remember more vividly and oftener what has given us happiness rather than what has given us pain. Christmas in particular is the time for recollecting, and now I am recollecting Christmases even more remote in character from modern Christmases than they are in time. We lived on a ranch twenty-seven horse miles from our “shopping center.” That was Beeville, Texas, which later became the family home. Three or four times a year a wagon went to town and hauled out supplies, but the biggest haul was just before Christmas. As I look back, those days seem to have been days of great plenitude--not because of anything like family prosperity, for we lived meagerly, but because of the necessity of local stockpiling. Sugar came in barrels, molasses in kegs or big jugs, flour in barrels or in tiers of 48-pound sacks, beans and coffee in bushel sacks (the coffee to be roasted and ground), lard in 50-pound cans, tomatoes, salmon, and other canned goods in cases. Then at Christmas time there was a large wooden bucket of mixed candy--enough for us six children, for our visiting cousins, and for the children of several Mexican families living on the ranch, most of them farmers. Each of these families received also a new blanket and a sack of fruit. We had home-made candy not infrequently, but Christmas was the only time of year when it snowed candy. There were no chocolates, as I recollect--just a mixture of lemon drops and an assortment of variously shaped hunks of sugar, both hard and gummy, variously colored, alloyed, and flavored, with peppermint being dominant.