Trails of Honor

The last few days we have been trying to get my daughter Emilie enrolled in the Arts Institute of San Antonio.  We have been going over the financial aid options and looking for possible scholarship money that she can qualify for.   Trying to figure out how to finance college can just about make your head explode.  When you look at that whooping $80,000 dollar figure for the four year cost of a college you wonder how in the world that we can come up with that kind of money.  Emilie is the youngest of four children and Katharine and I have been trying to underwrite the expense of all of our children as they struggle to put themselves through school.  They have been working and paying as much as they can as they go and are starting their working lives off already in debt but so are most young people as they try to get through college these days.  I am trying to afford this all on a coal miner’s pay. My wife is a school teacher and together we have made a comfortable living.  We have all that we need and we feel blessed. Sometimes I am tempted to be resentful of the Federal government. If it had left us alone we would have had plenty to accomplish this task of educating our children and had some left to tuck away for a retirement one day.  Much of my retirement, however, is now a memory now having spent it to pay off my house and other bills and what little was left Uncle Sam sucked up like a vacuum cleaner with taxes and penalties.  I feel tempted to be angry at the government but being angry will accomplish little.   It is what it is and now we must just keep going. In an age were many have no conscience about defaulting on debts and just walking away from responsibility I feel at times tempted to do the same. Yet I know better. My debt is my own and I will bear it.

I woke up this morning thinking about this challenge and feeling a little like a small boat in a great big sea looking ahead to a very dark and troubled storm looming in the distance.  I said a quick prayer and threw one foot down on the floor and decided to focus on this morning’s immediate need, which was to get the girls to school on time.  That being accomplished I came back and took care of a few morning chores and then sat down to write while I have some time before picking up Emilie once again. We will go back to the Art Institute for our enrollment appointment this afternoon.  As I sift through my feelings about all this I once again go back in my mind to my great grandfather Rollie Davenport.  I had so little time as a small boy to actually interact with him, yet his shadow looms large over me because of the character of his life and the example he set in the face of difficulty and trial.  He was loved by my father for the same reason and my father’s experiences with him and Granny Pearl’s stories about him have sustained me and reminded me of important values in life that are worth holding on to.  Even though he travelled in a time ahead of my own his tracks are deep and wide and I hope my tracking skills will lead me in a righteous path.

Late in Rollie and Pearl’s life they met with such tragedy that would have crushed and destroyed people of lesser character, but by the Lord’s grace they survived and persevered.  Their only daughter Helen was stalked and murdered by her estranged husband.  She was gunned down in broad daylight on a street corner in San Antonio, as she was about to board a city bus on her way home after work.  Leaving behind three small children, my mother and her two brothers, Helen’s life was cut short in a drunken fit of rage by a husband who was filled with anger and resentment over her rejection of him. Due to his failure to support and his philandering and drinking Helen made the decision to divorce and move on with life. Dick Squyre , my grandfather, after shooting her down then turned the gun on himself and tried to commit suicide but failed to do the job and instead was left wounded but alive. After being nursed back to health he was tried and convicted of murder and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.  In one fell swoop of fate my mother and her brothers lost both their parents and Rollie and Pearl though in deep grief were now facing the prospect of raising three young children with very little money and in the sunset of their years.  Grandpa Rollie had been a cowman and rancher all of his life owned very little property and had accumulated very little wealth and now at this age was also not in good health.  All this looming over him he did not shrink or cast off his responsibility but went to work doing the best he could to provide and make a home for his grandchildren.  His sisters great aunts Dovie and aunt Lila did what they could to help and with this somehow they “eked” out a little living.

Sabinal, Texas was a little town were everybody knew everybody else’s business.  A murder was a real scandal during those days and the pain of living through the loss of their daughter and the surrounding circumstances had left my grandmother Pearl’s heart resentful and bitter toward her estranged son in law. His name was simply not mentioned around her even into my own generation. When my grandmother lived with us this tragic story was never spoken of.  I did not know of it, in fact, until I was nearly a high school senior. Grandma Pearl dealt with her grief and though it was heavy she rose out of the gloom and in time was in fact a jolly person who knew laughter and joy. All that knew her remembers her as being a person full of life and laughter. I do not know how my Grandpa Rollie dealt with his grief but I sense he had no time to dwell on it but was rather focused on trying to bring in some income for the family.  The loss of his daughter took place in 1944 during a time when Grandpa was employed as foreman for his sister Lila’s ranch. He continued as foreman for a while but later bought and sold his own herd keeping them ranged on a small leased place somewhere near Yancey, Texas.  He made income of this enterprise for a while until the great drought of the early fifties that began in 1955.  Making it in the cattle business during those days was really tough and paydays were few and far between.  Many cattlemen lost their herds and “went bust.” Grandpa had just bought a small herd just before the drought hit.  He spent the next few years just trying to keep them alive and hoping to at least break even.  Toward the end he was literally herding them along the public highways letting them graze on what little green grass could be found there.  He and my dad often spent days herding them day and night along the highways to try to keep them alive until he could sell them.  During this period of time Pearl and Rollie opened a little store near the school in Sabinal selling B.B.Q brisket and hamburgers. My mother worked there during her high school days.  The school kids bought hamburgers for lunch and Grandpa’s B.B.Q was popular with folks.  His sauce recipe was a particular success and at one point he was offered a considerable sum for the recipe.  That recipe is still used in our family today when we get together for family reunions and gatherings of all kinds.  Somehow piecing together income from whatever skills he had Grandpa Rollie kept the wolf away from the door.  It could not have been easy at his age.  The old house that they lived in was not with modern convenience.  It was a very humble wood slat structure with a big front porch and a screened-in back porch.  It had no indoor plumbing and it’s heating was dependent on an old wood stove and gas butane stove in the kitchen.  It’s cooling was based on high ceilings and open windows and whatever breeze the good lord provided.  It was simple and humble by any measure but it was a loving home and the best he and grandma Pearl could provide.

Somehow Rollie and Pearl Davenport ran their race together with dignity and honor.  They held their head high and just continued raising their grandchildren in a Christian home providing what they could as they could.  Sometimes I ponder what might have been. What might have been if my grandfather Dick Squire would have made better choices and not have succumbed to the pressure of temptation and listened to the angels of his darker passions.  What might have been if my great grandfather Rollie had been a lesser man and had given in to the temptation to pass his responsibilities on to someone else. Both of my grandfathers left behind a trail to follow.  They left tracks in the sands of time that speak a lesson to me.  I do not judge grandfather Squires harshly.  I guess I can never know what he was thinking and what he was facing and how he eventually arrived to a place where he was holding a pistol in the middle of a street ready to take his own life and murder his wife.  How can I ever get into his mind and know for sure what really happened in secret places of his mind.  I spend little time pondering what can never be known, but I do spend time thinking about the consequences of his choices.  His tragic choice forever changed the coarse of our family history and left a deep scar and a void that exists even today in my own generation.

 Dick Squyre died a few years after being released from prison.  He was released into the custody of a brother after serving his sentence and lived the last years of his life in a nursing home in Oklahoma.  I never met him, though at times I regret not having the opportunity to answer many questions that, as far as I know, were taken to the grave.  I have on occasion tried to research Squyre family history but as yet have been unsuccessful in trying to find someone that knew him or could answer some of those questions. My mother as a little girl kissed him, as he was lead away in handcuffs to prison and never again saw his face.  My mother in her characteristic way has made peace with all these things and does not dwell on things beyond her control but is always focused on her own family.  The tragedy of loosing her parents at a young age I will always believe has been part of the reason that she has been so focused on cherishing family.  She is the most meek and gentle and servant minded person I have ever known.  She followed in the tracks of Grandpa Rollie and dutifully cared for them in their last years and also my father’s parents even while trying to raise her own 6 children.  My parents did not dodge or pass off their own responsibilities but also took on the challenges of life with faith and fidelity.

These tracks are worth following, As I meet my own challenges I must say Thank you Grandpa, your life speaks to me even beyond the grave.