J. Frank Dobie wrote many...
Illustration
J. Frank Dobie wrote many books on life in rural Texas during the early 1900s. Most of it was what we call today "oral history." This little snippet, true to life, comes from his story on droughts, The Droughted: On a front gallery, facing south, two ranchers sat in silence for a while, looking out and away. A spasmodic flurry of wind made the windmill turn over about six times, and then it was motionless. "Whirlwind," the first cowman commented, without bothering to gesture, for he knew the other had noticed. "Seems to me I never heard dry weather locusts sizzling at such a high pitch so late in the fall," the other commented. "People say fall don't begin till the equinox," the first remarked. "September is a fall month," the other said, not argumentatively. "It ought to rain in September." "I guess we all ought to do things we don't do," was the only rejoinder. "Reckon it would make any difference on the weather if we did do them?" "Not a bit. There's not a truer saying in the Bible than the Lord sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. It pours down out in the ocean where neither the just nor the unjust exist. Elrich Dobie says that if it would rain on the land of the unjust what's left could be watered with a bucket."
-- Mosley
-- Mosley
