03/04/2024
Back in the 1970s Alan McDaniel came to South Texas by way of Morgan City, Louisiana. He was in his twenties and had no way of knowing it, but his stay would last a lifetime. McDaniel stood tall with a lean and frisky physique that reminded you of an anxious foal kicking up its hind quarters. He proved to be strong too, the equal of a yearling bull. The future of his choosing lay before him. McDaniel would come to sink roots deep in the brush country.
He settled into his late uncle's house on the family's ranch holdings a few miles south of Benavides, Texas. Not one to idle lazily in the shade, he would never think of letting time pass without something to show for it. McDaniel signed on as a laborer with his neighbor farther south on the highway, the Agua Poquita Ranch. Run by the Miller family, it was a big spread always calling for hands and the young man needed the work. Cash money was not hanging from the limbs of trees like so many strings of mesquite beans. The ranch signed him on. It so happened that he had a blood connection to the Miller operation. His mother was niece to the wife of M.M. Miller, Jr., one of the ranch owners.
The work was tough, as one could imagine. McDaniel learned his responsibilities quickly, never shrinking from a task or letting a learning opportunity escape him. There was much in the way of practical knowledge he could pick from the more experienced hands. Their hard-earned wisdom and skill would not escape him. In no time he settled into the day-to-day practices of the Agua Poquita. The older and more seasoned ranch crew observed that the Louisiana transplant never tired. His stamina was second to none. The young fellow always smiled and offered a steady stream of good conversation. Everyone liked him.
One afternoon, some of the hands busied themselves in El Coyote pasture. Over a hundred acres of recently baled buffelgrass dotted one of its fields. At a walking pace pounded by a hot sun, the crew trailed an old hay wagon towed by the battered ranch GMC, a rusting blue four-wheel-drive bucket of bolts lumbering along on worn tires. Minus its doors, it was not fit for the highway, but the pulling power of its 305 V6 made it a valuable piece of equipment for the Agua Poquita. The clanky combo worked up billows of dust mixed with itchy flecks of hay. The irritating billow covered everything and everyone with a fine grit mixed with the summer heat. No quicker was the plume blown clear by the hot breeze that a new cloud was kicked up by the pickup and trailer. The platform worked its way between long rows of bales ending at the distant fence line. The moving flatbed was the collection point for a growing stack of interlocking bales. Steadily, the crew worked to fetch bales bound tightly with wire as taunt as guitar strings. In a quick series of motions, gloved hands would grab the wire. Strong shoulders and arms je**ed the bale chest high with an upward push from the knee while swinging the bale up, then releasing it, letting it take brief flight to the trailer. A sweaty pair of waiting ranch hands stacked them on the flatbed in an interlocking pattern, layer by layer, building it tight and high. When the trailer reached its limit, the moving operation steered toward the large hay shed near El Coyote corral for unloading and stacking under the big shed with the corrugated steel roof. From a distance the operation looked like a string of army ants busy carrying tiny bits of leaves to their hole.
McDaniel proved to be an able ranch hand. He tugged, lifted and tossed up bales averaging ninety pounds onto the platform as though they weighed no more than loaves of bread. The man was strong. One time, as the GMC pulled its load to the hay shed, one of the guys on the fully stacked trailer jokingly shouted out to McDaniel, "Hey! We need two more." Without hesitating, he flashed his wide grin, turned, and dashed back a hundred feet or so to scoop up a couple of bales and ran them back to the moving trailer as easily as though he were running with a lunch pail in each hand. That man was strong.
McDaniel was a deep thinker, too. Breaking for lunch one day in the shade of big elms down in the creek, the crew took their meals of potted meat, crackers, bean tacos, Fritos, Vienna sausages. They split into two groups; the older ones claimed space at the pickup, while the youngsters sat on the soft cool earth at the base of the elm. Half an hour was the accepted lunch break, but lately, with the days so hot and humid, and the labor so heavy, the break for lunch had grown longer. With muted consent the crew had begun to stretch their lunch to nearly an hour, depending on how much work the day called for.
After their meal, the older of the crew sprawled out on any flat surface: the pickup's bench seat, the tailgate, tool chest, anything off the ground. Ticks and chiggers were plentiful in the summer, especially in creek bottoms where cattle sought shade and water. The men lowered their hats over their eyes and slipped into a restful nap. Songbirds and the wind rustling through the leaves overhead helped lull them to sleep. Other times, the noon newscast on the AM dial provided the background noise.
The more energetic young ones in the crew talked and joked, playing with clods of damp earth from the creek bank. These they tossed at tree trunks, fallen limbs, piles of smooth stones collected by the rush of water that coursed through the creek bottom in the rainy season. McDaniel paused his tossing, taking notice of how the clods of dirt disintegrated on impact. The action interested him.
"What's a word for that?" He asked no one in particular, forming the question as though he was half-talking to himself. We followed his gaze. It pointed to busted clods of dirt making a small growing mound. "A word for what?" One of us under the shade of the elm got curious. We had little interest in searching out descriptive words during a lunch break. McDaniel did have an interest, however. He drew us into his questioning, his line of thinking, his search for that one right word. The group painted an odd picture... ranch hands in search of a verb in the bed of a creek. After much back and forth it was agreed that the clods "fragmented" on impact. That was the word that satisfied McDaniel. It was important to him and worth the effort to think hard about something. We learned a thing or two that day from his example. And then, the lunch break was over.
McDaniel had been in South Texas long enough to understand that he could broaden his horizons if the local Spanish dialect could roll off his tongue. He figured he would be twice the man, and so he set himself to learning "Mexican." Not long into his South Texas sojourn, McDaniel left the employ of the Agua Poquita and began working for himself. His efforts at self-employment ran from trapping feral hogs, honey bee keeping, on to hot shot trucking. For the work he could not do for himself or needed a regular hand, he employed wetbacks. Supply was plentiful in these parts forty years ago. After that, the Spanish came quickly. In a few weeks' time he was rattling off orders to his Mexican crew as though he were a native speaker. It was impressive.
McDaniel's story is a colorful one that warrants a book. A lifetime later Alan McDaniel retired as a school administrator for the Goliad ISD. He had come a long way from Morgan City, Louisiana.