#I live sixty miles from Uvalde!!!!

[blurglesmurfklaine]

first he survives covid when thousands of people died from it BECAUSE OF HIM and then he survives gun violence when he’s done nothing for gun control laws like seriously fuck him why won’t he die why won’t he just fucking die

[frontporchwomanism-photos]

Restored log cabin at Heidemann Ranch in San Antonio, TX.  Julia Blanks was a free African woman who married a ranch hand and they lived in a similar place called Adam’s Ranch near San Antonio during the 1870s.  In her words:

On the Adams ranch, in the early days, we used to have to pack water up the bank. You might not believe it, but one of these sixty-pound lard cans full of water, I’ve a-carried it on my head many a time. We had steps cut into the bank, and it was a good ways down to the water, and I’d pack that can up to the first level and go back and get a couple of buckets of water, and I’d pack that can up to the first level and go back and get a couple of buckets of water, and carry a bucket in each hand and the can on my head up the next little slantin’ hill before I got to level ground. I carried water that way till my chillen got big enough to carry water, then they took it up. When I was carryin’ water in them big cans my head would sound like new leather - you know how it squeaks, and that was the way it sounded in my head. But, it never did hurt me. You see, the Mexkins carry loads on their heads, but they fix a rag around their heads some way to help balance it. But I never did. I jes’ set it up on my head and carried it that way. Oh, we used to carry water! My goodness! My mother said it was the Indian in me - the way I could carry water. 

When we were first married and moved to the Adams ranch, we used to come here to Uvalde to dances. They had square dances then. They hadn’t commenced all these frolicky dances they have now. They would have a supper, but they had it to sell. Every fellow would have to treat his girl he danced with...

Another thing, we used to have big round-ups, and I have cooked great pans of steak and mountain orshters. Generally, at the brandin’ and markin’, I cooked up many a big pan of mountain orshters. I wish I had a nickel for ever’ one I cooked, and ate too! People from up North have come down there, and when they were brandin’ and cuttin’ calves there, they sure did eat and enjoy that dinner. 

The men used to go up to the lake, fishin’, and catch big trout, or bass, they call ‘em now; and we’d take big buckets of butter - we didn’t take a saucer of butter or a pound; we taken butter up there in buckets, for we sure had plenty of it - and we’d take lard, too, and cook our fish up there, and had corn bread or hoe cakes and plenty of butter for ever’thing, and it sure was good. I tell you - like my husband used to say - we was livin’ ten days in the week, then.

When we killed hogs, the meat from last winter was hung outside and then new meat, salted down and then smoked, we put in there, and we would cool the old bacon for the dogs. We always kep some good dogs there, and anybody’ll tell you they was always fat. We had lots of wild turkeys and I raised turkeys, too, till I got sick of cookin’ turkeys. Don’t talk about deer! You know, it wasn’t then like it is now. You could go kill venison any time you wanted to. But I don’t blame ‘em for passin’ that law for people used to go kill ‘em and jes’ take out the hams and tenderloin and leave the other layin’ there. I have saved many a sack of dried meat to keep it from spoilin’.  We would raise watermelons, too. We had a big field three mile from the house and a ninetu-acre field right by the house. We used to go get loads of melons for the hogs and they got to where they didn’t eat anything but the heart. 

I used to leave my babies at the house with the older girl and go out horseback with my husband. My oldest girl used to take the place of a cowboy and put her hair up in her hat. And ride! My goodness, she loved to ride! They thought she was a boy. She wore pants and leggin’s. And maybe you think she couldn’t ride!

After we left the ranch, we took up some state land...After my husband got sick, we had to let it go back...My husband has been dead about nineteen years.