Ode To Merka

I came of age living outside of a central Texas town of Moulton, population (at that time) of 792. I went to school in Shiner, which was a 24-mile round-trip commute, and at the tender age of 14 and without a license, I ferried my siblings to and from school in the 1973 Ford Country Squire station wagon, with faux wood panelling.

Moulton was the quintessential Texas tank town, located in the heart of the German-Czech belt of central Texas. Downtown was centered on the railroad tracks, though the freighters rarely stopped there, even at that time. The central district was two blocks long, and was anchored by the Catholic church at the north end, and the bar at the south. Lick the Sugar Habit: ... Appleton, Nancy Best Price: $6.72 Buy New $12.25 (as of 01:06 UTC - Details)

Downtown Moulton consisted of the hardware/farm store, the bank, and the general store. On the other side of the tracks was Pilat’s restaurant (later Kloesel’s steak house), which served the most amazing dinner (mid-day farmer’s meal) you’d ever want to lay into. On Saturday, the men gathered behind the hardware store to smoke meat, and by 3pm it was gone though the aroma lingered long afterwards.

At the cross-road where our farm road met the big town, there was Barta’s store. Here you could fill up the tank with hand-pumped gas, while you shopped for homemade sausage and ammunition.

I learned to drive on a Ford 2000 tractor, and I got my first gun — a Browning lever-action .22 rifle — for my eighth Christmas. My first experience shooting a gun was at 6 years old, when my father and uncle took me out in the front 40, handed me a .16 gauge shotgun, threw a coffee can in the air and told me to shoot it. After they picked me up off the ground, and my softball-sized bruise healed, I had a healthy respect for guns. I competed in NRA-sponsored events and earned the Marksman patch for 100 feet.

After the Saturday morning chores, and a run into town to buy smoked meat and load up at the tractor supply/feed lot, I was free to wander the wilderness until supper time. Carrying my trusty .22 and guarded by my trusty Dachshunds, I would head down to the creek to plink beer cans and exercise my imagination. Having 125 acres to play on gave my imagination a lot of space to roam.

The sheriff was more of a messaging service and news outlet, than law enforcement. He would occasionally pull someone over to pass on an important bit of gossip, or to say the party line phone system was on the fritz and that so-n-so was trying to get ahold of you.

The neighbor and his son would drop by from time to time to have a cup of coffee and chew the fat a bit. Men never went in the house during the day, so we would lean on the fence and stare into infinity. Eventually he’d say, “I gotta troe da cow over da fence some hay,” and he’d be off in his Ford F-150 and a cloud of dust.

This is the Merka I love. I couldn’t care less about the United States of America. The latter is a death shroud over the rotting remains of a truly great country. Folks were happy to see neighbors, there wasn’t enough crime to hire a sheriff’s deputy, the fire department was all-volunteer, screen doors were never locked, gun racks in the rear window were de rigueur, and pressed tin ceilings were the latest design fad. The Immune System Reco... Blum M.D. M.P.H, Dr S... Best Price: $5.56 Buy New $24.29 (as of 07:12 UTC - Details)

Every shop had a screen door, and the crash bar always read “Rainbow is Good Bread!” When old man Barta made sausages, there was always a bunch of folks loitering around to grab ‘em before they were gone. Fields changed throughout the year, from black tilled dirt to lush green sorghum or corn or cotton. Playing hide-n-seek in a 40-acre corn field is how it should be played.

One time, my father decided to burn a field, since the cockleburs had taken over. The neighbor was supposed to come with his plow to dig a fire break around the perimeter. Since nothing happens fast in Merka, my father got impatient and lit off the fire before the neighbor arrived.

The neighbor eventually came to see why the volunteer fire department was at our place. By that time, 52 acres, a couple hundred yards of fencing, a barn, and three cottonwood trees were toast. We were able to use the neighbor’s tractor to pull the firetruck out of the mud, though.

That was Merka at it’s best. Sure, there were loonies then, and they were tolerated for the most part, as long as they didn’t get too close to the livestock.

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