Too Much Pain...

David. The last few days have been hard to take. There is so much pain here, from different causes, some of it historical, some of it very current.

Chris and I went to Uvalde. The town has a memorial to the children and teachers killed here last year. After all this time - what is there to say that hasn’t been said already about this tragedy?  I could make some comments about how this part of Texas is awash with a belligerent gun culture, which is true enough, but then we heard yesterday of the latest school massacre in Tennessee. Not Texas. Something bigger is involved.

As we were driving to Uvalde we heard of the migrants suffocating in a box car just outside of Uvalde. We passed trains with boxcars. It was chilling.

This morning as we rode west, we heard the news of the fire in a migrant processing
Center just over the border. As we went on route 90 we were funneled through a Border Patrol checkpoint. We stopped. A dog sniffed our car. “Are you US citizens?” The guard asked in heavily accented English. Officer Marta. “Yes,” I answered. “Then you can go.”

Further up the road, two ranchers in pick up trucks took up a position on a small hilltop from where they could surveille in all directions. A mile behind them, a Border Patrol officer in the van with green stripes waited for any word. We could see across the fields into Mexico.

                                                 

These towns we’re passing through are poor. The entire region is stressed. The owner of the only store left in COMSTOCK explained that a generation or two ago, the ranches and towns along here were booming. But now the old ranchers have died. Their grandchildren have moved away. They can’t make a living ranching. The weather has changed. There used to be springs all over the ranches.  Now they’ve dried up. “We’re supposed to get 25 inches of rain a year,” she said. “It’s been years since we’ve had a measurable rainfall.”

The ranch workers have also left. The houses they lived in are simply sitting empty. Jesse, pictured below, said there are 25 houses in Langtry. There are 9 families left. One of the families is flying the Confederate flag and the “Come get it” flag out front their crumbling house. Feeling the pain of the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy 150 years in, and the fear of gun confiscation.

                                     

                                     

While another set of families grieve their lost children in Tennessee. And another set of families in Central America grieve their lost family members. And ranchers and ranch hands grieve a way of life that is passed because of changing economics and changing weather.