Deflection

Today, I attended Texas Independent Day from the country of Mexico 190 years ago. Yesterday, I found that the is an old cotton gin that is a Museum about fifteen miles from here. As I was taking a walk through the gin plant, the tour guide mentioned that today there would be the Independence Day Celebration 35 miles from here, so how could I not go to this celebration.

There was a parade at 10:30, but I missed the it. It was just after 11::00 when I got there. They were reenacting shooting when I got there. Well I have been around guns before, so I moved on. There were a number of tents set up for the reenacting of the war against Mexico, but I did not spend much time there.

Since it was close to noon when I got there, and I was looking of food from the area, there was Texas kabobs for sale. Well that sounded good, but what is a Texas kabob? Well it has no vegetables. It is an eight ounce sirloin stack cut up in one inch squares and strung with a stick. Well, if you like a beef stake, they were good. Texas food.

On the pavilion, they had dancers in from the country of Mexico dancing with a dance from their state in Mexico. Some of the song has other songs mixed in like Germany polka. That gave there dance some rhythm. Of course, the women were dancing in their Mexican dresses, and swing them around as we have seen in the movies. It was culture to be enjoyed on a day like today.

Washington on the Brazos was the capital for the country of Texas for 11 years, before Texas became part of the United States. As was discussed today, not everyone was happy about the merger. If I remember correctly, it seems like the Civil War happed the merger along. The was only a couple of older buildings there, like Independence Hill. But, in recent years, they have just built a number of replaceent buildings, like the president’s office that is one room about eighteen-foot square. The walls are logs that were hewned with an ax. The walls were hewned vertical, with the corners locked into place. It took skilled work the make a log match the log below and lock in the corners. However, most of the buildings were normal stick built.

The tour of the cotton gin is worth mentioning, since it does have an award from the Mechanical American Society. This gin was built in 1924, just 102 years old. The cotton from wagon to bale was moved by forced air, and it only took fourteen minutes for the cotton to be off loaded and blown in the cage to make a bale. There were five cotton gins. In each gin, there are what look like skill saw blades. Then notches in the blade would move the seeds through the gin. When the seeds got to a narrowing for the blades, the seed separated from the cotton. There was not much cotton that came off of each blossom, so it took a bunch of blossoms to make a pound. Some of the seeds were give back to the farmer as seed for next year’s crop, and the others were sold and the cotton was in the 500 pound bale.

It should be noted that the gin ran until 1974, or 50 years. The power to produce to turn the 57-foot shaft for the gin is worth mentioning. It stated with steam, but only the foundation is left. Then there was a huge oil engine that came in by rail and was so heave that it is impossible to understand how they moved it about 100 feet from the railroad tracks. The next engine was a six cylinder West Alice propane engine. And the last engine, was not an engine, but an electric motor. Today, they have the oil engine running, after spending years in hibernation, and they use this engine today to demonstrate how the mill worked by ginning actual cotton a few times each year.

These have been what I have filled my last two days with, and I have enjoyed them.

Roger