Research Catalog

Harder than hardscrabble : oral recollections of the farming life from the edge of the Texas Hill Country

Title: Harder than hardscrabble : oral recollections of the farming life from the edge of the Texas Hill Country / edited by Thad Sitton.
Publication: Austin : University of Texas Press, 2003.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Book/Text	Use in library	F394.F6365 H37 2003	Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Sitton, Thad, 1941-

Description

x, 297 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

Until the U.S. Army claimed 300-plus square miles of hardscrabble land to build Fort Hood in 1942, small communities like Antelope, Pidcoke, Stampede, and Okay scratched out a living by growing cotton and ranching goats on the less fertile edges of the Texas Hill Country. While a few farmers took jobs with construction crews at Fort Hood to remain in the area, almost the entire population--and with it, an entire segment of rural culture--disappeared into the rest of the state. In Harder than Hardscrabble, oral historian Thad Sitton collects the colorful andfrequently touching stories of the pre-Fort Hood residents to give a firsthand view of Texas farming life before World War II. Accessible to the general reader and historian alike, the stories recount in vivid detail the hardships and satisfactions of daily life in the Texas countryside. They describe agricultural practices and livestock handling as well as life beyond work: traveling peddlers, visits to towns, country schools, medical practices, and fox hunting. The anecdotes capture a fast-disappearing rural society--a world very different from today's urban Texas.

Series Statement

Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas heritage series ; no. 6

Uniform Title

Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas heritage series ; no. 6.

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies.
History.
Oral history.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-290) and index.

Contents

1. Introduction : Lost Worlds -- 2. Homeplaces -- Lay of the Land -- Chores -- Gardens, Home-Use Field Crops, Fodder Crops -- Domestic Livestock -- Fishing, Hunting, Trapping, and Gathering -- Medical Self-Help and Town Doctors -- 3. Money Crops -- Cotton and Other Crops -- Cash-Crop -- Livestock -- Minor Money Crops -- Part-Time Cash Labor for Others -- Peddlers and Country Stores -- Visits to Town -- 4. Settlements -- Country Schools -- School Entertainments -- Family Visits -- The Sporting Life -- House Parties and Dances -- Neighbors Helping Neighbors -- Churches and Religious Life -- 5. Modernizations and the Takeover -- Communication Breakthroughs -- Roads and Automobiles -- Government Programs and the Takeover -- Epilogue : Sixty Years Afterward -- Appendix : The Fort Hood Oral History Project.

ISBN

0292701993
9780292701991
0292702388
9780292702387

LCCN

2003016597

OCLC

ocm52757453
52757453
SCSB-1325479

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library