Success Comes from "Cans"

Taken from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman"  May 30, 1946 

Writing about graduation times, Lucile Ellingwood Morrow reflects on the values of "schooling":

"Whether viewed through the happy tears of parents, the congratulations of friends, or the eager eyes of the young men and woman, commencement is the climax of years of toil and sacrifice for all.  These children have formed a binding link in binding habit of success.   

When I taught school, I often wrote mottoes on the blackboard and the one that was most often commented on was this:

              'Success comes in "cans"; failures in "can'ts. "  

These graduates have formed a working philosophy for life;  they have fought a good fight;  they have finished the course; they have kept the faith and now await a life more abundant." 

  

As we begin a new school year, be encouraged and encourage others to reach out for the "cans" so we and they can look forward to a life full of riches, success and self-fulfillment.

The Little Town That Became Lubbock. . .

Excepts from "Just Thoughts of a Plain Country Woman" by Lucile Ellingwood Morrow, Published in The Collinsville News, January 9, 1958.

(Background)  With a child that suffered terribly from asthma, the Ellingwood family left their home in Rocky Ford, CO, and moved - as the doctor ordered -  to a dry climate with a lower elevation.  Grandfather Ellingwood settled the family in Fort Worth and traveled west to locate good grass land for cattle.  He ended up with a ranch out of Midland and pastureland in Yoakum, Terry and Gaines counties in far West Texas. 

"The cowboys stayed in West Texas and Grandfather came back and forth to Fort Worth to see the family and make arrangements to move, buy and sell the cattle. 
She writes, "When we first had a ranch about 100 miles from Midland, we had to walk our cattle to town to market. " (The cowboys used the various established trails, the Goodnight, the Chisholm, etc. to get the cattle to Fort Worth and on the Kansas City to sell. These trail rides were hard on the cattle and harder on the cowboys.) "Cattlemen around the vicinity of what is now Lubbock finally persuaded railroad men to set up a stockyards there (in the Lubbock area) during shipping season. 
They would send out a crew that laid a track, set up pens, load the cattle as long as there were cattle to load, then tear down the pens, take down the track and go back to Midland 'til next shipping season. 
Gradually the little town of Lubbock sprang up and, of course, the shipping pens and tracks became permanent. With the coming of oil, Lubbock became an oil town as well as a cow town."

Taken from:  http://www.forttumbleweed.net/cattledrives.html

"The Chisholm Trail, which went through Oklahoma, had become so crowed that cattle had great difficulty in finding forage along the way. To avoid this, ranchers scouted and laid out a new trail, the Western Trail, which has also been referred to in the past as the Longhorn Chisholm Trail, the Trail to Kansas and the Fort Griffin and Dodge City Trail.

During the peak of the season many herds where on the trail at the same time, sometimes only a few miles apart. A herd of 2500 to 3000 was considered the most favorable size for long drives. Smaller herd required about the same crew and overhead expense; larger herds faced problems of watering facilities, grass along the trail and general unwieldiness in handling. Daily travel distances were gauged by grass and water, the object being to fatten cattle en route.  A cattle drive typically covered about 10 to 15 miles a day with a drive to western Kansas taking between 25 and a 100 days.

Trail drivers were cowboys who moved cattle from a home range to a distant market or another range. A typical trail driving outfit consisted of a boss, who might or might not be the owner; 10 to 15 hands, each of whom had a string of from 5 to 10 horses; a horse wrangler (remudero), who drove and herded the cow horses and a cook, who drove the chuck wagon. A "hoodlum" wagon carried the bedrolls. During the day, the men drove and grazed the cattle and at night herded them by relays. Ten or 12 miles was considered a good day's drive. Typical meals consisted of bread, meat, beans with bacon and coffee. The wage was around $40.00 a month.

"The peak year on the Chisholm Trail was 1871. After interstate railroads came to Texas in the mid-1870s, trailing cattle to the Midwest became unnecessary. The Chisholm Trail was virtually shut down by the 1884 season. . . .