Hardtack Tom's
Winter Family
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Halito! Chim-achukma? Welcome to the Winter Family Homepage!
My theme for sociology this quarter has been tradition and sacred space. I recall a former professor at Abilene Christian University - where I attempted my ill-fated bid for religious ministry - who made the point in a graduate course how important tradition is. Of course, being the know-it-all I am, I thought that old Christian fogey was not progressive enough for my taste. At middle age now, I look back and return to those patterns of ideas and practices hoping for them with a passion I never knew in my youth. What could be more progressive than keeping faith with those memories, experiences, and sacred places of childhood and adolescence? When that professor asked me what my family's traditions were, I never could give him an answer. They were not apparent. Perhaps, I was not an intellectual wrangler enough to understand what he was asking me at that time.
I understand that word "tradition" now. It is the most progressive idea one can cling to both as an individual and as a family. Tradition resides in the heart - that holy of holies - which each person must guard in times of plenty and draw upon in times of need. There is an old farm around Tussy,okla humma. It is black jack-post oak, short grass, a scrubby vegetative carpet barely covering red dirt. On its mantle rests giant, metal grasshoppers pumping and spitting black bile. There are lots of memories on this old farm. The barns, now ghost barns, I approach with reverence and humility. I want the horses to run as the wind, mane and tails streaming like freedom, a cacophony of whinnies, snorts, stomping, and farting agitating the silence. I pray as I walk past the second stall, Everetta Gal will poke her head through and bite my shoulder. I walk by carefully, disappointed but grateful. I remember the promise of life, and the pain of death - Flashbar's colt with the broken leg is buried in the uppermost corral. I stand near it and remember its demise on a rainy day. On to the Wild Horse Creek - that polluted, sandy drain - where I would go baptize myself in its oily waters, skinny dipping on a sweltering, summer day. Then on to Dead Horse Hill. The ghost of Gal Watcher haunts that hill. His body unceremoniously dragged to its final resting place. Sex, the basic of life giving acts, can kill too. And did. Ancestors of his coyotes know this sacred space well, no doubt. Coyote tradition has it that Gal Watcher's spirited, but gentle flesh provided the energy for a surplus of coyote pups that year. So legend has it.
But of all the sacred spaces, there is that old Choctaw Charles Thomas Winter. A kind, good, and decent man who loved and lived tradition more than anyone. For when he died, in his trouser pockets, were wrinkled, faded, worn pictures of those he loved in the present, and in his wallet were the obituaries of those who were part of his past. If that is not progess, friend - I'll never know what is.
"Oklahoma" does not mean "Land of the Red Man." Poor old Rev. Alan Wright who coined that word for the state that bears its name already had surrendered his intellect to Christian symbolism, and the meanings that must be forced upon culture for it to make sense. But I stand with the ancient Choctaw. Okla humma means roughly "red earth people." The Muslims may look to Mecca and the Koran for their sacred meanings. The Jews to the Torah. The Christians to those collective writings known as the bible. I look South to that red dirt farm. I am a red earth person after all. This is my tradition and heritage.
Love families and friends this holiday season. Be kind, gentle, nice, and disciplined. You may have entered sacred space. Cherish tradition affirmation and building. Click on the links below to check out family pictures and announcements.
ps. "Hardtack Tom" is my Pacific Northwest wilderness hobo, river-rat-runner, camp cook, muleskinner moniker.
