Ode To Merka
The mythical land of freedom
I came of age living outside of a central Texas town of Moulton, population (at that time) of 792. I went to school in Shiner, which was a 24-mile round-trip commute, and at the tender age of 14 and without a license, I ferried my siblings to and from school in the 1973 Ford Country Squire station wagon, with faux wood panelling. I learned to drive on a Ford 2000 tractor
Moulton was the quintessential Texas tank town, located in the heart of the German-Czech belt of central Texas. Downtown was centered on the railroad tracks, though the freighters rarely stopped there, even at that time. The central district was two blocks long, and was anchored by the Catholic church at the north end, and the bar at the south.
Downtown Moulton consisted of the hardware/farm store, the bank, and the general store. On the other side of the tracks was Pilat’s restaurant (later Kloesel’s steak house), which served the most amazing dinner (mid-day farmer’s meal) you’d ever want to lay into. On Saturday, the men gathered behind the hardware store to smoke meat, and by 3pm it was gone though the aroma lingered long afterwards.
At the cross-road where our farm road met the big town, there was Barta’s store. Here you could fill up the tank with hand-pumped gas, while you shopped for homemade sausage and ammunition. If you didn’t need either, then there were high-quality reproductions of Cassius Marcellus Cooldige’s masterpiece series, “Dogs Playing Poker” on the wall to occupy your time.
I got my first gun — a Browning lever-action .22 rifle — for my eighth Christmas. My first experience shooting a gun was at 6 years old, when my father and uncle took me out in the front 40, handed me a .16-gauge shotgun, threw a coffee can in the air and told me to shoot it. After they picked me up off the ground, and my softball-sized bruise healed, I had a healthy respect for guns.
I competed in NRA-sponsored events and earned the Marksman patch for 100 feet, with a plug of plum chew in my cheek. Thursdays were Skeet Club, and the high school became an armory, with a hundred shotguns and enough ammo to win the Ukraine war, and no one ever got hurt.
After the Saturday morning chores, and a run into town to buy smoked meat and load up at the tractor supply/feed lot, I was free to wander the wilderness until supper time. Carrying my trusty .22 and guarded by my trusty Dachshunds, I would head down to the creek to plink beer cans and exercise my imagination. Having 125 acres to play on gave my imagination a lot of space to roam.
The Lavaca County sheriff was more of a messaging service and news outlet, than law enforcement, because folks didn’t need a lot of force to be social. He would occasionally pull someone over to pass on an important bit of gossip, or to say the party line phone system was on the fritz and that so-n-so was trying to get ahold of you. If he thought you’d had a bit too much fun at Pavil’s bar, he’d tell you park and give you a ride home.
The neighbor and his son would drop by from time to time to have a cup of coffee and chew the fat a bit. Men never went in the house during the day, because we were dirty and sweaty and generall unpleasant, so we would lean on the fence and stare into infinity.
We’d discuss the weather and when Spring would arrive, and which bull was the best for siring and which were ready for the butcher. Eventually he’d say, “I gotta troe da cow over da fence some hay,” and he’d be off in his Ford F-150 and a cloud of orange dust.
This is the Merka I love. I couldn’t care less about the United States of America. The latter is a death shroud over the rotting remains of a truly great country. Folks were happy to see neighbors, there wasn’t enough crime to hire a sheriff’s deputy, the fire department was all-volunteer, screen doors were never locked, gun racks in the rear window were de rigueur, and pressed tin ceilings were the latest design fad.
Every shop had a screen door, and the crash bar always read “Rainbow is Good Bread!” When old man Barta made sausages, there was always a bunch of folks loitering around to grab ‘em before they were gone. Fields changed throughout the year, from black tilled dirt to lush green sorghum or corn or cotton, to golden dried stalks that rattled in the wind. Playing hide-n-seek in a 40-acre corn field is how it should be played.
One time, my father decided to burn a field, since the cockleburs had taken over. The neighbor was supposed to come with his plow to dig a fire break around the perimeter. Since nothing happens fast in Merka, my father got impatient and lit off the fire before the neighbor arrived.
The neighbor eventually came to see why the volunteer fire department was at our place. By that time, 52 acres, a couple hundred yards of fencing, a barn, and three cottonwood trees were toast. We were able to use the neighbor’s tractor to pull the firetruck out of the mud, though.
That was Merka at it’s best. Sure, there were loonies then, and they were tolerated for the most part, as long as they didn’t get too close to the livestock. We had hippies, yippies, pinkos, and fags, but they were part of the tapestry and not the loom.
We didn’t tolerate the feds, though. They were always coming around to tell everyone how to contour their fields and what crops to grow. Not a one of them had ever planted a seed in their lives. They were always wanting to test the soil and set up gizmos for measuring air quality and rainfall. The gizmos made for good target practice for bored teenagers on Saturday nights. The feds were generally met at the gate, and never allowed to go much further.
That was Merka when its head was screwed on straight. That’s the Merka the Bumbledicks are so desperately trying to destroy. That’s the Merka the corporations are busily buying up. That’s the Merka that felt good to everyone. It was diverse, it was inclusive, and everyone had a piece of the pie.
That was the Merka of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and the children are all above average.” That was the Merka of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, of Herman Melville and Ray Charles. That was the Merka of Ansel Adams and P. T. Barnum. That was the Merka that knew the definition of “woman”.
That was Merka when government was an annoying servant, not a tyrannical dictator.
The Merka I love gave teenagers free beer at the Spoetzl Brewery after a winning game, pulled directly from the vat by old man Spoetzl his own self. The Merka I love had annual festivals featuring The Velvets (pronounced vel-VETS) and the Geezenslaw Brothers. The Merka I love made you hold your plate on the table when the train went by every day at noon. The Merka I love meant washing the horses and oiling the saddles, whether they needed it or not.
The Merka I love really did exist, once upon a time.
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Great work, Farside. One of your best pieces yet. You channeled your inner Hemingway for this one. Very evocative.
That Merka still does exist in a few isolated places where the pastures are bright red rather than blue. I was fortunate enough to find such a place--also in the free state of Texas---only much further west where the average rainfall is only 30 inches in a good year. Had to flee that I-35 corridor for my sanity and well being.