What Happened To The Family Land?
Bernard Pyron
Below is a recent Google Maps air view of a part of the Blake Pyron homestead tract of a little over four acres. The house is near the upper left corner, with its hip roof on the east side. A little right of the upper center is a rusted roof, which is the old Blake Pyron barn. There was a cow pen about the size of what looks like the remains of a pen. In the thirties there was a dog pen next to the cow pen to the south, where my father and older brother kept their coyote hounds. That white thing near the house looks like a mobile home and a large motor home is parked nearby. Thats roughly where the two shacks were. My father in about 1946 or 1947 had built a concrete block chicken house south of the barn and cow pen, and that structure may still be standing as shown in the photo..
Families who owned land that was good for farming or ranching should have held ownership of that land, even if they moved off of it into the cities for jobs, etc. My grandfather owned a 360 acre ranch when he died in 1932. From 1935 until 1948 my father owned 63 acres of his father's 360 and traded it for part ownership of a grocery store in the town next to the family land. That left our immediate family owning 4.6 acres of grandfather's original ranch, until March of 1982 when the heirs of my mother sold close to four acres and the house. My older brother had retained a small lot of .257 of an ace which was the northwest corner of grandfather's land which he sold in January of 1982. Had we kept ownership of part of that final 4.6 acres or the entire tract in the eighties we would have had retained a part, at least, of the family land. But we were more interested in cash than in owning land.
And much of grandfather's 360 acres about 15 miles southwest of San Antonio in the Brasada, or brush country, was able to support what they called Truck Farming in that area, which is the growing of garden type produce on a large scale. In that climate you could get in two crops at least each year, planting the first crop in late February and a second one in mid summer. Although my family did not get into Truck Farming, my older brother in 1946-1947 and his brother in law bought up crops as entire fields of five or ten acres of watermelons, cantaloupes,and tomatoes. I remember the smell of fresh cantaloupes, since the ones you buy in the supermarket do not small like those did.
They would buy mostly produce that we could take to the outdoor
market in San Antonio and sell ourselves. That was real farmer to consumer business. Many of the crops they bought were down in the Black Jacks. George and Roy Kurz bought an old Model A
truck we used to haul produce out of the Black Jacks to market in San
Antonio in 1946, and 1947. I got to drive it sometimes. I remember one time when we had a big load of cantaloupes in the old Model A. George was driving north on a narrow sandy Black Jacks road, and Daddy and I were in the back on the load. I got out and ran alongside the truck because George was going so slow.
This is a view on Google Maps looking east from Somerset Road at what was the Blake Pyron house. I think its that white thing to the right of the mesquite tree. and telephone or electric line post. None of the trees shown are familiar to me. Click on the photo and it will enlarge,
Virginia Pyron Subdivision In 1935. This shows the 360 acres owned by Virginia Pyron,, widow of A.M. Pyron. The 15 acre A.M. Pyron Homestead Tract is in the northwest corner. Click on the image to enlarge.
Unitarian Church Off University Ave In Madison
Bernard Pyron
Below is a recent Google Maps air view of a part of the Blake Pyron homestead tract of a little over four acres. The house is near the upper left corner, with its hip roof on the east side. A little right of the upper center is a rusted roof, which is the old Blake Pyron barn. There was a cow pen about the size of what looks like the remains of a pen. In the thirties there was a dog pen next to the cow pen to the south, where my father and older brother kept their coyote hounds. That white thing near the house looks like a mobile home and a large motor home is parked nearby. Thats roughly where the two shacks were. My father in about 1946 or 1947 had built a concrete block chicken house south of the barn and cow pen, and that structure may still be standing as shown in the photo..
Families who owned land that was good for farming or ranching should have held ownership of that land, even if they moved off of it into the cities for jobs, etc. My grandfather owned a 360 acre ranch when he died in 1932. From 1935 until 1948 my father owned 63 acres of his father's 360 and traded it for part ownership of a grocery store in the town next to the family land. That left our immediate family owning 4.6 acres of grandfather's original ranch, until March of 1982 when the heirs of my mother sold close to four acres and the house. My older brother had retained a small lot of .257 of an ace which was the northwest corner of grandfather's land which he sold in January of 1982. Had we kept ownership of part of that final 4.6 acres or the entire tract in the eighties we would have had retained a part, at least, of the family land. But we were more interested in cash than in owning land.
And much of grandfather's 360 acres about 15 miles southwest of San Antonio in the Brasada, or brush country, was able to support what they called Truck Farming in that area, which is the growing of garden type produce on a large scale. In that climate you could get in two crops at least each year, planting the first crop in late February and a second one in mid summer. Although my family did not get into Truck Farming, my older brother in 1946-1947 and his brother in law bought up crops as entire fields of five or ten acres of watermelons, cantaloupes,and tomatoes. I remember the smell of fresh cantaloupes, since the ones you buy in the supermarket do not small like those did.
They would buy mostly produce that we could take to the outdoor
market in San Antonio and sell ourselves. That was real farmer to consumer business. Many of the crops they bought were down in the Black Jacks. George and Roy Kurz bought an old Model A
truck we used to haul produce out of the Black Jacks to market in San
Antonio in 1946, and 1947. I got to drive it sometimes. I remember one time when we had a big load of cantaloupes in the old Model A. George was driving north on a narrow sandy Black Jacks road, and Daddy and I were in the back on the load. I got out and ran alongside the truck because George was going so slow.
This is a view on Google Maps looking east from Somerset Road at what was the Blake Pyron house. I think its that white thing to the right of the mesquite tree. and telephone or electric line post. None of the trees shown are familiar to me. Click on the photo and it will enlarge,
Virginia Pyron Subdivision In 1935. This shows the 360 acres owned by Virginia Pyron,, widow of A.M. Pyron. The 15 acre A.M. Pyron Homestead Tract is in the northwest corner. Click on the image to enlarge.
Unitarian Church Off University Ave In Madison
Unitarian Church Off University Ave In Madison
Mundane Madison, where the Leftists are now created out of the Millennials, still has, not for west of the Outfit on Lake Mendota where that creation is performed, a building out of the past which rises to the level of art. Rose Slivka wrote in 1961 that "As a fusion between the two dimensional and the three dimensional, American pottery is realizing itself as a distinct art form. It is like a barometer of our esthetic situation." Cecile Whiting in Common Ground: Ceramics In Southern California, 1945- 1975,, 2012, said that "The art critic Bernard Pyron tartly noted three years after Slivika's article that even the fine art world was aware of the ferment in ceramics." Whiting was writing about my 1964 article, The Tao and Dada of Recent American Ceramic Art, in Artforum,,,,,,,,,,But before 1961 and 1964 Frank Lloyd Wright had shown in some of his best buildings a greater rise of a type of three dimensional form - architecture - to the status of art.
Mundane Madison, where the Leftists are now created out of the Millennials, still has, not for west of the Outfit on Lake Mendota where that creation is performed, a building out of the past which rises to the level of art. Rose Slivka wrote in 1961 that "As a fusion between the two dimensional and the three dimensional, American pottery is realizing itself as a distinct art form. It is like a barometer of our esthetic situation." Cecile Whiting in Common Ground: Ceramics In Southern California, 1945- 1975,, 2012, said that "The art critic Bernard Pyron tartly noted three years after Slivika's article that even the fine art world was aware of the ferment in ceramics." Whiting was writing about my 1964 article, The Tao and Dada of Recent American Ceramic Art, in Artforum,,,,,,,,,,But before 1961 and 1964 Frank Lloyd Wright had shown in some of his best buildings a greater rise of a type of three dimensional form - architecture - to the status of art.
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