If you have ever thought about carving and sculpting of any kind, if you have ever looked at a rock or stone and thought it had the potential to be a dog’s head or a human face, or if you have ever had the impulse to turn something made by  Mother Nature into a work…

And Its Significance Just last week I read the story of J. O. Langford, a Mississippi cotton farmer who moved to the Big Bend Country of West Texas a century ago, in 1909, and homesteaded along the Rio Grande east of the Chisos Mountains. Langford’s story is told by a Texas writer of considerable talents,…

This article was first published in February, 2012. Lea Rancher Bert Madera passed away in 2021 Ranching and cattle have been stampeding through Madera family blood for several generations, and today on his sprawling ranch 20 miles west of Jal, New Mexico, Bert Madera is still in the saddle doing the old time work his…

I can’t remember the first time I met Bert Madera. It seems like I have known him since Mary and I moved to Lea County in 1974, but probably it was several years later that I first talked with him. It feels like I have been going down to his Pitchfork Ranch in the southern…

Among hundreds of books, magazines, and documents, the Lea County Museum’s archives room contains a very small daybook from 1906 that belonged to Lea County rancher Matthew Sewalt. A rancher’s daybook is a daily log or a combination of a diary, chronicle, log, bookkeeping list, ledger, journal, or diary.  The Sewalt book is handwritten and…

Over the last 20 years, I have seen literally thousands of standup and kneel-down, eyes-on-the camera photographs of cowboys. But there was something about this one picture from 79 years ago that was instantly arresting and provocative for me. For one thing, it had children in it, usually the older family portraits would be all…