A quaint, picturesque, Texas town. A hardworking small community. A town of about 16,000, shattered by senseless violence. These are the sorts of words and phrases being used over and over again to describe the scene of the latest U.S. School shooting.
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have much to add to the full-court press of national news coverage already squatting on top of the place. There would seem to be no outperforming the mass of resources being brought to bear on the coverage of this tragedy.
But, one notices things. One notices the almost blameless inadequacy of the words being used over and over again to describe the City of Uvalde and the people living there who are enduring not only such a horrible loss, but also the mega-watt glare of national news coverage at a time when almost every last scrap of dignity has been scraped away by events, leaving the rawness of an opened wound exposed not only to the gaze of the well-intentioned, but also the jaundiced and filthily septic operations of a chattering political class determined to twist events to their own ends.
We won’t bother to link each and every example of this. It would be impossible. And it would probably be an unwelcome additional burden to many readers. If you’ve turned on the television, or visited almost any other news website, you’ve already seen it. You don’t need us to rehash it in any great detail.
Hoary old goats speak of gun control. Others speak of arming teachers. Still others lift their voices in calling all others hypocrites. As loud as they all are, they aren’t loud enough to obscure the open pain and anguish apparent in Uvalde as moms and dads, tios and tias, and other family members learn their children are among the slain or wounded.
Uvalde is a quaint picturesque Texas town. Yes. That is accurate. Uvalde is a hardworking small community. Yes. That too is accurate. But these words are almost entirely insufficient for the task of describing the town that sits just next door to where we write this. One imagines they are the fruit of some harried and rushed wire service writer scrambling for information in the early stages of covering this story, looking for a short pithy sequence or phrase that might do the job for reporters and producers and other journalists hundreds of miles away with only the barest of familiarity with the area. Our imagined worker at our imagined wire service has been more successful than he might have suspected— the words are short, concise, accurate, and are being repeated over and over again around the world.
But accurate as they are, they are insufficient.
Uvalde is a town with long history in the State of Texas, though it doesn’t match the holiest of Texas sites like San Antonio and Goliad. But few places can, usually it requires the shedding of buckets of blood to join such grim fraternities as the shrines of Texas liberty, and the various civil war battlefields and other sites further beyond the boundaries of Texas that are equally as hallowed. And it is with that realization that one ponders the sad fact that with this tragedy, perhaps, the City of Uvalde may now be pledged to a collection of places no parent, no sane person would ever want to be a part of.
Uvalde has existed on the Southwestern edge of the Texas hill country since the 1850s, when it was named Encina. It was renamed Uvalde, for the former Spanish Governor Juan de Ugalde, of Coahuila who was highly regarded for past campaigns against the Apache, back before Texas Independence.
Settlers at the time wrongly believed the man’s name was Juan de Uvalde. It is another one of those little strangenesses of Texas— similar to how Bexar County in San Antonio was supposed to be Bear County. How Dimmit County was supposed to be spelled Dimmitt County with two t’s, named after a revolutionary war hero.
Uvalde is a quaint picturesque Texas town. Yes. That is accurate. Uvalde is a hardworking small community. Yes. That too is also accurate.
Uvalde is a town sustained by the Edwards Aquifer— the same delicious, naturally limestone filtered water that supports San Antonio and many other communities. The aquifer also supports a relatively verdant green oasis of irrigated farmland that surrounds the place.
Generations of farmers and ranchers in the Uvalde area have raised sheep, goats, and cattle, and grown potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, onions, and probably many other crops we are largely ignorant of. We know that at one time, a long time ago, the driver of an 18-wheeler could make fair-to-decent money, running Uvalde potatoes down to the Lays potato chip plant in the Rio Grande Valley. It wasn’t big money, but it was steady enough and drivers could be home almost as much as they wished. Some still may be making some money that way— incorporating the route into longer runs elsewhere as the cost of shipping freight fails to keep up with the cost of living for many.
On the Western edge of Uvalde sits the Southwestern Livestock Exchange, operated by the Hargrove family. We don’t know them personally. But many living around here do.
It is a reminder of times when ranchers from miles and miles and miles around would gather up their stock and trailer them to Uvalde for auction. They still do— but perhaps not in the same numbers. The exchange has been in operation for decades— helping to knit together a far flung community of growers and tenders— stewards of the land. Yes, they were and are men and women who do their work for profit, but it is in the care of the land they own and look after that they feed not only themselves but also many a family they will never know, in places they will never see. The Exchange is a mecca of South and West Texas agricultural commercialism, yes, but it is also more than that— a touchstone for hardworking people from all over the State of Texas.
Uvalde is and has been a town of such tight-knit closeness for so many years, that the idea of an incident like this is almost unthinkable. It is perhaps a grim commentary on the fracturing of the American fabric and experience in recent times that this occurred in a place like this, of all places. Even in a town like Uvalde, it would seem life has been divided into dehumanizing camps of us and them, enough so a disturbed individual can conceive of the most senseless behaviors. Time was, indiscriminately slaughtering one’s neighbors— killing one’s neighbor’s children, was an unthinkable act— almost as unthinkable as killing oneself— a larger segment of the same Corpus of people. Now, recognition of that larger Corpus is bounded and defined by something other than geography. And that is disturbing.
It is no longer enough to breathe the same air. To drink the same water. To know the same people. You must think exactly as others do. You must accept all that others demand you accept. Deviation deserves death. What horror to contemplate.
Uvalde is a quaint picturesque Texas town. Yes. That is accurate. Uvalde is a hardworking small community. Yes. That too is also accurate.
Uvalde is a town that has repeatedly brushed up against the very faintest edges of fame, but managed to retain its soul and character in ways that many a painted, jaded lady of a City might regret not doing— and we’re looking at you Austin.
John Nance Garner, Dale Evans, and Matthew McConaughey are just some of the more famous people who’ve come from Uvalde and gone on to perhaps greater things.
John Nance Garner was Vice-President of the United States under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was once one of the most famous political figures of his day— called “Cactus Jack,” and is still remembered for saying that the job of Vice President wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. One can imagine the prickly nature that lent itself to his nickname, but the truth is, he was almost certainly a likeable man in other ways, or he would’ve never succeeded politically.
Dale Evans was the wife of Western Legend Roy Rogers, and famous in her own right, as a singer, songwriter, and an actress. She passed away in 2001, still known for her time in mostly black and white productions. Roy died in 1998, by the way.
Most modern audiences know who Matthew McConaughey is.
Uvalde’s a small town. But it has a huge heart. The spirit of the place has been carried to many far shores by those famous and those less so. In the days to come, the political figures— the chattering class we have already disparaged here will continue their efforts to make use of Uvalde’s pain and tragedy. The well-intentioned will tell themselves that they are taking the most negative of events and trying to turn it to a positive end.
Do not be fooled, even if they might fool themselves. Such behavior is the height of hubris.
The work of undoing the sort of balkanization and tribalization that is feeding the dehumanization that leads to these kinds of tragedies will not be accomplished in Washington or Austin. They may be the places where many are profiting from the tribalization we are all enduring, but the solution to the problem will be found on main street. In neighborhoods, town halls, and yes, also churches in some cases— places where a people can relearn to recognize and value the shared community ties and the shared humanity and dignity they all possess.
Good morning friends, obviously today’s newsletter is following a somewhat different format. There’s more to talk about, of course. Along with the tragedy in Uvalde, the crisis on the Southern Border continues. Texas had an election yesterday, and the results are in this morning. Ken Paxton won. George P. Bush lost. Henry Cuellar may have won. Jessica Cisneros may have lost. Something like 177 votes apparently separated those two, and a recount has been ordered.
Desperate people in dire straits continue to swarm over the border in an uncontrolled fashion, overwhelming communities, creating dangerous situations that benefit only the Narco-cartels.
The time to address all of these things in detail will return soon enough.
But not today.
Love your people. Love your pets. Eat well and hearty and stay healthy.
Like all things, this too shall pass.
Enjoyed the history lesson.
Edited to correct: John Nance Garner was a mentor to Lyndon Baines Johnson, but served as Vice President under Franklin Delano Roosevelt.