Texas's King Ranch has become legendary for a long list of innovations, the most enduring of which is the development of the first official cattle breed in the Americas, the Santa Gertrudis, renowned for its beef quality and ability to withstand dry and blisteringly hot climates. Among those who played a crucial role in the breed's success were Librado and Alberto "Beto" Maldonado, master showmen of the King Ranch.
Betty lives in a WWII post depression period. Her family is very poor and lives as outcasts in their small town. At the age of seven, her mother gives her to her grandmother. She leaves a barely supervised home to enter an extremely strict home. Her father passes away when she is nine. Her grandmother gave her backbone. Her life with her grandmother consists of long hours hard work.
This collection of short stories is told through the moving letters of two women who discuss their rising from the Appalachian upbringing and beautifully serve as windows to the souls of those hidden children of the mountains.
Founded before the Civil War, the King and Kenedy Ranches have become legendary for their size, their wealth, and their endless herds of cattle. A major factor in the longevity of these ranches has always been the loyal workforce of vaqueros (Mexican and Mexican American cowboys) and their families. Some of the vaquero families have worked on the ranches through five or six generations. In this book, Jane Clements Monday and Betty Bailey Colley bring together the voices of these men and women who make ranching possible in the Wild Horse Desert. From 1989 to 1995, the authors interviewed more than sixty members of vaquero families, ranging in age from 20 to 93. Their words provide a panoramic view of ranch work and life that spans most of the twentieth century. The vaqueros and their families describe all aspects of life on the ranches, from working cattle and doing many kinds of ranch maintenance to the home chores of raising children, cooking, and cleaning. The elders recall a life of endless manual labor that nonetheless afforded the satisfaction of jobs done with skill and pride. The younger people describe how modernization has affected the ranches and changed the lifeways of the people who work there.
Winner, San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2011 Texas's King Ranch has become legendary for a long list of innovations, the most enduring of which is the development of the first official cattle breed in the Americas, the Santa Gertrudis. Among those who played a crucial role in the breed's success were Librado and Alberto "Beto" Maldonado, master showmen of the King Ranch. A true "bull whisperer," Librado Maldonado developed a method for gentling and training cattle that allowed him and his son Beto to show the Santa Gertrudis to their best advantage at venues ranging from the famous King Ranch auctions to a Chicago television studio to the Dallas–Fort Worth airport. They even boarded a plane with the cattle en route to the International Fair in Casablanca, Morocco, where they introduced the Santa Gertrudis to the African continent. In The Master Showmen of King Ranch, Beto Maldonado recalls an eventful life of training and showing King Ranch Santa Gertrudis. He engagingly describes the process of teaching two-thousand-pound bulls to behave "like gentlemen" in the show ring, as well as the significant logistical challenges of transporting them to various high-profile venues around the world. His reminiscences, which span more than seventy years of King Ranch history, combine with quotes from other Maldonado family members, co-workers, and ranch owners to shed light on many aspects of ranch life, including day-to-day work routines, family relations, women's roles, annual celebrations, and the enduring ties between King Ranch owners and the vaquero families who worked on the ranch through several generations.
Volume IV of The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, covering the years 1780-1781, will be of particular interest to students of Burney as it marks the young author's introduction into the world following the astonishing success of her novel Evelina (1778) and includes her visits to Streatham and her encounters with Hester and Henry Thrale and Dr Johnson. It was an exciting period in her life, which she managed to enjoy despite struggling to repeat her first success while avoiding the often unwelcome attention it brought. But it was also a difficult period in her family life as she dealt with jealous interference by her stepmother, the courtship of her sister Susan by a man she considered untrustworthy, and the misbehaviour of her brothers. Burney's enthusiasm makes the most of her experiences and she describes characters and scenes with all the genius displayed in her novels. Her descriptions contain the four great attributes that distinguish her novels: brilliant handling of detail, total and full recall of conversations characteristic of the speaker, sensibility and empathy for others, and great relish for the ridiculous wherever it occurred.
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