I’ve never farmed anything more than the struggling crop of fescue on my front lawn. The only livestock I tend is a pack of mixed-breed chihuahuas who won’t go outside if the ground is wet. But I grew up in the Texas Panhandle, and like most of my fellow Panhandlers, I’m a sodbuster and a herdsman in my heart.
So when summer makes that turn to fall, we all live the poetry of harvest in our own way. Time stands still for a bit as we measure the fruits of our labor and call it good through fairs, pageants and feasts that showcase the best of what we made when the sun was high and hot.
The Antelope Creek people showed up in the Panhandle around 1150 A.D. and cultivated corn, beans and squash. We don’t have knowledge of how these earliest of our Panhandle forebears celebrated harvest, but the Comanche and Kiowa who came later developed rituals of thanksgiving for successful buffalo hunts by feasting on fresh tongues and livers, not unlike cutting the heart out of a freshly harvested watermelon.
When the ranchers staked their claim on the Panhandle, they were averse to poking additional holes in the ground. But the great roundups, spring and fall, were a harvest of sorts—a hot and dirty job that made swinging a sickle look inviting. When it was done, cowboys enjoyed a time of revelry, and possibly debauchery, that involved hearty chuckwagon meals and trips into Tascosa or Mobeetie (but not Clarendon) for a taste of whiskey and maybe a cuddle.
The more pious farmer-types began to flood the open range once the railroads made farming viable and brought the crops and harvest traditions with them from the old country. My first assignment as a reporter at the Amarillo Globe-News was to cover the Umbarger Sausage Festival at St. Mary’s Church, a harvest tradition dating back more than 100 years. Days in advance, almost everyone in the community was involved in preparing not just the sausage (the beef kind) but also sauerkraut, potatoes, applesauce and homemade bread—all the proof you’d need of a good harvest.
Down in cotton country, where my people settled, everyone was involved in the harvest and the celebrations that capped it off. My dad often told about Hedley schools letting out in September so kids could help bring in the crop. When it was all done, young and old alike celebrated with the Cotton Festival. Hedley folks couldn’t eat the cotton, but they threw a big party with cotton-arrayed floats complete with cotton queens popping out of giant cotton bolls.
My great aunt Myrtle, a.k.a. Auntie, organized the artsy aspects of this celebration for many years, and once she dreamed up a love-themed float upon which my father, a kid at the time, was tapped to play the role of Cupid. I’m not sure what this had to do with cotton harvest, and my dad didn’t make the connection, either. He bowed up in a way Auntie didn’t expect and said he wasn’t going to parade around in a diaper, even after Auntie tried to bribe him with a new pair of boots. So Cupid didn’t happen and Myrtle Reeves never fully forgave my dad for doubting her theatrical genius. But Hedley’s festival continues to this day.
The Collingsworth County Fair in nearby Wellington, my hometown, was perfectly timed to the brief idyll when farmers waited for cotton bolls to open up wide. If the weather changed early enough, we were blessed to celebrate with a draw of that first fallish air. Not cold, not hot, but delightfully crisp and clear. It always seemed this time of year brought out the best in everyone. But just whose best was better had to be judged, of course—thus the need for the county fair.
While there were plenty of cotton stalks and shocks from the amber waves on display, the women of the county stole the spotlight every year. Many had toiled all summer gardening, baking, crafting and sewing and were itching to stick it to Mabel or whoever reigned as Queen of Domesticity that particular year. Art was also celebrated, and half the community building was given over to student art projects. I thought of myself as somewhat of an artist, and I won a ribbon for my Crayola portrait of George Washington during the bicentennial run of the fair. Somebody quipped that GW’s mouth looked funny, so I characteristically self-destructed at the first hint of criticism and decided I would be a writer instead.
The Tri-State Fair always followed our county fair. You might be a big shot in pumpkin pies or metal art in Wellington, but this was big city stuff and it was harder to stand out. But there was a certain joie de vivre in celebrating everything good about the Panhandle. My dad was the county agent in Wellington and
was expected to set up a booth in the old ag building where all 26 counties would be represented. Months in advance he would gather samples of the county’s finest wheat, milo, cotton and maybe even an outsized cucumber or a mutant pumpkin. Once on display, his agricultural art made Collingsworth look like the Eden of the Plains. Not fancy, but never sloppy. This from a man who could also ball up a show steer’s tail with “spray-net” better than any beauty operator in the Panhandle. He always made me proud.
And that’s just it, really. Being proud of who we are and what we can make from dirt and sweat, with a nod to the Creator who sustains us on an often unforgiving land. In our harvesttime labor and celebrations, there has always been a measure of worship and adoration for when it turns out right, and a streak of optimistic denial when it doesn’t. I like to think we are still imbued with this harvest spirit, and that no amount of AI or pop psychology can dull the sensation of a September harvest evening or salve a nagging restlessness that inspires us to start all over again come spring.
