It was a cold, wet windy winter Sunday in the Devine area of south-central Texas. “Come on outside with me Paul Bain! We’re going to take some firewood into town.” Under Dad’s direction, I chopped some oak wood alongside him, loaded it into the green 6-cylinder bobtail truck which was normally his ride to work and primarily a hog shuttle to San Antonio, and we then headed slowly into Devine to a small shed-like structure of old wood and cardboard near the Devine Mill and Elevator. Inside was a small, aged Latino hovering near a wood stove. Dad handed him some of the fall potatoes we had grown and put up for winter, and the man wrinkled old man greeted us in broken English and with a humble and amazingly beautiful smile on his ragged and bearded face.
We unloaded the wood from what was at that time a fairly new 55-Chevrolet bob-tail truck Dad had purchased second-hand from local cigar-chomping automobile dealer, Mr. George Fernandez. We stacked the renewable biomass near the old man’s scant living structure, and then without too many words being spoken, shook hands with the old compadre and headed home to our five-acre hog farm nested within the Gutierrez, Schroeter, Bowman, and Uncle Peggy Martin pasture lands.
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I believe this story pretty much captures the essence of Dad Alton Martin. He was a hard-working, not wealthy, and giving person who loved people, especially the real, the poor, the humble.
[I do want to make one important point at this juncture. These are mostly my memories from my formative years during a period from about 1949 when I can date my first memories to about 1969. Later in life Dad mellowed somewhat, allowed the boys to drive the car to two-a-day football practices in August, gave a calf to which my sister became attached special dispensation from slaughter, took the family on a vacation to see his sister Delia and family in Farmington, NM (minus brother Lawrence and I who were off working for the summer to cover college expenses), and air-conditioned his and Louise’s home.]
Dad Alton was good in many ways:
• He appreciated, very, very much, south Texas wild flowers! At times he had us transplant them from the roadsides into our own yard (We’d fill the bed of that 1955-bobtail with shoveled up flower plants from sandy land in between Stockdale and Devine.), and he’d purchase phlox seed to broadcast around the house. Late in his life he enjoyed visiting the botanical gardens in far-away San Antonio (35 miles from our homesite).
• Gardening and the eating of fresh vegetables and fruits was immensely loved by Dad!! He particularly loved our homegrown cream peas (Vigna unguiculata), fresh-from-the-stalk sweet corn, new potatoes, tomatoes, English peas, green beans, and okra. Moreover, he/we* would supplement the fruit and sweet corn we grew with dewberries, plums, and hard pears from our farmland in Stockdale and other properties and from farmers’ field corn. White-flesh peaches and other fruit for direct eating, freezing, or canning, would be brought home from the (feed) Mill where he worked for many years and where friends would give him the wonderfully fresh and tasty ovaries. (*We Martin kids were generally involved in production, processing, and harvesting. … And by the way, we all sat down at the table together for meals of this wonderful food when we were not out on a job working or at school. And we only began eating together after a blessing of the food. Finally, it was extremely rare in all the years I lived with Alton Martin for us to eat out in a restaurant.)
• Dad enjoyed making, sharing and eating homemade ice cream made from our Jersey cow’s milk and cream, and eggs from our mestizo chickens. On a hot summer’s day we’d go into town and purchase crushed block ice from the ice house across from the locker plant and near the railroad tracks in Devine, and then churn the rich and sweet concoction under a shaded area.
• Dad Alton was justly proud of the healthy, good quality, and meaty hogs we raised as a family.
• A small and fairly sustainable agricultural system on the five-acres just outside of Devine was developed by Dad & Mom and our family during the years of the 1950s & 60s. It involved milk cows, a large garden, chickens (and sometimes guineas), a calf for slaughter, and hogs, and Dad directed the creation of this diverse agrarian landscape perhaps to simply survive and enjoy life in the best way in which he knew. On this small and diversified acreage, we Alton Martin children always had plenty of chores to take care of before and after school, on weekends, and in the summer, including household chores to help Mom. And in taking care of our little five-acre place, and another 140-acres in Stockdale (on which we ran a few cattle and later leased out for grazing and dryland watermelon production.), Dad had a strong conviction of “small is beautiful, and an ethos of conservation and hard and structured work, but also a determined-mindset of low-input when outside resources were considered.
• Alton Martin truly loved his good friends—his faithful wife and our mother, Louise; his Mom Eva; Tucker Irwin and David Haywood, and other co-workers at the Mill–black, brown, pink, whatever; Tony Cruz and his wife; and many others. In his letters from the Pacific Theater during World War II, he longs to be with childhood friends and anticipates in a relishing way the day he will be reunited with his various friends and cousins in Stockdale, the Akins, the Jacksons, the Montgomery family, the Garners, Buster Martin, Marcus Allen, and his brothers and sisters, including especially his closest sibling, Oscar Bain. (The handsome and athletic Bain, the closest to Dad—who exchanged letters with Dad from the European front—was killed in the insane combat of War he hated, in February of 1945.)
• Dad Luther Alton dressed simply and had a small wardrobe of Khaki pants, blue shirts (tee-shirts and pearl-snap), as well as one suit for the rare occasions when he would dress-up. He did have one pair of fancy shoes, but generally wore high-top work shoes. And he always had a fine Resistol or Stetson-felt or straw hat, or a cap, on his head.
• He rarely left a 30-mile radius of his home and especially a 100-mile radius. He only went into San Antonio to sell hogs at Swift and Company (or rarely a High School football playoff game for which he had placed a small bet). After they learned of the quality of our hogs, Swift became our major buyer of hogs and would give us a cent or more bonus per pound over the previous days market price at the S.A. Livestock auction. (In terms of who truly took the hogs to market, it was frequently Mom or we boys who transported them into S.A.)
[Once in the peak of my rebellious years when Dad took the car keys to keep me from driving the 60 Impala into town, my plan was to take my girl-friend Kathy Wilkinson to a track meet in which I was participating. What did I do? I hopped into the hog-transporter for the date with this lovely red-haired girl from Devine.]
• Birthdays were not of importance to Dad, especially his own. Moreover, we never expected much for Christmas. He might build us something to play with or in, and we would generally receive a pair of pants or a shirt, or socks, but there were few store-bought toys. Christmas was very special to Dad, however, and he would take us kids for a ride to see the city lights every Christmas Eve while Santa Claus Louise laid out the gift.
• There was a wise reluctance and slowness in Dad about embracing new technologies. He definitely wasn’t a materialistic or gadget person, nor was he enamored with the synthetic chemical, plastic, electronic, or information world which quickly developed after his arrival back home from the Pacific in 1945. He let Mom do the (phone) calling, his garden tools were generally a shovel and a hoe, we built our own farrowing pens, he owned two bob-tailed trucks and less than 6 cars in his lifetime, we didn’t have air-conditioning for most of my and my siblings’ growing-up years, and the Alton and Louise Martin family of eight never had more than one bathroom, and they lived in a two bedroom-home for much of their existence.
• Dad Luther Alton Martin avoided lawyers, life insurance salespersons*, loan officers in banking operations, and salespeople, unless they were selling reputable agricultural products. He was frugal, he saved, and he did not believe in borrowing money. [*Dad was, however, a believer in health, home, and vehicle insurance.]
• The soil and water conservation teachings he received under the GI Bill after WW II had a great and positive impact on him in the realm of what I call sustainability and the ecological sanity component of this concept and practice. Moreover, he vehemently expressed his displeasure that some big rancher/farmers were receiving disaster payments during the drought of the 1950s, despite their unsustainable agricultural practices.
• Dad would sort of mildly “go ballistic” if you left a light on after leaving a room or the house. And when I asked for the car to go to two-a-day football practices that first August I played organized football, he quickly and assertively replied, “You can walk. You’re going there for exercise, aren’t you?” (Generally during my long two-mile treks to the Warhorse field, a friend would pick me up.)
• Alton Martin was a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Marines in World War II and participated in the horrible battle of Peleliu. But he never ever came close to pounding on his chest about this or any of his military experiences in WW II. He was a proud citizen of south-central Texas, but tired of a Warring U.S. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/unnecessary-hell-the-battle-of-peleliu/ [During the heat of the Vietnam War in keeping with the mindset of Uncle Bain, I personally wish that I had filed as a conscientious objector, or fled to Canada with my entomologist friend Scott Boyd, rather than joining the U.S. Naval Air for a very brief stint in 1969-70 to avoid being drafted into the U.S. Army.]
• Cow-/hog trader/work-acholic Alton and Mess Sergeant Martin was good at many doing many things, including the wonderful singing and yodeling of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Lefty Frizzell, and Hank Snow songs. (We didn’t do much radio listening other than farm reports, and didn’t get a television until I was in High School and even then primarily only watched TV a bit on Friday nights and Sundays. Nevertheless, Daddy entertained us with his great singing.) Even though there was a division of labor in our home and Mom generally did the cooking, Dad could cook a mean biscuit, sugar syrup, roast beef and vegetables, or gravy. He was dead-on in guessing livestock weights, and he was good at doctoring animals. Moreover, despite his cigarette-puffing habit, this relatively small man was strong and of endurance. Like my brother Lawrence, he worked like a machine!
(Concerning the division of labor, Dad could never bring himself to castrate. Early on, big Johnny Taylor, an African-American, came over to do this job. Later we boys learned and did it and always knew that when we arrived home from college, we would be castrating pigs. Then after we were basically all out of the nest and not coming home much, brother Charlie taught Mom to castrate. Dad would hold the pigs, and Mom would do the cutting.
I have to inject here, that on one occasion after arriving home from Texas A&M-College Station, Dad told me to castrate five ca. 130 pound hogs before going out on my date with Donna DiRusso. I got in a hurry, cleanly sliced rather than doing a careful scraping through the spermatic cord, vas deferens, associated tissue and the blood vessels, and three of these hogs bled to death. When I got back from the date, without saying hardly a word Dad took me out to show me what I had done. I suffered greatly in seeing those poor animals lying there, but it hurt even more to think about what I’d done to Dad’s pocketbook.)
• Cuss words were an emphatic component of Dad’s lexicon. Otherwise, he didn’t ever talk about God, Jesus, Heaven or Hell, Being Saved, the Second Coming, or really anything Spiritual or Faith-based. Occasionally Dad would attend Mass at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Devine with us, but the entering into a “house of God” was very rare for Dad. Dad’s “god/spiritualism” was rooted in ecological community, with a strong focus on: humans and the sharing of his good life and resources to the benefit of the poor, less fortunate and humble ones he came across and loved in local community. (I would characterize Dad as having been an “ignostic”, as a delightfully social justice-conscious and active citizen-friend of mine from northwestern Massachusetts has labeled herself.
• I haven’t mentioned Mom Louise much herein. (She’ll be the main focus of a future piece.) However, I do wish to emphasize that she and Dad were into the living of life together, and that they had a great love, appreciation, and respect for each other and each other’s talents and abilities. In terms of listening to the sage advice of Mom, I have but one story: Once late in Dad’s life right around Fathers Day, he and I got into a bad argument about the management of The Farm in Stockdale (which I had purchased from him years previously) and he proceeded to tell me all I was doing wrong, and how I needed to fix things immediately. I basically left his house crying, and after stopping over at my sisters’ place in Devine, my wife and I headed home to Seguin in a very melancholy mood. The next day Mom and Dad arrived in our home early, and Dad apologized to his eldest son and wife. It turns out that after our very rough and heated argument, Dad had turned to Mom Louise and asked, “What are we going to do?” Mom answered wisely, “You know what YOU have to do?” … The wisdom and prudence of Dad Alton Martin was the wisdom and prudence of MOM & DAD Martin. … Finally, it should have been paul bain martin who initiated the process of apology; however, I’ll never be the man Alton Martin was.
• Dad Alton did love the business of living very much. When there was consideration dealing with heart surgery late in life, he overruled some of us kids and said “Yes! I will definitely have the surgery!! Let’s get on with it!” Nevertheless, he wanted quality life and was adamant about not having extra-ordinary measures taken to keep him living using “extremely-artificial” devices.
• Dad Luther Alton Martin was a very calculating and careful risk-taker, and even though he never heard of the terms, he (and we as a family) had a small ecological footprint, low daily transformation of energy/kilocalorie-utilization, and did relatively little appropriation of net primary productivity. (Our hog operation at its peak was dependent on a few hundred acres of grain grown conventionally on other farms as well as having a dependency on other limited inputs of the industrial agricultural system.)
Was Dad perfect? No!!! He was human with testosterone and epinephrine and norepinephrine (and other hormone and neurotransmitter) rushes from time to time:
• Dad was a rounder and a player in his younger days.* And he had somewhat of a drinking and gambling problem during this period. Before he swore off alcohol during our early years in Devine, there’s a story that Dad and Jesse Alvarado got thrown out of Warhorse stadium for sharing a flask of whiskey. (Dad did apparently do well at loan-sharking and gambling while stationed in New Zealand and sent monies home to Grandma Eva and Grandpa Oscar, and Mom Louise.) [*I base this on stories told me by my Grandma Eva Martin while I stayed with her to work watermelons during a summer of my junior high years, those of Aunt Jo Bailey and cousin Wanda Jo Dinklage, and from letters from New Zealand in WW II found in Mother’s cedar chest.]
• Once after some years of effectively conquering his gambling and drinking challenges (Dad went on the wagon, and gambled for only small stakes thereafter.), Dad and a family friend went out to shoot pool after a celebratory day of barbeque and beverages involving both of their families. The beverage the friend had a considerable amount of was beer, and he subsequently lost some substantial cash to Dad in gambling on pool games. That friendship went to pot after the friend sobered up and felt he had been taken advantage of.
• Dad smoked a great deal of cigarette tobacco—including in our house and in our vehicles—from when he was quite young until about 65 years of age. (He quit cold turkey with the help of the chest hospital in S.A. after a doctor told him he had about five years to live if he didn’t give up smoking.)
• Alton Martin did take a work ethic too seriously. As an Alton Martin family during my growing-up years, we rarely took a vacation. (I do fondly remember that during one of our “We’re getting up at 3 am!”-trips to The Farm, Dad packed bacon, eggs and bread and a skillet, and he cooked for us kids half-way in between Devine and Stockdale singing, “Camping in the raw. Camping in the raw. I wish I was in Texas but here I am in Arkansas.” By the way, half the way on the 70- mile route to the farm was close to a one-hour drive, because Daddy wouldn’t drive over 45 miles an hour. … Beginning in my junior high years, we began to take a trip to Avant’s Camp near Garner State Park and spend a wonderful few summer days on the Frio River.)
• While we Catholic kids and Mom ate fish sticks, or salmon patties with plenty of crushed saltine crackers, or oatmeal, and eggs in them to make the canned fish suffice for six young ‘uns on Fridays, and sometimes liver and onions on other days (which I actually enjoyed), Dad sat at the end of the table eating steak.
• Because he was generally very busy making-a-living, Dad didn’t really take a lot of time teaching us how to best build structures. He’d just tell us to build a fence, shed, or garage, or lay water-lines, and expect (through on-the-job-learning) the various jobs and projects–assigned to us through regular lists given to Mom–to be accomplished on weekends, after school, or after our outside paying jobs in the summer.
• The stern, disciplined, authoritarian ways of Dad did result in some friction—initially with my brother Lawrence because of his fun-loving, energetic, and carefree ways and lack of near-perfect grades, and even with my quiet, intellectual brother Dr. John Russell Martin, M.D. Lawrence* received many scoldings and whippings over his Bs & Cs, etc. on report cards, and I never remember Lawrence protesting.
But once when Dad criticized John’s building of a farrowing pen, John retorted “If you don’t like it, build it yourself!” I seriously rebelled during my senior year in high school, and our father-son/elder-son relationship was estranged for a few years.
[*Lawrence later became a very well-respected principal of schools for the Northside ISD in San Antonio, including Clark and O’Connor, and was affectionately labeled “The Amazing Mr. Martin” before he died from cancer in 2010. The library at O’Connor is named after Lawrence. http://bannedbookscafe.blogspot.com/2010/06/lawrence-devine-warhorse-aggie-clark.html ]
• Once after being caught picking on my brother Lawrence several times when we were supposed to be working hard in the garden, Dad proceeded to make me pull my pants down to expose my bare bottom. As I stood there as the oldest brother half-naked in the garden, he blistered my butt in front of a young audience of Lawrence and his friends who were over visiting.
For better or worse I received some of the traits and behaviors of Dad. And in reality I wish I had taken on more. I do feel strongly that if all of us lived lives similar in many respects to that of Dad’s—for the most part wisely, simply, steadfastly, and sharingly—the world would be in much better shape and a better place!
The ethos and mores/values and behaviors I have embraced and practiced through the years, have always been developed and modified primarily through the lens of those of my Dad. (Of course, this is not particularly unusual, and would be the case for many humans. Moreover, there were other strong influences which were also positive, e.g., from Mom, from St. Joseph Catholic Church and Vatican II, and from the whole of the village of Devine. Other very significant influences were the sexual revolution, ecological activism, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War of the 1960s & 70s.
From this came my ethos of regeneration and conservation of resilient, sustainable community; Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology/PEACE; and the mantra for lives which are: “Sabio, Simple, Small, Slow, Steadfast, Sharing, and Sustainable”. I am most definitely a sinner! But!! …
1. As effectively and efficiently as I am able, I work to acquire ecological knowledge toward practicing critical thinking and being prudent. This is a continuing educational process which encompasses psychological, social, political, economic realms. In this effort, I recognize that biology, the arts & kinesiology, physics, anthropology, and philosophy (including consilience) are key components of the learning process and that mathematics and various spoken and written languages of ethnic and cultural groups are essential for communication.
2. I try to keep my eyes on the prize in the distant future which will come from us all working together to effectively and sustainably deal with overshoot and disparity, and our destruction of biocapacity, biodiversity, and the natural resource base.
3. I do also take time to enjoy all people and peoples including the wealthy and powerful Haves (although I do have to admit that it is in a teasing, sarcastic, snarky way in the case of de facto greedy, selfish, and arrogant Haves), but I especially enjoy and appreciate the poor, the relatively powerless, and the disenfranchised Have-nots. I like to work alongside the jesuses of the world, I don’t give a damn about a second-coming, and I am not in the least concerned about being blessed.
4. Finally, I appreciate symbioses/”nature” in whatever state it exists.
To a large extent, Dad Alton Martin brought me here to where I am at almost 72 years of age in the late 2010s. pbm (Nov. 2018)
7Ss / VV->^^
pbm
