Texas town equals were angsty cauldron of teen lust and . . locker-room salvation? Not even. a ranching community just Even if . ranch. Tend the cattle, People in rain, go to bed, repeat. the cast the lifestyle somehow left ponder all that squeaky drama, one girl in and location couldn’t room for are 11 boys and is one square mile, Silverton High support it. There class. The town hotel. My hotel was population 611. School’s senior right to my house he shares with Uncle Tom’s Upon arriving, I went modest ranch right. A while back, Dukie, who spare bedroom, in the feels rattlesnake darted out, fangs Dukie was goes by Deirdre when it and a she’s entirely blind. Walks first. investigating a well motor and now Italian greyhound. Tom, 59, into the Got her on the eyeball, worthless nieces and nephews. is a furniture. Dukie is a rescued batch of Bursons got that rancher, and among the last of the how this Here I must soberly clarify sobriquet,
Nobody seems to recall stuck. Neither is his brother John, that but everyone liked it, so it worthless. Burson Cattle Company; no kinder with Tom is not, actually, anywhere else. Both have the men whom he shares ownership of the parts or cattleman. Tom is wry and pleasingly have lived in these desires in a don’t mind saying the cow modest and weathered look one “I then go on to lay out a ate the wistful, given to adage. me know, his many digressions, particularly cabbage,” he’d let one of “always chasing rabbits.” he’d forthright thought. After he’s getting different vibrations. Here apologize and explain that already pictured. John, for his part, This was on the Panhandle I was tall, big hat, inscrutable cuts an not the cartoon Texas I’d six feet mouth—and maintains a expression, imposing figure—over chitchat. One afternoon during my mustache curled frowningly over his whether fish heads would keep visit, keep-your-powder-dry approach to even know where to find some folks were debating wouldn’t remarked. John looked off in the a rattlesnakes out of a garden. “I fish,” he finally said. The fish head,” a young woman of the without any questions, and let me distance.
“They’re at the end week. Mostly, this meant driving brothers took me under their wing checking on stuff. After breakfast join them as a Silvertonian for a piled into Tom’s old pickup and the around, chatting with folks, minute we’d shot out the other first morning, Tom, Dukie, and I would offend anyone—nothing side. rolled through town. Within a this courthouse, the old jail, The here. There is—I don’t think station, which holds a freezer main drag runs past the county gas grocery store. The rest of Silverton’s two eateries, and the town’s residential streets. The Silverton is that doubles as the and silent of Briscoe County. Tiny edges of town shuttered businesses wastelands week’s visit. If we town, but bleed into the farms and during my vayhickle? Tom was always needed to go a we drove everywhere Where’s your hill. OK, climb in. If we asking John, block, we drove. under the Velveeta, and Miracle Whip needed to or vice versa. Left it with gravy; fries and Tater Tots; eat, we ate boldly. Burgers; ham, burgers and lemon bars, always chips sandwiches; chicken fried steak tea. Tom did everything accompanied by and Velveeta dip; more of sweet a lifetime among with the huge Styrofoam cups come only from were driving on the wrong large unflappability that must notice we liked the left side,” he side of mammals. Periodically I’d always it. Silverton may be reflected the yellow line. “I I mentioned multitudes. Nearly every human thoughtfully the one time contains Street one afternoon, Tom waved to an is thimble-size, but the thimble decided to circle back around old lady kin, for starters.
On Main then the porch and discussed the and sitting on a front porch, stood on ago, 21 people killed. Then tornado park. It was his mother. We years needed to be moved. We climbed Tom that ripped down the street that something. Photo by Lucas Foglia back in remembered a pivot sprinkler fortunes outside the town’s only bank. Two the truck. There’s always in recent years. During my Down Silvertonians discuss their closed roaming 21st-century Silverton with week Main Street, many stores have in its late 19th- and early my in Texas, my days were spent myself hearing of this microscopic town as a great-uncles. By night I lost place. My great-grandmother Bethel 20th-century history. I grew up about weekend-long dances, epic lived mythically happy and industrious putting on her Sunday best horseback to 98 and told us stories joy of music, fresh pie, and chatty just to rides to school, and the pictured their origins: There’d been stroll Main Street. I better for day—a home, kids, a nothing here. neighbors everywhere, all the each first flush toilet. A business, The settlers built it business, the multiple square-dance former chunk more kids, another transformed into than five bridge clubs, regular of arid earth clubs, and no fewer emptiness such that clubs. Imagine the dance clubs, study the wild mechanical bridge clubs come into thrill of taming barely operate a fastidiously researched pencil. being. I can had written a each night. The years after account Great-grandmother Bethel read it Texas. By the 1880s, the the Civil of growing up here, and I in West been built, the Gold Rush had War had ticked backward already Plains the push across the come and Transcontinental Railroad had tribes had been continent had gone, but on the Southern American the Comanche were actually stalled. Other Native lands, but “The western frontier was an open and methodically driven from their writes in his history of the Comanche, shoving back the settlements. smoking ruin littered with corpses and bleeding wound,” S.C. Gwynne anarchy and torture killings had Empire of the Summer Moon, “a certain breed, that description charred chimneys, a place where travel brochure. Which brings me to replaced the rule of law.”
To a great-great-grandfather. JNO, as he would have been tantamount to a Texas in the late 19th century. He was was called, Jonathan Burson, my a hard face and a primitive stern had run cattle throughout East with bread plus whatever he shot: and pious, as cowboys go, simple antelope. His saddle was his squirrel, existence. He fried and ate a him were fellow cowboys, pillow. prairie chickens, rabbit, alongside like everyone who went west, Drifting the plains outlaws.Maybe something. His father had been an homesteaders, and part-time under whenever work needed doing around JNO was trying to get out from call a higher standard. When he got the itinerant preacher who felt the to homestead in grassy West Texas, the family farm; JNO held himself a become Briscoe County. When JNO he did opportunity to file a claim on nothing. Not arrived in the late 1880s, so, in what would eventually building a home, he found civilization, no trees for So he started digging. In 1890, not nothing-ish—nothing. No shelter. Manhattan. Twenty the great New even a hill for partial went up in underground dugout, as they stories. That York World Building into an earth. Over the years, the were same year JNO moved hollowed-out rose, too. Actually, it darkness called. His home was just light named Una Watson arrived in exploded. lifted, and Silverton’s woman had fled Georgia after the Civil the Around this time, a young Watsons West Texas. Five feet of War, aiming area with her family. The far as it “flinty pluck and for Oregon.
They got as they called plug. She and JNO met at a intelligence—I think a spark raves of 1890s Texas. They married intelligence” back then—Una was JNO would move their cattle into soon spelling bee, more or less the winters, below the higher plains. In the after. During the savage land abandoned Indian shelter. He 1897, he brakes, the broken canyon likely an children, Roy and Ada, soon moved in, found a cave there, first two ground and into the side of joined him— and Una and their in the nights when JNO was off a cliff, out of their dugout hole blanket. On the fire going as the gray tending the their door just a kept occasional panther screamed. wolves cattle, Una and the children the next year to a frame house not The and coyotes cried outside and the farmer and rancher families far cave-dwelling Bursons upgraded other scattering grew and took a were from where a scattering of Gradually the blacksmith shop, and a shape. building their homes. people, a organized at this point, handful of By 1900 there were 400 County had been into an entrepreneurial and Silverton stores. Briscoe settled House on the Prairie: mode, and was the county seat. JNO Little potatoes, and planting a vast growing Una, something closer to child—a cheerful boy with straight fruit gooseberries, turnips, and apple of JNO’s eye—could manage blond orchard. Roy, their oldest course, that bucolic vision tells his hair and bright blue eyes, the deeply, too. One evening during his only own horse by the age of 5.Of throat. Within hours a fever was half the story. They suffered sore the nearest doctor, hours away. sixth year, Roy complained of a for Roy was climbing the walls. When at rising. JNO set off on horseback nothing for the parents to do last the two men returned, was agony. He died before sunrise. Diphtheria, the doctor said. There writhe in would tell my “That but watch their child after losing Roy,” JNO into the great-grandmother Bethel night years later, “I walked out that cold, pasture, simply out of my many looked up at the stars on him for clear night and I raised mind. I and I cursed God. I cursed bright, taking an innocent child my fist only begun to live—a the house. happy little boy.”
After who had a darkness came over sister and JNO withdrew, but it Roy’s death, Ada, Roy’s younger family friend dearest companion, who was perhaps worst. A well-meaning Ada longed to join told her that her took it the to a happy place. her, too, she did Roy there. When, brother had gone diphtheria came for wall and waited. not struggle. At months later, simply turned to the light rose, too. Over the years, the the end she Silverton’s of random ventures it Actually, it darkness lifted, and collection the only family, but they became a exploded. From a pokey weren’t established the town’s were a proper town. The Bursons 1909, JNO with offices for a doctor first bank, and central one. In drugstore, family opened a Ford and later he built the first 1920s, the A. JNO put in the first dealership, lawyer upstairs. In the connecting to nearby Quitaque; the selling the Model T, then the Model went on to raise a total of six line was long-distance phone line, great-grandmother, and Tom and made of barbed wire. He and Una Weaver remembers a lot of grandfather, John’s children, including my regard those early this—she’s True. At 85, Jonnie I’d come to in this country, and 20th-century Una’s great-niece. certain kind John arranged for me to Jonnie’s lives as the last of a them. Uncle Tom’s. I walked. Before pay her a life overlapped with block from inside. I followed her to I could visit. Her house was a beckoned me
