The Harness Maker's Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas

Author's Note: The Questions We Never Asked

Et AUTHOR'S NOTE The Queslions We Never Asked A T DAY B REA K, my grandfather and I would walk together across the white sand beach and then, hand in hand, wade into the gentle surf of the Gulf of Mexico. Dressed in his scratchy woolen two-piece swimming suit, he would splash the salty water all over his face and body, an exercise he found invigorating. On those annual summer vacations to Corpus Christi or Galveston, other family members slept late, and so we two early risers became special companions during this sunrise ritual. He was old and slowed by a stroke, but still determined in will and dear of mind. I was eight years old and always eager to embrace the adventures of each new day. From those trips, I remember his still-strong grip, how he would squeeze my soft biceps and quietly advise, "You've got to be strong, 00 " y. Back home in San Antonio, Nathan Kallison and I shared other experiences. On Sundays, Uncle Perry-the youngest of Nathan's four children-would pick us up at his parents' home, where I lived with my divorced mother, Tibe. We would ride the eighteen miles out to the ranch, stopping along the way for Papa Kallison to buy the Sunday newspaper for his ranch foreman and a bag of penny candy for the foreman's children. Once at the ranch, they allowed me to ride with them, usually in a battered old truck, as they checked on the integrity of the ranch's barbed wire fences. We paused along the way so Nathan and Perry could survey the crops and inspect their fat herd of registered Polled Hereford cattle. Later in the day, the remainder of our large family '57 THE HARNESS MAKER'S DREAM would join us at the ranch for a barbecue. I still can remember the smoky, pungent aroma of goat roasting on a spit. Saturday mornings, my mother would drop off Papa Kallison and me at the Uptown Theater to watch the double feature westerns starring the Lone Ranger and his sidekick Tonto, Roy Rogers and his wife Dale and faithful horse Trigger, along with a galaxy of other cowboys in white hats including Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, and Red Ryder. My grandfather loved watching those Hollywood versions of the life he actually had lived as a rancher in the Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Decades passed before I realized fully the important opportunities I had missed during those special times spent with Nathan Kallison. Why hadn't I asked him and my grandmother about the experiences of their early lives? It didn't occur to me to inquire about where they were born and where had they grown up. I had no idea then that Nathan Kallison, only seventeen, had made a hazardous trip across Europe in 1890 to escape horrors in Russia, or that he had been sent to work as a child to help support his widowed mother. I did not know where he and my grandmother came from, nor how they had made their way to America. What were their lives like as Jews living under the reign of an oppressive, cruel czar, for example? How did they escape raids on Jewish villages? Why did they come to Texas? How did they start what became a huge business-the largest farm and ranch supply store in the Southwest? How and why did a Jewish merchant become an important Texas rancher? I certainly had ample opportunity to ask those questions and many others. My reality was the San Antonio lives of the grandparents whom I loved-Texans. Until I was almost fourteen, I lived with them in their San Antonio home. Yet I knew far more about Sam Houston and his victory in the Texas War of Independence from Mexico than about how my own grandparents had escaped a different revolution in Russia. To the amusement of grandparents, aunts, and uncles, I also ,,8 AUTHOR'S NOTE became the self-appointed family expert on World War II. After reading the daily newspapers, listening to the radio, and watching the newsreels at the movies, I would announce at family gatherings the latest news about how our American soldiers and sailors were faring against their German and Japanese enemies. I learned a lot of history early on-but very little about the remarkable lives...