January 2011

Few enterprises for any alleged expert in a given field can be more hazardous than the compilation of a “best” or “worst” list. The undertaking of such an effort immediately invites second-guessing by everyone else with similar credentials and offers the risk that any number of them may give valid, even insurmountable, proof that their selections are superior. Just as historians are forever rating Presidents and are therefore endlessly scrapping over whether Martin Van Buren ranks above or below Rutherford Hayes, so those who care about automobiles automatically dispute one another’s favorites. At least in the realm of politics or military history, ranking is more easily established through tangible successes. But with automobiles, as with art, certain aesthetic judgments must be made, and accomplishments in terms of commerce or public acclaim often have no bearing. Vincent van Gogh died with his work castigated as lunatic scribblings. In 1935 the Stutz Motor Car Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, was building some of the finest luxury automobiles to be found in the world yet was able to sell only six in a Depression-ravaged economy.

From the moment he entered the White House in March 1829, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee turned a cold and calculating eye on Texas. Sitting in his study on the second floor of the mansion, maps strewn around the room, the white-haired, sharp-featured, cadaverous president breathed a passion for Texas that was soon shared by other Americans.

Old Hickory always believed—or so he said—that Texas had been acquired by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and then had been recklessly thrown away when “that old scamp J. Q. Adams” negotiated the Florida treaty with Spain in 1819 and agreed to the Sabine River as the western boundary of the country. The claim was questionable at the very least, but many Southerners, outraged by Northern reaction to the slavery issue during the debates over the admission of Missouri and chagrined over the institution’s prohibition in the Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30’, decided to press it anyway.

The Texans on these pages are a vanishing species, born of the vast and varied geography of the toughest frontier. The Republic of Texas was wrested from Mexico one hundred and fifty years ago, and its brief history as a separate nation helped convince Texans that they were a special breed of Americans.

For such a place, one history is not enough. East Texas is part of the South: magnolias and plantations carved from the pine forests, the dark legacy of slavery and the Lost Cause. South of the Nueces River is a border empire of great ranches, vaqueros, and the uneasy meeting place of America and Mexico. The Panhandle belongs to the Great Plains, the land of buffalo and Comanche, blizzards and wheat. West Texas is part of the Llano Estacado and the New Mexico desert leading into the southern Rockies. Each place has its own experience, but the whole has been held together by the thread of an idea—the idea of Texas.

Karen Ordahl Kupperman replies: The Lumbee Indians, though little known, are the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River. They first appeared in the written record in the early eighteenth century, and there are many theories about their origins. The idea that they are partially descended from the Roanoke colonists was first proposed in print by a local historian named Hamilton McMillan in 1888; it quickly became a popular theory. Historians, who have traditionally acknowledged only the written record, are increasingly coming to respect the oral tradition, which McMillan claimed supported his theory. The problem in this case centers on the gap of over one hundred and fifty years between the abandonment of Roanoke and the emergence of the Lumbee tribe. Those interested in all the theories should look at Karen I. Blu’s The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American Indian People , Cambridge University Press, 1980.

The picture of the Webster City, Iowa, high school football team in “Readers’ Album” (October/November 1985), provides a graphic glimpse of the difference in football in its emerging days from the game as it has evolved. Note that football. It is the old, large ball that made forward passing difficult. Even an abnormally large hand could not manage to grasp one of those balloons so it could be thrown straight—or far. The game consisted largely of two groups shoving against each other. Not the same open game as today but a lot of us oldsters still think that modern football is more basketball than the game we used to play.

Note the padded suits the boys are wearing—a far cry from the modern armor that makes a football player look like a medieval knight setting out, fully caparisoned, in armor.

Paul F. Boiler’s article on the sounds of silent movies (August/September 1985) certainly triggered memories for me. In the summer of 1928, when I was eleven, I visited my grandparents in Oskaloosa, Iowa. One afternoon my grandfather took me to the one movie theater in town for a matinée. Since the owner was his friend, we were guests, but I wound up paying anyhow. The piano player had not shown up and the owner was considering canceling the show (a Western), but my grandfather volunteered my services. After all, I had had piano lessons since age four, he explained, and I could just play everything I had ever learned.

Your interesting article about the history of supermarkets (October/November 1985) doesn’t mention that customers were already familiar with the name Piggly Wiggly when Clarence Saunders selected it for his chain of self-service stores. Piggly Wiggly was a popular children’s board game of that era. Chips were advanced along a winding pathway by a throw of the dice. There was an entrance and an exit where the player was safe home.

Thus the customers immediately recognized the layout of the stores as described in the article: turnstiles at the entrance, a check-out counter at the exit, and in between a single serpentine aisle lined with “easy-to-reach goods.”

I played many a game of Piggly Wiggly with my children. It was boring to adults but exciting to the young. It was only fair, as my parents had played it with me.

I’m very grateful for your presenting an excerpt from Architecture, Men, Women and Money in America, 1600–1860 about Longwood in Natchez (October/November 1985). I’d like to add that most of the credit for salvaging that house and for making the Nutt correspondence and the Nutt portraits available to the public goes to Mrs. Ina May Ogletree McAdams of Austin, Texas. She transcribed all the letters, published them independently, and has made available to visitors to Longwood the results of her labors. She’s not only a pioneer, therefore, but a generous and competent scholar.

I am writing to thank you for your excellent article on my father, LeConte Stewart, which appeared in your August/September 1985 issue. Our family is appreciative of the thoughtful treatment by Mr. Stegner as well as the quality of the reproductions. The colors and tones are amazingly faithful to the original canvases.

The article has contributed measurably to my father’s sense of accomplishment as he nears the end of his life.

Biographies of writers often disappoint. Albert Camus once described life in the literary arena with bleak accuracy: “One imagines black intrigues, vast ambitious schemings. There are nothing but vanities, satisfied with small rewards.”