Frank Is Forced To Give Up His Cowboy Ways

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about one of the top Texas Ranger lawmen to ever wear the badge, the great Frank Hamer, who was brought out of retirement to take down Bonnie and Clyde.

In yesterday's post Frank was excelling in his work and taking alot of outlaws into custody. He'd spent most of his time in the saddle because of the vast, open spaces of Southwest Texas.

The Rangers had always been a mounted fighting force:

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In fact, almost all his Ranger unit was still composed of cowboys. But they got the shock of their lives when Captain Rogers received orders from headquarters for the company to sell or give away their horses because they were being transferred to Austin.

This map shows the general area they'd been operating in and then you can see Austin several hundred miles to the East.

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This sucked

Frank loved the country and he'd spent his life learning about nature and honing his wilderness skills so this was not good news. In fact, it sucked royally. But the men were dedicated to the cause so they all accepted the order.

It was a huge sacrifice too. Well shoot, just BEING a Ranger was a sacrifice because they didn't make any money.

They made a paltry $40 a month! That was half what the average city cop was making, and the city cops weren't exactly raking in the dough.

Here's a street scene from Austin in 1906, a mixture of horses, buggies, cars and trolley cars:

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Check out that windmill on top of the building. lol.

I think Frank is going to stick out like a sore thumb among all those city-slickers with his big cowboy hat, boots and six shooter!

His story continues on the next post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

PS- I found a couple more interesting wire sculptures, this time bare minimalist wire sculptures, almost not there but still ingenious:

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Look this one even has a cat!

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