Roses Are Red, Icebergs Are Blue

Roses are red, icebergs are blue…I think that was what my wife Nita is pointing out to me. We’re in a stretch of days which are hotter than blue blazes, every day passing the 100 degree mark. So I figure why not post a photo of a frosty Alaskan blue iceberg. It is probably making your screen cold to the touch. Enjoy. Maybe it will bring on a delightful shiver.

Extreme weather, be it hot, wet, or dry is a real deal here in Central Texas. I admit our only blizzards are at Dairy Queen, but floods are a recurring theme around these parts.  

In October of 1998, crazy heavy rains brought on record-setting floods where I live near Austin. Even the flood control dams failed to hold all that water. The normally mild Guadalupe River became a raging beast. The same thing happened to the nearby Blanco River in 2015. Vacation homes on the river became death traps in the middle of the night.

How do raging rivers connect to my new in-progress novel, A Different Country Entirely, a story about the Texas Rangers in the semi-arid regions of South Texas and Northern Mexico?

In October of 1855, 162 years ago, when there were no flood-control dams, rains along the Rio Grande River caused the river to run 15 feet higher than normal. The normally thin thread of placid water that is our border with Mexico became fast, wide, and wild.

That’s how the Rio Grande looked to Captain Callahan’s Texas Rangers. Raging. Formidable. Dangerous. And no bridge. 

The owners of the few small row boats the Rangers located refused to put their skiffs in the river for pay, and had to be forced at gunpoint to ferry the Rangers across to Mexico. Horses had to swim next to the boats. At least one man drowned and horses were lost in the swift current.

All that effort was just to get onto the forbidden Mexican side of the border. A week later when the Rangers had to re-cross the Rio Grande in a big hurry, things were even harder and hotter.

Harder because the river was still in flood stage and this time hundreds of armed Mexican soldiers were on their heels.

Hotter because the Rangers torched the town of Piedras Negras to cover their escape from Mexico. It was not a diplomatic visit.

Weather befuddles man’s best efforts. In one night, the hurricane of 1900 wiped away the city of Galveston and killed 10,000 people. The tsunami in Japan just a few years ago did the same.

In World War II, D-Day and the Battle of Bulge were greatly influenced by stormy weather.  During the American Revolution the ongoing heat-related deaths of soldiers wearing wool uniforms were a plague to the British generals. And flooding rivers have long played havoc with determined leaders like Captain Callahan.

I’d say weather probably changes history more than man does. Reckon? So when Texans or anyone talks about how bad the weather is, please don’t poo-poo them. Because we never know what tomorrow's weather will bring.