We dined . . . on . . . two pickles.
Frederick Law Olmsted
Beginning in the early winter of 1852 Frederick Law Olmsted, on assignment for the New York Daily Times, and his younger brother John Hull Olmsted left their home in Connecticut on a journey to ride through the newly adopted state of Texas to report on the state of the state. Until they reached Texas, they primarily traveled by riverboat. Arriving at the hamlet of Smithland, Kentucky, the “mouth of the Cumberland,” they were in desperate need of the “lavabo”—a water and basin and towel for washing up. Frederick wrote, “One rain bathes the just and the unjust, why not one wash-bowl?” Having “cleansed” themselves from the common bath they realized that it was Thanksgiving. Ever the observant chronicler, Olmsted provided a menu of the meal they had on that Thanksgiving Day in 1852.
Smithland is—or was, for who knows what a Western year may bring forth—a thriving county seat, composed of about two taverns, one store, five houses and a wharf-boat. Being Thanksgiving day, we dined in company with several of our fellow-citizens, wearing full-dress shirts, but no coats, on cornbread and pork, with sweet potatoes, and two pickles.
As I wrote in “A Texan Gives Thanks”:
Of the human qualities, gratitude is chief among them. It is the seedbed from which the fruit of happiness and contentment grow—whether you are chewing on Saturday steak or slurping on Sunday soup.
Or two pickles.
Whatever your Thanksgiving holds this year, whether feast or famine, large or small, be grateful for the grace of God in your lives—even if your Thanksgiving only consists of two pickles.
When Frederick and John reached the banks of the Red River in mid-December they purchased horses—one, a mare named Fanny, “a gay little roan creole pony”—and a mule named Mr. Brown, along with saddles and traps needed for the trip horseback. For six months they traipsed all over Texas, from Natchitoches, Louisiana, across East Texas to Austin, then south through San Marcos and New Braunfels to San Antonio. They took a side trip to Boerne and Sisterdale, and then down Indianola on the coast, returning to San Antonio. From there, they rode to Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande, where they made a foray into Mexico. Retracing their steps back to San Antonio, they headed east through LaGrange, Houston, and Beaumont, leaving Texas at Turner’s Ferry on the Sabine River in the early summer of 1853.
Four years later, Frederick published his book A Journey Through Texas. Within a year of publication, he won a contract to design a park in the middle of New York City. We know it today as Central Park.
Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), 26.
Texan spoken here, y’all.
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