John Graves

Americans have always been cruel to the land, and when they reached Texas, they found 170 million acres of it. For 150 years they have been recklessly plowing it, logging it, grazing it, and reaching down for its water and oil. Rain doesn’t follow the plow, not any longer, if it ever did, and there’s no greener pasture over the hill. So, says a man who lives off the abused Texas land, the time has come to realize that, short of cultivating other planets, there is nothing left but to succor and renew “the earth that shaped us and feeds us and sustains us and will accept our bodies when we die.”

A free-lance writer and part-time teacher , JOHN GRAVES served in the Marine Corps during World War II and taught at the University of Texas before he decided to make a career of his writing. For several years he lived in New York and in Spain, and since his return to his native Texas he has been doing a good bit of digging into the local history. The following story is one of the first fruits of these efforts.