Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!
We're on a new series about Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, who was one of our greatest lawmen.
Recap
In the last post we learned more about his time in the wilderness of the Hill Country in West Texas and about his skills in the woods as well as his skill in fighting.
His early training was extraordinarily unorthodox. He became a naturalist, survivalist, expert hunter, tracker, and marksman as well as a student of natural law and how the world works.
Texas Hill Country. He used to say that he spent 8 years in the wilderness here:
One of the reasons he was in the country in the first place was to escape the crowded living quarters of his family home. His parents and 7 brothers and sisters all lived in a small house.
We even have a photo of the house, on the left, and on the right was his dad's Blacksmith shop:
Nine people living in that shack?? I'd want to get out of there too!
Today's story
To understand Frank Hamer's character and some of his actions later in his career it's important to understand the code of ethics of the West. I've posted about it before, it was known as The Cowboy Code.
It's mostly about honor. And that honor means courage, honesty, giving your word as your bond, loyalty, tremendous respect and honor of women, and never backing down from a fight.
Parts of the Code are still alive
Many of these are instilled in the culture of rural Texas today. I can't speak for the cities, I rarely go there.
Frank himself said "I was born and raised in Texas. I was born and raised not to take an insult. Any time a man insults me he has to back it up." In the West it was totally acceptable to use violence to resolve social problems like being insulted.
This created alot of feuds
That's why the West and South had such bloody feuds between clans like the Hatfields and McCoys. Texas was as bad as anyplace for bloody family feuds. It sounds insane now but that's the culture that Frank grew up in.
Some of the Western Code was wonderful and some of it was nuts. Like using deadly force because someone insulted you. Shoot fire, there wouldn't be anyone left alive if we did that today!
The Western legal doctrine
But back then it was codified legally as the "stand your ground" or "no duty to retreat" doctrine which authorized a man to defend his home, family and even his honor against physical OR verbal attacks with deadly force.
It was straight out of the Wild West and was fully ingrained in the way boys in the West were raised going well into the 1900's. Frank Hamer was a living example of that Code which becomes evident in his law enforcement career.
In Frank's case I would add one trait to the Code which he demonstrated many times and that was "to defend the defenseless and stick up for the underdog."
In the next post we'll find out how at the age of 16 Frank accidentally got into a gunfight which dang near kilt him!
Thanks for reading folks!
-jonboy
Texas
PS- Since I did a post last week about the fabulous Fairy wire sculptures of Robin Wright I've kept my eye out for them and yesterday I saw a different type of Fairy.
It's not a wire sculpture but an antique Fairy lamp from the 1920's or there abouts which I found to be cute as well as elegant:
God bless you all!
