Competing and Being Prepared

Wilma Rudolph paved the way for black female track and field athletes. No one thought they were good enough to run the races with the all-white runners. At a young age, she was diagnosed with polio. Some people told her to forget the idea of running. "Just put it off...wait until  there is a better time for you. It will take too much effort to map out your rehab." Instead she used every minute of every day to get stronger, to begin to run, never wasting a second in planning how she would succeed. In 1960 she received three gold medals in the Olympics. Many teenagers took an interest in track because of her.

When I was growing up in Denton, the spring was a time when the local gas company would have a Cooking School. Ladies and their families(remember few women were working back then)would come from Monday through Friday, see the latest gas stoves, get some free prizes, have food cooked every day, and just have an enjoyable time. On Wednesday of the week those who had come were supposed to bring their best cookies, pies, or cakes to enter in a contest. For doing that, they received extra grocery prizes, Then on Thursday the winners would be announced and given even more free stuff on Friday as they told their recipes.

Mother made one of her wonderful pies, probably egg custard or pecan. Grandma had put her name in the cake division, but she got busy in the yard or visiting and knew she didn't have time to get something ready for Wednesday. So she went to a local store late Tuesday night, bought a Mrs. Baird's angel food cake, and put some colorful icing on it. She thought she had escaped detection when results on Thursday named her cake as third place. That night she began to sweat. "Lord, Daughter(that's what she always called Mother), what am I going to do? Will they make me give back any of the groceries?" Mother told her she had gotten herself in the mess and would just have to deal with it. Friday morning the judges asked the winners in the cookie division to give their recipes. Then it was the turn for the pies. Grandma was now in a complete dither because cakes were coming up. A judge stepped forward and said,  "But because we are running out of time, Ladies, we will ask only the first and second place winners in the cake division to come forward." SAVED! But she never let that happen again.

August 1862 Germans  in the Hill Country who didn't believe in slavery were terrified that their young sons would be conscripted into the Confederate Army. They sent word to families to send their boys to Comfort, and the group would travel quickly to the border, go into Mexico, and then to New Orleans which was held by Union forces. Money had been sent to Mexico to take care of them when they arrived there. The young men, perhaps 60 or 70 in the group, began, knowing that a Confederate guerilla captain James Duff was known for his  vicious attacks and murders  on those who did not show immediate support for the Confederacy. They could do it if they kept at a steady pace. But planning broke down as the young men stopped for debate tournaments, shooting matches, singing, and just a generally, slow trip. They didn't know that Duff had gotten word about what they were doing and moved as swiftly as he could to cut them off at the Nueces River and attack. The battle left at least 19 dead, perhaps 10 wounded, others scattered in the brushy landscape. The wounded were executed, and Duff left orders that the bodies were to be unburied. If family came after them, they would also be shot. So the bodies stayed on the river bank until the end of the war when families could finally gather remains and put them under a monument at Comfort which says, "Treue der Union."

Thinking that things will take care of themselves is easy, but competition and completion of ideas of any kind deserve planning even if it is hard.