Willfully Horn

Honestly think I am caught up, but the following recount of the neighborhood tensions was news to me. A “liberal young couple” in the Alito’s neighborhood had politically liberal signs in their yard. Alito’s wife would react at the sight of the couple’s car, once being near enough to supposedly spit at their car. This “liberal young couple,” while taking out their trash intersected the Alito’s, who were out for a walk. Words were exchanged. The young wife admits she used an expletive in response, and claims to have said: “How dare you behave this way. You’ve been harassing us, over signs. You represent the highest court in the land. Shame on you.” Apparently, the young husband sought the help of the police to deal with what he labeled “harassment.” There’s other details, such as the Alito’s knowing the young couple by name, and Mrs Alito interpreting their yard signs as fascism. https://www.rawstory.com/alito-stop-the-steal-2668393895/

I ought have known those cultures which create shamans would also be caught up in the desecration of the Liar, but I dismissed buffalo wazoo as a one off. #TeamHorseBoy I guess simulation is another word for prophecy, in terms of structure a person grasps at, in order to make sense of utter chaos.

We talking Southern heroes? By all means (from Reddit): Old Austin Tales: Guerilla Warfare on Bull Creek - 1861 Inspired by [recent events](https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/6191ei/austin_oaks_advances_at_city_council_after/), I thought I'd post a story today instead of the usual history pic about a time when some of the NIMBYs of north Travis County decided they didn't want that thing called the Confederate States of America in THEIR backyards. They make today's NIMBYs seem docile and accommodating in comparison. But first some backstory: Among the first American settlers in the area were Will Preece Sr., his wife Elizabeth, and sons Richard Lincoln Preece and Will Jr.. (there were also other unknown siblings) About 1838, the year before Waterloo was designated Austin by Mirabeau Lamar, the Preece family left their Illinois homestead and moved to either stretch of land near where Marble Falls is today or a hilly plot near where Common Ford Ranch Park is today off 2222. (They apparently owned both.) The parents were originally from Kentucky and Virginia. The father took after Daniel Boone and fancied himself a 'Mountain man'. The sons Dick and 'Little Will' (as the brothers were known) became Texas Rangers in the 1850s and eventually acquired many various plots of land in the area, including a 3000+ acre tract stretching from today's Lake Travis to Cedar Park along modern 1431. For about the first 30 or 40 years of Austin's existence, the area to the north and west of Shoal Creek was the borderlands of [Comancheria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comancheria). The Preece children were hardened by a state of constant warfare with the natives growing up and became expert hunters and trackers, which served them well as Rangers. They were intimately familiar with the geography and the hidden nooks and crannies in the area. According to lore, they named the nearby creek "Bull Creek" in honor of a particularly large buffalo bull (some say the last one ever seen in the area) which either Will Sr. or young Dick shot in the creek one day. I'll let some better storytellers than I pick up the story from there: The following is an except from Mike Cox's Central Texas history column on [TexasEscapes.com](http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/267-Bull-Creek-Battle.htm) and also appears in his book Central Texas Tales. >Remote and hard to reach in the days of horse and wagon travel, the hills west of the Capital City were peopled by scattered families who came from the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky and settled there because the terrain reminded them of home. >But not all of them hailed from the South. The Will Preece clan had come to Texas from Illinois, and when southerners started talking about leaving the Union, the Preece’s brooked no interest in the concept. In fact, old man Preece’s cousin was Tom Lincoln, father of the man recently elected president. >That set of circumstance led to a long-forgotten series of gunfights and ambushes in the hills of Travis County, a Civil War conflict for which no historical markers stand in commemoration. Texas’ Battle of Bull Creek hardly compares with the Battle of Bull Run, but the partisan feelings that triggered the fight went as deep. >Generally lost in most Civil War stories is the fact that not everyone in the South, particularly in Texas, favored secession. In fact, Travis County voted to stay in the Union. >The first movement in the battle came shortly after the secession election results became known. A squad of Confederate recruitment officers, “flushed with good bourbon and electoral victory,” rode into the hills to enlist “mountain cowboys” for the CSA cavalry. >As the rebels approached Will Preece’s cabin, which stood in the immediate vicinity of Bull Creek, a rifle bullet cut the bridle of one of the riders. A second shot from another of the Preece family removed the eyebrow hair from another secessionist. >More lead followed, but none of the rebels caught any. Since the Preece’s provisioned their larder with deer and squirrel they shot, the misses may have been intentional, mere warning shots. >The riders turned and rode back to Austin. Four months would go by before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, but the Civil War had started in Texas. >That June – Preece did not give the day – 20 Travis County Unionists calling themselves the Mountain Eagles ambushed more than twice that number of Confederate cavalrymen on their way to the pro-Union German settlements farther west. >The half-hour gun battle near Martin’s Well claimed nine “Secesh” as the hill men called the Southerners. Another six men suffered wounds in the battle. >In response to the attack, the governor commissioned a special Ranger company to root out the pro-Union element west of Austin. The Southern partisans scoured the hills, giving young men the choice of conscription in the Confederate Army or a permanent draft deferment at the end of a rope. Those considered incorrigible did not get the military option. >... The following is an excerpt from ["My Grandfather, Dick Preece"](https://archive.org/stream/MyGrandfatherDickPreeceByHaroldPreeceRealWest1964/My%20Grandfather%20Dick%20Preece,%20by%20Harold%20Preece,%20Real%20West%201964_djvu.txt), written by his grandson Harold, which was first printed in [Real West Magazine (Volume VII, Number 38, Nov. 1964)](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cLLm-8hqGr8/Vq45BOOnMxI/AAAAAAAAEXo/BuuztJ3syks/s1600/Real%2BWest%252C%2Bcolor%2Bcover.jpg). This is part of the original story Mr. Cox based his version on. ... >***By 1859 most of the wild tribesmen had been driven to a reservation set aside for them by the federal government in the Wichita Mountains of eastern Territory. By 1860 only a few roving bands remained in the remote, unsettled Texas panhandle. By 1861--*** >***That year the Union fell apart. And so did Texas. Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president of the crumbling nation. That ugly shambles we call the Civil War began. Across Red River, into their old domain of the Lone Star state, rode the Comanches.*** >***County after county in the western half of Texas voted against secession including Travis County of the Preeces and of Austin, the capital. Thousands of Union men, including distinguished ex-Rangers like Dick Preece, refused, from principle, to fight in the armies of the foredoomed southern Confederacy. But grandfather and other loyalist leaders hoped that all Texas, whether Unionist or Confederate, might unite in common defense against the new onslaught of the returning Comanches.*** >***The dice rolled differently. Grandfather with his outstanding Ranger record found himself a fugitive from men wearing the Ranger badges. That many of these wore it unworthily is now generally admitted. Giving grandfather the most trouble was a pathological character named Jeff Maltby who had his special sick reason for hating the Preeces.*** >***Maltby was a native of Springfield, Illinois, where he had known and feared the town's leading citizen, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, it is said, had once represented a man who had beaten the hot tempered sadist Maltby, in a lawsuit. After coming to Texas, the unpopular drifter had reputedly tried to enlist time and time again with the Rangers. He blamed grandfather for blocking the way.*** >***Three months after Fort Sumter, grandfather who'd tacked up reward posters for so many wanted men, was seeing billets with his own name tacked on the trees of the hill country. "A deserter from conscription" — he was branded. The designation made him feel proud even when he had to keep shifting his residence from one Bull Creek cave to another.*** >***Yet from other such "deserters", lots of them ex-Rangers, came some of the most effective of the resistance groups springing up in a rebellious south from Virginia to Texas. "The Mountain Eagles" his corps was called because the eagle was the emblem of the American republic to which its members would not foreswear allegiance.*** >***Time and time again Maltby, the northern-born leader of Confederate irregulars, invaded the hills looking for boys to conscript in the Confederate armies and stock to be requisitioned for the confederate state "home guards." Time and time again, grandfather, the southern-born chieftain of Unionist irregulars, blocked him.*** >***Maltby scored some triumphs, but he never conquered that detached, unsurrendering patch of the United States which was Bull Creek. Grandfather, the very symbol of the Loyalist counter rebellion, turned caves into citadels which belched death on the mounted thugs every time they rode into the hills Within the dense caverns he cached stocks of rifles and ammunition supplied to him through the widespread Unionist underground operating from Mexico, across the far away Rio Grande River, but honeycombing western Texas with clandestine political organizations and bands of sure trigger bush fighters Grandfather became one of the finest sharp shooters and best scouts in a Unionist regular outfit, the First Texas Cavalry of the Federal Army, after the Mountain Eagles were drafted into official service by Colonel Andrew J. Hamilton appointed by President Lincoln to head a sort of a state government functioning underground from ranch to ranch in far western Texas.*** >... As Mike Cox finishes the story: > By Jan. 1, 1862, only 40 of the Mountain Eagles remained in the hills. Their ammunition supply low, the men had holed up in a makeshift piled-stone fortress atop a prominence offering a good view of all approaches. >Opting not to celebrate New Year’s Day, state forces attacked the Unionist stronghold. Preece wrote that his uncle claimed 30 “Secesh” and 3 Unionists died in the battle near Bull Creek but admitted that “half that number for Confederates and double that figure for the Eagles would probably be a less biased estimate.” >In truth, the numbers likely came to even fewer than that or the battle site would have been better remembered. But the location of the fort did come to be called Dead Man’s Peak. >The fight ended the mini-war in the hills west of the Capital City. The surviving Mountain Eagles rode to Mexico, four of the Preece’s ending up in New Orleans. After the war, their loyalty to the Union never having wavered, they returned to Bull Creek Dick Preece and his brother Little Will had many adventures and battles, especially with The Comanche. You can read much more about them and their families' lives in early Travis County in [this comprehensive 5-star history blog post](http://txcompost.blogspot.com/2016/02/texas-ranger-dick-preeces-comanche-trail.html) written by Dick O'Dennehy, complete with maps, pics, and documents from the era, from which I have borrowed tiny bits of info without permission for this post. (along with Mr. Cox and the late Mr. Preece) Please forgive me sirs, if you see this. I really can't say enough good things about that blog of Mr. O'Dennehy, many great articles on there with good insights, good reading for anyone interested in Austin history. Mr Cox's column is decent in that regard as well with hill country lore. ~~The part of the Preece family's land along the Colorado where the original family cemetery was located was inundated when the construction of the first Austin "Great Granite" Dam created Lake McDonald in 1893 (roughly the same as Lake Austin today).~~ When Dick died in 1919 they buried him in the [new Preece family cemetery on Vaught Ranch Rd.](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Preece+Cemetery/@30.3728753,-97.8094546,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x865b3497d0d77b9b:0x44fcfe0126d70fbf!8m2!3d30.3728707!4d-97.8072659) near City Park Rd. off 2222. The University of Texas’ Briscoe Center for American History is home to the “Richard Lincoln Preece Papers, 1859-1919” P.S. If anyone has any theories where the hilltop they made the "makeshift piled-stone fortress atop a prominence offering a good view of all approaches." is, or if you have some info about The Preece's, or "Martin's well" (What and where is that?), please speak up. I'd love to hear people's thoughts and ideas. P.P.S. Apologies to those offended by tl;dr walls of text or were counting on seeing a history pic today. have some bonus pics. Tl/dr In the hills around Bull Creek, throughout the Civil war, pro-Union Texas Rangers conducted guerilla operations against the secessionists. They kicked traitor ass.

Congratulations to the new US citizens! Looking forward to learning what your mom’s cooked, when she spoiled your dads like babies.

Sure. But when Red Lobster and Cracker Barrel both close, many think it is due to a bad economy.

Picking up on how the perception of the economy might affect the election: Just tuned in to what has been called the retail apocalypse, and it is easy to see how people could view the ongoing raiding by private equity groups as a bad economy. Folks see their Red Lobster going bankrupt and think, the economy must be bad, not, some folks bought Red Lobster and sold the real estate, and now the franchise can’t make rent. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/private-equity-rolled-red-lobster-rcna153397 Yeah, I think this is part of the plan to burn down our government.

Got to tell you, I enjoy this type of reply the best.

When that thread next brings up my questions, I will now expect to be informed, as you will be held to the standard of explaining things to a dolt. I guess we can trash the claims of libertarianism.

Dude, you have always had the choice to explain why you reach your conclusions, which contradict those of established medicinal structures and the peer reviewed studies, but you prefer to speak down to people. I’ve made it clear I don’t understand why you make your claims. Luckily for you, you get to call me dumb. But, the concept of a libertarian is something I understand, and you ain’t committed to the cause. Denying medical coverage by muddying waters isn’t liberty, nor is passively accepting the loss of an established right by judicial fiat, and not by an amendment, libertarian. Don’t claim to be a libertarian, then I will stick to thinking you’re a narcissist arrogant ass, and not also a hypocrite.

C’mon.

I’ve mixed feelings about the Libertarian response to Trump’s propaganda. Contrarian? Yes. Committed to Constitutional Rights? Meh. Maybe if this thread were about the liberty of trans folk, @Anastasis would be contributing his anti-libertarian thoughts. Dude might claim he is a libertarian, but the proof of a pudding is in its taste.

I get the impression some are jealous of the way they fall in line and unite behind a fictional narrative.

Didn’t you set up that dark web page, gofundtheendofalito? Or was that the other guy?

I’d be posting that he is ever the liar, as he was afforded a justification defense, not an acquittal, but he, and every last apologist ready to stan for him, are just too fucking dim to understand the difference.

And folks wonder why homeopathy hasn’t gained any traction in the US pharmacy industry. Also, TIL that I am friends with a uncicorn.

Disagree with your final sentence somewhat because I think the gop endgame is to literally dismantle the constitution to stay in power. I don’t disagree that the average MAGA crowd lacks organizational ability, just that the trajectory of the party will substantially be any different.

As is the plane currently headed toward the mountain.

So, the alt-right nutters now embrace European governance strategies?

Ironic. My friend, an APD detective, has a master’s of physical theater. Said it came in handy when he worked the street.

Agreed. Patriots they are not.

Finally.

In the art world, bizarre and confusing are features, not bugs.

Personally, I am as far past as Opium Wars era Netherlands. Which means we can jail his corpse. After the flaying and the hanging of the corpse.

I know a guy who liked Nugent enough to see his concert in Dallas, and then travel to the city where his next concert was held. So, two shows in a row. Those two shows were carbon copies of each other. That dude is a bottom feeder among the ranks of musicians.

Helicopter spin and toss.