Harder Than Hardscrabble: Oral Recollections of the Farming Life from the Edge of the Texas Hill Country

Winner, San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2005
Runner-up, Carr P. Collins Award, Best Book of Nonfiction, Texas Institute of Letters, 2005

Until the U.S. Army claimed 300-plus square miles of hardscrabble land to build Fort Hood in 1942, small communities like Antelope, Pidcoke, Stampede, and Okay scratched out a living by growing cotton and ranching goats on the less fertile edges of the Texas Hill Country. While a few farmers took jobs with construction crews at Fort Hood to remain in the area, almost the entire population-and with it, an entire segment of rural culture-disappeared into the rest of the state.

In Harder than Hardscrabble, oral historian Thad Sitton collects the colorful and frequently touching stories of the pre-Fort Hood residents to give a firsthand view of Texas farming life before World War II. Accessible to the general reader and historian alike, the stories recount in vivid detail the hardships and satisfactions of daily life in the Texas countryside. They describe agricultural practices and livestock handling as well as life beyond work: traveling peddlers, visits to towns, country schools, medical practices, and fox hunting. The anecdotes capture a fast-disappearing rural society-a world very different from today's urban Texas.

Author: Thad Sitton
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 03/01/2004
Pages: 309
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780292702387

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2004 pg. 547

About the Author
Thad Sitton is an independent scholar and writer in Austin, Texas. Among his ten other books on Texas history are three winners of the Texas Historical Commission's T.R. Fehrenbach "best book" award.