Prof. Pepper's Travelin' Medicine Show

People came to Texas from all over the United States, and all over The Earth.   When they carved “GTT” on the door of their homes and were Gone To Texas, they brought their guns along with them.  Why were they GTT?  Many of them had nowhere else to go.  The fact of the matter is that our greatest Texas heroes were ejected from their previous lives for various reasons.  The newly opened colonization of Texas was a great place to commence anew.   They brought along their firearms, because the country was wild and unknown.   The opportunity to disappear and start over was not without mystery of what was waiting for them here. Texas was part of the Mexican state Coahuila y Texas.   The government of México operated under The Mexican Constitution of 1830, which actually was not that bad.  Mexican El Presidente and Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna did not like the constitution, though, so he tossed it out.  This did not set well w...

            After the Battle of Adobe Walls, the savage Indians were demoralized; this was especially the result of Billy Dixon’s long shot with his buffalo rifle. At this same time, the U.S. Army was responding to the settlers’ ongoing pleas of 20 years for something to be done about the marauding Indians’ savage attacks, murders, and kidnappings all along the frontier. An all-out war was waged with the Indians, carried out from all sides of the Texas High Plains. There were few actual confrontations, other than Ronald MacKenzie’s Battle of Palo Dura Canyon. This well known battle against mainly women and children (most of who escaped) resulted in the capture of the Indian’s enormous herd of horses, their winter’s food supply, and shelters. The supplies were destroyed. The best horses were kept for the Army, but the majority were shot and killed. Their food, shelters, and horses were gone, and they were left afoot and now on foot...

       During the 1850-60s in Texas, some of the worst Indian massacres ever recorder occurred in what was then the frontier of Northwest Texas. The area comprises the region from just outside Weatherford, TX to the area up just north of Ft. Richardson (Jacksboro), and south around present day Mineral Wells, Palo Pinto County. The Comanche and Kiowa and others would leave their reservation in the Indian Territory of present day Oklahoma, and on horseback would raid the scattered and isolated farming and ranching families. In 1860, the Ezra and Martha Sherman family lived on their little homestead in the Cross Timbers on the eastern edge of Staggs Prairie (north and a little east of present day Mineral Wells, TX). The father, mother, and three young children were about a mile from their nearest neighbor. One after noon, several Comanche approached the house. As was always the case in such situations, the family was way out numbered; about all they could do was welco...

Gumption Junction is a place where hope meets up with reality, confidence crosses paths with faith, and happiness turns into joy. Somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, this little town is a place where the weather and the people are nearly always nice.   Taint never too awful hot there in the summer neither.   There always seems to be just about enough variation in the weather the rest of the year that all them bluebonnets, Indian blankets, Mexican hats, and lilies bloom bigger, longer, and brighter than any other dadburn place in Texas.   The milkweed there draw the biggest monarch butterflies you ever seen in your life, and crepe myrtle are all over the place.   This is a place where the sunflowers reach for the sky, drawing doves into the one place where this bird of peace can fly peaceable like all year long. In Gumption Junction ever body is welcome, so long as they are there trying to make the world a better place. If German Jack Fordern were known for any partic...

  In all the experience I’ve gained to this date, I have the proud and bless’d assurance of being from the state Which has been owned throughout its history by Mexico, France, and Spain. The 3 flags bringing the total to 6 can easily be named. 180 or 90 brave and strong took on Santa Anna at the Alamo, But we became a sovereign nation with victory at San Jacinto. A true blue, Lone Star Texas will tell anyone, with pride, Texas  annexed the  United States , December 1845. In a little less than another generation, Texas joined 10 other states to form a Confederate nation. There are few fond recollections from those years of history, Led by President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Age of the Outlaw rose from Reconstruction days, And many came from Texas to live that evil way. There came John Wesley Hardin, and a fellow named Sam Bass, Who both met assassins’ bullets which would lay them under grass. In the years since the reunion of the States with Texas soil, W...

  People came to Texas from all over the United States, and all over The Earth.     When they carved “GTT” on the door of their homes and were Gone To Texas, they brought their guns along with them.  Why were they GTT?  Many of them had nowhere else to go.  The fact of the matter is that our greatest Texas heroes were ejected from their previous lives for various reasons.  The newly opened colonization of Texas was a great place to commence anew.     They brought along their firearms, because the country was wild and unknown.     The opportunity to disappear and start over was not without mystery of what was waiting for them here. Texas was part of the Mexican state Coahuila y Texas.  The government of México operated under The Mexican Constitution of 1830, which actually was not that bad.  Mexican El Presidente and Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna did not like the constitution, though, so he tossed it out. ...

 My dad is a dentist. He is very knowledgeable about everything in the area of science and medicine, coming from a family of health care professionals as we do. In keeping with the idea that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, rest assured that a great deal of knowledge can be a tremendous problem. This has proved to be true in the area of personal wellness awareness commonly referred to as “paranoid hypochondria”. In my family, we call it Gunsmoke Botulism. This is the story of how that came to be. A few years ago, I was talking to my “godsister” Clair about irrational fears, such as would be related to paranoid hypochondria. Clair is a few years older than I am, and normally a source of great conversational wisdom. She told me that, for as long as she can remember, she has had an irrational fear of contracting botulism. This is a food poisoning caused by a bacterium called botulinum growing on improperly sterilized canned meats and other preserved foods. When I asked her why...