My Heritage, the Next Page

The family ranch

Returning to the Treasure  Valley, I am lost in thoughts of West Texas, and a different attitude.  There are many feelings, but not many words come to mind to describe it.  My logical side says I am just having an identity crisis (something I have had practically all my life) but my instincts tell me that I have come home.   I have just been made a managing partner in my birth family’s large land corporation.  The Lord has begun a new page in my life and it seems very familiar, yet totally foreign!

Having grown up in the Bay Area of California, West Texas, where I found my birth family,  seemed like a foreign country.  In the small rural town where they live, there is a much stronger sense of community and heritage.  There is a definite sense of independence in these people, but a sense of dependence as well.  They depend on God and family in a way that is different from Californians.  They are Texans, and then they are Holmans, and proud of it.   The history in the area seems to revolve around who owned what land. Their lifestyle is dependant on what their mineral rights are and how the oil business is doing.  The economy in West Texas follows its own rules.  As my aunt put it, their success or failure is a combination of hard work, and ingenuity, but mainly Providence.  What a contrast to California.

Since I was a child, and visited my adoptive grandparents in a small town in Illinois, I have wanted to live in a small community.  I guess that is what attracted me to Idaho which seems to be the best of both worlds.  We have the smaller population which makes for a stronger sense of community.  Meeting people who have lived there for several generations makes me feel that sense of the Treasure Valley’s heritage.  Idaho has been the small town atmosphere that I loved in Illinois.

Texas, however, has a personality that fits me.  It really does feel like home.  The tough hard working people who are willing to take risks are right up my alley.  I have always been the wild child, the bull in the china shop, but I could get the job done!  I have now met people who are like me!  The life long identity search is coming to an end.

The Next Generation

I have found my gene pool and they are Texans who descended from a Texas Ranger who was not only one of the largest land owners in Texas, and president of the Cattleman’s Association, but he also leaves a spiritual heritage.  He was a man that was respected and I am proud to be named one of his descendants.  From he and his wife came a daughter who married another man who also build a heritage for his family, and from them came another daughter who married another man, my papa who built on their heritage.  I have an aunt and uncle who have carried the load for their generation and now my generation is stepping up to the plate to carry on this great tradition.   I only hope that we can be as hard working and diligent as they have been.  We have been entrusted with more than a land company, we have been entrusted with a heritage.  May God help us to pass it all down to the next generation – the business, the history, and the spiritual heritage they have left us.