Part 1 of 7

 
Chapter 1
Texas. Y'all know that everything's bigger in Texas even if we hardly ever say y'all around here any more; too sophisticated, I guess. One thing for sure: Texas is big. It takes two long days to cross it from east to west without gathering a speeding ticket or two. Hell, the King ranch at 825,000 acres is bigger than the State of Rhode Island at 775,900 acres.

So OK, you can sling numbers like that around all day and still not get the feel of just how big the place is. If you grow up on a ranch (not anywhere as big as the King Ranch, believe me!) you get to feel in your bones just how big the place is. Like there's nothing to be seen for miles and miles but scrub land and scrubby trees, with the exception of the odd oil well, horse, cow, goat, deer, sheep or windmill.

Well, actually you can see some solar arrays instead of windmills these days, modern technology is everywhere. In the part of Texas where our story takes place there will be a few modern-day cowpokes and of course some of the ubiquitous dirty white diesel pickup trucks if you happen to be near the ranch house or one of the small settlements that dot the landscape at absurdly distant intervals.

If you're from up North, you may wonder just what we grow on all those acres. The answer is - usually nothing. Those acres are mostly good for pasture, a few inches of soil over a whole lot of limestone. Houses down here don't have basements - they sit on the limestone and you never have to worry about the foundations sinking.

Then there's the problem of water. In much of the state there is hardly any rain - we're talking semi-desert here. In the pastureland there is more water, but it tends to come in torrents in the spring and irregularly the rest of the year. You can grow grass, or maybe hay if you're in the right area, but the crops a Northern farmer plants just don't work down here.

Thus the horses, cows, goats, deer and sheep, which can thrive on grass. It takes a lot of acres to grow enough grass to feed them, thus the big ranches with the animals wandering around munching all day.

But it's not as easy as letting the critters go and wander, they have a tendency to wipe out an area if they stay too long, so someone has to keep track of them and move them to different pastures every so often. You have to drill wells and put up windmills to pump water out of the ground so they can drink. There are another million or so things you have to do to be sure that expensive calf stays alive and healthy to grow up so you can take to market when the time comes. I'm sure you probably don't want that much detail, and that's not what this story is about.

No, this is the story of the Magnificent Seven, but not the scruffy outlaws of the old movie. This Magnificent Seven are the children of the Jordan family, who grew up on one of these family ranches. There are still a few that haven't been taken over by agribusiness, at least not yet.

As is the ideal for a multi-generational family ranch, Heather and Ben Jordan had run the place while raising their family. Several of their children had migrated to the city, but son Travis was the one who loved the land and took over when disaster struck.

Under normal conditions, life on a working ranch can have it's hazards. When a ton worth of cow decides to zig when you were thinking it would zag, there is little doubt as to whether the cowboy or the cow will come out ahead. Cowboys still fall off horses or tumble off ATVs when traversing the dusty plains. Machinery acts up, trucks go off the road, there are plenty of things that can hurt a hand on a ranch.

Heather and Ben Jordan would have been happy to continue running the ranch with the help of their son until Ben was old and gray, but Ben's horse found a hole in the ground while he was moving along at a fair clip and Ben went flying. Fortunately, he was with a group, but when he hit he crushed his hip and broke his leg, they had to medevac him out by helicopter and he spent weeks in the hospital and months in rehab.

Ben was eventually able to walk again, but only for short distances before it just plain hurt too much. A practical man he started using a wheelchair to get around outside his home, but he was never going to be riding the range and poking his cows again.

The old family farmhouse was built and rebuilt many times over the years, but it had never been designed to cope with a wheelchair. With some reluctance, Heather and Ben moved to a nearby town (as Texas distances go) and lived in an accessible apartment.

There were times when Ben railed at the lousy hand life had dealt him, but he continued to cope with hardship in town just as he had on the ranch, building a new life for himself and his wife. Thus, Travis and family took over running the ranch far earlier than anyone expected, but he had been training all his life for the job and he did it well.

As you might imagine, when you live in the middle of nowhere and the weather is lousy, you hunker down in the old family home and make your own entertainment. These days electricity, phones, Satellite TV and Internet make for far more options than in the past, but there is one age-old entertainment that never palls.

Thus Ruth and Travis Jordan produced a new family member with some regularity after entertaining themselves quite enthusiastically. In fact, for the first six productions they had to come up with a female name to use for the Christening at the local little white church house.

Now Ruth and Travis weren't all that religious, but attendance was rather expected by the community and what the heck? There wasn't much else to do on Sunday morning and it gave them a chance to see someone besides the ranch hands. Thus we have Ramona, Raina, Roslyn, Roxy, Rhoda and Rita.

As fate would have it, this pattern didn't hold when number seven made his appearance. There was some discussion as to whether his name should start with his father's 'T' to signify his male nature or with 'R' to keep with the established pattern. If you've ever been involved in selecting a name for a baby, you'll know just how delicate the negotiations can be, especially when the potential siblings wanted some input in the whole process.

Strangely enough, since Travis was an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt, the great Western adventurer and president, he prevailed and the son was to be known as Roosevelt Andrew. Teddy came a close second, but the agitation for an 'R' name was such that Travis gave in gracefully.

Now most people have at least one friend with a ridiculous nickname that resulted when some small child butchered their given name. Naturally, the smaller siblings had a hard time with Roosevelt and it didn't take long for the child to become 'Little Roosie.' Unfortunately, on the Sunday when Little Roosie was to be christened, there was a substitute preacher who had never met the Jordan family.

Pastor Henry Konowalski was a sweet old gentleman retired from active preaching who would step in on occasion when he was needed. To further the confusion that morning, Pastor Henry was a bit hard of hearing, and when the time came he blessed Little Rosie and used female pronouns throughout the ceremony.

Since he was hard of hearing, he failed to notice the giggles from the six siblings and the amused parents as they realized what had happened. The beautiful family christening gown, passed down along the family for several generations, furthered the impression of a little girl at the font.

From that day forward, Roosevelt Andrew Jordan became known as Rosie Ann to all and sundry.
 

Chapter 2
The sudden change in name mattered not a jot to the former Little Roosie. He just lay there in the time-honored tradition of babies everywhere and drooled, ate and filled his diapers. That his hand-me-down onesies were pink and had legends like 'Grandpa's Little Angel' or 'Daddy's Little Girl' didn't impress Rosie Ann in the slightest. With six sisters generating hand-me-downs it was inevitable that the infant would be wearing his sister's clothes.

As time passed, Rosie Ann became mobile, learned to talk and became a person in his own right instead of a baby and plaything for his sisters. He still spent much of his time wearing his sister's hand-me-downs, but on a working ranch we aren't talking gingham dresses or fancy frocks. No, for everyday use the women wore practical outfits like jeans, overalls and boots or sneakers. Mucking out the horses, feeding the goats and chickens or weeding the garden were not dress-up jobs.

Facing a ninety minute school bus ride, Ruth and Travis opted to home-school their children, along with the two girls, Cindy and Beth, belonging to the ranch foreman Jerry & Gabrielle Corwin. It certainly helped that both Ruth and Gabby had been a middle school teachers before they married.

Jerry's job was supervising the outdoor work and Gabby was a combination nanny, cook, maid and gofer helping Ruth with the domestic side of things. They lived in a neat little cottage next to the main house, beside the bunkhouse for the ranch hands. Gabby often referred to herself as the ranch's 'auxiliary wife', and with nine children to clothe and educate, it took two women to keep the house running.

Thus, as Rosie Ann grew up, he never really appreciated that girls and boys were supposed to wear different clothes. The only time it mattered was when the family went to church or some social event. Then the girls were dressed in their prettiest dresses, had their hair brushed and wore shiny shoes.

The trouble started somewhere around Rosie Ann's second birthday, when he became aware of the difference when they went out. That's when his other grandparents from New York sent him one of those disgustingly cute little suits that are inflicted on small boys in order to indoctrinate them into the drab clothing and neckties required of the male of the species.

He couldn't put such concepts into words at that tender age, but Rosie Ann knew he was being singled out and he didn't like it. He had played dress-up with is sisters - usually assigned the role of a doll to be dressed up - and was comfortable in the cute little dresses they all wore. He couldn't understand why he was jammed into this suit while his sisters got to wear those pretty dresses.

When a two-year-old doesn't understand something he is liable to pitch a fit, and pitch he did. That first time Ruth and Travis figured the kid would get over it and packed the family up in the van and went off to church.

Problem was, Rosie Ann didn't get over it. He was a pain in the ass the entire morning. Such a pain that Ruth had to remove him from the service and desperately try to keep him quiet until the preacher ran out of preaching. The entire family was frazzled by the time they returned home.

Once the suit was removed, their sweet child returned to the fold and peace reigned once more. Well, as much peace as such a large family was able to produce, anyway.

The following Sunday Rosie Ann was not to be found. One look at that suit and he took off faster than the proverbial speeding bullet, and was just as hard to catch. There are a lot of good places for a two-year-old to hide on a ranch, so finding a good hiding place wasn't all that hard. Trouble was, his sisters had all found those places before him, so it didn't take too long to recover him. At that point Ruth made an executive decision and let Rosie Ann wear one of the hand-me-down dresses and peace was restored.

Travis simply shook his head and realized that you have to pick your battles and this one wasn't one he wasn't going to win. Thus, The Magnificent Seven made their first formal appearance as seven sisters that morning and the die was cast.
 

Chapter 3
There are a certain class of people in this world that are wont to complain. It doesn't matter much what they are complaining about, as long as they are complaining. In fact there are those who have raised complaining to a high art. Old men in rockers on the Post Office porch, old women quilting in the church basement, teenagers whining about how life - or their parents - are just so unfair! When they really get going you practically expect to see a line of judges holding up numbered cards to rate the performance.

If complaining were an Olympic sport, that might hold true. If so, then 'things weren't like that in my day' would be part of the compulsory routines, just like they have in ice skating. In my day we walked ten miles to school, uphill both ways! or In my day we made our own fun, we didn't have this dang-fool bleepy-bloopy electronic folderol all over the place! In the case of a tie, In my day you could tell the boys from the girls! would be a reliable subject, with sub-classes of hair length, skirt length, trousers on women and metal junk poking out of the skin in strange places.

By the time Rosie Ann was five, even a gold-medal level complainer would have been hard put to pick out which of the Magnificent Seven had been born with a Y chromosome. As modern parents, Ruth and Travis tried not to enforce the antiquated gender roles. The girls were just as happy to sit in the middle of the floor with a truck going 'vroom! vroom!' as they were to hold a tea party.

Naturally, all the children were doing the various chores around the ranch and dressed accordingly, but with six girls the balance was swung way toward the feminine side no matter what happened. Without a doubt, everyone - most emphatically Rosie Ann - knew she was a girl and there was no need to argue about it.

It took some soul-searching on the part of Ruth and Travis to accept that this was the case, and even more soul-searching on the part of grandparents Heather & Ben. An abundance of innate caution prevented Rosie Ann's parents from discussing the subject with Pastor Tim at that little white church house, and professional counselors were a very long drive away from the ranch in the country.

That satellite link to the Internet proved worth the sometimes exorbitant rates, not only for school work but for information on just what to do about a small boy who thought he was a girl.

They came to realize that, in another age, their six daughters would have been thought unnatural and mannish because thy wore trousers, rode horses astride, worked on the ranch with the 'hired help', did physical labor and failed to feint when a mouse got into the house. How does this differ from a son who wants to wear a dress but does all the same things that his (her?) sisters do?

Grandpa scratched his head and philosophized, Grandma shook her head and pontificated, Mom and Dad held their heads and agonized and the Magnificent Seven just got on with being ranch kids. The family gradually came to realize that whatever was happening, it was working well and everyone was happy. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, a common Texas philosophy, became the family philosophy as well and was accepted by the other people that made the ranch run.

If the kid wanted to wear a dress like her sisters then let the kid wear a dress. Let's not get excited until she's older and we have to worry about puberty.