John Wayne pales in comparison to my daddy! Wayne’s characters were fantasy. They were just movie characters. Daddy, on the other hand, was a “real man”.
In Texas, where he once did road maintenance, someone said about him, “ If you want Buell to dig your drainage ditch, just make him mad! When he gets to your road, he’ll dig you a ditch that’s so deep you could drown in it.”
My painting represents a few of the stories of his life: his amigos, his women, his favorite foods, and some of his wonderful successes. There is not adequate space to picture the “battle on the highway”, when Daddy took away a man’s gun, while our family watched; nor the saga of the rodeo vendor who he punched when the man stood in front of us kids at the rodeo, down in old El Paso; nor the fight on our front lawn that the neighbor almost broke his neck getting out of the shower, so he wouldn’t miss the confrontation. It doesn’t show his coffee plantation. It does not include the hunting lodge, nor the now famous boot company that he started, nor the skateboard that he brought home (predicting its popularity, long before anyone had ever heard of a skate board).
It does include his children, and his first wife, our mom. It does show the unknown little barrel racer who flew off her runaway horse. Leaning against the fence, Daddy caught her. He probably saved her life because he did not flinch or move as the horse pounded toward him. It also includes his Cadillac with the full sized horse mounted on top. It shows him riding the bronco for seven jumps, for $50, when none of the younger cowboys could do it. It does show him driving his jeep with a keg of dynamite in it down a mountain. When the brakes went out his family that was also inside the jeep were praying Hail Marys. It does show him (symbolized by his empty chair) consoling my bereaved sister. He’s also there blowing up a mountain while I watched. So many wild stories! But, what I know of my daddy is that I love him and he loved us.
He was a sinner who had the selfish morals of God’s King David. Also, like David, who actually loved God, Buell was a man “after God’s own heart”. Perhaps his personal sins were impatience, willfulness and self-hatred. He had little tolerance for the sins of others. His heart resembled King David’s, who was indignant when he heard about the rich man who stole another man’s family pet and killed it. Though angry about other people’s sins, he neglected his own. Isn’t that like all of us? I know that Daddy bore good fruit. Although his times were troubled, his children and grandchildren are his Legacy. When he was a young man, his greatest strength was his faith. Always hopeful! He loved the Lord and he believed that anything was possible. Unfortunately, he never waited long enough, on the Lord, to realize his dreams! In the end, he rode away in his own blood. When I recall the tales of my dad’s life, as in Psalm 90, “a tale that is told,” I know that he was consumed by his own wrath. He took his own life, because he saw death as an escape from pain, his and ours. The gun was his solution. Like any real cowboy, “He lived by the gun and he died by the gun”. However, now he is with the Lord. He is dancing Texas style! AND, he is a great dancer! “The grass withers”. We all die, but the cry from the cross is “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.
