An Old Man Tries His Best

On Saturday, Nov. 9th, I offered my first demonstration of the season to visitors at the Castolon Historic District. At 1:30pm each Saturday for the remainder of the season, I'll show folks how to make an adobe brick in a 'program' that the Park publicizes as "Building Green."

The materials for this demonstration include horse manure I collect from the corral not far from our apartment. The earth I use for the 'mud brick' I dig from an old roadway, closed for more than a decade, that once led to a crossing to Santa Helena, Mexico. Since 2002 that informal crossing has been closed and any violation is closely monitored by resident Border Patrol agents. In the fall of 2008, our first season in the Park, that old road was covered with several feet of silt from a devastating flood. The clay silt is now my source for the mud I need to make adobe.

The word 'adobe' has been basically recognizable in a number of languages for the better part of 4,000 years. An ancient Egyptian language when translated into a later Coptic word is 'tobe.' That word was taken into Arabic to become 'al tub,' meaning 'mud brick.' Probably during the Moorish period in early Spanish history, 'al tub' became 'adobe' and so we have known it ever since.

When the Hebrew Scriptures tell us that Moses and his people were forced to make bricks without straw, it probably means that they were required to harvest the grass-like binder using their own resources rather than the Pharoah's troops collecting it for them. It is unlikely that they could have made mud bricks without any kind of plant binder. The straw, grass, fiber assists in the uniform drying of the bricks; without the straw, the bricks would have dried so that they cracked.

"Building Green" is a good description of the process of making and using sun-baked bricks because the materials are easily at hand and really are a means of recycling what is not difficult to obtain. Clay, sand, plant fiber and water are all one needs to build structures that can last for thousands of years, or if neglected will wash back into the earth in a lifetime. So long as an adobe, sun-baked brick building is roofed properly and plastered/stuccoed on the outside of its external walls to resist the occasional rain of its arid desert context, the structure will last almost forever. In 2003, a public building in Iran made from sun-baked bricks, suffered extensive damage from an earthquake; it had served the public for 2,500 years before the quake brought it down.

Here in Big Bend, the oldest building is the 'Alvino House,' named for its resident from 1918 until 1958, Alvino Ybarra, who, with his wife Teofila Luna, raised a number of children in the adobe house originally built in 1901. Alvino Ybarra was the operator of the steam-driven irrigation pump used to provide water for the large farm operated here at Castolon by Anglo rancher, Wayne Cartledge. The 'Alvino House' was restored and rehabilitated in the 1990s by expert adobe masons from across the Rio Grande from the village of Santa Helena, Mexico. These Mexican neighbors and volunteers from across the tiny village, gave their time and skills to restore an historic part of Big Bend National Park. A decade later, they and their fellow-villagers were no longer welcome to cross the Rio Grande where they had for more than a century because of our need for Homeland Security.

Jane watched from the porch of the Visitor Center as I explained the process of mud brick making to the handful of visitors who had gathered at the appointed time in the Visitor Center parking lot. Quipping as I went that I had learned my trade of mixing horse poop and mud by being a preacher for forty years, I dumped in the gallon bucket of horse apples, stirring them into a gallon or so of water in the wheelbarrow to break up the clumps. Then I hefted shovelfuls of the clay silt I had earlier brought in the large tub in the back of the Fire Blue Ford F-150. When I thought the mixture had about the right balance, I began shoving and retrieving the masonry hoe, with the broad blade and two holes, through the thick mud.

Using muscles I had forgotten were in my arms and shoulders, I shoved and drew the hoe back and forth. Sweat began to dampen by forehead and I thought, "I don't remember this being this difficult last year." My narrative began to come between the labored breaths and soon Jane was looking from the porch as though she expected me to collapse red-faced and exhausted from the effort. Not one to admit being unfit, out of shape and certainly not willing to look like a feeble old man, I shoved and breathed, barely able to say the word 'adobe' in a single breath.

Finally, the 'mortar' was the consistency of bisquit dough and I shoveled it into the mold. Unable then to bend over and pull the mold off the slab of mud, I enlisted another volunteer, Bill Marvin, who with his wife, Patty, had come to observe my demonstration. Together we lifted the mold and there on the pebbly gravel of the parking lot was the first of this year's abode bricks.

I find myself panting as I write this, in anticipation of another dozen breathless Saturdays.