Suspension Bridge in Waco

For the longest time I was not a fan of history. It seem to me to be a waste of time to learn about “water under the bridge.” It’s a long story, but in the past 20 -25 years of my life I’ve done a 180 degree turn on my perspective of history and so I’m making up for lost time. I read about history and I love to visit places of some historical event. One of my epiphanies some years ago is that many of our modern roads and highways lay on top of historical paths. For instance, a main artery for the famous, post Civil War era cattle drives was right where interstate 35 comes up from Austin and into Oklahoma.

The bridge in this photo was built in 1870 for the explicit purpose of getting cattle safely over the Brazos River in Waco, TX. As I look at it and think about how many cattle and how many cowboys crossed over this bridge in the approximate 20 years of the cattle drives. I doubt many of those cowboys thought to themselves that people would be writing and reading books about them 150 years later. They would certainly not have expected movies and television shows depict their experience. Yet, they played a role in a historically significant time and event in American history.

I think, “What we do in this relatively short time we have on earth can have a significant impact upon others. Let’s do something good.”