DIGITAL - Daisy's Bluebonnets by Floyd Rumbaugh

From the Author
'I gathered all of the material I could find and started putting it together. From the very beginning, I heard a voice. Not crying out, you understand; a strong, confidant voice, asking but demanding at the same time. I continued putting the pieces together from a pile of information, words from different sources. They seemed cold and unfeeling ... "Just the facts Ma'am" kind of impersonal data. When I had assembled my cast and imagined a plot for the story it hit me. Daisy Miller Bradford was not just the old woman who owned the farm where the East Texas Oil Field was discovered; she was a baby, a new generation birthed into a great family who loved and cherished her. A little girl with a wonderful smile, big blue eyes, and curly black hair. An intelligent woman with feelings and love to give. She wasn't the encyclopedic, magazine article printed word I had collected from my research. She was more than a character in a book. So, to me, it was no longer what she was . but who. It was then that the story became personal. I was talking to Daisy, or rather she was talking to me. I went to my easel and stared at a blank canvas. I am ever bit of an amateur landscape artist but I enjoy my work with oil paints. I saw the roses Daisy loved but the wildflowers that would have grown on any East Texas farm were framed in my mind. That is where I got the idea for Daisy's Bluebonnets; the plot thickened. I wanted to separate her from the oil field and describe her as an attractive young woman living her life in a small Texas community without the world watching. Daisy was the Scotts-Irish who left Ireland to escape injustice, the Pennsylvania strong that stood up to oppression and gathered an army to fight for Independence. She was the people who fought and died at an Indian massacre in South Carolina, the populace that was chosen to the courts of the land, and the pioneers of Texas who carved a home out of a land so big it dwarfed the other states of the Union. Yes, she was all those things that combined to make her who she was ... a one-of-a-kind, human being, strong and proud, she was her Mother and Father's pride and joy, and every man's dream. As reported by friends, family, newspapers, and magazine articles; she was a lovable, witty, stubborn, blue-eyed, and curly-haired Texas beauty; not the old woman who owned the farm. The research and the history tell the story, I only created the tale. Read it, assimilate the facts, but lean back and see the characters as real flesh and blood people living, growing old, and passing their heritage forward to the next generation. Don't forget Daisy the little girl, the woman, and then ...only then the bigger-than-life character standing beside 'Dad Joiner' in Life Magazine.'