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“G.L. Brown was born in Brown County near Brownwood in 1861. His earliest associations were with ranch life, and he was a cowboy almost as soon as he could ride a horse. In 1879, he and his brother Cabe established headquarters with a bunch of cattle near the sources of the Concho River, in what are now Mitchell and Sterling (then unorganized),” reads an entry in the book, A History of Central and Western Texas, edited by Buckley B. Paddock.

It’s interesting how many old time stories contain teenagers and sometimes younger children regularly working. They went on roundups, cattle drives and worked as hands around ranches. It wasn’t unusual for a 12-year-old to hire on as a cowboy back in the day. I did a story a while back on a kid that drove hogs to Fort Worth at the age of 11. To add to that line of thinking, I sometimes wonder if part of the problem our society has with teenagers today involves too many restrictions and not enough responsibility. I remember a conversation I had with a Mr. Holt of Coleman a few years back. Not sure how old he was then, probably in his late 80s. He has since passed away.

Mr. Holt told me that when he was 10 or 11 years old, his father died. He had a bunch of younger siblings, and the family had no money, so he went out to get a job. He ended up in California, working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, sending money back home to his mom. Mr. Holt worked his whole life, he said. It never occurred to him not to work. I remember him gesturing out at the town when he said that, adding, “The kids need to work.”

It couldn’t happen though. We wouldn’t let an 11-year-old ride the bus to California alone, much less live and work there by himself. I’m not suggesting we do, as the world has changed in some respects, but maybe there’s more middle ground between the two ways of living than what we generally do now. Kids respond to responsibility. They want and need it, especially teenagers.

Henry Petty, in a 1938 US WPA interview entitled Range Lore, told how he started out cowboying for ranchers at a young age. “I helped make my first cattle drive when only twelve years of age. My father’s outfit drove a herd of cattle from Bell County to Brady in 1886 and took me along. It wasn’t a long drive, and we didn’t have any serious trouble, but I thought it was a big trip. I can remember I had a grand time, but I sure got tired, and sometimes scared. The riders would tell ghost or Indian stories around the fire every night and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a band of Indian warriors or some of their dead victims make an attack on us at any time.”

“When I was about fifteen” Petty said, “I went to work for my grandmother’s (S 3bars – Harriet Clements) ranch in Brown County. She had a pretty big outfit, and kept a lot of horses. The country was for the most part open range then; however, they were beginning to fence some of it… I worked for my father-in-law, J. M. Franks, for some time. His ranch was on the line of Coryell and Bosque Counties. I practically lived in the saddle. I remember one drive we made from Coryell to a point south, and west. We crossed the Colorado River at Red Bluff crossing, and we were nearly a month making the drive. The cattle were thin, and we grazed them along as we went. It rained a lot on us and the Colorado and other streams got up, the Colorado staying up for many days. When it finally ran down enough that we could swim across, we carried the cattle across a few at a time.”

I like these sorts of stories because they make me think. Mr. Holt turned out pretty well, for all he went through at such a young age. Mr. Petty did well too. When I see kids looking for trouble, glued to their cell phones and full of anxiety, I wonder if we’ve taken the whole safety and protection thing too far in the other direction. Entertainment doesn’t give a lasting sense of purpose and achievement. Only work can do that. Life is risky, no matter which way you go. Building responsibility into a teen’s life is risky–they might fail, they might run into trouble, but not allowing kids to be responsible, to learn independence and how the world works leads to boredom. That is risky too.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com