- #FREE STAR WARS MOVIE AT MEMORIAL PARK COLORADO SPRINGS HOW TO#
- #FREE STAR WARS MOVIE AT MEMORIAL PARK COLORADO SPRINGS FULL#
In the Nueces Strip, Comanches riding on horseback could shoot as many as 20 arrows in the time it took to reload a gun. Often that was the literal time between life and death. That process could take up to a minute, longer in inclement weather. Until then, for centuries, handguns were practically all the same: a metal tube that used gunpowder to fire pellet-like projectiles. The same year Texas declared independence, Samuel Colt filed a patent for his weapon. Whatever semblance of control Texas gained of the Nueces Strip is largely a result of the Colt revolver. That general lawlessness there, mixed with the large and small animals - bears, mountain lions and wolves, and scorpions, tarantulas, snakes and mosquitoes - made the area almost uninhabitable. At times, with cholera in the water, even trying to quench your thirst in that unrelenting heat could be deadly. A place that seemingly alternated between floods and droughts. It was a place with no clear owner outside those with a stomach for violence strong enough to hold a claim. The land between those two bodies of water, about 150 miles wide and 400 miles long, became the Nueces Strip. If it even acknowledged Texas' independence, Mexico claimed the border was further north, at the Nueces River. And no place in Texas was as contested as the Nueces Strip.įor years after declaring its independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas said its southern border was the Rio Grande. The reality of who controlled the land was different from what any map said. The place where even if it was a part of Spain, or France, or Mexico, or its own republic, or the United States, or the Confederacy, its boundaries and laws were abstractions. Courtesy of the Mata familyįOR CENTURIES, the place that's now Texas was the ungovernable frontier.
#FREE STAR WARS MOVIE AT MEMORIAL PARK COLORADO SPRINGS HOW TO#
She later taught herself how to pitch, and was determined to make the Little League all-star team. Tess initially played second base because so did her older sister, Faith, and her favorite player, José Altuve. "She struck out the first batter she faced," he says. Further behind Jerry's back is the sugar maple tree.
#FREE STAR WARS MOVIE AT MEMORIAL PARK COLORADO SPRINGS FULL#
His back is to the chimney wall, now full of flowers, balloons and drawings. He holds the phone so I can see Tess pitching. He stands there, with salt-and-pepper stubble on his chin and puffiness under his eyes, wearing a gray T-shirt with the Bandits logo on it. He pulls out his phone from his front pocket and scrolls through videos looking for the right one. Talking about Tess while standing at the kitchen table, Jerry says he has video of the first time she pitched in a game for her team, the Bandits. She threw for hours, and after she was done, Jerry rubbed Biofreeze on her shoulder to comfort her. Each time, the ball broke off small pieces of bark. When that happened, even the neighbors in the Mata's quiet neighborhood in Uvalde heard the soft thumping of a softball hitting a tree. Sometimes the ball hit so perfectly, it almost bounced back to Tess. She kept going because few things felt better than hitting the target. Her goal was to make the Little League all-star team, and so Tess watched countless hours of YouTube on her iPad to learn the pitching mechanics. "She was always scared that nobody was going to pick her up," Veronica says.īut they couldn't tell Tess no she was too determined. Tess had been so timid when she first started school, she'd sneak her baby blanket into her backpack. When she told her parents she wanted to give it a try, her mother, Veronica, worried the position wasn't right for her baby girl, still just 10 years old. Tess might have hated the heat and the tree, but she kept throwing because, just like playing softball, pitching was her idea. "Hey!" her father, Jerry, yelled, "You're going to break the TV." It was back outside after that. And so she went inside, got on her knees and whipped a tennis ball against the chimney wall, until one of her pitches strayed. Do that routine a few times in the heat and humidity of South Texas, and you'd hate it, too. Every time she missed, she had to chase the ball and walk back to beneath the awning, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her sweaty nose before the next pitch. Tess hated practicing out here in the backyard. TESS MATA STOOD BENEATH the brown awning and threw a yellow softball at the white box that her father had spray-painted on a sugar maple tree. Tess Mata, 10, was a shining light in Uvalde, Texas, with an infectious love of dancing, softball, and most of all, family. A jersey signed by Houston Astros players hangs in the Mata family's living room.
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