SOCIALIFE
COMMUNITY HISTORY
Carreta at the Museum of South Texas History By Tom Fort, Curator of Exhibits
Mr. and Mrs. Hale Schaleben
The wooden carreta be buey, or oxcart, was offered to the then Hidalgo County Historical Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Hale Schaleben, of Edinburg and the Tres Corrales Ranch, around 1980 or 1981. The Schalebens were long-time supporters of the museum, and most interested in its growth. Hale Schaleben’s parents were early residents of Edinburg. He himself was an attorney as well as a rancher. He kept longhorn cattle on the Tres Corrales. Both Hale and his wife Ray were up in years by 1981. Both have long since passed on. Around 1981 Ray contacted the
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museum and asked if the museum wanted an old oxcart that they had at the ranch. Hale had bought it years earlier from an antiques dealer for their grandkids to play on. By around 1980 the kids were growing up, and the Schalebens thought the museum would be a better home for the carreta, since it was sitting outside in the elements. Museum staff went out to the ranch and looked at the cart and decided that it would be a great object for an exhibit about early ranch life. Subsequently, Hale and one or more of his ranch hands arrived with a trailer with the carreta parts on it. To display the oxcart, museum staff modified the Early Ranch Life exhibit area, widening the low platform and re-arranging some of the artifacts to accommodate the cart’s 16foot long tongue or pole. The cart’s “chassis,”with the pole, side frames
and their cross-pieces, plus the axle and wheels, was the only original portion when Hale bought it. He had his ranch carpenter make the missing parts – the upright posts and the horizontal rails connecting them. When it was all re-assembled the museum had one of the rarest objects in any Texas or other state’s museums. How rare? Before 1974, word had gone around the grapevine among borderlands museums that an original Mexican oxcart of the old solid-wheel type was for sale in McAllen, Texas. Evidently quite a few museums were interested. However, by the time another museum had called to inquire, the cart had been sold to a local rancher. Carretas like that simply weren’t available any longer. Their survival rates no doubt were pretty low. Probably most of them were used until they wore out, and finally became firewood after more modern wagons and later trucks became available.
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