illphated
By illphated
Published on illphated.com
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Clara Mae didn’t borrow trouble, and she didn’t lend herself out to fools.
Her land — fifty dusty acres of thorny brush and silence — sat on the far edge of Rio Sombra County. Most passed it by, thinking it barren. But Clara knew different. Her daddy used to say, “The desert don’t give much, but what it does give is yours, if you earn it.” And Clara earned it every single sunrise, her hands calloused and her boots stained with the truth of it.
She had green eyes sharp as glass, blonde curls stuffed under a battered Stetson, and a smile rarer than rainfall. When she rode into town once a month, folks watched — not because she was beautiful, but because she carried herself like she owned something no one could buy.
One summer, when the heat cracked paint and cattle wandered off looking for ghosts of water, a slick stranger named Maddox arrived. Oil man. City boots. Smelled like whiskey and contracts. He flashed his money like teeth and promised to “help her modernize.” Said her land could make her rich if she just let go of the old ways. Maybe sell a few acres. Just lean on him a little.
Clara looked at him like a scorpion in her boot.
The next morning, she painted a sign and planted it right at the edge of her land where the dirt met the road.
DON’T LEAN ON ME.
Then she saddled her mare and rode straight to the county office to file paperwork blocking every access road to her lot from being paved over or “accidentally” re-zoned.
Maddox didn’t last long after that. He left town muttering something about “crazy cowgirls and cactus land.”
Years passed. A wind farm sprung up ten miles north. Some said Clara could’ve made millions if she’d sold. She didn’t care. She had her garden, her goats, her guns, and her grit.
And when her time came, they found her sitting on the porch, old hat in her lap, boots crossed, smile on her lips like she knew something even the stars didn’t.
They say the wind never quite blows the same across Clara Mae’s ranch. It respects her boundaries.
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Moral:
There’s power in the dirt you bleed into. Don’t trade your roots for someone else’s idea of worth. And never — not ever — lean on someone offering to carry what you already hold just fine.
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More tales of grit, defiance, and staying rooted at
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