Clemens Frederick Joseph Finger

Clemens Frederick Joseph Finger, was born April 3, 1898, the eldest child of Louis Joseph Finger (1870-1947) and Caroline Amelia Rothe (1876-1936). He was born at the family ranch five miles south of D’Hanis near the Parker Creek. Their story also appears in this book.

When he was old enough to start school he stayed with a Finger uncle in town (Old D'Hanis) in order to attend St. Anthony School. Three years later his parents bought land on old Highway 90 (now County Road 5216) and the family moved to town.

Clemens spoke only German at the time and learned English in school. Later in life also became fluent in Spanish.

He remained a lifelong bachelor, farming and ranching on his inherited land south of D’Hanis, and acquiring an additional 400 acres about four miles farther south, both on Deer Creek Road (County Road 5232). He also bought and sold various properties in the area. It was facetiously said that “Clem probably owned half of D’Hanis at one time or another”.

For several years in his fifties he worked for the Texas Employment Commission in San Antonio, recruiting Mexican and Mexican-American farm workers to join work crews to harvest crops in northern states. In his middle years he enjoyed camaraderie with his nephews during their high school years, taking them on fishing and sight-seeing trips to the coast and around Texas.

In the latter half of his life he enjoyed traveling to Mexico, usually visiting friends he had made in San Luis, Potosi. He always traveled by bus, going “segunda clase”, riding with the people he enjoyed. On one occasion he became sick while in San Luis, bought an airline ticket and flew home. After that, his routine was to go down by bus, return by air. When asked why he did not fly down as well as return by air, he replied, “I do not know how to fly from here to there.”

Clemens loved the land and the critters that lived on it, much of this affection he seemed to have learned from his father. He recalled one day that after having received his first rifle he shot a bobcat. When he brought it home to show to “Pa,” Pa’s reply was, “Why did you kill it Clemens? You didn’t need to.” Another time, when driving past a field that had been neatly plowed in November he commented, “Pa never plowed in the winter. His fields did not look neat, but he left them like that so the wind wouldn’t blow the soil away.”

His reluctance to killing the critters that roamed the land was wide spread; in later years he put a sign on his fence, “Do not kill rattlesnakes”. The only animal that was not immune was the jackrabbit; he occasionally shot one for dinner. Not cottontails, just jackrabbits.

In spite of having opinions that often differed from popular views, he was a most non-confrontational person. In conversation he rarely disagreed and did not argue. If someone made a statement he might have disagreed with, even something outrageous, Clem’s response was a thoughtful and drawn out, “Well, you might be right.”

Clemens had an independence of mind that sparked him to do things that others would consider unfashionable. He loved a challenge, such as living for a year without a clock in his house or going swimming in the Seco Creek each day for a full year. He discovered while taking a bath in the Seco that horse flies did not tolerate the perfumed scent of Swan soap. After that, when he worked cattle he would carry a bar of Swan soap in his chaps pocket. When his gray horse (whom the horseflies swarmed over) got lathered up with sweat, he would rub the bar of Swan soap on the horse, to keep the flies away. He is today celebrated among his great grand nieces and nephews as the only cowboy in Texas to ride a perfumed horse, and a horse from which soap bubbles streamed as he rode across the plains.

He lived the latter 20 years o f his life in an apartment in Hondo, and died at age 97 on December 9, 1995, following a one-car auto accident near D’Hanis. He is buried in the family plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in D’Hanis. Without that auto accident, he might have been one of the very few to have lived in three centuries.

By James Reily Finger,

Joseph Michael Finger,

Patrick Joseph Ney