“X” Marks The Spot!

If you ever travel on Highway 155 from atop the Bluff going toward Weimar and veer off at Cozy Corner onto FM 3233, you will travel about one and a half to two miles to a steel pipe gate as an entrance to a pasture. A few hundred yards further, you will see another and, after crossing Williams Creek Bridge, there is a third gate identical to the other two.

Now, a gate is a gate but on these three gates a large “XK” made of pipe sits on top of each gate. One might wonder “Why an XK?” Let me explain.

In the old days a rancher would have a branding iron made to mark or brand his personal herd of cows. If cows strayed from the ranch, they could be identified by the brand she or he was carrying on their rump.

The brands belonging to each rancher had to be recorded and put on file at the courthouse. When my grandfather, Jon Kana, decided on his brand, he harnessed his team of horses, got on his buggy, and went to La Grange courthouse to register it. He was late in getting there because the deadline to register was only a day or so away. He presented the clerk at the desk with his brand consisting of a “J” with the right side of a “K” attached to the stem of the “J”. It was a neat small package being a “J and K” all in one. But the clerk advised that this particular brand design had already been taken by another gentleman with the initials “JK”.

Rather disgruntled, Jon asked for a brand with a regular “JK,” but was told that it had also been taken. The clerk asked him to consider “JK inside a circle” But Jon, knowing a few things about branding cattle replied, “Absolutely not! If I put a circle around my large “JK”, it will burn too much of the hide turning the whole thing sore and after a while, the hide will peel off and fall to the ground and all I’ll have left is a blank circle! No thanks.”

Then my grandfather’s eyes lit up and he asked, “Well, how about “XK”? Don’t tell me that there is someone who has the first name starting with an “X”?

The clerk advised this one was available. So “XK” it is! To this day, we, the descendants, still mark our tools using a chisel or hack saw with an “XK” on metal hammers, hoes, crow bars, jack bars, etc.

If you happen to see an “XK” on top of a gate or etched into something, you will know how and why this came about.

I still am in possession of this 115-year-old branding iron.