Norma Schreiner’s memoir, "Eight Miles from the Front Gate: My Life on the Y.O. Ranch with Charles Schreiner III," is a romp through Texas history, ranching lore, and the antics and accomplishments of the late Texas Historical Foundation board member herself. Sometimes self-styled as Norma Inman Cude Schreiner Schmelling (“after marrying her third or fourth husband, depending on how you counted them”), Norma described her story as a cross between Gone with the Wind and Giant, with a touch of Citizen Kane. That description fits.
Through the prism of her years as Mrs. Charles Schreiner III, Norma’s life unfolds as if she were destined from childhood to become chatelaine of the legendary Y.O. Ranch in the Texas Hill Country. Along the way, she guides the reader through the storied Schreiner dynasty, from the Alsatian patriarch’s arrival in Indianola and his death within weeks, to his 14-year-old son’s rise as Captain Charles Schreiner—one of the state’s most prominent financiers, businessmen, and philanthropists.
We witness “Charlie 3” carrying on that legacy by founding the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America, establishing one of the first private herds of the nearly extinct longhorn breed (Norma had her own herd as well), and promoting the Association with a trail drive from San Antonio to Dodge City, Kansas, commemorating the centennial of the Chisholm Trail. Charlie even arranged a surprise reenactment of an Indian attack staged by the Quanah Sheriff’s Posse.
Norma often possessed a Forrest Gump–like ability to appear at the right place at the right time. Fourteen years before earning what she jokingly called her “PhD in longhorns” from Charlie, a Texas Ranger threatened to arrest her for cattle rustling. Her high school boyfriend—then at Texas A&M—had phoned in the middle of the night about his 1963 kidnapping of Bevo, the University of Texas longhorn steer mascot, and word got out.
Years later, Norma appears in the Texas Capitol to work on political campaign research, having previously served as the Texas lobbyist for the Equal Rights Amendment. It was there that Representative Jim Nugent summoned her to his office to introduce her to Charlie 3. During their courtship, we overhear pillow talk at the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio, where they discuss—of all things—the descent of the longhorn from cattle brought to Mexico by the Spaniards. At the Moody Ranch, while wandering through rooms filled with antiques and books bearing the bookplates of generations of Moodys, she reflects, “Like everything I did with Charlie, I felt immersed in Texas history, part of a sweeping narrative with people and places I’d read about in books.”
Eight Miles from the Front Gate is written in the style of a novel, with dialogue worthy of a screenplay and a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. Norma teases the reader with lines such as: “Amazed at Charlie’s audacity, I put down the phone. What made him think I wouldn’t take umbrage at such a proposal? Many women would, but if I accepted his invitation, it wouldn’t be the first time I ran off with a man I didn’t know.”
Norma died last August, just before the book’s release by Texas A&M Press, but she left behind this precious record of a life well lived. After her years on the ranch, she earned a law degree and held a C-suite position at a Fortune 500 company. In her final years, she fulfilled lifelong dreams: crossing Drake Passage, watching snow monkeys bask in hot springs, trekking across the Mongolian steppes on horseback, hiking into the forests of Uganda and Rwanda to see mountain gorillas, and meeting the love of her life.
The Y.O. Ranch, it turns out, was only a prelude.
by Cynthia Toles
Eight Miles from the Front Gate: My Life on the Y.O. Ranch with Charles Schreiner III
Texas A&M Press, Nancy and Ted Paup Ranching Heritage Series
