Tudor Road Awakes

Tudor Road Awakes..

Talking With Shorty Fox

By Jeff Clark

I’m out riding up Tudor Road with Shorty Fox. He’s eighty-seven-years young. Slowing down a little, he tells me, only going to three senior citizen dances a week now.

Tudor Road runs north and south through the tough Palo Pinto Mountains, in far eastern Eastland County. From the Howard Cemetery, north of Hogtown, take off due north though the Mountain, Tanner, Tudor and Marston Communities. Those long ago places are invisible to the untrained eye.

Up and down mountains, jaw-rattling bumpy corners, and after a rain, more than a few not-so-low water crossings. Lonely country.

Back in the old days, Tudor Road continued north, I think. Going somewhere as yet concealed. Wagon roads, like first family fence rows, always have a punch line.

The lost Tudor Road communities no longer boast as many now-grown school kids as I met over Alameda-Cheaney way. But its Palo Pinto Mountains are filled with unbelievable legends, secrets and ghosts. Hopefully, Tudor’s dearly-departed will be in a talkative mood someday soon.

We stop the truck at the Howard Cemetery. Shorty used to live behind this place, moved there in 1950. “Lots of folks think the cemetery’s deeded to the Howard Cemetery, but it’s not.” Shorty’s getting ready for a tale.

“I’ve got a copy of the abstract. It was deeded to the Jimerson Peak Community School. The road separated the graveyard from the school back then. The school sat right over there, on top of that southern part of the cemetery. Miss Wisdom gave the land back in 1887.”

There was never a Jimerson Peak school up ON Jameson Peak (n/k/a), best I can tell. Though I’d like to walk around up there, if anyone’s got a key to the gate.

“Do you remember the old school building?” I ask.

“Sure do.” It was a wood structure, framed or boxed, he’s not sure. Kids from all around walked in. The Howards lived north, right across the road that’s there now, related to those up in Cheaney, along the western rim of Cook Canyon.

Tudor Road swings west at the cemetery now, though Shorty says it used to continue on south toward Desdemona. Was an eighteen foot wagon road when he was a boy. I draw and sketch while he talks.

We pull away, heading north. Pass places that had one, then another owner. Tom Friday, Rufus Buckley, then a Hogg, a Grimshaw. I’m stopping the truck every time he says a name, writing it down, noting a landmark so I can map it later. Getting permission to enter gates is the hardest part of this work.

That old Hogg house, out by the statuesque red barn you can still see, burned to the ground one year. Neighbors tried to put it out, hoisted water one bucket at a time up onto the roof. One man jumped to safety near the end. The house, gone.

That fine old barn on the old Hogg place survived, faded red barn wood, stump-toe turned up wood shingles. A hay loft. A wind mill. Open shed sides like medieval flying buttresses. “Maybe there were two houses that burned there.” He tells me where to find the grandson.

There was an Uncle Doc Horne that lived in an old house on the left. Wesley Hammond took care of him. None of his kin still around, best he knows. Neither is the house. I know it’ll show itself again, down the road some day.

The Tidwells on the right had a big turkey hatchery. Sons and daughters and lots of clues. A good view of a landmark from this homestead. Ancient footsteps cross the back of this place, leading up the valley, I’ll bet. We pass a forest of now-vanished wood-timbered oil derricks from The Boom, one of which blew out, caught fire, provided blazing day-like light all night to read from, for miles, for days.

A Genoway strip of land lies behind one of the Fonville tracts. Kin to Earl Fonville, who once led my steps to the Mountain School. A good man, I think, a kind man, recently passed away. Shorty was there, in the old frame homestead, the night old Fate Fonville died. Fate was born answering to “Lafayette”, was one of the first in this country in 1887.

Fate’s daughter, maybe his granddaughter Addie made coffee for those sitting up with their Fonville patriarch that night. A houseful, knowing history was passing away, through that door behind the cook stove.

We moved north, caught the land Bill Greenhaw leased, decades before, for 75 cents an acre. Shorty starts telling me about his friend Hardy Tidwell, all their fun and adventures, some of which won’t be repeated here. Not yet.

We start going up in elevation, toward Rattlesnake Mountain. “This was state school land way back,” he tells me, pointing off to the right. Sixty-something acres that could starve four cows plum to death.”

My guide did some baling back in the 1950s and 60s. He rode his Case tractor, his hay baler, his hay conditioner one long journey up this road, topping out at fifteen miles an hour. His wife Almarie would pull the hay conditioner with their 1951 ¾ ton Ford pickup. A six cylinder. It took the better part of a morning to get where work could begin.

When the couple was done, was heading out, they’d start back up the big hill (called a mountain on my map). Almarie would floor that old truck, wheels grabbing hold, accelerator pressed hard to the floorboard the whole way, to get the truck and its load out of that deep draw, up the hill toward their place. Mr. Cullum, one of their clients, thought Mrs. Fox was one of the best drivers he’d ever seen. She worked the fields, rode horses, tended cattle, worked with her husband, from beginning to end.

His partner.

We roll up on the cutoff to the Davidson-Tanner Cemetery and coast to a stop. Uncle Peter Davidson, the famed pioneer who surveyed this Palo Pinto country and its Leon River cousin to the west from 1856 on, owned this land back then, moving down from his Indian-thick first roost between Strawn and Thurber. I can see an old box homestead from the road. Then the Gaileys to the left, then the right, then the left again.

Shorty baled for five men up this way. Most planted Haygrazer. Other old homeplaces taunt from my 1917 map, places we don’t see, that Shorty doesn’t remember.

Most of Shorty’s work was south of the Tudor Community, so relevant stories taper off as we move north. He’s telling me about cutting hay, good money, baling for 35 cents a bale as long as the sun stayed up. I filled up on $2.59 a gallon gas that morning in Weatherford.

Oh, Shorty used to love to coon hunt up and down these creek bottoms, as a younger man. His dogs would get into some powerful scraps with those varmints. He’s pointing off to the west, tall trees staring back from the riverbed. The hounds would bay in the moon light, running the trail, sometimes half a mile in front of their masters.

Moving down toward the creek bottom, mature Native pecan trees join us, plenty of water in the time before tanks and wells and terracing. “I can’t believe these old fence rows have gotten so overgrown,” he’s telling me.

We had heck seeing past the fence rows. I’ll need to bring him back, come winter. When the trees die back. Some of the city-fied places have gone over to mesquite, to fat cedar juniper tree-size bushes. Thick oaks here and there along the bottoms give a clue to what stood guard before.

Jack Blackwell was the county commissioner in these parts about that time. Kept this rugged road in good shape. Smoothed it down for a hard-working farm hand friend, pulling a Case tractor up and down this hard-scrabble road, looking for work.

We stopped at an old stone cellar standing sentinel in a field behind drooping barbed wire, five feet of stacked rock showing above the ground. A county courthouse-quality precast keystone over the door. Precise mortar joints. Chiseled brown rock. Fine craftsmanship like the Hamilton Cellar over in Cheaney. Like the Alameda cellars and walls that I suspect Shelby Stanfield laid out by hand, coming up from Paluxytown in the early 1860s. To race horses.

“You didn’t know I made a mason once, did ya?” Shorty’s got that story-telling smile on his face.

“No sir, Mr. Fox. I don’t believe I’ve heard that one.”

“Well, when I was a kid, I was one of them that laid the stone on those cabins, next to the city pool in Ranger.”

“The NYA cabins, across from the library?”

“Sure enough. That was around 1935. I got paid $16 a month.”

“A month? Was that good money, back then?”

“ANY money was good money back then.” He’s looking out the window. “I had to get a Social Security card, a Social Security number so they’d pay me. They withheld eight cents a check, for Social Security. Heck, that could’ve bought gas for my Model A Ford.”

Shorty worked for a man in Ranger named Rainwater. That name rings a bell with me, so I’ll stop that part of the story, for now, till I remember to whom the man is tied.

Dangerous work, writing.

Shorty worked up there laying rock with old Mutt Lee. A Ranger boy, I suspect. They mopped tar up on the roof. Drove in to Fort Worth for building supplies one time, pickup truck breaking down, fixing its water pump with a pair of pliers and two hand-fulls of patience. Old Man Rainwater gave em a hard time, about that, about other things too. Rings a bell, that old man…better move on.

We reach I-20, the north end of Tudor Road. “Where’d Tudor Road end, Shorty, back when you were a kid?”

“Ended at Highway 80. That’s all there was.” Turn left. Turn right. Straight ahead is a fence. Now.

We hop up on the interstate, turn south on Hwy. 16 making good time toward Desdemona. I point out the abandoned rail bed, leading once to Eastland County’s Thurber mine. I ask him about goats…my boy wants to raise a goat, which I’m all for, if he’ll eat the weeds in the pasture (the goat, not the boy).

I did a little trading with Mr. Fox when we got back to his place. Sold some saddles, some lead ropes. I tried to impress this man, a man I respect, calling one “worn out” saddle, by its kinder “broken in” label of love. One “old” piece of tack, transformed into “vintage”, using the lilting trading songs I’ve heard my friend sing to others, lured off the road to examine his siren’s wares.

Shorty smiled at my rookie verbal tactics, nodded his head politely, patted me on the back, then traded circles around me til the back of my truck was empty. Never go to a gun battle, my friends, without ammo in your gun.

Shorty and I like to talk ABOUT people, if you want to know the truth. When it’s just us. Would be gossip coming from anyone else, ‘cept we both know how important these tidbits can be.

Important that we stay informed.

We really got down on one old boy, not there to defend his lowly ways. A nugget rolled across the floor. “That man was too lazy to eat all he wanted,” Shorty told me, a gleam in his eye. I pulled over the truck. Wrote it down. Used it in a sentence, down in Stephenville, later that very day.

Tudor Road has started talking. I hope she has a lot to say.