Gregg Family, Cheaney, Eastland County, Texas

Downtain Cemetery

Dobbs Valley

Caddo, Texas

Amanda Henshaw Cofer...Family Reunited

The Last Blacks in Thurber

The Baby Died, Was Lost, Forgotten, Then Remembered, Taken Back By the Family…Loved, In Heaven and on Earth…You Gotta Read This Slowly, Like Walking, Remembering

We got there as quick as we could. Cold, rainy then windy, then a taste of light sleet coming in from the north. We’re standing alone, five of us, in a pasture not-enough-miles away from Ranger Camp Valley, from Rattlesnake Mountain’s old wagon trail that led us here.

That ended here.

Forever.

Strangers or family or it doesn’t really matter stand together under a tall swaying sprawling regal pecan tree, bigger around than five full grown men where its trunk meets the too-cold Eastland County sanded black dirt. Leaves fall flutter float into the sad sand muted muddy soil.

The posted letter we received back east was scrawled but specific. That letter kept secret more than it told. “Little Luther’s sick, not good, not good at all. The doctor, he rode two days and one night, out from over near to the Stephensville road.” Doc Evans, or another. We don’t remember. Can’t remember. Not from here. Listen and wait but can’t call the man’s name, riding hard as his horse would travel across that far long ago.

God bless him, whoever he was.

“Please to come to our aid. Our neighbors’ children too sick for them to help. Church closed till whatever this is passes from our community. Fear lives here, sleeping in our cabins, though sleep escapes all but a few. Please to the Lord save our little baby, so sick, crying, come quick, sad we are, our little boy, nothing to do but pray, though Lord forgive me, that didn’t work for the Blackwell’s babe, one place south, one place west. They lost him just before dawn, yesterday morning.”

The letter trails off to nothing, but gets posted. It takes too long, a century till we’re all gathered around the place. Uncomfortable. After all that late frontier family must of gone through, riding down, circling round, trying to figure it all out, what else could we have done? Will they be there when we arrive?

The day before we rode out for Texas, a second scribbled note joined the first. One line, scratched hard into the tattered scrap of paper:

“Little Luther’s gone.”

No signature.

The longest letter I’ve ever read.

This Texas frontier’s scattered with hundreds maybe thousands of lost and forgotten graves. Stories that led into stories that birthed later tales that nurtured and struggled and survived and finally became people or places you yourself probably know about. But we that still walk these woods, pass these places every day, not knowing, not hearing the triumphs and tragedies that came before. Healing us, the silence, or God knows we couldn’t take much more.

Baby Luther Davenport was born then shortly died back in 1901, his family’s log cabin or box-framed home yards from a towering now-invisible native Texas pecan that shades where his family laid their baby to his final rest. One still-here man’s grandmother told Luther’s tale within this man’s hearing when he was a boy, decades ago, and that boy, now that man, never forgot. Though I guess it was Luther’s parents’ tale just as much, back then.

We five, more than five, did indeed go looking for Luther, found him, the family gone, he too quiet but still out there. We did get a posse rounded up and out there finally in person and in spirit, marked his grave, thought deeply of Luther, of the lives of our hard-wrought Texas ancestors lived. We left quietly a little richer, Luther having been born and died beneath this sprawling witness hard-shell pecan. His short story so powerful, so emblematic of where Texas came from.

Leonard and Florence had seven more kids, several of which made it to adulthood then parenthood then into lives out past that brave pecan and out beyond that hard rocky place in that family’s trail to their future. They left their shaking signature in Eastland County, beneath that lonely pecan tree. Then moved north. By the time we finally got to the pasture, they were gone, the old house was gone, the cistern or well or tank or however they got their water was gone. The wind blew, the pecan swayed. Only Luther’s story remained.

Winter clouds gathered.

Luther’s daddy was 33 when the baby died. Luther’s momma 26 when their boy succumbed to the Spanish influenza or smallpox or pneumonia or one from the hundred other diseased predators out running hunting through the woods back then. Leonard and Florence stayed together, but had to have left behind more than most can believe or retrieve from their own life’s story.

All we know for sure is that Luther’s gone. And we’re still here. Though that too is a mystery.

There’s beautiful new carved granite marking Luther’s story now, beneath his pecan, that carved rock the same rich red-pink color as gilds our Texan’s state capital farther south down Austin way. I hope he likes it.

We remember Luther. And hardship. And Texas. How we got here. Pray that we all get past it. This country is still hard. Pray and hope that our children will get to their Promised Land, someday, somehow, walking tall across this hallowed state and hard work and memory and whatever lies beyond.

Luther Davenport

Eastland County, Texas

1901-1901 

+

Thurber's Ghost

Thurber’s Ghost

By Leo S. Bielinski, Ph. D

Many cities have some sort of a ghost story. Thurber was called a “Ghost Town” after it was abandoned in the early 1930’s. But “Ghost Town” is a misnomer, for there have always been several residents living in Thurber. Some of these residents added to the legend of a ghost seen in this “Ghost Town.” While the later residents speak of a lady ghost seen and heard in downtown Thurber, the Thurber Ghost seems to have originated in the Thurber Cemetery back about 1920.

Frank Tolbert of the Dallas Morning News resurrected the ghost story in a May 15, 1983 story. At that time, the owner of the restaurant in Thurber was irritated because three of his employees had just quit because they claimed that Thurber had ghosts “in residence…Two of the employees were a married pair of Cuban refugees, and the other was a 65-year-old maintenance man.” These employees lived in apartments above the restaurant. The restaurant was in the bottom floor of the old two-storied Thurber Drug Store.

Tolbert also related that he had first heard of the ghost story in 1955 from Mrs. Eliza Whitehead, one of the “old-timers” who had seen and heard a singing ghost. “I been here 40 years…I was just walkin’ in downtown one night and here come this pretty woman singin’ in some funny way. Then she just went away right in front of my eyes.”

Thurber had an opera house and Thurber, with its large opera-loving Italian population, was a regular stop for touring opera companies. And Albert Whitehead, Eliza’s husband, corroborated Eliza’s story. “You don’t catch me passin’ through town after dark.” The Whiteheads remained in Thurber as caretakers of the remaining houses and buildings, particularly the “Guest House” (W. K. Gordon’s Home), where company “Big Shots” stayed when they came to Thurber for hunting and fishing.

Walter Kostiha and his brother Frank claimed to have seen the ghost. This was about 1925 when Thurber was beginning to shut down. The Kostihas lived near the old jail house, which was just north of downtown Thurber.

Walter: “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I know what I saw, even if I was about five or six years old. I was with my brother Frank behind the old grocery store just about dark. We saw this woman in a white gown and she was singing or saying something out loud. We took off running.”

The Fort Worth Star Telegram (Oct 26, 1997) in a weekend Halloween edition did not help matters when they wrote “The Thurber Cemetery is one of the biggest Texas historical cemeteries. It is also one of the scariest places to be on a dark night. The trees bend over the graves as if in mourning for the 700 (sic) or more children buried there. The epidemics of scarlet fever and whooping cough…definitely left their mark on this Texas Ghost Town.”

Raymond Bridier had a plausible explanation for the origin of the Thurber Ghost. When Raymond was about ten years old (say, around 1920), on moonlit nights a bunch of kids would meet at the ball park, which at this time was on top of Grave Yard Hill next to the cemetery. They would smoke cedar bark, play games like “kick the can” or just talk.

One night as they were going home, they noticed a lady in a white gown sitting on the top step of the sty (steps over the fence) in the southeast corner of the cemetery. She was crying or praying loudly, perhaps for a loved one she had recently buried in the cemetery. The kids thought this behavior odd but this quickened their pace toward home.

The following night the same scene, but this time they took off running; something had spooked them. Now, they were afraid to play in the ball park after dark. But several weeks later courage returned and they went back up the hill. Nobody there. They smoked, played their games, but as they exited the ball park and headed for home, she was there! She stood up on the steps and started toward them! They panicked and went tearing down the hill. They never went back to the ball park, and shortly thereafter, the ball park was moved to the east side of Thurber.

After the ball park episode, which seemed a plausible happening, all the alleged sightings have been in downtown Thurber. Some have said the singing is caused by the wind whistling through the old buildings. But Eliza Whitehead or Walter Kostiha would never believe that because they saw her with their own eyes and heard her.

The Thurber Cemetery was savagely vandalized recently. Decades of work were destroyed in a single evening. The Thurber Cemetery Restoration Project relies on donations of time or financial help. Contributions may be made to the Thurber Cemetery Association, Box 115, Mingus, Texas 76463.

The Winsett Springs Murder

Brutal Winsett Springs Murder

Chills History of Tranquil Place

By Jeff Clark

            Travis Winsett has gone missing.

            The backroads of Eastland County look like fields of fireflies tonight. Folks drive up and down, spotlights shining inside bar ditches. Flashlights sweep across empty pastures, peer inside silent barns looking for 52-year-old Travis Winsett.

            It isn’t like him to take off like this.

            Winsett Springs is located just east of Ranger on Hwy 571. Horse drawn wagons stopped here, the spring’s pipe ending so close to the trail one could almost catch water in cups, never leaving their buckboard seat.

Winsett water was cold and pure. Fill your containers. Let your horses drink. John “Milton” Winsett came to Ranger in 1900, planning to continue to Arizona. He ran into Sam Philipps in Ranger, who offered him a job and a room at his Colony Creek spread. Milton later married Philipps’ daughter Lucy, having two kids Veda and Travis during the marriage.

Milton was an outdoorsman, learning about a spring Indians once camped around. He found its waters seeping weakly from the ground, as the Indians had “spoiled it,” driving large timbers into its mouth. Winsett bought this land around 1902 and through hard work released the spring waters once again.

Winsett Springs helped save Ranger during the 1912 typhoid epidemic and the 1917 oil boom. Stagnant cisterns invited typhoid – treated by lots of water and not eating. Men made livings hauling water from Winsett Springs in wood barrels by mule-drawn wagons during the oil boom. It sold for $1 a barrel.

Some thought Texas Rangers might have used the springs as a camp. Caddo and Comanche may have called this place home.

Ranger’s 1935 Cooper School kids hiked here, spending the day roasting wieners and marshmallows on a camp fire. Alameda schoolmates visited during their 1940 senior trip.

Activity at Winsett Springs had tapered off by 1970, however.

            Travis Winsett has always been an enigma to locals. He’s described differently, depending on who you ask. Published accounts say he was well-respected. Anecdotal words paint the picture of a loner, a nice man who tipped his hat to school kids driving his mom to town.

Travis was arrested by the FBI for draft evasion during WWII. Some said he traveled with pacifists, giving speeches downtown on a portable loud speaker. Strange, as Travis might’ve been exempt from the draft being a farmer. His best friend was a WWII airplane gunner.

“His distance came about because he kept to himself,” niece Lucie Olson told me. “He didn’t want to cause any trouble or bother anybody. He was a very quiet, introspective artist/engineer type. Not anti-social at all, but he didn’t go out looking for things to do either. He had plenty with the gardening, farming and animal tending he did on a daily basis.”

By 1970, his parents had passed away. Townspeople noted the bachelor rarely spent money. Perhaps, some thought, it was hoarded up in that old Winsett house somewhere.

“To me he was a kind, gentle person,” Lucie remembered. “He took flies outside, without killing them. The only thing I ever saw him kill was rattlesnakes. It would have been much easier for him to go along with the draft, but killing violated everything he was about.”

Travis had a mechanical mind, once building a device to scare deer away tailored from a windmill and disk hammer. “Eccentric, but smart,” neighbors said. A nice man.

“Travis meant no harm to anyone. He was not un-American. He was a pacifist and if he had been a Quaker or Seventh Day Adventist, he would have been left alone,” Lucie said. “My grandmother had a stroke in 1968, and Travis and my mother cared for her at home until the very last. His patience and care was amazing to me.”

Lucie’s mom Veda, Mrs. Hubert Capps always thought of Travis as “her other child”, a touchstone connection that continued into adulthood. She was 11 years his elder. She had written him two letters that June, receiving no answer back. That wasn’t like Travis.

            Mrs. Capps arrived at the frame Winsett Springs farm house Saturday, June 27, 1970 to see what was up with her brother.

The front door was unlocked. His car was in the garage but he was nowhere around. She found the letter she’d written him the previous Sunday, still inside his mailbox.

The locals hadn’t missed him, until his sister raised the alarm.

The police were called. Sheriff Lefty Sublett, Ranger Police Chief J.W. Vinson, Deputy Sheriff Loy Williams, Ranger Constable Ralph Veal, Eastland Constable Bill Hunter, Game Warden Kenneth Payne, Ranger Justice of the Peace M.D. Underwood, Eastland Justice of the Peace L.W. Dalton and later District Attorney Emory Walton converged on the house.

            Walking inside, they sensed something wasn’t right. Moving Travis’ recliner chair near the front wall aside, they found dried blood on the hardwood floor. A small round hole was found in the front screen door. A rifle cartridge was located on the ground outside the front fence, below the left gate post some 50 feet away.

Mrs. Capps noticed a “Long Tom” shotgun absent from Travis’ bedroom. His arrowhead collection, valuable coins, and other items were also gone.

What the group didn’t find was Travis Winsett.

            Dozens of officers and volunteers spread out across the Winsett Farm. More hopped in their cars and pickups, searching high and low around the area. Neighbors said they hadn’t seen Travis since the previous Monday evening, right before supper time.

            Buzzy Rutledge was a high school senior in 1970. That previous Monday, he and his girlfriend noticed a house burning south of town at the Hathcock Farm. He drove to Ranger, hopped in a volunteer fire department truck and rushed to put out the blaze. There was no gas or electricity connected at the homeplace, making the fire’s cause a mystery. The house was totaled, its debris fallen all the way to its foundation.

After the Winsett manhunt got under way, that Monday’s mystery fire hit radar screens quickly. When searchers returned to the Hathcock Farm, they were greeted by a horrible smell. An old cistern under the back porch was covered by fallen debris. Flashlights shined down the dark cistern. Floating face up in the black water 22 feet below was the bloated corpse of Travis Winsett.

The search for Milton and Lucy’s only son was called off.

A killer was on the loose.

The fire department arrived, the body hoisted to the surface. One shot to the temple was visible. Justice of the Peace Underwood pronounced Travis dead, his body taken to Ranger’s funeral home. The cistern was searched with a magnet for a weapon and later drained. No clues were found.

            Constable Veal said, “I can think of a half dozen fellows around here we should talk with to find out where they were last Monday night.” One of the people interviewed remembered seeing someone in town with a new box of old arrowheads.

James Henry Bishop was a collector of old artifacts and antiques. Prior to Travis’ body being found, 32-year-old Bishop was investigated for burglary by Palo Pinto County Deputy Bill Harris. The deputy interviewed Bishop about a home burglary in the town of Palo Pinto. He remembered seeing a rifle in Bishop’s home, but it wasn’t connected with the crime he had been investigating.

Bishop was still in the Palo Pinto County Jail concerning that burglary. Eastland County lawmen were in luck. Meanwhile Travis’ body was sent to Abilene’s Hendricks Hospital for autopsy.

            The suspect appeared before a Palo Pinto County Justice of the Pace and was advised of his rights. Sheriff Sublett and District Attorney Walton then started asking questions.

            The rifle Harris had seen was bought at Weatherford’s First Monday Trade Days, Bishop told them. He couldn’t remember the seller’s name. Travis Winsett’s murder was news to him, Bishop maintained. The Long Tom, a .22 rifle, arrowheads, several silver half dollars, and other items of interest were found in Bishop’s home. A spent .22 cartridge similar to that found outside Winsett’s gate was found in Bishop’s vehicle.

            Sublett and Walton questioned Bishop a second time. His story didn’t waiver, other than admitting being near the Winsett place, finding one of the stolen items in a ditch. He acted like he wanted to help, lawmen said.

            The Hendricks autopsy found that a single shot had entered Travis WInsett’s right temple and remained in his skull. The slug was virtually destroyed. Local ballistics tests wouldn’t be able to tell if the bullet had been shot from the rifle taken from Bishop. Travis’ sister identified some of the items taken from Bishop as being her brother’s.

            Texas Ranger H.R. Block took possession of the spent slug. It joined the seized .22 rifle, two cartridges and dust samples from the Winsett and Bishop homes at the Dept. of Public Safety lab in Austin.

            Two days later on July 8, James Henry Bishop was charged with Travis Winsett’s murder. Bail was denied. Bishop was moved to the Eastland County Jail.

            The Austin lab later concluded that the two cartridges were fired from the gun taken from Bishop’s house. An Eastland County grand jury indicted Bishop July 20, 1970. Bail was set at $10,000 by District Judge Earl Conner, though Bishop remained incarcerated. Trial began in 91^st District Court, with 12 witnesses called.

The defendant admitted he’d shot Winsett, but that it was an accident. A “little voice told him to do it,” reports said he testified. He said he was hunting near the Winsett home that evening. He had pursued a rabbit near the Winsett barn, but didn’t want to shoot that close to the house. Bishop is said to have testified that he didn’t see Travis in the house, but aimed at a window and pulled the trigger in a “childish gesture”.

Bishop took off, he said, thinking Travis might come after him. When no one did, he returned to the Winsett place, he said. He found Travis in his chair, like he’d fallen asleep. It became clear to Bishop what had happened, he said. Travis Winsett was dead.

Bishop panicked, he said, placing the body inside a blanket, hiding it in a closet. He stole several things to make it look like a burglary, he said. Bishop testified that he came back later, taking the body to the abandoned Hathcock farmhouse. Travis being placed in the cistern was an accident, he said, but he admitted setting the fire.

            The jury found Bishop guilty, assessing a 55 year prison term.

            Prosecutors had not asked for the death penalty.

            Travis Winsett is buried on a quiet slope beside his parents and grandparents at the Merriman Cemetery outside town. The man convicted in his killing is alive, and out.

Many actors in this tragedy have passed away. I still don’t feel like I know Travis Winsett. I didn’t catch a sense of the man, walking around his family’s old farmhouse. Maybe I felt a little of his sadness near the cistern out south of town. I’m not sure what his legacy is, beyond that of victim. Beyond that of a life not fully realized. But that too, doesn’t feel quite correct.

Tranquil Winsett Springs continues to run, cold and pure.

.

Special thanks to Will Barrett, Kenneth & Salata Brown, Dorothy Elrod, Ken Falls, Lucie Capps Olson, A. J. Ratliff, Buddy Rogers, Buzzy Rutledge, Buddy Vinson, Roy Weekes (deceased) and the “Case of the Human Target,” by Bill McNeill, Startling Detective magazine, circa October 1, 1970.

Taylor's Chapel Enters Second Century

Country Church Refuses to Die,

Entering its Second Century

By Jeff Clark

        Drive enough back roads, you get used to seeing boarded up churches. Cemeteries becoming pastures.

Taylor’s Chapel in Comanche County didn’t get the word. Sure, the surrounding Soda Springs Community up and died decades ago, its school locked its doors, most families moved away.

            The church fell to seven people in 1993. “We almost died,” member Peggy Vineyard told me. Then those pioneer families started moving back when they retired. New friends joined in.

            Services begin at 9:30 a.m. Sunday mornings. Get there 30 minutes early, it’s just you, Gary Bragg and the cemetery out back. Bragg turns on the lights, makes coffee. Taylor’s Chapel sits nine miles north of Comanche, off the pavement a far piece.

            Folks file in. The church bell stops ringing. “Sammy, lead us off in prayer,” Bragg asks from the pulpit. Sammy Vineyard, five pews back, his family here over a century asks God to get them started.

            These are Congregational Methodists. Self-governing. Call your own minister. Don’t tell us what to do.

            They are also some of the friendliest folks I’ve met in a month of Sundays, most of 27 members walking over, shaking hands. “I’m glad you’re here.” It’s hard to be invisible.

            This church started as a brush arbor in 1901 by Brother Jim Havner, a farming circuit preacher. The area boasted a school, cotton gin and an 1881 graveyard. The church bought two acres from Hood Taylor for $20 in 1902. “The old land is worn completely out,” he said. “Ya can’t raise corn on it no more, and ya can’t raise cotton on it no more. I’ll just let you Methodists have it to raise hell on.”

            There’s a Prayer List passed out this morning, names read one at a time. One lady talks about her son. Another about her recent operation. A conversation back and forth, their concern is their prayer.

            They sing four hymns back to back, led by an energetic Mary Gillium whose high altitude voice guides others through The Lilly of the Valley. Four men and three little girls form their choir. Most live nearby, a few from Comanche, a few picked up from the rest home. Ages range from late 40s to 93.

            The regular preacher Robby Stuteville is off with grandkids the Sunday I visited. He’s been showing up one Sunday at a time for seven years. The church feels blessed to have this retired school superintendent lead their flock, Baptist though he may be.

            “We pray that Brother Robby doesn’t leave us,” Peggy confided. Member H. R. Helm walks to the pulpit to bring the message this day. His thick Bible is packed with slips of paper, notes to lead him.

“We should all be ready to go to heaven,” he reminds, “but I want to stay alive a little longer.” Helm wants to pass his lifetime of knowledge to grandkids, to his 13-year-old grandson. They’ve spent Spring Break inventing a battery-powered pizza cutter.

“Make that decision,” he grows a little louder. I brace myself for the dreaded altar call, but my fear is misplaced. H.R. looks into his friends’ faces. “Why won’t we decide and ACT to serve the Lord now?”

Helm’s stories are so honest they’re painful, more like family than church.

The first church house was built in 1902. The plan called for the church to face south, “but the wind blew so hard it turned the church around to face west. Members discussed trying to turn it back, but they decided the Lord had a hand in it, and they let it stand the way He left it.”

A tabernacle was added in the 1930s, the current chapel rising in 1948. They added a fellowship hall, built a new tabernacle, dug a well and installed air conditioning in 1960, restrooms and a steeple in 1993. Eleven stained glass windows were added by 1996.

“I remember that my grandpa Samuel Charles Vineyard sat in the ‘A-men corner,” Irene Day remembered. “And when he prayed he would kneel facing the back of the pew. When he finished he would be on his knees with his hand raised. I thought Grandpa knew the Lord better than the preachers.”

“You feel the love of God here,” Peggy Vineyard said, “and the love of the people. That’s the way it’s always been.”

That old church saw ice cream socials, pulpit-pounding revivals, shaped-note singings and dinner on the grounds for many decades. James Chapman remembered, “They got to know and love each other at events like these, and they were there for each other when sickness and grief came to call.”

They were there for each other, last Sunday.

Taylor’s Chapel baptizes folks in the stock tank by the cemetery. The chapel saw a wedding two years ago, periodic funerals, luncheons and baby showers. They teamed up with Broken Bronc Cowboy Church in nearby Beattie for vacation bible school last summer, hosting nine children.

Thirty minutes after the church bell began this service, it’s over. It normally runs longer, I’m told. Members walk to the fellowship hall to visit. Thirty minutes after that, the parking lot is empty, save Mr. Bragg, shutting off lights, getting ready to go again next Sunday.

This country church ain’t dying.

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.

The Louis White Drowning

Soda Pop Offer Tints

Louis White’s Memory

By Jeff Clark

“Life was cheap back then.”

            Butter Bridier is 85. He spent his first decade of life in coal mining Thurber. The Bridiers lived in House 1269. That’s eight-year-old Butter in the photo telling this story.

“One day Louis White knocked on our front door. I didn’t even know his name.” Louis was 14. After knocking, Louis stepped back off the Bridiers’ porch. He was black. Times were different.

“He wore no shirt or shoes, his hands in his pockets.”

             “Miss Polly Boo,” Louis said to Butter’s mom, “Charlie said I could ride old Mary.” Charlie is Butter’s older brother.

“Are you sure Charlie said you could ride his donkey?”

“Yes m’am. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Butter’s dad was French, his Polly Boo nickname derived from “Parlez vous Francais. Louis gets the donkey bridled. He dives halfway across her back so he can straddle her to ride. But when Louis jumped, his pants slipped down around his ankles. “My mom laughed so hard snuff ran down her face.”

Another time Butter and his mom drove their A model Ford to Thurber’s service station for two gallons of gas. “That was all you could afford, even at 15 cents a gallon.” Louis is there, leaning against an iced soft drink cooler.

“Hey Louis.”

Louis looked at Butter, not lifting up from the cooler box.  “You want a soda pop?” he asked Butter.

“I don’t have any money.”

“I’ll buy you one. I got money.”

“You won’t pay for it.” Butter doesn’t know if Louis had a nickel, dime or what. Grown people in Thurber didn’t have 10 cents in their pockets back then.

“I don’t remember seeing Louis alive after that.”

            The White family is living with Louis and Isabella Walters inside House 208, according to the 1920 census. A 40-year-old “Louis” Walter and a four-month-old “Louis” White. Father Ed White is 65 and wife Lucy’s 37. By 1930, Louis is 11, his father 75, mom Lucy 49. They’re living in House 102, in “Colored Town” notes the census taker. Lucy is a laundress. Ed isn’t working. He listed “coal mines” as his job in 1920. Perhaps he became disabled.

The census shows the most money any of 50 names on the page possessed was $20 (all races). Ed and Lucy had “none”. Though Thurber had no black school, Louis was able to read and write.

Thurber’s Little Lake still sits just west of New York Hill. You could swim or fish there. There was a homemade flat-bottom row boat anyone could use, made of 1 x 12’s, tar and pitch keeping water out. Two boys about 16 joined Louis in the boat that day.

He could’ve fallen overboard accidentally. His shipmates could’ve wanted to see if Louis really couldn’t swim. Louis disappeared beneath the surface.

Johnny Elwood brought his metal boat. He and Ted Botts went back and forth looking for Louis’ body with a grappling hook. Fifteen to twenty people watched from shore.

“I came around our house the day of the drowning. Diagonal across the street Miss Crane had a grandson Charles Sanders, playing with a yo-yo. “Hey Butter, you know N___ Lewis drowned?” He just kept yo-yo’ing. “I told momma and she hurried to Little Lake to see.”

When Louis was brought to shore, he wore no shirt or shoes. A stretcher carried him up on the dam. He’d been in the water over an hour. No effort was made to resuscitate.

“Dr. Baldridge was standing by Louis’ feet. He said, ‘I pronounce him dead.” The crowd dispersed.

            There wasn’t an inquest, it doesn’t appear. The family cared, perhaps few others. “It was hard to stay alive back then.” Louis was buried in an unmarked grave in Thurber Cemetery.

Blacks had church below New York Hill. Though all races mined together, there was little associating around town.

            There was a black preacher once, preaching real loud. “I got scared and started crying,” Butter told me. “They once passed the plate. One guy didn’t pay the plate any mind as it went past. The preacher asked, “How ‘bout you sir? You got something you can give to the Lord?”

“Yeah, I might give Him a dollar.”

“Very good, put it in the plate there.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll give it to Him when I see Him.”

            Louis White was willing to share a soda, Butter told me these 76 years later. “I always remembered that.”

            Louis’ mother Lucy died two months later to the day of a broken heart. We don’t know if his then 79-year-old father had died or moved away. Lucy was getting up in age, in bad health, poorly fed, facing the world’s worries without that 14-year-old boy’s smile to keep her going.

“Those were survival times. As bad as it was, Louis offered to buy me a soda pop.”

When the restoration of Thurber Cemetery began Butter told wife Faye, “If we ever discover where Louis’ grave is, I want to put up a tombstone.” Butter’s grandmother is buried at Thurber.

After he retired, he talked to Flogene Boston who lived on Park Row. She told him, yes, she went to Louis’ funeral. His grave’s right there by the fence. The Bridiers found two plots that “fit” her memory.

Butter and wife Faye gave Louis his tombstone. Leo Bielinski gave Lucy hers.

“I can always remember that little guy,” Butter told me, “leaning against the soda cooler. If I could put flowers on only one grave at Thurber, it would be his.”

Lucy White’s headstone reads “A Mother Grieves No More.”

Little Louis White drowned, after teaching one important lesson.

            “You want a soda pop?”

SUGGESTED CAPTIONS

1.         The story teller, eight-year-old Butter Bridier in front of House 1269 in Thurber.

2.         The grappling hook used to find Louis White’s body in Little Lake.

3.         Mother and son’s headstones.

Latin Mass at Thurber

St. Barbara’s Church Walls Hear Echoes from its Past

The Latin Mass in Thurber

By Jeff Clark

            It’s black dark here in the long-deserted Thurber Cemetery, a mere hint of orange sunset visible to the west. Tonight is New Year’s Eve – the beginning and hopefully the end. Forty-seven pilgrims, good people ranging from pre-teen to senior citizen kneel in a circle around their priest, in the flat dead winter grass beside one lonely grave.

            I won’t water this down. The presence of the Lord is tangibly inside this forgotten place tonight, among and around these people. They are in communion with Thurber’s departed fathers, mothers and children at rest beneath and around us, their souls or their memories or their tragedies as present to me this night as my own distant heartbeat – perhaps more so. Father Kenneth Novak’s words waft skyward:

            “Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine,

                        et lux perpetua luceat ei.”

            “Eternal rest, grant unto him, O Lord.

                        And let perpetual light, shine upon him.”

This is a prayer for the repose of this mining town’s lost, buried for eternity within these tombstone-speckled nine acres, spreading like a flickering Easter candle into the darkness around us. If there are ghosts within this place, tonight they welcome this throng to their table.

The circled parish quietly answers their shepherd: “Amen”.

The priest lifts his strong voice into the night: “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” Hands touch foreheads, heart, left then right across their chests. These new friends to Thurber Cemetery rise. The cold wind turns warm in celebration. We return quietly to our cars, headlights come on in the darkness, a slow procession of 14 vehicles snakes slowly along the cemetery’s serpentine center road, then along the fence, leaving this hallowed ground to its peaceful night.

            I’m beginning to wonder if there’s such a thing as chance encounter. Last week, my friend Leo was tending to this cemetery, as he has for many years. Father Novak of El Paso shows up, completely at random Leo tells me later, a priest from the Pius X Society.

            The Pius X Society is a conservative Catholic group that believes the Catholic Church departed from its true path after Vatican II (1962-1965). Father Novak is excited about Thurber’s story, Leo tells me. Wants to bring his parishioners out here, hold a Tridentine Mass in Latin that dates back to 1570, inside Thurber’s 1892 St. Barbara’s church, resting peacefully at the foot of New York Hill. Leo agrees.

            I was baptized into the Catholic Church when I was thirty-eight-years-old, following a year much like this last one. Never baptized or saved or any of that before one dark fateful Easter Vigil evening, back in the big city. I’ve attended Masses all over the South – in pre-dawn Spanish at San Antonio’s San Fernando Cathedral, at a sprawling Jesuit monastery beside the lumbering Mississippi River, and with a couple of once-ordained friends nearing the end of their own personal crises. I’ve never seen the Latin Mass performed, at least not in person.

            Friday morning, I met Leo at St. Barbara’s. Father Novak’s flock began arriving soon after. It was clear from the cardboard boxes, the number of altar boys, the stream of cars pulling up outside this church that history was about to make itself visible inside this little wooden church.

            Weekly Mass has not been said at St. Barbara’s in many, many years. This proud white building originally sat below Graveyard Hill until it was moved to Mingus in the 1930s, until it returned here to Thurber in 1995.

            Father Novak swept into the old church building, wearing a traditional black cassock. He is a force, a sparking current of energy that can take the unprepared aback. His exuberance would give my seven-year-old a run for her money. He shakes Leo’s hand, then begins issuing orders – candles go here, reliquaries there – a throng follow him down the wood plank floored aisle to make ready. His followers love their charismatic leader. St. Barbara’s stirs to life.

            Four altar boys light the candles, six white tapers lining the space behind St. Barbara’s front altar. Two statues are delicately lifted into place, atop empty white perches where St. Barbara’s own sculpted saints once stood. The red Gospel is placed lightly on the altar. The golden chalice moves into view. Men bow to their Lord when stepping in front of the front altar, turn and bow again upon leaving.

Father Novak is a teaching priest, explaining to the assembled that because there’s no altar stone in St. Barbara’s, that linens containing holy relics sealed within wax will help consecrate their communion rite, that clean linens atop these will be in place as tradition demands.

The Latin Mass is celebrated with the priest facing away from the congregation. Father Novak’s words were sometimes too quiet to hear, though God undoubtedly received the prayers heading His way. One of the prayers was sung, the haunting Gregorian chant rising to the ceiling like sweet-smelling incense. St. Barbara’s communion rail has been put back in place, restoring authenticity to its pre-Vatican II legacy.

The men led the rosary before Mass began, gleaming beads in hands as confessions were received by the priest in the confessional along St. Barbara’s back wall. Four ornate golden reliquaries graced the altar. St. Barbara’s white wooden tabernacle against the front wall is original. The tops of women’s heads are graced with delicate lace veils. These worshippers in the Latin rite have traveled here from all over North Texas. The lights are on. The bathroom door is unlocked. The floor is swept. This church, at least for today, is back in business.

            My eyes were fixed forward, sitting in the back pew with Leo. Edging majestically into the silence, the sound of St. Barbara’s original foot-pumped organ announced the opening words of Mass. “I haven’t heard that organ play in over 60 years,” Leo whispered to me. You have to pump both your feet at the same time, while playing the keyboard to make the thing sing – not a common skill in this post-modern age.

This organ was heard by coal miners coming here for Mass over ninety years ago. Leo’s Big Ciocia (Polish, “Big Aunt”) played this same organ. His mother Lottie sang in the choir. Today the organ’s tone was again strong, was haunting in its beauty. Leo was baptized in this building, married here, and served as an altar boy here.

            Father Novak preached of the history of this town – about the fleeting cities of man, about the eternal City of God. His masculine last words stayed with me: “Lord, we’re coming. We’re on our way.”

            I believe him.

            Toward the end of Mass the church’s steeple bell began to peel, each strike carefully timed to fit the choreography within Father Novak’s traditional liturgy. That long-silent historic bell could be heard all the way north to Mingus back in the day – its first toll to get dressed (church starts in 30 minutes), then to head for the church (15 minutes left), and then to take a seat in your pew (five minutes til kickoff).

            I sat there wondering if New York Hill Restaurant diners up the hill knew that the St. Barbara’s bell they were hearing from their tables was singing its part this last day of 2010 in a centuries-old celebration. That Thurber’s heart had come back to life.

            After Mass ended, the worshippers left the church and climbed the steep Thurber-brick steps to New York Hill’s scenic overlook, bringing to mind Christ’s last sorrowful journey on this earth. A catfish dinner was served by New York Hill Restaurant, being Friday and all. Leo gives a talk about Thurber, about scanning for graves. The room warms to his stories.

The group adjourned for a short tour of the museum down the hill, then drove across I-20 to the Thurber Cemetery. Kids and adults were taught to scan – new graves were located. Stories were told among new family –about the Spanish influenza mass graves, about the two Marys, about our sleeping friend Vincenzo. We talked about the past, about the holy duty of handing our stories forward to their futures, through kids and grandkids – through ink onto paper. Someday those descendents will need to know who they are. We told one short ghost story, then moved away.

            There is a concept in Catholicism known as ecumenicalism – the simplified definition explains that though there are important differences between the various denominations, we should all reach out in fellowship and love one another as Jesus did, as Jesus does. People of good will should join hands, the thinking goes, no matter what the sign says on the front of their church building, on the front of their cardboard box home beneath that lonely freeway bridge.

            I meet many new people each week. After “I live in Weatherford”, I often get asked which church I attend. The answer is complicated, as I feel connected to the Holy Roman Catholic Church (Mother Church versus some of her recent drivers), the Church of Christ (special friends and ancestors), the Baptists (my two daughters and grandparents), the Buddhists (Catholic friend Thomas Merton saw the same bridge here, I believe), to the Native whispers I’ve begun to hear from this part of Texas and to the many other “unseen churches” that I happen upon in senior citizens’ homes around the state. God is not just an inside-some-church-building deity. The gleaming megawatt cathedral of worship these kind folks brought to life this night in Thurber Cemetery proves this, at least to me.

            Thurber Cemetery contains believers’ graves of many stripes, probably some non-believers too. In this quiet darkness, I prayed as rarely before for 2010 to be finally over. I prayed that conflict would end its too-long stay outside our doorsteps. And I listened for the future.

These kind people who I now consider friends remind me of the earliest Christians, holding their assemblies below the streets in dark catacombs. They knew what they believed. Their parents or grandparents has seen Jesus in the flesh, had known the sacrifice that their faith might extract from their too-fragile lives. Those catacomb warriors joined these new friends worshipping in the dark last night – they knew that One was more powerful than many. I respect these people’s return to their tradition, their fidelity to what they know is right.

            There are no chance meetings. Let us leave it at that. May this New Year bring us back to that knowledge. May we all see what God puts before us. And act. Amen.

The “lonely grave” mentioned above is that of Barbara and John Lorenz, its perimeter “fenced” with vertical oil field pipes. When first discovered, only the date “January 31, 1931” was visible. Research into 1931 church records restored their names to the roll call of this physical place.