During the summer after I finished fifth grade (1937) my dad visited
his former employers in Fort Worth,
to learn the state of affairs in the tile business. Upon returning home he said (1) Mr. and Mrs. Good (owners of Good
Marble & Tile) had
recommended him to the Valley Marble
& Tile Company at Harlingen (in the Lower Rio Grande Valley
of South Texas), (2) he had been offered a job over the telephone, and (3) he
had accepted. I suppose Mother’s
attitude was “Whither thou goest, I will go,” for I remember hearing no
objections to a 500-mile move from familiar faces and places. (Even had there been objections, I probably
wouldn’t have heard them.)
My dad loaded the Model A with his clothes and tools of his trade and
went to the Valley before Mother, Twila, and I did. I don’t remember wondering why we didn’t all go together, but he
must have felt it wise to “test the waters” and find living quarters before
bringing the family.
A post card sent us after he reached the Valley said that while on the
way he had slept for a while on one side of Alice, then a little more on
the other side; we thought he was referring to the car as “Alice,” but learned
a couple of weeks later, as we made the trip ourselves, that Alice was a town
south of San Antonio on US 281.
I was then
almost eleven years old, but had never been away from North Central Texas. A line drawn from Dallas to Fort Worth,
southwest to Stephenville, south to Hamilton, then northeastward back to Dallas
would have encompassed my lifetime peregrinations; Dallas and Hamilton are the
points farthest apart in that area, a distance of about 125 miles.
By the time Mother, Twila, and I joined him in the Valley, my dad had
found an apartment in La Feria, eight miles west of Harlingen. I suspect, though I never heard him say so,
he opted for La Feria because Mr. Herman Krehbiel (another tile setter with Valley Marble & Tile) and his
extended family lived on a farm two or three miles south of town. (The adult members of the family – Mr.
Krehbiel, his wife, his sister Lydia, and his parents – were all relatively
recent immigrants from Germany, with evidencing accents and speech patterns.)
◊◊◊
Moving south didn’t end all my connections with Hood County. Because of family ties, I’ve been back many
times since we moved away in 1937. Both
sets of grandparents lived out their lives at Acton; my parents lived in
Granbury and Tolar from the late ‘50s until the mid-‘80s; other relatives
(e.g., Ruth and Virgil) lived in Hood County until the late ‘90s.
My visits to Hood County nowadays usually include Acton and its
cemetery, where my parents, all four grandparents, Great-Grandmother Nancy
Guffey Goodwin, Great-Granddad James Hodges Stribling, two
great-great-grandparents (David Sloan Stribling/Joanne Croxton Hodges
Stribling), and numerous other relatives not in my direct family line are
buried.
The Acton
community is no longer small; Lake Granbury, formed when a dam was
constructed on the Brazos River at DeCordova Bend, has made the area
attractive to retirees and people who work in Fort Worth but don’t want to live
in the city. As a result of population
growth, the Baptist and Methodist churches have imposing new facilities. A large, very attractive, Episcopal church
has been built across the road from the cemetery; I knew no Episcopalians when
we lived there.
The
building in which I started school is gone, but a large elementary school has
been built about a half-mile southwest of my Grammer grandparents’ old farm, on
land that was Mr. Snider’s west field in the ‘30s.
A new
Acton Middle School sits astride the heart of the old Miller property; the only things
I recognize now are (1) some old pecan trees, just north of the school grounds,
and (2) the land that comprised my granddad’s east field. The school building sits just southwest of
the area formerly occupied by the barn and barnyard; the wells and old homesite
are covered by driveways and parking lots.
I
talked (January 9, 2003) with the man who bulldozed the Miller place prior to
start of school construction; he described some of the things he pushed aside
or covered as he did the work – the old round concrete stock watering tank, the
cellar, barn, and house built by the lady who purchased the property (160
acres) from my dad and his oldest sister (Stella) following the death of
his other sister (Sue).
The
Grammer home place (120 acres) is overgrown and unused; only the barn still
stands. My grandparents’ house
(unoccupied, but still structurally sound) was destroyed by fire on a recent
Independence Day (purportedly caused by boys playing with fireworks); the
garage, and other out buildings sit in crumpled heaps, as does the small house
in which my family lived from 1932 until 1937.
If
the “great cloud of witnesses surrounding us” (Hebrews 12:1) is permitted to observe
developments on the earth they’ve left behind, I’d bet Mama and Papa Miller are
surprised to see a big chunk of their home place covered by a large middle
school and its appurtenances; I hope Mama and Papa Grammer are unperturbed by
their unkempt, deteriorating place that was once so nice.
[Lest
I leave a questionable theological implication hanging in the above paragraph,
I should state that I don’t think Hebrews 12:1 means that people of faith gone
on before actually “witness” people and places on earth today. Rather than “witness us,” I believe those
listed in chapter 11’s roll call of faith “witness to us” through their acts
recorded in scripture.]