Small Towns, The Little Things Part II
Ok. I’m going to tell ya’ll the whole truth here. I struggle with consistency. I wanted to get more regular on my blog just for my own personal benefit and I started a series last week about preserving the small things and little places that are getting trampled on by our society and with time.
I sat down last Saturday and wrote out a perfectly fine, albeit boring, little piece on small towns. I struggled with it but I slopped something out there in the name of being consistent.
I couldn’t publish it. Yes, friends, even I, your once in a while mouthy, touchy-feely mostly unread blogger have standards. It was bland. A saltless saltine. A stale pita chip. Old popcorn. All I have is food analogies.
I’m glad I waited because what I have for you today is something I actually can espouse and share with some passion.
It’s also entirely possible that the heat I experienced during a camping attempt last week may have melted small bits of my brain. One will never know.
So there we are. Last week.
Feeling the rush and struggle of our every day life with 4 kids and all the stuff and things we often experience the need to slip away into nature, or close to it for a few days. It’s the chief reason why we bought our camper, to facilitate such activities more frequently.
Last month I noticed on the Texas State Parks and Wildlife website that there was one single unreserved full hook up site, one of a coveted 4, at Fort Richardson State Park.
This is one of my husband’s favorite parks. We’ve been there many times during many seasons and it just happened to have a treasured full hook up spot available for my husband’s birthday. So we quickly made a reservation, rearranged work schedules and began to look forward to a camping trip in the name of celebrating our head of household, my beloved, the hubs.
No one could have known that the forecast for that week would reach into over 100 degrees each day but also that each day would, in fact, exceed its forecasted highest temperature and launch us into the fiery likes of one hundred fifteen degrees Fahrenheit.
So, there we were, loading up and headed out. I was standing in a gravel drive that was poured specifically to park ours and my in-laws campers.
I could feel the heat hitting my feet and legs. My face, when I turned it to the sun felt much like the blast from a preheated oven when you open the door to put something in. It was melt your mascara, stick your eyelids together hot. I do not exaggerate. If you’ve never been in Texas during one of our hot years in July or God forbid, August, you may presume I’m being an over dramatic wimp. Not so.
This is crayon melting, egg frying, exhaustion inducing heat. Long story short, the birthday boy, much to everyone’s relief as there’s only so much lake swimming you can do to cool a 115 degree kind of family wide grumpy, opted to call our trip short and we did.
My original post was going to be about small pioneer towns and how who founded them, their history, is getting drowned out and forgotten in the name of progress and suburban sprawl.
Where I began to lose my way is when I tried to explain why that is important not to forget. In the end I just couldn’t post it and have felt like a flop who just can get her ducks in a row and can’t consistently put forth even the blandest of blog posts.
And then, by golly, there it was.
At the corner of the drive of our campsite (which I’ll just say here, yes we did have an AC, it did not keep up in our light weight camper as it sat like a literal oven in the unshaded site) was a scrubby old oak tree. The kind that sprawls. The kind that can live to be hundreds of years old. This one I give maybe three decades.
It’s leaves looked a little sad. All the prairie grass that crunched with the breeze around it looked thirsty, but the tree remained. I’m quite sure, barring some bad fire or storm or “progress”, this tree would remain. I was sweating through in places I don’t care to mention but that tree? An almost immovable part of the landscape, sturdy and strong, stood before me. The kids climbed on it. We hung our lake swimming towels on it.
Our town, Rhome much like so many Texas towns, was founded by pioneers. It was originally named Prairie Point, and thrived for about a decade until, overtaken with raids of Indians kidnapping pioneer children for ransom, roving cattle thieves and just general violent criminals of all shapes and sizes that targeted pioneer families, it just about dissolved into the landscape from which it sprung.
I know these things because I took the time to learn them. To find out more about why streets are named what they are and what our town once was.
When the area began being more defended by military and then later held the interest of the railroad, it began to flourish again and a bigger community began to be built on that frontier land.
Now, I like to read about who owned the land and when it changed hands. I like to know when the churches were built and why the schools moved or shut down. I like to read what thriving businesses used to be and why they no longer exist in those places. I find that very, very interesting.
That alone, however, is not enough to fuel a defense of preserving this particular “small thing” or “small place” in the name of a so called “series” by a so called “writer”.
What does provide sufficient fuel is knowing what strength it took live and thrive there. Pioneers came into a land strange, new and harsh. Despite much difficulty they carved out an existence in their new place and called it home. They were strong. I imagine while they may have noted in passing how particularly difficult a season was they were, in general, not complainers and not “quitters”.
We need to remember their strength and what they built and how what we now see in our time came to be. Because if we can have an ounce of that strength, we can preserve and fight for the things we know are right and true and good.
Our lives are easier now. I’ve argued that sometimes that doesn’t mean our lives are altogether better. Modern medicine and safety from raiding, murderous natives bent on revenge aside, there’s something to be said for the strength we develop in struggle.
Just like that tired, hot oak tree, the pioneers that forged a community, were strong.
We can model that strength and know that the seemingly impossible can, in fact, be accomplished.
In this crazy world, does that not give you hope?
If a pioneer woman can raise a family of eight in the hot, scrubby land of Wise County, build them and everything they have up out of scratch, rising from the dirty, hot landscape, by gosh I can suck it up and deal with sweating through my bra.
It’s not that simple, I know. That’s not really the point.
The point is, we’ve forgotten what strength God gave us. When we learn about or remember where we came from, we are reminded of the great things we can do. It’s important to know the good and bad of our roots. We can build on the good and learn from the bad.
I recently got back on my twitter account. I have regrets. To call it depressing is an understatement. I can be on twitter thirty seconds and run a gambit of emotions from humor to anger to depression to rage. It’s just more noise keeping me away from reality and being still and knowing God. With our ease of existence and all the noise it seems like a lot of things God is telling us we either can’t hear or don’t’ find applicable.
In a world where we have constant distraction it is important to remind ourselves that we have, with the help of God the Father, the capacity for strength and perseverance.
Twenty first century Americans live a life of relative ease and that was made possible by the strength of the people that have come before us.
Twenty first century Americans have a plethora of distraction and constant confusion that is, for sure, used by the devil to pull us away from our Heritage. Yes, I used the word “plethora” and yes I mean our Godly Heritage as well as our earthly heritage. How’d you like that full circle?
It’s important to know how your community came to be. It’s important to know your local history. We cannot forget the ways in which, as well as the individuals that shaped it. Doing so is a huge loss to us all.
Your ancestral history, your local history, has it’s own lessons. Learn them.
