Coming to a community reunion like the Rock Church Homecoming, you know that you are going to meet and usually hear from people who can reach far back into time and tell you how it was back then – who the people were, some of whom were your direct relatives and others who you figured at least interacted with your relatives.  So this homecoming is of interest and pleasure for those of us wanting to know more about our forebears and through that, of course, to know more about ourselves and how we came to be who we are.

And beyond and before those known relatives and their associates that migrated to this place from other parts of the United States and even from other countries, we also know that the land itself somehow had an influence on those who came here.  We know that, even before our relatives, there were the native people, who we can’t help but remember from the arrowheads that they left behind and that are to this day scattered about, as are the grinding stones and the reddish burnt rocks that now and again you can find in a field.

And beyond and before them, there were those gigantic megaton, mega everything it seems animals that left us their footprints down the shallow river beds that we now pay a price in order to see.  Are they a part of us also? 

My actual memories of this community don’t go back that far, only about 50 years.  And mostly that was only a couple of weeks a year for a period of from when I was 4 or 5 through about 13 years old.  So there was very little time really that I was here on vacation with my family and relatives.  But it was an important time and certainly one that is an essential part of who I am.

Every year, we came to what is now Olive Morris’ ranch, but which was the homestead for Eugene Morris and his wife George Washington Morris, better known as Annie, and their six kids.  But I never knew those grandparents, and I rarely got to meet my uncles.  It was really only my Aunt Mary Modina Morris, her husband Joe McInroe and my cousins Carol Ann and Mary Joe McInroe that I got to hang out with and grow up with in those summer vacations.

One of my earliest memories as a child was my Dad Lorenzo Eugene Morris, known as L.E., who along with Uncle Joe took us down to wade in a part of the Paluxy River that held the giant footprints, and I got to sit in the giant footprints.  I remember how well my little bum fit so well in the toes of those footprints, and I remember how well I knew what those horrible monsters looked like, remembering my View-Master cards of fighting model dinosaurs.  It was a scary thought to a four year old.

Those dinosaurs followed me right back to the old house where we stayed on the Morris home place and to the Paluxy where we regularly went swimming.  I could see them in my mind’s eye, lumbering through the river valley and squashing me with one foot.  But it was a passing thought because mostly I was too busy trying to learn how to swim, thanks to my Aunt Mary, and trying to not step down too deeply in the ooze on the bottom of the river as I frolicked with my cousins.  And as we grew a bit older and bolder we played a lot of imaginary games in the river.  Mary Joe, being the youngest, got relegated to being the boy and Carol Ann and I were the damsels in some sort of distress who had to be rescued again and again and again.  As uncomplicated as that scenario seems, it proved to be hours of fun for us all.

We never got to go swimming alone.  We always had to wait for the adults to go with us, and that meant waiting the whole long unbearably hot August days until finally they stopped working on the old house or whatever unimportant things they always seemed to be doing to finally take us swimming.  We geared up back then.  We donned our swimming suits and the oldest pairs of shoes we had to go wading over the rocks in the river.  We each slung over a shoulder the black inner tube that had just enough air in it so that you could kind of sink into the water but not really.  And hopefully you could find one out of the pile of inner tubes in the back closet that was not too old so you wouldn’t come back with black rubbed all over you.  Sunscreen, of course, did not exist.

So then we took the short hike down to the river, looking out for snakes along the path.  But before you could go swimming, often we had to seine for some minnows with our Dads in the shallows for a while.  Only then did we get to jump in for real.

On occasion we got to go all the way to the rock hole.  The rock hole had jutting rocks out over the deepest part of the river that we knew of.  It was a wide and cool place that always held a certain mystery.  But it was also a slightly dangerous place, because above the rocks was known as a place for snakes, and we rarely went there.

But once we did.  My adventuresome Aunt Mary had taken us three girls there for better swimming than usual.  At sundown, we had started back home out across the top of the rocks with her in the lead when she called out in a stern but calm voice that she had perfected being a school teacher: “There is a copperhead on the path!”  We froze.  And then there followed: “And there’s another one!”  We watched, not really seeing what she saw, but evidently the snakes were on the move.  Soon, she gave the demand for each of us in turn to hop on her back, piggy back, as she ran down the narrow trail through the snaky area to the other side.  And then, back and forth, she did this until all three of us were in safety.  Perhaps this would not have been so much of a feat, if we had been five years old, but we were more like 12, and by that age I couldn’t have been more than a couple of inches shorter than her and perhaps even a couple of inches taller than she.

So snakes and dinosaurs were there for us to fear when we went to the country, and this was very different from the city life that I was used to in Wichita Falls.  But even these did not compare to the Paluxy River after a real gulley washer.  Who can forget the 30-foot-plus deep raging torrent that had once been the placid little stream the summer before, but now had mammoth trees whirling down it?  Not a sight to be easily forgotten and hard to believe for those who have never seen it.  And in this drought, you begin to wonder if anyone will ever see it again. 

The Paluxy River was the heart of our memories of the old home place.  Every summer after catching those minnows my Dad and Uncle Joe would set out the trot lines and then go down in the middle of the night to check them and then check them once more in the morning.  There was always fish – catfish, of course, but also bass.  And I remember my Dad always asking my Mom where the cornmeal was so that he could build the fire outside and cook the fresh fish.  Of course, it did not taste a bit like fish; because it was so fresh, there was no fish taste.

And to go with that simple but delicious entre, there was always horse corn, since there was a field of horse corn immediately to the side of the old house where we stayed when we went there.  It was the old house that my Dad was born in, as were his brothers and sister. 

Horse corn is the yellow corn that was basically grown to feed cows and horses or to sell for corn meal.  But it was not the sweet corn that most people grew in their gardens for regular eating.  But horse corn is what we devoured, and slathered over it was real butter that was given to us by the kindly folks that rented the land from the Morris family at the time, the Nixes.

And after stuffing ourselves with that and some soda drinks, we took to the favorite evening activities which were to sit outside and wait for the stars to come out and for my Uncle Joe to bring out his guitar to sing Big Rock Candy Mountain and Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette.  The real treat was for him to sing some gospel songs, and my cousins would join in with him as he had taught them how to sing in harmony at an early age.

As for talk, someone would typically mention how awful that young swivel-hipped guy was that was making all the girls scream.  That being Elvis Presley.  And it seems that some mention of the President got thrown in there now and again.

And by that time, we were all ready for the desert course, which was always watermelon.  My family brought the red one and my cousins brought the yellow-meated one, and we joined in discussing which one was the sweetest, with my Dad always ending the argument by saying that they were all good.

By that time, there was nothing else left to do but to lie on the bed and look up at the stars which were ever so bright back then.  And lay on the bed we did because someone always brought a bed out of the house and put a mattress on it and eventually slept outside, mosquitoes and all.  No one seemed to mind having a bed in the front yard back then, and it could be cooler than sleeping in the house.  I think it was the teenagers that slept outside, needing some privacy.  As for us younger kids, we still could sleep comfortably three to a bed if need be.

We stayed up late usually.  Frequently, there was a rollicking game of 42 going on inside in the living area under the single light bulb with plenty of moths hovering around.  The laughter and carrying on of the adults at play didn’t disturb us, however, because we girls were off in a back bedroom trying to grow up into preteens and showing each other the latest nail polish and funny books with buxom heroines.  This was way before girl role models like Brittany Spears.

Despite our exhaustion from the day, sleeping did not always come that easy because my Dad did not believe in sleeping under any kind of a fan, much less air conditioning.  I think I was fully 14 before he acquiesced and let me run the 1920’s-era fan at night.

And waking up in the morning was glorious.  A whole other day of fun ahead, and breakfast was cooking and the aromas pervaded the place.  And no one cared if we combed our hair or wore shoes or had watermelon stains down our clothes from the night before.  This was vacation in the country!

Typically the first thing we did was to head out to the tree house built by my Dad in the ancient oak in the front yard.  We could swing down from it down to a lower bench platform, and that swing beat any zip line of today, although it was probably only about 20 feet long and there was no harness, helmet, or insurance waiver form necessary.

But the tree house only lasted a couple of summers since our legs got too long or we got more dignified or something changed.  Then again, maybe it was just that we were starting to learn how to drive, and that took our interests in a whole new direction.  For one thing, we could drive up to Rock Church and do an inspection.  Carol Ann would play on the piano, and we would check to see if anything had been stolen that we remembered from the last time.  I remember standing before the lectern thinking what I would say if I had to say something from there at some time.   

Next, we would venture over to the empty old schoolhouse where our grandfather Eugene Morris had taught school.  The Rock Church homecomings used to be there.  I remember one reunion where we went onto the top floor and poured ice tea down a hole onto the reunioners down below, careful not to pour it on the wash tubs lined with newspaper and filled with freshly fried chicken.  What fun!

And we would always stomp around the cemetery, which was a lot sparser back then.

So many fond memories once you get started remembering.  The down fall of tiny frogs everywhere after a rain, an explanation for which I still have never found; the pinto horse we got to ride; the Nix’s garden that miraculously grew with hardly any water and no artificial fertilizer; our cousin Ken Morris flying his plane in and landing in the field; that stinky water in Glen Rose on a sleepy town square.

But just to recall one more indelible memory, and that being of Christmas.  Other than summer vacations, we did not get to the farm much.  Perhaps once during the fall or the winter, but that was about it and it was a short trip.  But once, when I could not have been over six, it was Christmas and we were at the farm and we went up to the Nix’s house.  The Nixes were an elderly couple, both gray-haired, and they had rented the place for several years.  Theirs was a meager lifestyle, to say the least, but they always made us feel so welcome when we came to the farm, and they always seemed happy.  They lived in the old log cabin that was once on the Morris place on the hillside.  It was a small, old place to live.

But that Christmas when we went to the farm, we went up to the cabin to visit the Nixes.  There, nestled behind their front door, you could see when it was closed, stood their Christmas tree.  It was a cedar tree chopped down from somewhere on the hill there, about 3.5 feet tall sitting on a small table.  It was covered with spray-on artificial snow that looked so like real snow, and it had a few old-looking ornaments hung about.  And there was a white cloth around the base with more "snow" on that and a couple of small presents.  And the Nixes were so proud of it and so happy.  As a six-year-old, I am sure I must have stood there mesmerized, gazing at it forever.

I have seen lots of Christmas trees since then – pine trees from Safeway of the 50’s, flocked trees of the 60’s, aluminum trees of the 70’s, scotch pines of the 80’s, and artificial trees with crazy zipping electric lights of the 90’s, the Rockefeller Christmas tree in New York City – but none holds a candle to that precious little Christmas tree in the Morris’ log cabin.

Thank you.  Happy memories to you all.

SOURCE:

Sherry Morris Lee, "Memories From Rock Church," presented at the Rock Church Homecoming, Hood County, Texas, 09 Oct 2011.  Printed by permission of the author.




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02 Dec 2011  |  02 Dec 2011