Since my mother’s accident over Thanksgiving weekend, I have
reflected a lot on the love, security,
and comfort that defined home to me. I
was in my 30’s before I realized that ours was not a “Beaver Cleaver” home…but
what we had was probably a lot more normal.
Yesterday was my parent’s 66th Wedding Anniversary and today
is Roots Day. I did not remind Mother of
their anniversary, as it would have made her increasingly sad, as it seems
these last 16 years she has missed Daddy more than the year before and she so
yearns to be with him once again. With
Mother now in rehab, our Christmas will be different this year. My sister and youngest nephew came in to see
Mother and bring their gifts for our exchange.
My sister gifted Mother and I with prints of old family photographs. When I opened them, I cried, but we have been
crying a lot since Mother’s accident.
Dwight and I were talking about being thankful that Cindy and Matt got
to see Mother on Friday, for it was a good day for her and unfortunately her difficult
days are becoming more frequent.
Family gatherings, old photographs, sharing childhood stories
and those of our ancestors all help us discover our roots and learn of the
things that have made us who we are today.
I believe that finding our roots gives us a sense of belonging that we may
not even realize we were missing. In
1982, my parents vacationed in Colorado
for the first time. As a young boy, my
dad had lived in Colorado and during
that vacation, he had gone in search of his childhood home. Upon returning home to Texas,
they showed us incredible photos of Colorado
tourist spots where they had captured the Lord’s glory in its finest. There were also pictures of Daddy’s childhood
home against the backdrop of a distant range of mountains and they were
captivating as well. These pictures that
seized my attention revealed a small and very plain little house that no longer
had a roof, was void of its windows and one wall laid in ruins. This was the home that MY grandfather had
built for his family—my grandmother and his three little boys.
Soon after seeing these pictures of their 1982 trip, I came
up with a plan to move Daddy’s home from Colorado
to our family farm in Texas and
presented my plan to him. Being realistic,
Daddy told me of all the cons to offset all the pros of my plan. Of course, it was his money that I was using
in “the plan” estimates and it just did not seem as enticing and practical to
him as it did to me. I certainly did not
have the $100,000 plus dollars it would have cost to buy the home from the
current owners, and for the cost of dismantling, moving and rebuilding the
house, so the idea was quashed.
My husband grew up vacationing in Colorado
during the summers, as his mother too had lived in Colorado
as a young girl. In 2001, she wanted to
take another trip and asked us to go along. As the trip began, I was very
excited with the prospect of finding my dad’s home which was what I wanted more
than anything on the trip. The first
night we stopped in Raton, New
Mexico where Dwight’s parents stayed in an RV park
and we stayed at the Best Western. Early
the next morning we checked out and went to the RV Park to start the journey to
Colorado Springs. They had decided they wanted to stay and rest
a while longer and urged us to go and to find my dad’s home. Our trip was to be a three week vacation, and
I had thought we would search for Daddy’s home at the end of the trip instead
of the beginning, but instead we headed out that morning looking for the little
house. I began praying as soon as we
left, knowing that I was going to be terribly disappointed IF we did not find
the little house, as that had become the main focus of planning for me…to find
Daddy’s home. The longer we drove, the
more I prayed as it was not long into that journey that I realized, it was
going to be like “looking for a needle in a haystack”. And the more I talked to the Lord, the more I
talked of concession, realizing that I just did not have enough information
(just a few pictures from the 1982 trip) for anyone to direct us to Daddy’s
home in the vast wilderness of His Colorado Plains. My dad had died in 1997 and Mom could only
tell me what she remembered of their search 19 years before “if you can find the school
house, you can find your Daddy’s house which is a mile or more from the
schoolhouse”. As I viewed the Plains I kept thinking that I certainly
never recalled seeing pictures or of studying THIS Colorado
in school. What I saw of the Colorado
Plains made west Texas look
heavily populated. It was definitely going to take the Lord’s intervention and guidance
to find Daddy’s little home in the vast and barren lands we were
traveling. .
Two hours into our drive, we came to a fork in the road and the
first little town called Walt’s Crossing.
As I remember, we had not seen any cars, houses, or cattle since leaving
Trinidad, Colorado. I had believed we had to be going the wrong
way, not believing that anyone could have lived and survived in the wilderness
of this land. Walt’s Crossing had a home
which was also an art gallery. When we
went inside, the folks were as excited to see us as we were to see them. We asked if we were on the right road that
would take us to Pritchett, Colorado. They were puzzled why we were looking for
Pritchett. I showed them my pictures and
they knew nothing of the home or schoolhouse, but said to stay on the same road
for the next 70 miles and once we got into town to stop at the Post Office or
General Store for assistance.
As we entered town, we found the Post Office with ease. Pritchett was as much a ghost town as those
seen in the old Westerns shown on television.
I certainly was not surprised after our three hour drive through the
Plains. The woman working at the Post
Office had only been in the area for a couple of years and knew nothing about
the home or the schoolhouse. She sent us
to the General Store—the only other business open in town. The General Store served as a bar and diner
as well. The lone woman working took our
hamburger orders as I viewed the meager grocery supplies. It was obvious that Pritchett was not home to
many folks or they were definitely due a big delivery to stock the bare
shelves. When she brought our burgers,
she asked what we were doing in town. I
pulled out my pictures feeling a little foolish in asking as I believed it was
pointless to ask anyone else if the Postmaster did not know where the old schoolhouse
could be found. Once our multi talented
friend at the General Store looked at the pictures, she told us something like
“I not only sell, sack and shelve groceries, tend bar, cook, serve and bottle
wash, I ALSO mow for the county and know exactly where this home is!” She then went on to tell us that there were
only two such structures remaining in the Colorado Plains and this was one of
them. Once we finished lunch, she
directed us to the Co-Op to get gas and gave directions to Daddy’s home. I was too excited to take time to get gas
first, so we proceeded in search of Daddy’s home. No luck.
We headed back to the Co-Op and as we were gassing up, we talked to the
man running the Co-op. He was a local
and actually remembered the family name and thought he remembered my dad and
his older brother. He went inside and
called the owners of the ranch and told Joyce that I was searching for my dad’s
home. She invited us out, gave us
directions and we were soon on the road in my quest to find our family roots
and incredible blessings from the Lord.
Joyce met us as we pulled into their drive. She took us out to the barn to meet Eddie, her
husband. I showed them the pictures and
they explained when they bought the property, they built their own house
literally around the old schoolhouse.
Through the back barn doors, Eddie pointed to Daddy’s house---way in the
distance. He gave us a crow bar to use
in turning over rocks as the Plains are a prolific rattlesnake habitat. They told us that we could take our time and
have anything from the house that we wanted.
I was glad we were in Dwight’s pickup as I definitely wanted rock from
the house.
For three hours, we walked around the house and the
land. I can not explain the incredible
and overpowering feelings I experienced at the home site. The home stood near a cliff above the deep canyons
and I SAW the beauty amid the barrenness.
My grandfather had quarried the rock from the stone canyons below and
had hauled the rocks up out of those deep canyons. Many of the rocks actually had the signs of
the pick he had used in cutting the stone.
I could count the numerous strikes just by the pick marks on the many
rocks as I intently gazed at the stone walls of the home…the fruit of his hard labor. The house was a small one room home with a
dirt floor, yet he had to have labored very hard to build the home for his
young family. To load and haul the large
rocks from the canyons would have been a difficult feat as well. As we went through every inch of the house,
Dwight pointed out that what made the difference in Granddaddy’s house was that
he had made mortar and used it instead of mud that would wash away. And he had taken barbed wire and used it like
modern day rebar is used in strengthening structures to withstand the elements
and storms. He had to have been as wise
as my dad as the small home had at that time withstood almost 80 years of the
harsh elements of the Colorado Plains.
We later realized that the same was true of the schoolhouse which was
probably the second “remaining structure” we had been told about. Inside the house, Granddaddy had taken strips
of wood and embedded them into the rocks creating pegboards. I imagined the boys using them to hang their
little clothes and other items such as Grandmother’s pots and pans. As I peered out each of the openings where the
windows and doors had been, I wanted to capture what they saw as they looked at
the vistas outside their little home.
When we walked outside, I picked handfuls of the native flowers that
looked like yellow baby’s breath growing wild across the land. I was seeing this all at summer’s end, but I
also tried to imagine what it was like for them in the fall, winter and spring
and a wellspring of love flowed within me as I imagined the hard daily life of
my dear family in the barrenness of the Colorado Plains. It was a life that eventually brought them to Texas
in 1934 when my dad was ten years old.
Wanting to thank Eddie and Joyce when we left Daddy’s home,
we headed back to their house. As we
pulled up in front of their home, we saw their dog, a Rin Tin Tin look alike
and she was nursing a litter of kittens.
What a surprising yet delightful and sweet sight to see! They wanted us to come in to meet Eddie’s
mother as he had called her and she had
come to share her own memories of those times during the 1920’s and 1930’s. They gave us a tour of the home and we
actually sat in the old schoolhouse which was the large den area of their
home. I was shown the area of the room
where there was an elevated floor which served as a “stage” for the
school. They used it for plays, choir
practice and other school programs. After
acquainting me with the school, Joyce presented me with a packet and explained with
the purchase of the ranch, the school was included as well as all the records
going back to the beginning of the school.
She had been appointed the County
Historian and therefore had all the
records dating back to when my family lived there. She had spent her time searching the records
while we were out at the home site. She made
copies of pictures of the students, of which my father and his older brother
had not been identified and she was now able to “name” them. She gave me copies of the teacher's
contracts, my dad’s report cards and other miscellaneous data that she thought
would be of interest to me. I was so
incredibly overwhelmed and thankful to have received all that she found and was
so kind to share with me. I could not
have been happier if I had found a treasure chest of gold.
That magical day has been one of the most memorable days I
have spent with my family, even though I was the only one there, I felt they
were ALL with me in spirit and the love I
have for them was felt as strongly that day as if they were all right there
with me. As we drove away from the ranch,
I gazed back upon Daddy’s little home in the distance until it was merely a dot
on the Colorado horizon. I felt a mixture of emotions, a sadness as I
knew that I had seen Daddy’s childhood home for the first and last time, yet at
the same time I felt so incredibly happy because I had found such treasures
and would carry those memories in my heart for the rest of my life.
The rest of our vacation was incredible too and so full of
the Lord’s surprises and blessings. That
very night we checked in to the Garden of the Gods Motel in Colorado
Springs. We had
gotten ready for bed and were both deep in some good reads. As I was ready to go to sleep, I got up to
look out the window to see if we could see Dwight's truck from the room and was
absolutely shocked to see it was SNOWING! It had been warm that day in Raton and
Pritchett too. The next morning we awoke
to view the most incredible winter wonderland!
We got dressed and immediately started driving through the mountain
passes taking tons of pictures and enjoyed sights I had never seen! After days of glorious snow, it warmed up and
the snow melted, leaving a variety of hues that only the Lord can paint. I told Dwight over and over that I knew “the
Lord did this just for me since I have so wanted to see the beauty of Colorado”. In less than three weeks, it looked like we
were there for three seasons---summer, fall, and winter. God is good and all the time!
Several weeks later on our return from Colorado,
we were several hours away from home when I had a memory of the year my
grandmother gave all the grandkids quilts for Christmas.
She made Sunbonnet Sue quilts for the girls and a Fisher Boy quilt for
my brother. She had finished all the
quilts except for mine. Instead she gave
me a quilt from her collection. I was
disappointed, yet would have never let it show, not wanting to hurt or upset my
Grandmother. Since it was an old quilt,
I carefully wrapped and stored it away.
It had been stored for years, as I had never used it as it was fragile
and I was afraid I would ruin it. As we
were driving, I suddenly thought of the long forgotten quilt and believed it to
be a friendship quilt. I got so excited
as I told Dwight that was the only place the family had ever moved away from
and I believed it was a Friendship Quilt and IF I remembered correctly, it had to be from Pritchett when they
moved to Texas. When we got home, the
first thing I did was search and find that quilt and YES! It was from 1934 and women from Pritchett embroidered
their names on the various flower blocks.
Once I got the school records out, I had the student’s names and their
mother’s names. I realized then that my
Grandmother knew me better than I knew myself.
She could not have given me a gift that I would treasure more—a piece of
our family heritage that the Lord Himself has written. Thank you to my Dad and his family and thank
you always to the Lord in all things and in all ways, for He is in it all!
I would like to urge you to discover your own vistas and the undiscovered
roots of your heritage as it will be an incredible life changing experience and
probably full of many blessings such as these have been for me. Moments such as these are so good and to be
cherished for the love of our awesome families.
