Feeling imprisoned between the Texas Gulf Coast and Houston's urban sprawl, I made a mad dash for sanity in the great open counties northwest of the city this past weekend. Just west of Katy on I-10, I took a right and drove until mercados and roadside taquieras disappeared behind me and before me there were only cow dotted hillsides and soaring hawks riding silence like hang gliders. Meandering along Farm Roads from Bellville to Caldwell, I stopped only for the dilapidated and the obscure. With winter branches still bare, old abandoned houses set farther back from the road are revealed making their final appeal.
Deep under the pricker vines twisting through the bare oak branches, a collapsed facade is barely detected. Like a dollhouse opened to exposed rooms, the sunlight shines on a back bedroom. The bed and a favored chair hold fast to their positions as the floor caves underneath. The skeletal remains of furniture and and hints of delicate wallpaper tell the story of a once treasured life. This was a woman-centered home. Feminine touches still shine through the decay and a faint scent of roses lingers here.
Once spring arrives, the vines and limbs will strengthen its hold and continue to pull what remains back into the ground, snapping beams like pole beans and shattering windows whose breaks will not be heard.
In another month when bluebonnets dominate the roadsides and fresh leaves camouflage the past, this wee house will go quietly into her goodnight.
Aside from from abandoned houses, ghost towns also offer history rich cemeteries. On the road from Snook to Caldwell is Providence Cemetery. This meticulously maintained memorial ground contains the remains of early settlers, Civil War veterans, slaves and the sad reflection of infant mortality in pioneering life.
Rows of markers show the sorrow of parents who lost as many as six children; each dying before they reached the age of 4. As a Mom, I can't imagine such sorrow. It's ironic that as much as I seek out the fallen houses to base my art dolls on the lives that once were- I seldom take into account the lives that never had a chance against frontier life and yellow fever. I also forget that slavery was a big part of the early Southern Texas cotton industry. Large plantation houses still stand twenty miles away in Independence and Washington.
Time moves forward, people grow old and die, some stories get told while others are left with simple markers in a bygone era. In an ever growing tech-centered, busy world it's important to get out in to wide open spaces where history paved the way for modern convenience. It is where history lives, breathes, and mingles with science in the beauty of rural decay.
LOVE & TINY HISTORIES!
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