Time has it only meaning in the thoughts of men. The longer that I live, the more I realize that reality assumes the role of people and places from the past.  I remember Papa talking to his uncles about the time the stars fell. I recall my Aunt Mattie telling  this same familiar story she heard as a girl, while I sat at her dinner table when I was five. I later learned that they were living in Alabama at the time, in the 1840's. In my mind then, the event was merely an unusual occurrence, but now it is an event of significance because it defines a part of who I am, my past, my present, and my future. 

          "Every time I see your face, it reminds me of Papa," my grandfather told his daughter Annie when she was twelve. His Papa had fought in the Civil War and served in the Alabama State Legislature in 1850; however, her picture hanging on my wall today over a hundred years later, reminds me of what she meant to my grandfather, and to me. When my Aunt Annie was born, her Papa, shortly afterward, went to the State Fair of Texas and brought back a medallion commemorating the event in 1902. Her gift of that present to me some ninety years later reminds me of her love and closeness, a closeness which I hope my life has encouraged in others. Time, like men, never ends or begins, and neither do memories and dreams. Papa left his brothers and sisters after his father's death and traveled by covered wagon to Central Texas, where he worked as a bouncer in a local saloon at a place called Towash, named for the tribe that had settled there years before.  Aunt Millie said, "Papa worked there until he met and married your grandmother whom he carried away on horseback. She never returned to her family but started a new one in Bosque County."  Time does not exist in events in time, but in hearts and souls, in love and suffering, in dreams and disappointments. My great-grandfather's daguerreotype of 1850 reveals a solemn and dignified countenance that underlies these powerful emotions.

          "I remember when Papa and Uncle Tobe were talkin about the time that the sky fell and everybody thought the world was comin to an end," said Mattie. They were remembering what their Papa had told them when they lived on the plantation in Alabama in the 1840's.  That was in the twenties, and I was just a girl listening from the kitchen while the menfolk ate in the big room. We children ate when they were through. That was what Papa and Uncle Tobe remembered of what  Papa told them before he met Mama in San Augustine County and fought in the War. That was also before he got in that saloon fight with another man over his family and shot him right there at the bar. That was like the time that radio program announced that Martians were invading the world, and everyone started reading their Bibles and praying because we all thought the  world was coming to an end. People left their jobs and looked for places to hide because they are afraid of what was coming.  They were holding prayer meetings in the churches every night and watching the sky for any signs of the invaders." 

"I heard them say that, too," said Mary, her sister. "That's why he came to Texas, cause he thought he killed that man and was afraid they'd hang him.  It was lucky for us though, cause in Texas he remarried, and that's where we came along.  Ain't it funny the way things work out? You'd never think that things would work out the way they do, would ye? Papa marrying Mama and all. Papa told me that Annie looked just like him, the spitting image, and they say  he had a mind like a steel trap, never forgot anything he read, and so does she. She only has to read somethin one time and she's got it. Anyway, Grandpa come to Texas, where his two brothers had moved and earlier fought in the  War against Mexico. He lived with them a while, and got a job as a teacher in San Augustine, where he met Mama. She was a student in his class. I have a tintype of her in the family trunk. Our Papa was born there, and when he was eighteen, he helped build the railroad that run through the forest. It's a national  forest now, I understand, and some of Papa's cousins still live  there. They can stay there as long as they don't take a notion to move, but if they do, then they lose the land their grandpa settled cause it belongs to the government."

"They say Papa was a tough character; you didn't mess with him," said Annie, their sister.  He worked in a saloon in Towash, throwing any roughnecks out if they started trouble. That was right after he decided to leave San Augustine and come to Texas with his Uncle Elbert Weeks, the preacher that married them.  You remember him. He was a traveling preacher  and rode from place to place spreading the Word and staying overnight in the homes of those who fed him. That was in Hill County. Uncle Elbert Weeks and Daniel Busby took care of Papa when he was young, after  his Papa died. Poor papa was only eight when his Papa passed away. That was only a few years after the War Between the States. I have a picture of Grandpa when was a Congressman in Alabama. That must have been around 1850.  We were wealthy then, and had our own plantation, with slaves and cotton, but the Yankees burned us out. We lost everything. Even now, when I hear people singing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' I think of those Yankees and that no-count Lincoln.

Aunt Millie then said, "Things were so bad in Bosque County then that the childern had to hide in cornfields on moonlight nights to keep the Comanches from scalping or kidnapping them, the way they done Cynthia Ann Parker. Bosque County was full of outlaws and scalawags in those days, too. The newspaper said that there were two killings a week, and no law to stop it. Jesse James and his gang traveled through Bosque from time to time, going in and out of Mexico, and Sam Bass passed through on the Texas Central Railroad on his way west of here. Belle Starr also had a cabin near Morgan. Folks had to survive any way they could. They had their own kind of justice. They had to, if they wanted to live. B.C. Hill talked about the time that Jesse James and his gang rode up to their house one night late and demanded food and a place to rest their horses for the night. B. C. said he didn't think nothin of it cause in those days folks always took care of one another, particularly those travelin by night. That is, until he saw their hog irons  and decided it'd be better just to stay out of their way .It's always better to leave them alone than to bite off more than you can chew.. They were on their way to Mexico. Another time, they stopped over on their way to Missouri. Some folks thought they was meaner than hell, but I knew for a fact that they never took nothin from poor dirt farmers like us. We've always been poor as Job's turkey, and don't spect him to cotton to us. It's the bank money that he's after. Everyone knows that bankers are all  as crooked as a dog's hind leg. " Yeah, we all know that they're as crooked as a barrel of snakes,"  sister Louisa interjected.

"Papa was born the year they freed the slaves, and Mama was born three years later," Annie told them. "They were married in 1888 by Uncle Elbert Weeks, and Papa named one of his sons after him. He also named a son after Daniel Busby who took care of him after his Papa died. Papa and Mama had twelve children, as did Mama's three other sisters, and they all settled in Bosque County about that time. Grandpa Sowell was born in 1820, in Kershaw County, South Carolina, where the family moved from Bertie County around 1790. Grandpa was named James Jackson-Augusta Sowell, after Andrew Jackson, under whose command his papa fought during the Battle of New Orleans. For a few years, we even lived near President Jackson's home in Carolina, and were close friends, I am told. Grandpa Sowell's Grandpa fought in the American Revolution in North Carolina and was given 100 acres by the governor for his service in the war."

"Why don't you stop telling that story! I've heard it a thousand times, and nobody wants to hear it again!" shouted Luther, the youngest sibling. "Nobody's listening to you anyway! We don't need a history lesson!" Dad told me he paid for that remark with a razor strap. "Yeah, you'll have your hand on your head with a knot under it," his older brother Elbert laughed. 

  "Pipe down, you young sprout! I'll tan your hide if you don't dry up!  Some people just  cain't keep their mouth shut, and you don't want to be like that. Like a catfish, all mouth and nothin else. You stick your nose where it don't belong, young man, and you'll come back with a knot under it"  You'll getting a little to big for your britches," Papa said. "Keep your mouth shut and you might learn a thing or two. That's why you have two ears and only mouth. Understand? It's like the story of the old man who lost his pipe and looked all over the place for it, until he finally looked in the well  and saw his reflection. Then he yelled, "There it is!" as the pipe fell from his mouth.

"I think it's funny how our grandpa's names are a lot the same,"  said the eldest sister Millie.  "Papa was Jackson, and his papa was James. His papa was John, and his papa was James again, who fought in the Big War. His father was John, as well. Then everything changed. His papa was Richard, as was his own papa." Ain't that strange? The same names over and over again."

"It really is!" Louisa exclaimed. "They lived in South Carolina until 1825, when they moved to Henry County, Alabama, where they had a large plantation like the one in Carolina. They were living there when Grandpa's papa died in 1841, and later Grandpa's two brothers came to Texas and settled in  Augustine County. Grandpa joined them some time after 1850 because he married Grandma in 1860.""Grandpa Cox was a real character, too, if I remember right. They said he  led a company of men against Indians and rustlers. He had a blind brother named Palonzo whose horses ran away him one evening in the woods. The wolves got after him, and we didn't find his body until the next day.  Grandpa and Grandma Cox , along with Palonzo and his brothers, are all buried in the  family cemetery across the road from Grandpa's home. It's sad to look across the road see all of them, but in another way, you knows they'll always be there  to remind you of how much they loved and cared for you. It makes me just want to cry." Their stone markers standing there so proud and dignified, shining in the sun, just waiting for the Lord to come again. How wonderful that'll be, won't it? That'll be a reunion better than any we've had here at Lane's Chapel, and we've had some good ones, here, too." 

 "Come on, now, tell us more about Papa and his new home in Bosque, "said Gus , one of the girls' older brothers.

 "Well,  Papa brought our Mama to live near Grandpa 's place near Lane's Chapel, and Uncle Weeks stayed at Lampasas near the Sowells that settled there years before. Papa and Mama took up housekeeping on Holiness Mountain just after they married in 1888. That wasn't too far from where Ole Nystel was captured by the Comanches. He stayed with them for nine months and then jumped into a canyon to escape. They say he escaped on a Saturday, and after that time, he became a Seven Day Adventist. Our sister Louisa  took pictures of Ole and his wife in 1925 when they celebrated the anniversary of his escape."

"You remember it well. I took the pictures, and my husband Bryan Moore, stood there with the family and friends together," said Louisa. " I still have have those pictures with those  of Tobe and his uncles in a box I keep in the closet. Ole Nystel even wrote a book about his escape and called it Three Months with the Wild Indians. Grandpa Sowell's place joined the land where he escaped. I remember when Ole was first learning to drive a Model T. He would ride up to the gate, yell, 'Whoa!' and drive right through it! Luther, our brother was only five at the time, when Ole asked him to open that gate, and I thought Uncle Ole, as we all called him, was going to run smack dab over him! Then he'd get madder a hornet and yell, 'Am gracious!' He always said that when he was riled up."

Millie said, "Grandpa Cox always kept two two or three bottles of whiskey under the front porch, and claimed he used it for medicinal purpose, which as far as I know, was the truth. I never saw him drunk, though.   Men would come  by to visit  and Pap would offer them a snort. Papa and Mama had twelve children, and what a rip-roarin time it was when they were at home together! I can see them now! It was just like yesterday. I remember that folks came from all around asking him to pray for them if they had  the colic, a  fever, burns, or female trouble. He had learn certain words from the Bible that he would use when he prayed over them, and most of the time they would be cured. Some conditions he couldn't cure , but others he could, after praying over those words. Folks even brought animals sick with  the dropsy or the scours. He taught my Mary, Louisa , and me some of those words. You had a particular set of verses for different types of problems. My brother Luther 's wife burned her hand really bad on a red-hot iron, and she went to Millie about it. Millie took her into a back room by herself, held her hand gently, asked her how it happened, and said a quiet prayer over it. By the time  they had ridden home, the burned place was no longer painful." I remember my mother's hand and her amazement at the miracle she had experienced. Grandpa Cox settled in Bosque County in 1865 and was the first to build in fence in the Lane's Chapel area. He planted bois d'arc trees along the border of the land, and Luther later made a gavel and doorstops from that same wood. 

 I remember these conversations between my four aunts when my parents visited them during a family reunion when I was only five. Since then, I have found that their Grandpa Sowell, my great-grandfather, fought in the Civil War, his grandfather fought in the  Battle of New Orleans, and his, in the American Revolution. Sadly, only their brief impressions remain. Time leaves unforgettable memories of love, struggle, and hope.