Here's a pic of where my heart resides...on the high plains of West Texas, just outside a little town called Maple is my Grandfather's 80 acres of red dirt and cotton.
H. W. Garvin was his name...a noble, gentle man...he worked the land, loved his family , loved his Lord, and went Home in 1977. On the night Grandma died 19 years later, the great elm west of the house was split in two by the fierce winds summer.
The house is empty now, and broken down...the chicken coop and feed sheds stand like monuments, ancient and speaking of another time...the fields are tilled by a neighbor, now...but the land is dry, the crop struggles.
Maple and surrounding towns are drying up and blowing away, just like the cotton.
Still, the space and feel remain...the flat horizon crowned with distant trees, windmills, cotton gins, grain elevators and John Deeres kickin' up the dust...the big blue sky above it all.
Texas is a place where people came to be free...to have a small piece of land to plow and plant...to raise crops, horses, cattle and families.
I have a bit of that good red dirt from my Grandpa's cotton field sitting on a shelf, and in it rests his broken water cup, which I found in the ruin of the well house the last time I was there...so, part of me will always be in Texas...and a part of Texas will always be with me.
I'm a Dixie boy who's damn proud our President comes from Texas...may the Good Lord always bless and favor him as he leads the battle against enemies foreign and domestic.
And, God bless the USA...)
(Big HOWDY to all our Hostesses, and to all FRiends and FReepers here at the Finest...there's no place like home.)