Dear Dad, Kings’ Visits 9.20.21
We started our trip with a drive to the Iredale Café arriving for a late lunch. The place is known for their catfish and there are stories of some driving many miles just to dine here. The fish was tasty, and the side dishes were prepared on-site. It was good, but not a long drive good. I would go back only if I was already in the area.
On to Cranfills Gap over a very lightly traveled farm road with only an occasional ranch house along the way. The town had a very tidy appearance indicating perhaps a certain amount of civic pride. But it does not seem particularly prosperous; the only significant businesses were a bank, a real estate office, and a restaurant/bar (the Horny Toad). The Horny Toad seemed designed for catering to the weekend bikers from the Fort Worth, Dallas metroplex who are so ubiquitous on the rural roads in this area.
Norse was an interesting stop. The church was unremarkable, but the cemetery proved to be quite interesting. It This is an area populated almost entirely by Norwegian immigrants who began arriving in the 1850s. The cemetery is very well preserved. I walked around most of it while Dad waited in the car under a shade tree. As I got back into the car, Dad said with a smile, “Bet you didn’t see too many Macs out there”. His observation was spot on; only one Mac in the entire cemetery. I was most impressed by the stone fence around the perimeter. The stones in the fence are not quarried or only roughly so and seemed random shapes put together almost perfectly like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. I contrast this to the few stone fences remaining around Paluxy built by my Scotch/Irish ancestors. The stones around Paluxy were quarried roughly into shoe box-shaped blocks, but the fences by the Scotch/Irish seemed to be assembled somewhat haphazardly as if much more for function than esthetics.
There is a plaque outside the cemetery commemorating the king of Norway’s visit to Norse in 1982. After my visit with dad who is the reigning patriarch of Paluxy, perhaps it would be appropriate to add another plaque commemorating the 2021 visit to Norse by the King of Paluxy.
The highlight of the day was St Olafs Kirke (the rock church). A beautiful little church on a hilltop beside a cemetery. The only other visitors this afternoon were a couple from a nearby town out for a drive. When I see very ornate or elaborate churches the first thing popping into my mind is — What a waste of time, money, and resources that could have been put to so much use elsewhere. Not my first impression here. The church built in the 1880s with local materials was almost austere, but it was a marvel to see. It was restored a few years ago with no electricity, a wood-burning stove, and a pipe organ in the balcony. The only light was from kerosene lanterns and candles or the sunlight coming through the windows. This must be very close to how it appeared soon after the original completion. As the area is almost completely devoid of man-made sounds, my imagination seated me inside on a cold night with the light from the lanterns and the stove providing heat. The only sounds coming from wildlife outside. Then stepping outside seeing the church with the muted lights from the lanterns in the windows and outlined by the night sky.
A very pleasant drive home took us through Fairy, Hico, and Chalk Mountain, ending our day with enough time for a walk to the river. Maybe the books I have read recently have made me more contemplative; for on this walk I became a bit of a 2021 version of Henry David Theroux. I stopped multiple times for several minutes just to observe my surrounding. Sitting by the river, I listened to the sound of the water and observed the ants, frogs, spiders, etc. A dragon fly landed on my hand. A short distance away from the river, I took the time to sit near and imagine what might have happened under my favorite oak tree during the ~400 years of its existence. Then I stopped a bit later to watch a coyote and two jackrabbits (all three observed me but not each other). And as I walked back to Dad’s house along a stone fence bordering a long abandoned public road; I remembered the stone fences we had seen earlier in the day and how the two differed even though from the same period of time.
Where to next?
