 This visit was a stopover on the way home after the visit with Mother
and Andrew and Carolyn described immediately below. I had not been
to Celina since the death of our paternal grandparents. We had
often driven past the Interstate 40 exits to Celina, and I had
sometimes thought about making the stop, but had never done it.
Finally on this trip, I asked Susan and Rebecca if they would accompany
me. They both said yes and we took an exit -- not sure which
one, perhaps the one to Livingston.
I didn't have much trouble finding the location of the old Masters farm
house, although the house itself is long gone. There is still an
enormous cedar tree at the corner of the property, which I can vaguely
remember, and the old cave across the road is,
of course, an unmistakable marker. It's hard to reconcile a modern style
rambler with the authentic old white frame
two-story farm house that held so many memories -- for example, waking up
on a frosty morning under a feather blanket, with the room almost at
outside temperature, it seemed, and the delicious aroma of ham, bacon, eggs,
country biscuits, home-made jams, and red-eye gravy wafting
through the house.
We drove on into Celina and spent some time looking for Walter and Gypsy
Ann's grave. We stopped at a local funeral home, but they had
never heard of our family. They did, however, tell us where the
local cemeteries were located. I walked around town square,
capturing as many photos as possible, before heading to the most likely graveyard,
Fitzgerald Cemetery. I was struck with the fact that Celina gave the
appearance, perhaps wrongly to my brief examination, of being a
backwater where little takes place.
I
n any case, we found Fitzgerald Cemetery and immediately discovered
Walter and Gypsy Ann's combined headstone. At Rebecca's
suggestion, we went back into town and bought flowers, which we left by
the marker. Then we drove out to Dale Hollow Dam, the site at which Mother was working as a nurse when she met Will. In a very
real sense, we three brothers got our beginning from the encounter at that dam, and it
was the first time I had been to the dam since childhood. In fact,
I only have fuzzy memories of being there at all, so it was good to
visit it and see what it looked like as an adult. Also, it was fun
to visit with our daughter, the geologist, who immediately checked out
the surrounding rock formations! Finally, we drove across
the dam and, bidding Celina farewell, made our way back to I-40 and
continued on to Virginia and home.
|
