Tuesday, February 2, 2010

millwood

We drove down the country road, beneath the trees, past the old and graying buildings on one side and the local livestock watching us on the other. The road wound down and around and past the cemetery and ended in a dead end in a pasture beneath some high electrical wires. The old bull stood near the fence snorting. It was a bizarre jumble of technology and old headstones and cows. Some plastic flowers had been placed in the ground next to what appeared to be a grave across from a Texas historical marker.
We got out in the misty rain and ran across the road laughing. There was a padlock on the gate to the cemetery but there was a section of fence that was missing and we simply walked through. The historical marker told of a place called Millwood. A farming town that had sprung up and prospered in the little valley and now was gone. Dead as the inhabitants of the cemetery with no one to remember them, well perhaps someone remembered. The plastic flowers had been placed in the center of the broken millstone. According to the marker the mill had stood within 40 yards of the marker but looking around there was no indication that it had ever been thee.
It began to rain a bit harder. We ran back to the car and talked for the next 40 miles imagining the people who had lived there and whether the town had died first or the millstone had broken and that had been the end of the town. Of course there was no telling now.

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