Sometimes I think about the little boy who lived on that farm outside Lohn. I know things about him that he didn't know. He cannot know yet how far his life will take him, or the failures, successes, marriages, and children ahead. He will love Trish for twenty-two years and help raise her granddaughter, McKenna. Eventually he will have to say goodbye to both of them. The little boy knows none of that. He is simply living the day in front of him. Perhaps that is merciful.
None of us could carry the entire weight of our lives if God showed it to us at the beginning. We receive it a day at a time.
What Matters Now
At eighty years old, I do not measure my life primarily by the things I once thought would matter. Job titles fade. Companies reorganize. Houses are bought and sold. Money comes and goes. Awards are put into drawers. Even photographs eventually contain faces that younger generations cannot identify. What remains? Faith. Family. Love. Character. Memory. And the effect we had upon other people. I have made mistakes. I have failed at things. I have hurt people, and I have been hurt. I have had successes of which I am proud.
I have also received blessings I did nothing to earn. I have lived long enough to understand that a life does not have to be perfect to have meaning. Mine certainly wasn't perfect. But it has had meaning.
Back to McCulloch County
That is one reason I have wanted to recover the history of Lohn, Pear Valley, Brady, the Marshalls, and the Latimers. I don't want those people to disappear. I don't want L. O. Marshall to become merely a name on an old building. I don't want Charlie Latimer's cowboy years forgotten. I don't want Ivy Marshall and Kirby Latimer to vanish simply because their lives were short. I don't want future generations to know only that Hardy Marshall was a poor sharecropper during a drought without knowing the family history that stood behind him.
And I don't want the little communities that shaped us to become nothing more than names beside highways. Those people lived. They worked. They struggled. They laughed. They buried children. They survived droughts. They built stores. They raised families. And eventually, two of those family lines came together. The Marshalls. The Latimers. On January 30, 1946, I entered that story in Brady, Texas. I grew up near Lohn, and after eighty years I am still learning how much those people and places shaped me.