The Weakline Place

Sherri, thank you for the birthday note. Brought back a lot of memories. I also wanted to wish Vie and Gene Pennell a Happy Anniversary, as it is also on the 13th. If we were closer we could "party" together.

Reading about the Texas Trail, I remember dad telling us he thought the trail ran pretty close to our draw, below the barn.

Sherri if you remember,we use to have ponds down in the draw, that eventually dried out with the dry years. The boys found some old rusted tin plates, a couple old rusted cups, and some other things that fell apart if you looked at them around the big pond. Of course they must have been digging around because that stuff wouldn't have been on the top surface. Anyway dad said they probably were left when they brought cattle up from the south. So you are probably right about the trail running through the breaks.

Talking about the ponds, the boys were allowed to ice-skate on the pond once in awhile,and it was nothing my folks were thrilled about. I'm sure every time they went down there they had a "sermon" before hand. Well you all know how boys are--seems as if one time the skates weren't thrilling enough----oooooh noooooo--one of my brothers decided it would be much more fun to use his car to do a few ice-twirlies. I don't think a complete turn was made before- yep you guessed-. You know, I can't remember what happened after that-----so I guess that wasn't "the fun part".

I was wondering if Indian Hill is on the old Weakline place where the folks lived. There is a marker almost where the old house was. When dad's sisters would come out from Manhattan they would walk to the edge of the breaks and look across the country and marvel how beautiful it was. (And how do I remember this? My sister told me).

Probably not to many people know that the Scrivener road was the only road to get out to our area at one time. It was such a treat for the folks to take that road home. There seemed to be sooooooo many steep hills to a little girl riding in the back seat. I was so impressed by the Scrivener place. I think because of so many trees and no matter how hot it was, that place looked like a cool heaven.

Anyway my mother told me about them coming home from town (it was the only road then) and Doralene was pretty little. Well it started to rain. Apparently you do not want to be on that road when it's wet. Of course those cars in that day were not like our cars today, you know--no 4 wheel drive and such. Well this little piece of machinery started to slide and there was no way of stopping it. Mom said she nearly squeezed Doralene to death just trying to hold on to something. Mom's blubbering around like a mag-pie wondering what they are going to do, dad's pretty calm and cool--picks up Doralene and tells mom to follow him and he'll show her what they are going to do. Now I know why mom hated that road--she and dad walked home, taking turns carrying Doralene. Of course dad went after the car when the road dried-----which was a day or so. At that time they lived on the Weakline place.

--Karen Lindell

NOTE FROM EDITOR: After getting this note from Karen, I opened up Google Earth and sat down with Mamma and asked her to show me where the Weakline place was located. Here is a picture of that area with names on the places she could remember. (Double click on the picture to see an enlarged version)

--Editor