TJ Reeder
THE FREE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
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Chapter 1
Looking back on it I guess you could say it was a nice day in East Texas. not too hot yet but needing some rain. I expect it will come, always does. the breeze in the tall Pines and big Oaks that make up this part of Texas was welcome. as was the quiet gentle sound of it all.
Life here in the small community of Dog Trot (named after a style of house built here since the days of the founding of the Republic of Texas) was real nice.
250 people living quietly, nobody rich, nobody starving. The elderly are cared for by everybody if they have no close by family and even if they do.
In other words it’s a real nice place to grow up and to live your life. Of course if you’re into big city lights you have to travel 25 miles or so. (Big city of 15000 folks.)
The town while not set up with a mayor and city council nor any of that stuff still has the kind of folks that will work together.
Like getting the fire truck and the ambulance. Folks just chipped in what they could. The Jonas brothers used their small garage to do all the work on rebuilding both units. Damn near from the ground up.
Then some of the boys from the high school auto shop class got permission to do the body work and painting as a class project for grades and the shop teacher was right there making sure no short cuts were taken.
Them kids done a bang up job! Dog trot has the sweetest emergency services equipment for many a mile around and we’re proud of it too and of the folks coming together to get it done.
I guess you’re kinda getting the picture of a nice town filled with good folks who want to live and let live. But not the kind to be run over by anybody.
It was coffee time at the Early Bird café. Meaning just about all day if ya know what I mean.
The front screen door squeaked open and a man walked in out of the sun and stood blinking for a bit. A few of the locals sorta stared, some didn’t. What with him being a stranger to the town.
He sat down and ordered breakfast. Looked around a bit, nodded to the ones looking at him and never said a word cept for his order. He picked up the area paper and read it while eating his breakfast. Left money on the table. nodded again and walked out.
Well there wasn’t nothing too strange about that cept he was the first stranger to come into the café in distant memory what with us being so off the beaten track so to speak.
And now the locals did have something to talk about besides the usual, is it gonna rain, gonna blow, the fire that broke out 2 months ago outside of town and how the town fire truck and crew got out there and put it out. Saving 25 lives. Of course it was a barn and most of the lives was chickens and barn cats and a milk cow. But we was real proud of the fire truck and crew.
Well sir, next day at dead on 7:00 am the door squeaked open and there came the stranger again. He smiled and nodded, fetched the paper and ordered breakfast, same thing as the day before, and the next day and the next for 2 weeks running.
Now the café was getting a lot more business for breakfast cause half the town was coming in to watch to see if this feller came in again, they even left his table open, whole place full and an empty table sitting there, well he would just walk in and smile and nod and Miss Ellie who had stopped asking him what he wanted to eat would bring his breakfast out as soon as he sit down, she had him timed to a tee! Yes sir that ol boy was running like the trains were supposed to.
On the morning of the 15 day the door opened Miss Ellie headed for the empty table and the stranger saw the paper was already on the table, That Miss Ellie was really having fun with this ol boy, the whole room was smiling.
But then the feller stopped before sitting and looked around the room, met every eye in the place, then he smiled as usual but instead of nodding he said in a pleasant fairly deep voice, Good morning, my name is Jody Brown, I just moved into the old Harmond place out a ways. Then he sat down and ate, well we all sat there looking at each other wondering how this could be?
The Harmond place was about a half mile out of town, in a bend of the river, in fact if the river bent any more it would be on an island. It was a really nice place, great big old oaks, and tall pines like all of this area, it had a small but nice old house made from logs cut off the land when it was cleared, big logs too, I’d bet they was 2 ft thick, the place was about 100 acres and everybody for 150 miles around had tried to buy it at one time or the other, Myself included. The place had been empty since Granny Harmond had passed on 2 years before, an outfit from the city 25 miles away kept the brush and weeds cut back and the house closed up good, the Deputy who patrolled this part of the county would check on the locked gate most every night.
Now you can’t see the place from the county road that goes by because of the trees and it being clear at the back of the land on a small hill right above the river, above any possible flood which had never happened due to the lay of the land.
Well after this bomb shell was dropped you could hear a pin drop and it was several minutes before the talk started up again, Now me, being the newest resident at that time, having only been around for 10 years decided that it was time to stop all the wondering going on, so I stood up and walked over to Mr. brown and introduced myself, He stood up and took my offered hand and with a firm grip said he was happy to meet me and invited me to take a sit, I was being looked at by the rest of the folks like I might either be siding with the devil or maybe finding out things they could later on torture out of me. That was a joke folks… maybe.
Miss Ellie brought my coffee to me and winked at me; she’s a beauty and has been for most of her 75 years! Every man in the country at one time or the other had a thing for Miss Ellie, but she had only had eyes for a young feller who went of to some war somewhere and never came back so to speak, she puts flowers on his grave several times a year.
Mr. Brown, or Jody as he said to call him finished his breakfast while I sipped my coffee and waited, when he was done he sat back and looked at me and said, I guess you have some questions huh? Well I’ll tell ya; even the ceiling fan stopped making a sound.
He kinda turned his chair and looking around the room a bit then said, My Mom was Granny Harmonds great niece and when she died she left the place to my mom, who lives in California and has no interest in the place so she signed it over to me when I retired from the service a few months ago, After almost 30 years in the Marines I decided I needed some quiet so I came here looked it over for a few days then left to get my life in order before coming back to live.
Well folks were starting to chatter amongst themselves and Jody took the moment to have some coffee, when it quieted down he said, I plan to stay here and make this my home, I want and need some peace and quiet in my life and this is as nice and quiet as I’ve seen in 20 years.
He then said he had some plans for the place and would be turning it into a working small self supporting place, which didn’t seem to matter to most anybody as they all were self supporting so to speak.
He then stood up and said he needed to get home and start his plan for the future such as it was going to be… now that right there sounded funny at least to me and a few others but he had nodded and said he was happy to meet us all, and walked out.
Well 2 weeks would go by before Jody came back into the Early Bird and headed towards his table, which already had the paper on it and Miss Ellie walked out of the kitchen with his breakfast, now this was sorta spooky to us regular folks, how is it she had placed his paper there and poured the coffee not 30 seconds before the door opened and had his breakfast ready?? This was, well it was out of the normal of our lives and was unsettling so to speak.