Dove Road

© John K. Taber 2002

I have taken to driving Dove Road instead of Highway 114 to get to town. Dove Road isn’t crowded, and it avoids the noise, pollution, and the aggressiveness of the Highway 114 drivers.

Dove Road is an old road, one of the oldest in Tarrant County. Parts of it are still county road. It roughly parallels Highway 114 but is oddly segmented because it was built in pieces in the early days, only as far as needed. Each segment is fairly straight, but the next segment continues at an odd angle. It begins in Grapevine at Dove Corners, and in segments proceeds west through Grapevine, Southlake, and Westlake to Roanoke.

This part of Texas is full of mourning doves. They have a peculiar call, a woo-oo, woo-oo, rather than the coo of the turtle dove. When I first moved here, I mistook the mourning dove’s call for an owl’s. Folks imagined that the call was plaintive, hence the name “mourning.” It must have been the plenitude of mourning doves that caused so many places around here to include “dove” in their names. The area is also known as Cross Timbers because of the thickets of various oaks, mostly scrub oak today, crossing the beginnings of the Texas Plains.

Recently, so-called killer mold (stachybotrys) was found at Dove Elementary School on Dove Road in Grapevine, and had to be cleaned up. That made TV news. The poor girl on local Fox News TV station could not handle Dove Elementary School on the teleprompter, and pronounced dove to rhyme with stove instead of love.

Dove Road was used by Bonnie and Clyde. They murdered two state troopers near the intersection of Dove Road and Highway 114. It is an incident reflected in the movie. According to official sources the officers approached their parked car to assist them, and were gunned down. It was Clyde Barrow’s fingerprints on a whiskey bottle that identified them. There is folklore disagreement where these murders happened. According to some long-time residents of Trophy Club, the murders occurred near the old Medlin barn, now torn down in what is now Trophy Club. They say Bonnie and Clyde stopped to picnic when the officers tried to sneak up on them. But, a local newspaperman says that an old-timer he talked to claims the murders happened in Euless, at least twelve miles to the south. The evidence is overwhelming, however, that the murders happened where the officials say it did.

There was a monument to the officers, Wheeler and Murphy, near the site. The monument was removed for freeway construction, but eventually it was returned. The monument read:

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF
TEXAS
ACKNOWLEDGE AND THANK TROOPERS
EDWARD BRYAN WHEELER
AND
H. D. MURPHY
FOR THE GREAT SACRIFICE THEY
MADE TO KEEP THE PUBLIC SAFE.

TROOPERS WHEELER AND MURPHY
WERE SHOT TO DEATH EASTER SUNDAY,
APRIL 1, 1934 NEAR THIS SITE ON
WEST DOVE ROAD BY THE INFAMOUS
CRIMINALS, BONNIE PARKER AND
CLYDE BARROW. WHEELER AND MURPHY
STOPPED THEIR MOTORCYCLES NEAR
PARKER AND BARROW’S CAR, THINKING
A MOTORIST NEEDED ASSISTANCE. WHEN
THEY APPROACHED, THEY WERE SHOT.

THEIR EFFORTS WILL STAND
THE TEST OF TIME.

MAY GOD BLESS THEIR SOULS.
            ERECTED 1996

This area is developing madly. Perhaps somebody feared that developers and publicists would misrepresent the incident here to sell houses and hamburgers. A Bonnie and Clyde hamburger (meaning with ketchup on it) is not far-fetched. Ponder is only fifteen miles away, where scenes for the film Bonnie and Clyde were made simply because the old Ponder State Bank robbed by Bonnie and Clyde still stands, though it has long since ceased being a bank. The movie crew patronized the Ranchman’s Cafe which has been doing a boom business ever since. Folks drive into Ponder in Mercedes lugging their wine in Igloos with them (Ponder is dry) to eat a steak at the Ranchman’s Cafe. There are even busloads of tourists in this unlikely Texas small town. So fears of mindless exploitation are well-founded, and this monument may help to ensure that an accurate version of the story prevails.

One day, off Dove Road, I noticed Lonesome Dove Road. Immediately, I thought of Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove. Damn, I thought, must be a new tract. Developers will use any name that helps sell houses.

But Lonesome Dove Road is the real thing. A little north of the junction is the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church.

Dr. Quesenbury, pastor of the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, says that McMurtry was eating in a Fort Worth restaurant and happened to see a church van through the restaurant’s window with the sign “Lonesome Dove Baptist Church.” This is from McMurtry’s own account. The poetry of the name took his fancy. His novel has nothing to do with this area of Texas (it is set along the border), but he made use of the name.

Larry McMurtry may have heard of the church much earlier through his family. One of his uncles was a member of the church.

Ironically, the church is often suspected or accused of stealing its name from McMurtry’s novel.

The Lonesome Dove Baptist Church was started in 1846, and completed in 1847, shortly before Tarrant County was formed, while Texas was still a republic. At that time, this was the frontier, the westernmost church save for a small Catholic church in El Paso.

A band of settlers from Missouri started the settlement in what is now Southlake/Grapevine. The Republic of Texas, fearing Mexican efforts to forcibly retake Texas, made a determined effort to settle Texas with Anglos. Large tracts of land were given away in order to attract settlers, 640 acres to a family. This was one of the tracts available and being wooded it was attractive to the pioneers since the woods provided material for cabins, fire, fences, and implements. Also, there was no immediate problem, apart from thieving, with Indians in this particular area.

The name Lonesome Dove is peculiar, and there are several origin legends. A widely told tale is that a mourning dove flew over the church when it was built. However, the church was named Lonesome Dove before construction started.

Another story is that a dove alighted on an early pastor’s shoulder and stayed there during the entire sermon. Dr. Quesenbury, knowing doves, pastors and their sermons seriously doubts its probability.

The founders cast about for a suitable name once they decided to build the church. They had been meeting in each other’s homes, but the congregation had grown too large for that. One proposal was to name it for their original church in Platte County, Missouri. Dr. Quesenbury hasn’t discovered that name yet. Another was to name it the Platte Baptist Church.

According to legend, while debating what to name the church, the members heard a mourning dove call, and somebody remarked “Listen to that lonesome dove.” This is as likely an origin as any. Those settlers must have felt very lonely here. They were on the frontier, with wilderness all around. It was necessary to go to church armed because of lawlessness, and to post a guard during services to prevent Indians from stealing their horses. After the church was built, the back of the church on Sundays looked like an arsenal because of the stacked arms.

Basically, we don’t know why the church was so named. The name, lonesome dove must have resonated to trigger its adoption. My guess is, it must have been already current in folklore. Doves are important in western culture, in the Bible as the Holy Spirit and symbol of peace; and in literature and song as true and faithful love. Perhaps there was a song at the time about a dove that had lost its mate. Perhaps it evoked fidelity under trial. Perhaps it evoked loneliness.

Whatever the reason for the name, McMurtry’s novel also struck a chord. The novel led to a movie, then a TV series, and there are now places named Lonesome Dove all over the United States as a result. McMurtry said that he meant to kill the cowboy myth by showing how ugly the life was in reality. Instead he added to the myth and inadvertently started a Lonesome Dove industry. Dr. Quesenbury says that when the church established its website, Lonesome Dove businesses were all over the Internet, and his church could scarcely find an unused name for itself.

One myth has it that the church burned three times, the first time by Indians. The myth even supplies a date, 1865. But the church burned once, in 1930. It was the Mt. Gilead Baptist Church about ten miles to the west in Keller that the Indians burned. Probably, people conflate the two churches.

This intersection, Dove Road and Lonesome Dove Road, was the heart of a small unincorporated community, informally called Dove Community, right up to the 50s at least. The creek is Dove Branch, still used by the church for baptism. There was a blacksmith shop with one-cylinder engines to drive a conveyor belt. There were a couple of country stores, a cotton gin, a Woodmen’s Hall, and Dove School, all now gone. The Torian cabin in Grapevine, on display like a museum piece, came from here. One of Mr. Torian’s descendents, Bud Tanner, now in his 80s, describes the area well enough so that the listener can almost see and hear those bygone activities.

The Woodmen of the World, almost defunct now, was a fraternal order, like the Odd Fellows or the Elks. One of its benefits was a tombstone. In the old cemeteries around here you may see a tombstone shaped like a tree trunk. These were provided by the Woodmen, and there is one in good shape in the church cemetery of the Lonesome Dove church.

When you drive Dove Road, you should try to see settlers and wagons, old churches and graveyards of pioneer days, and an old, old country lane traveled by horse and wagon, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and modern day refugees from the freeway.
Take your time. This is, after all, a country lane, and the Southlake police patrol it, glad to give out tickets to improve the police department budget. Begin at Dove Corners in Grapevine. Drive through Southlake stopping at the Lonesome Dove Baptist Church. Dr. Quesenbury is friendly, and if he has the time, can show you around. The church has a quilt made by its women members for a fund raiser decades ago hanging in pride from the rear wall. Member names are stitched in with their contributions, 25¢ perhaps or $1.50. Member names are freely spelled, thus Halford is also Hallford. In the church office is an old decanter carried by oxcart from Missouri, and used by the 1840 pioneers for communion.

Follow Dove Road west through Westlake to Roanoke. This is the prettiest stretch of Dove Road, a pure country lane through gently rolling hills and groves. It bisects the Circle T Ranch, some 2000 acres, owned by the Hunt brothers until their bankruptcy. They used the ranch to train thoroughbreds. It won’t remain a ranch much longer though, because it is now owned by H. Ross Perot and is scheduled for development. It is supposed to be upscale, but the past is disappearing. Still, the mourning dove will remain, its plaintive call reminding us of the past.

Cousin Bea

© John K. Taber, 2002

We received an unexpected call that Cousin Bea just died. Perhaps it should not have been unexpected because she was 98, but as she endured so long it was still a surprise. She hoped to reach 100, and almost made it.

I was in my junior year at Berkeley, 45 years ago, when the bell to my apartment rang. At the door was a frumpy middle-aged woman. “Are you John Taber?” she asked. “Yes, I am” I acknowledged. The frumpy woman announced “I’m Beatrice W., I’m your first cousin once removed.” Or, maybe she said first cousin twice removed.

What does one say to an announcement like that? There is a general understanding of aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, and cousins, but with today’s atomized family, the remoter reaches of kinship like second and third cousins or removed cousins are beyond ordinary understanding. “Well, do come in” I said, the only response I could think of on meeting my removed cousin.

That was how I met Cousin Bea. She brought me up to date on the kinship. She was my mother’s cousin, and my mother’s girlhood friend in Manhattan in the period before World War I. Actually, try as Bea might, I didn’t grasp the kinship. Just as the explanation grew crucial, Cousin Bea jumped to another distant relative, and I lost the thread. I took her word for it. Shortly after WW I, my mother’s family moved to California, and eventually contact was lost.

But she had a daughter, Clare, my second cousin, living in Berkeley that I should look up, she said. I had no idea. So I promised I would look her up. Cousin Bea loved to get people together.

And so I met Clare. She was my age, also attending Berkeley but for an advanced degree, struggling as a divorced mother with a four-year-old daughter. We liked each other. Nothing came of that, and eventually Clare married a great guy who pushed and encouraged her to get her doctorate, while I moved to Texas and married a great gal. But we kept up the ties over the years.

My wife Sonja took a shine to Cousin Bea, maybe because she was a direct link to my otherwise lost past. When my aunt died I inherited the family photos. “Who are all these people in period clothing?” I wondered. That’s the trouble with family photos. By the time you inherit them the identity of most of the people in them has been lost. It would help if people dated pictures, and wrote who the subjects are and where the pictures were taken, and on what occasion on the back. But nobody does.

Cousin Bea identified them for us. Of course, some of her identifications were mistaken. Over the years she forgot some and misremembered others. Still, she made a dent in the pile of pictures, though we can only be sure of some of them.

Bea did not like to shut up. She was fine for a visit but I imagine that if you had to live with her you would either flee to a remote part of the country or strangle her.

Sonja was interested in the family relationship. Almost always Cousin Bea’s explanation would get fuzzy, because, I supposed, when we asked for clarification, the interruption annoyed her. So on a visit to us, my wife taped her. After several days of taping, my wife asked Bea if she would like to hear herself. Of course she would. Her face showed her pleasure in listening to herself, and her annoyance at having to shut up to listen to herself. The expression of cross purposes on her face was as perfect a picture of Cousin Bea as any of us can think of.

Sonja, with paper and pencil in hand, kept on interrupting Bea as she mentioned long forgotten relatives to get the relationship down. The arrows and layout are somewhat confusing, but after Bea’s death I could use my wife’s notes and Bea’s writings to puzzle out the relationships.

Cousin Bea had a talent for bringing people together and reuniting them. I remember my mother when she finally saw Bea – they were both middle-aged by that time, and had not seen each other since girlhood. They embraced, and there were tears in my mother’s eyes. “Beatrice!” my mother said with a catch in her voice, “I thought I would not see you again this side of the grave.”

Once a year, Sonja shipped a Weihnachtsstollen (a German Christmas cake) to Bea which my wife baked herself. Cousin Bea loved the Stollen. Maybe it reminded her of her own girlhood in New York. She told us the tale of my grandfather’s sarcastic German term for weak American coffee: Blümchenkafe (flower coffee). By that she said, my grandfather, whom I never met, meant coffee so weak one could see the floral decoration at the bottom of the china coffee cup.

But the last year my wife had to send her store-bought Stollen. We’re not getting younger ourselves, and the Stollen was work. It was imported, and very good, but it was not to Bea’s liking. Bea thanked her, but let Sonja know Bea preferred the real thing, home made.

Cousin Bea was a trencherman. The writings she left dwelt on menus of a bygone era. On a visit to us I was determined to treat her to a rich steak dinner, aged and marbled meat, as in her youth. We took her to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. At the age of 89 she devoured a rare filet mignon, sizzling in butter, with evident pleasure. She loved red meat, she told us. She wiped out the lyonnaised potatos, and polished off the asparagus. She even managed a roll or two. For dessert she had crème brulée. She astonished us, but at the same time we all took pleasure in her pleasure. It was a memorable meal.

Her pictures reveal a beauty in her youth. She was bright and accomplished. She attended Cornell, taking her degree in the Classics – Greek and Latin in 1926. She played the piano very well, probably good enough to be a professional. She continued to play until near blindness kept her from reading the score, and arthritis became too painful to work the keys.

In those days there was not much a beautiful, intelligent and educated woman could do. If she had completed high school she could become a telephone operator. If she had some training she could become a nurse. With a college degree, the only practical field open to her was teaching. So, she taught high school in New York.

Cousin Bea had many adventures some successful, many not. A memorable defeat was her hamburger stand in Florida. In spite of the fact that it was supposed to make her and her husband, Jack, independent and wealthy, they went broke, and had to abandon the stand. Her most successful was her retirement from teaching to Albuquerque. She and Jack picked the location well. In the 70s, Albuquerque was big enough to support elderly people, with an ideal climate for the elderly, near desert, dry and neither too cold nor too warm, and relatively inexpensive.

They traveled a lot around the country, visiting their children and grandchildren, quarrelling with them too. Jack was nearly deaf, which is why I suppose he did not seem to mind his wife’s talking, while Bea’s eyesight was increasingly poor. With Jack’s eyesight and Bea’s hearing they managed driving the US.

Cousin Bea involved herself in the community. She was active in the senior center. She still loved to teach, so taught Spanish to the seniors, one of the many languages she had mastered. She helped organize her church, and once a year was a lay reader of Bible passages, which she read in Greek, a tour de force.

One day at a senior picnic she pronounced something to Jack, who rose as if to reply and fell over dead from a stroke. Death was instantaneous. She missed Jack, but at the same time I suspect she harbored a grudge against him for finding another way not to listen to her.

And so we laid Bea to rest next to her husband.

John J. W. 1903 – 1982
Beatrice B. W. 1903 – 2002
Together forever

Vale, Cousin Bea.

Chushingura; A Review

Chushingura (The 47 Loyal Samurai) is set in the early 1700s in Japan, when the transition from the older feudal system to a more modern centralized authority was nearly complete. The basis of the story is the struggle between doing what is right, according to the honor code of the dying feudal order, or going along with the modern system.

It is a moral story structured as an epic. The story has deep meaning in Japan to this day. Children grow up on Chushingura, somewhat like Shakespeare in the West. There is hardly a Japanese who does not know this story. It was apparently based on real events.

This film is a loving rendition of the traditional epic. The occasion was the tenth anniversary of the Japanese movie studio, Toho. The scenes are gorgeous, arranged with utmost artistry.

The epic itself is a revenge story. The hero is the faithful Chamberlain, Oishi, who is a hero of cunning, like our Odysseus, rather than Achilles. There is brawn and swordplay, but the emphasis is on intelligence; the devising of stratagems and careful adherence to them. The movie is paced, with the plot developing slowly, allowing tension to build up like a coiling spring, until the end when the story explodes in violence.

But the hero, Oishi, does not appear in the story until late. The story opens with the wronging of Count Asano, who is the good feudal lord of the old order. The villain, Lord Kira is introduced, and the new order, the Shogunate. The cause of the story is the clash between the upright Asano and the corrupt, indeed despicable, Kira.

The Shogun’s envoys are visiting his vassals occasioning elaborate ceremonies. It is Count Asano’s turn to receive the envoys. The ceremonies are elaborate, and extremely important. An error in protocol means disgrace. Lord Kira is the Master of Ceremony (protocol chief), and Count Asano has no choice but to seek his instructions. Count Asano gets off on the wrong foot by giving Kira a gift, honorable enough but of little value while Kira was expecting a substantial bribe. As a result, Kira uses his knowledge of protocol to humiliate Asano. The protocol for the visit of the envoys cannot fail without Kira also being disgraced, Kira has to cooperate, nevertheless he humiliates Asano on every occasion. Finally, Asano attacks Kira, wounding him. Attendants keep Asano from killing him.

The law intended to end feudal conflict has been broken, and the Shogun orders Count Asano to commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide). Asano obeys the edict in a scene of touching beauty.

Thus ends the introduction. Only now is the hero, Chamberlain Oishi, introduced. The fear is that Count Asano’s followers will not accept the results because Lord Kira, the cause of the trouble, has escaped punishment. Remember, these are still feudal times, and there is no assurance that the edicts of the central authority will be respected in the strongholds. It seems to everybody that the corrupt, despicable Kira is in favor with the Shogun, while the good and upright Asano was forced to commit suicide. Yet, a simple rebellion will not do, because the fortune of Asano’s entire clan is at stake. If the Shogun must enforce the law with an army, all of the clan will suffer.

Only total compliance with the Shogun’s wishes, with no hint of revenge, will save Asano’s clan.

Oishi devises a strategy of going along with the system, while intending to exact revenge when the time is ripe. He embarks on an elaborate ruse of rejecting the warrior’s code, and living a debauched life as if by preference.

Three times he is asked if his debauchery is in earnest. Actually, this is a weak point in the film. You should remember that the details of Chushingura are well known in Japan. A Japanese watching the movie already knows the details of the story, just as an ancient Greek watching Sophocles’s Antigone knew the story in advance. Thus, the ritual questioning of Oishi could have been used in the answers to illuminate the storyteller’s view, as Sophocles used them in the Antigone. Everybody knows that Oishi for his own honor will avenge his dead lord, regardless of what he says or does. Yet, Toho tells the story as if Oishi’s eventual acts are in doubt. The earnest samurai questioning Oishi on his intentions seems a little stupid rather than convincing. Still, it does cast into relief the moral question: Will you do what is right, or will you go along with the system?

In the West, doing what is right is presented too easily. The cowboy hero does the right thing, and in the end gets the girl and the farm. The strings in the orchestra swell, and the movie fades into the end. But doing the right thing in Chushingura is not so easy. It is more like the whistleblower who is fired and disgraced, and maybe even sent to prison. If Oishi and the other loyal samurai exact revenge on Kira, their own lives are forfeit. The Shogunate is trying to stamp out feuding. Will you do what is right because it is right, not because of the nice music, and getting the girl and the farm?

In the movie, Kira is the plain villain—greedy, lecherous, and cowardly. It would have been more interesting if Kira were developed. The new system (more centralized authority) is not all bad, in fact it is very necessary, and Kira has some good lines. He says that when a man stops wanting money and lusting after women, he might as well be dead. His lust and greed make him an active old man indeed. He advises Lord Asano to do as other men do, and go along with the system. That’s really not bad advice. As our once Speaker of the House, John Nance Gardner said “If you want to get along, go along.”

It would be interesting to retell Chushingura in a more nuanced version; a humanized Kira, an inflexible Asano, and a dogged Oishi. But that is not this movie.

Eventually the time is ripe. Oishi sends word that Asano’s faithful samurai are to meet in Edo to take revenge. Edo is the classical name for Tokyo. Kira is at his mansion in Edo. Of all, only 47 samurai make the rendezvous. After beautifully choreographed swordplay and mayhem, the 47 faithful samurai take Kira’s head, and march off, not to a Hollywood ending, but to their own satisfaction of having lived up to their warrior’s code. It is understood that they will be ordered to commit hara-kiri for disobeying the Shogun’s edict.

This is a terrific movie, in my view, one of the four or five best films of all time.