Before there was the farm at Lohn that I knew as a boy, there was another story. It belonged to my mother's father, Charles Alfred “Charlie” Latimer.
Granddad Latimer had been a cowboy. His years in the saddle took him far beyond McCulloch County, from Texas into Arizona. This was before highways, pickup trucks, and the conveniences that later generations would take for granted. The distances were real, the work was hard, and a cowboy's life depended upon horses, cattle, weather, judgment, and his ability to take care of himself. Eventually, however, Charlie came home. He married Beckey Helena “Tishie” Huffman, and together they established their home in Lohn valley. Charlie the cowboy became Charlie the husband, father, farmer, and family man.
Charlie and Tishie had eight children, including my mother, Marie.
The Latimer family became deeply rooted in McCulloch County. In later years, Tishie inherited a ranch near Brady, not far from Curtis Field. That ranch became one of the gathering places I remember from childhood. There were live oak trees, relatives, children, food, conversation, and the kind of weekend gatherings that become more valuable in memory as the people who attended them gradually disappear. There were many Latimers. My generation alone included twenty-eight first cousins. Family reunions became part of our lives—first at places such as Marlin and later at Camp Gene Ashby Boys Ranch on the Llano River near Mason. Still later, the first cousins gathered in Kerrville.
After our grandparents died, the first cousins kept the reunion tradition going. We continued gathering in Kerrville, making the effort to come together even though our lives had carried us in different directions. Eventually age and distance made the gatherings harder, and the reunions stopped. For many years, though, the cousins themselves kept those family ties alive.
Those reunions belonged to the large family Charlie and Tishie had created. But there was an empty place in that family.
Kirby
Their son Kirby was ten years old when tragedy struck.
According to the story passed down through our family, they believed he somehow got a piece of straw lodged in his throat. Whether they did not realize what had happened soon enough or simply could not get it out, I do not know. Kirby did not survive. Today it is difficult to imagine what that must have been like. We live in a world of ambulances, emergency rooms, X-rays, specialists, and medical procedures that can sometimes turn a terrible accident into a frightening story that a family later tells.
Charlie and Tishie did not live in that world. They lost their ten-year-old boy. And then, as families had to do in those days, they went on. There were still children to raise, work to be done, animals to tend, meals to prepare, and another morning waiting when the sun came up. I cannot tell you everything Charlie and Tishie felt when they buried their son. But I know they never forgot him. Kirby's death was not the only childhood tragedy in the family from which I came.