Take the north end of Kuykendahl as an example. This once, dead end road is now becoming one of the most heavily traveled roads in North Harris County. The former dirt Hufsmith Road is now constantly backed up with traffic trying to get onto FM 2978 and if you have not seen FM 2978 in a while…wow…we will have our first overpass in Hufsmith in just a few more months.

Places where I once roamed as a kid are now roadways. Fields where I used to haul hay are now filled with houses. Man, this place is still growin'.

Some of the changes seem good, but some of the changes create a small hole in me because I see us allowing a heritage slip away. Families that helped settle this area are forgotten. Historical locations are altered or destroyed and all we have that remain are memories. If our memories are not recorded and passed down to the next generation, many of them will never learn the significance of the area to their heritage.

It is my hopes and dreams in the next few weeks to embark on a mission. I want to start building my own personal pictorial record of these parts. Some of the places will simply be a space of bare ground or maybe a lonely tree, but to me each of them will hold a spot in my memory.

As an example, there was once a sycamore tree at the northwest intersection of Stuebner Airline and Hufsmith Road that once shaded the old Cooper Hill School. The school existed back in the late 1800-1900s. I never had the privilege to see the school building, but it was a story shared with me by my Daddy. The tree is gone, but the story remains in my memory.

Another tree that carries historical value is found on the southwest corner of this same intersection. It’s a tree where two men supposedly got into an argument over politics and one man shot another man off his horse under that tree. Then there is my own personal “smoking tree.” It’s the tree that I used to climb into as a kid when I tried to sneak a cigarette.

I was thinking my parents would never see me, only to find out years later my Daddy knew exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing. I guess he decided to let me cough in my own smoke long enough until I finally found out smoking wasn’t all the Marlboro Man made it out to be. And then…then there’s the spot where the Bud Turk Tree used to stand before a storm took it out.

The Bud Turk Tree is so named because of a story my Daddy told me that supposedly occurred in the early to mid 1900s. There was a pair of twin cedar trees in our front yard about eight feet apart. They were big trees and the last one was taken out by Hurricane Ike. I counted 163 rings when we moved it. As the story goes, the old timers used to pull their Model T’s between the trees and place a chain up high between the two trees and hoist their car motors out when they did an overhaul.

One Sunday afternoon a group of men were standing around a car and were pulling a motor. Bud Turk came walking by and these men began to challenge Bud to see if he could pull this car motor. Now, what you don’t know is, Bud Turk was a man’s man! Bud was a BIG man! Bud Turk was the kind of guy that when he entered a building, the whole room would show respect to this man’s physical size!

The story went that Bud accepted their harassing challenge and climbed on the front of the car. He firmly placed one foot on one fender and his other foot on the other fender as he straddled the motor. He bent over and with one hand he pulled that car motor out of the car and handed it to the men who presented the original challenge to him as they stood on the ground next to the car.

Word said their jaws dropped to the ground as they struggled to move this motor that had just been handed to them. They suddenly became very silent as they pondered the human feat they had just witnessed. That’s how the tree got its name.

Clifford

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed