Six Years Later in Bosque County

Two photographs. October 24, 2020, and October 24, 2026. Exactly six years apart.

In the first, there are masks and “I Voted” stickers. In the second, there is a Texas flag on my cap and another sticker on my shirt. Looking at them together, I have a starting point for a story about voting in Meridian. But the photographs also send me back through the people who made this part of Texas familiar long before today.

When I was in first grade, my family moved down to the lake and I attended Clifton Elementary. Granny Perry would pick us up from the bus stop and take us to the café to eat. Aunt Barbara was never far away. I described those afternoons in the eulogy I wrote for her, along with the weekends at the Moose Lodge: bingo, dancing, a smoke-filled room, and the family gathered around.

The photographs from the Moose Lodge now have a location attached to them: Lakeside Village, where Papa Don served as governor. A lodge office can sound like a small detail until you consider how much of a community’s life takes place in rooms like that. In my family’s story, this was somewhere people worked, served, visited, and danced. It belongs in the account of how we lived here.

The café belongs there too. My memories and Aunt Barbara’s story connect the family to Holly Burgers in Laguna Park. A December 1995 issue of The Clifton Record mentions Holly Burger Box as the destination for a veterans’ group’s Christmas lunch. That little notice does not tell us who owned the business. It does tell us that the place existed in the community’s ordinary life, beyond the memories of our family.

There are earlier connections. My great-grandfather Raymond John D. Perry lived in Clifton and died there in July 1974. His wife, Euna Mae Carden Perry, left her own account of their family’s movement from West Texas through Spur and a ranch in Hamilton County. Hamilton County is part of that journey; Clifton places the later story in Bosque. Keeping those places straight helps us see the actual movement of a family instead of turning several counties into one convenient hometown.

Nanny’s later life around Morgan and Lakeside Village gives us another generation’s connection. The family photographs add more: a porch, children, a swimming pool, meals, and relatives together. Each adds another view of the places where our family spent its days.

Today I went to Meridian to vote. There were stone buildings, a courthouse, and signs pointing toward Hillsboro, Cleburne, Hamilton, and Waco. Those directions make a fitting photograph for a family whose history follows so many Texas roads.

Voting is a choice about what comes next. Looking through these pictures makes me think about the people and places I carry into that choice. I can stand outside a courthouse today and, in the same afternoon, be back at a café after school or in a room where my family was dancing.

Six years separate the two voting photographs. The family story around them reaches much further.