Watching his granddaughter, Dorothy, laughing and climbing a twisted willow tree perched on a tiny island allows the small business owner time to pause and reflect.
“I live in a high stress world,” says Mitchell, regarding his used car and bail bond business. “Thirty minutes listening to the river … it’s a sedative.”
His voice trails off as 6-year-old Dorothy catches his eye, smiling and waving up the dirt bank. He points to the little girl, wearing a blue jean skirt, pink blouse and rubber wading boots. “What’s that worth?”
Mitchell and his wife, Janet, are part of a small group of locals who frequent Falls on the Brazos County Park, a 22-acre respite from the daily grind just a few miles west of Marlin.
Overnight campers can pitch a tent, light a campfire and relax with the river’s quiet roar for backdrop. Or those who want the sense of place that parks like Falls on the Brazos offer without giving up creature comforts can hook up their recreational vehicles to water and electricity.
Maybe there’s something in the Brazos water that stimulates one’s philosophical nature. Fifty years ago, Texas author John Graves wrote about the river’s tranquilizing effect in his narrative, “Goodbye to a River,” a first person account of a three-week river trip that is now taught in college classrooms.
“We will be nearly finished, I think, when we stop understanding the old pull toward green things and living things, toward dirt and rain and heat and what they spawn,” Graves wrote.
Although Graves’ section of the river is farther north, between Lake Whitney and Possum Kingdom Lake, the philosophy rings true more than 100 miles downstream and a half-century later.
“It’s where I get my relaxation,” said Bert Tiller, a local nursing home worker. Showing off a plastic bucket full of freshwater drum he had caught that afternoon, Bert flashes a toothy grin. “I come out here every chance I get.”
Pulling through the park’s front gate, the first person you’re apt to meet is the caretaker, Tinker. With an ever-present cigarette, and ponytail wrapped around her shoulder, she’ll spin yarns about the time the river turned angry, surging up out of its banks, flooding the campground, washing out giant willows and a pedestrian bridge.
“We sat here last year on April first, watching ice boxes and people’s freezers floating by,” Tinker said.
Tinker also likes to talk about Fred, a regular park visitor. But this guest pays no fee, and always enters the park from the river. Fred is often seen dragging tree limbs into the water and swimming toward a sandy point downstream.
One day, Tinker’s camera caught the buck-toothed rodent with the flat tail sniffing around the park. Today, Fred’s picture is displayed on the welcome center’s bulletin board.
Inside the welcome center, you can find everything from a snake bite kit (yes, there are snakes) to fishing tackle, to such camp staples as pork and beans and Spam.
Early in the 19th century, the falls were actually two miles southwest of the present site. The 10-foot drop must have presented fantastic sight and sound.
According to a marker on site, the location was a geographic landmark, meeting spot and campsite for the Waco, Tawakoni, Anadarko Indians and early settlers. Alas, as rivers are prone to do, the Brazos jumped course in 1866, probably during a major flood event, and today the falls are actually a slight set of rapids easily navigable via both kayak and canoe.
Before engineers and builders erected bridges across the Brazos, the rocky river bed at the falls was the only hard-bottomed crossing on the river within 200 miles of the Gulf Coast.
Today, there are actually two sets of falls at the park - one a natural phenomenon, the other manmade. A concrete slab wide enough for a motor vehicle served as a low water crossing at one time. It looks more like a dam, with water steadily pouring over the 2-foot drop.
During heavy rains in January 1979, two men driving a Volkswagen Beetle across the slab got hung up and the river almost washed them downstream. Journalist Leon Hale, who often stopped there on his travels, chronicled the event in the Houston Post.
Hale described a frantic, comical scene in which two trucks, “hooked-end-to-end” pulled the Volkswagen out of knee-deep water with the VW driver lying on the roof, reaching through the window to steer the car.
Sadly, a 7-year-old boy drowned at the park in 2002. A marker on a high spot near the playground commemorates his life.
Today, the park seems to have fallen on hard times.
The welcome center and Tinker’s attached apartment are thirsty for paint, and hungry for foundation and roof repairs. The picnic tables’ wooden planks are warped and curl upwards, making them mostly unusable.
A row of stationary, rusty barbecue pits lean toward a nearby creek like forgotten tombstones. Reminders of recent flooding - a washed-out pedestrian bridge and 10-foot cliff remain unrepaired. Steel cables that once stretched from post to post to keep automobile traffic on the gravel road lies broken on the ground.
In August 2005, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department awarded Falls County a $50,000 matching grant for park improvements. The county has until July 2009 to get plans and permits approved.
If they miss the deadline, the grant could be lost. TPWD grant administrator Roxane Eley said they were committed to help Falls County any way possible. Falls County judge, R. Steven Sharp, said other projects with more immediate deadlines had to be addressed first. Still, the county was committed to the park improvements.
Regarding the mystique of the Brazos, whether seen from a canoe or the tailgate of a pickup, noted author John Graves’ pithy comment ties it all together like a tightly-rolled sleeping bag stashed away for the next camping trip.
“One river seen right, may well be all rivers that flow to the sea.”
