The Rock - The Rest Of The Story

This is me and The Rock in front of the house I grew up in. This was the day, after both my folks had passed away, that I moved The Rock  to my home after it had been there for forty-five years.

Beginning back in the early to mid 1960's one of the favorite past times of the Beck Clan was going out in the country on an old farm about eight miles south of Brownwood going toward Indian Creek. It was a beautiful place with a little of everything to offer. There were rocky hills, several stock ponds, a creek and a good mixture of trees. There were also signs that there had once been a small settlement on the property, although all that remained were small sections and pieces of a rock fence.

We would hunt, fish, explore, do a little frog gigging and sometime spend all day there and not do anything but maybe eat. Even as I grew older and started figuring out that there were other things in life other than fishing and hunting (namely girls and making the drag with my running buddies) I still enjoyed my times with the family out in the country.

My Dad really enjoyed strolling around on the old farm. While we were fishing, horsing around or fighting, my Dad would find himself a walking stick and off he would go. As he walked he would poke and prod at rocks and pieces of flint looking for Indian arrowheads. He found hundreds of them over the years. Another thing that he found was a huge flat rock with a perfectly round hole through the middle of it. Pop would get excited every time he found even a partial arrowhead so you can imagine how excited he was about this huge rock of several hundred pounds that obviously had some history behind it.

Every trip out to the old farm Pop would walk out and check his rock. Then one day somebody (I don't remember which of us) suggested that we load the rock up and bring it home. I can remember Pop saying that he didn't really think we would be able to accomplish such a task, although you could tell by the smile on his face that we were going to try. My Dad, my four brothers and I headed to the farm in Pop's 1949 Chevy pickup. We could only get to within seventy-five yards or so of the rock because of the rough terrain. Without going into the tiring details, we eventually carried the rock to the pickup and loaded it into the bed. For good measure, we also loaded a couple more big rocks, although there wasn't anything special about them other than they were terribly heavy.

It seems like it took forever to get the rocks home. There was so much weight in the bed of the old '49 pickup that every time Pop would hit a bump, the front end of the truck would come off the ground and he would lose the ability to steer. The terrain was so rough on the farm, a couple of us had to ride on the front fenders of the truck to keep the tires on the ground as Pop eased along the old farm trail. Although we were being extremely careful, I would expect that if we were to have done this with today's way of seeing things, Pop would have ended up in jail for child endangerment.

Although it was a long slow trip we made it home with the rock. We dug a hole and stood the rock up on its edge along with the other rocks we had brought along for company. Over the years we had several really smart people tell us that the rock was a form of an Indian grind stone. Just to make sure we also asked a couple of people who weren't quite as smart and they agreed that the rock was indeed some type of an Indian grind stone.

The rock stood at that location for about fifteen years until Mom and Pop decided to remodel the old house and add on a couple of rooms. It was moved around to the front of the house and there it stood until April 3, 2010. I just could not bear the thought of leaving The Rock behind to live with strangers. My brother Pat met me there and we loaded it in my pickup. It now abides in Burleson, Texas and is on display for all to see.

The Rocks new home, a perfect place to sit and reminisce.

After my Mom passed away August last, I began to go through hundreds of family photographs. I was amazed how many of the photos had The Rock in them. Sometime it would just be quietly in the background and other times it would be the main backdrop for a photo. The Rock was there for about forty-five years and had a way of letting it's presence be known. On August 19, 2002 I took several photographs of Mom, Pop and the brothers. On August 27, 2002, Pop died. The last photo taken of Pop, he was sitting in front of The Rock.....his rock. On August 27, 2009 Mom died and some of the last photos of her were taken as she sat in the same chair that Pop had sat in and yes, she was sitting in front of The Rock.......Pop's rock.

Now, my grand kids, a new generation will continue the legend of The Rock