Garland Bend
Seven generations and 150 years on this special, ancestral land
Story and photo by Michael Pearce
Family lore says Washington Lafayette Garland came to the steep, jagged landscape above the bend in the Brazos River that bears the family name back in 1873, settling into a cabin built 20 years before. Its native timbers were thick enough to keep out any weather, while a gun port near one corner served to deter unwanted visitors.
Roughly 150 years later, Garland’s descendants still stand strong above that same bend in the river. Scattered about are homes that have been passed down through the generations of Garland’s descendants. Most of them are small, a little aged, and used for family reunions, weekends and vacations.
But the undisputed matriarch of the clan, 90-year-old Pat Borman, has lived in retirement for about 30 years in a fine home at Garland Bend. She’s Garland’s great-granddaughter, and she can’t remember a time when she didn’t long to be on that patch of land.
“I love every stick and every rock on this place,†she said. “I always have, and I always will. No matter where I was in life, I couldn’t wait to get back to here.â€
Borman, who said her mother had a similar bond with the land, has passed along those sentiments to her own children and grandchildren.
Borman spent most of her younger days in Fort Worth, except for a few Depression-era years when she lived on Garland Bend as a child. It’s where her parents retreated to cope with her father losing his job. As soon as they could, though, they moved back to Fort Worth.
In her youth, Borman made the trip back and forth from Fort Worth with her family in a venerable Ford Model T, on roads a far cry from today’s highways.
Eight decades later, Borman can still spend hours telling stories of the Garland Bend of yesteryear. Most of those remembrances revolve around weekends or summer days spent with her grandmother, Grace Garland.
Some of the nights were spent in the “Sears house,†the family name for the Sears and Roebuck house her grandfather, George Garland, had assembled in 1909. The house arrived by rail, in a kit that had pre-cut boards and the needed number of nails, nuts and bolts. It still stands to this day, right where it was built.
In her childhood, she said, little had changed since Washington Garland first came to the cabin. Electricity and indoor plumbing weren’t even a dream, and she didn’t remember having an outhouse to use for bathroom trips, either.
“You just went out in the trees and did whatever you needed to do,†she said.
At that time, horses were still a major form of transportation and labor, and water was a well-earned commodity that everyone worked to obtain, she said. For children who were too small to handle an adult-sized bucket, they were handed smaller containers and expected to help. It was the same in the huge gardens and at the river, she said, and there was no catch-and-release fishing back then.
Borman credits high fish populations in the Brazos for much-needed income during otherwise lean times. Her grandmother, who lost her husband at an early age, took to charging people to fish from their section of shoreline.
“She charged $1 per car and $2 to rent a boat, and at times it was bumper to bumper,†Borman said. “People really had a lot of fun there.â€
When her work was done, Borman would have some fun, too. She said she still remembers swimming in the river, peeking over boulders and seeing huge catfish below. She could slide on clay banks, listen to echoes of her shouts in the canyon, and ride a horse just about anywhere she wanted. That included getting the animal to haul her on a span of 2-by-12-inch boards on a temporary bridge across the river as the dam was being built.
“I guess I never had too much sense,†she said with a chuckle. “But I sure had a lot of fun.â€
Borman insisted that her seven children should have similar experiences on Garland Bend, and said she often she took them from Fort Worth on her own, since her husband, Jim Borman, wasn’t as enamored with the rugged conditions.
Many of her mornings began at 3 a.m., getting diaper pails, bottles and other supplies ready for the trip. Before daylight, the children were carefully wrapped in blankets and placed on a mattress Borman had fashioned in the family station wagon. They often returned well after dark on the same day, which left Borman burning the midnight oil to unpack and do laundry.
Such was a way of life for her young family.
“It was almost like a religion for her, getting us down here,†said Judy Cotter, Borman’s oldest daughter. “None of us can remember the first time we were down here, but we were raised knowing coming down here was important. It was a huge part of who we were and what we did as a family. It was a great childhood.â€
Recently, standing along the Brazos near their mother’s house, Cotter and her brother, Philip Borman, laughed as they talked about their Tom Sawyer-like times amid the mountains and the river.
They mentioned skipping untold numbers of stones across the Brazos and swimming in the deep pools. Other times, they said, they just wandered off and explored the mountains.
“We just roamed and felt totally safe,†Cotter said. “Mom always told us if we got lost, just to go downhill and we’d find the river. If they wanted us to come home, they had signals, like honking a car horn three times, and we’d all meet at Mam-aw’s (her grandmother’s) trailer. Not many kids these days, or even back then, know that kind of freedom. It taught us how to be independent. If we had a problem, we figured out how to solve it. It was good for us.â€
The family also had relatives who lived close by and checked on them on a regular basis, Cotter said. She and her siblings spent fun times with armies of cousins, Cotter said, and just like their mother in her younger days, they soaked up tales of family history from aged relatives on the land.
Cotter and her brother also mentioned times when their mother would drop them off at the Sears house, which already was in disrepair, with a few bags of groceries and would leave them to fend for themselves for a few weeks during the summer or winter breaks.
If there was work to be done, it was done first without having to be asked, they said. They endured a friend getting bitten by a snake while at the river, as well as dealing with broken bones, uninvited raccoons and rattlesnakes at the old house. Winter temperatures got so low, they said, that they sometimes slept four to a bed just trying to stay warm.
Other shared memories included times the road washed out after a rain or was shut down by heavy, drifting snow. Fallen trees could block the trail, too, Cotter said, but they took it all in stride, dealing with problems and enjoying the adventure of it all.
Cotter and Philip Borman said the time they spent as youths on Garland Bend helped make them successful adults. It was there, they said, where they learned toughness, independence, a deep love for family, and self-reliance, too.
Their mother agreed with their assessment.
“All seven of our kids put themselves through college,†she said. “They worked and earned it. We’re pretty proud of that.â€
Many of Borman’s grandchildren were brought to Garland Bend as often as possible, and Cotter said her children gained the same benefits from time working and playing there that she had in her younger days.
Like their mother, some of Borman’s children spent much of their adult lives planning to retire on Garland Bend. All seven of her children were given land on Garland Bend, and Philip Borman and his wife, Deanna, are living with his mother as they make plans to build a house there.
Cotter and her husband, Paul, have a house under construction up the mountain from her mother’s residence. The view is spectacular, and even though it’s a small house, it will certainly have room for another generation to visit. As of now they have no grandchildren, but one of their sons has told them that could change in the next year or two. That could start a new branch on the family tree Washington Lafayette Garland sprouted seven generations and 150 years ago, and nobody is more excited at the thought of a new generation roaming Garland Bend than Borman.
She, more than anyone, knows the kind of childhood the coming generations of her family can enjoy on that special, ancestral land.
