Blog 3436 – 03.31.2025

The Wild Woods

From nineteen-sixty till their deaths in nineteen-ninety-seven and two thousand respectively my dad and mom lived on two relatively small adjacent lots in the Chattanooga community of East Lake. The first seventeen years they resided in a small two bedroom rental house and the remaining twenty or so years in a larger house with more rooms on a slightly bigger corner lot, back yards adjacent, that they paid cash for and spent several thousand dollars on a new roof, paint and sheet rocking inside throughout and refinishing all the hard wood floors. They made it a lovely home for the last couple of decades of their lives.

My dad, an avid hunter, fisherman, and woodsman always dreamed of owning some land in the wild woods. He even realized that dream late in life by purchasing several acres of wooded property in Middle Tennessee near Smithville. Sadly by the time he was able to afford it he was not able to visit it often nor to enjoy it very much.

It is a big part of our Western Culture, this desire by many if not most males to like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett explore and own a piece of the wild woods. I recently secured another fifteen and a half acre tract of timber land in East Texas near Bon Weir, Texas which is only three miles from the Louisiana state line. The property is next to another fifteen and a half acres that I bought last November. I bought both pieces from a brother and sister whose parents had left them the property equally divided when the last of them passed. This thirty-one acres is adjacent to another sixty acres that my son Jay bought about a year and a half ago. He drove me from Houston to see his property last summer and shared with me his dream of one day owning an additional forty acres so he would have a total of one hundred acres of wild woods. He mentioned the brother and sister’s property and that he had made inquires but had gotten no response. I asked him if it was okay with him if I wrote to the brother who owned the northern most tract that also had a “sweet pond” on it. I told Jay my intention was to help him to realize his hundred acres dream which like Winnie the Pooh and the gangs’ habitat I have for some time come to refer to as Jay’s Hundred Acre Wood.

My son had said that I could park an RV camper trailer on his property and retire there if I liked which has long been a dream of my own.

Well, this month we achieved several milestones in realizing my son’s and my dream. Together we are only about eight and a half acres away from the one hundred acre goal. Also this month my brother-in-law and sister-in-law picked up a twenty foot pull-behind RV camper trailer that I purchased from the daughter of a friend in Lafayette, Indiana. David and Esther pulled it to their home in Indianapolis to store till I can drive up to get it or make arrangements to have it brought to the property off FM1416 one mile south of Bon Wier.

Lastly, my son and I have picked a site for the camper trailer and have begun clearing it so we can arrange for a municipal water farm tap and a Newton-Jasper Electric Co-op 200 Amp power service to be installed. I am only waiting on a tax refund to pull the trigger on those two items.

We will start getting estimates on installing a septic tank system after we have the water and power hook-ups installed. I hope not much longer than a year after first seeing these East Texas wild woods to have a cool or warm (depending on the season) dry place to retreat to from them right there. Much as Jay and I like my father before us consider ourselves hunters, fishermen, and woodsmen we are not animals and if we ever have any hope of sharing this beautiful place with the three most important women in our lives (My wife and Jay’s mother – Linda, his wife and the mother of their daughter- Lauren, and the Princess herself – almost two year old Emma Grace) we need a place for them to rest while there, with facilities.

Ladies and Gents, dreams do come true, even in the wild woods.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z0Ne1WH37sKNx6Hhpv1DOzLY8tevfZa4/view?usp=drivesdk

A Whole New World