Human Flower Project

High Hill: Ghosts with the Mostest


What’s a miracle? When five thousand people return to a tiny rural town in Texas and a wildflower covers the pastures with summer snow.


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Thistles in a window at St. Mary’s Church, High Hill, TX

Photo: Human Flower Project

The church picnic season in Fayette County, Texas, with its auctions, stew dinners, polka masses, is winding down, and so, praise be to God, is the Texas summer.

Yesterday was the annual St. Mary’s picnic at High Hill, a place some call a “ghost town.”

The railroad once planned to make it a stop on the route between Houston and Austin, but citizens declined, so the tracks (and later, Interstate 10) ran through Schulenburg instead, a few miles to the south. High Hill maintained its topographical prominence, pride, and the fine old Catholic church, but its population dwindled.

Yesterday’s church picnic drew many thousands of people back, though, in celebration of St. Mary’s 150th anniversary. Some might say that the High Hillfolk were short-sighted to refuse the railroad’s offer, but they were indeed wise to schedule their annual picnic for the Sunday before Labor Day. The worst of summer is typically over: this year the air was fresh and the temperatures quite merciful – in the low 90s.

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Snow on the prairie (Euphorbia bicolor) at High Hill, TX, 9/5/10

Photo: Human Flower Project

And all across central Fayette County, Euphorbia bicolor was blooming. There were whole fields of it, giving credence to its name “Snow on the Prairie.” (It turns out High Hill was earlier known as Blum Hill; could Euphoria bicolor have been why?).

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A “snowy” field of late summer, between High Hill and Hostyn

Fayette County, Texas, September 5, 2010

Photo: Human Flower Project

Up at St. Mary’s there were two tours Sunday afternoon describing the extensive restoration of this “painted church,” all of the work completed in the past 8 months. (Our garage rehab is now 10 months in the making and far from the finish line.)  A new cookbook has been published to honor the parish’s sesquicentennial, and someone had made a giant metal gate featuring the silhouette of the church, offering it to the benefit auction. Meanwhile, the fabulous Mark Halata and Texavia brought the crowd to its feet with four hours of polkas and waltzes.

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Mark Halata and Texavia play for the 150th anniversary of St. Mary’s Church, High Hill

Photo: Bill Bishop



Fatima has its whirling sun. At High Hill, there’s snow on Labor Day and ghosts who dance and put up pickles.


Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/06 at 02:56 PM

Comments

That plant was always called milk weed.  Never head of Snow on the Mountain, Snow on the Prairie or any such fancy names.  It is pretty but the milk produced when stems/leaves are damaged is detrimental to livestock.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/09 at 08:21 AM

Thank you, Sarah. Fayette County friend Gary McKee calls this “dove weed.” Always good to know local names—and dangers. J

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/10 at 05:48 PM
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