Author: Sheila Morris

“During the many years the Scotts and Nebletts [original landowners] farmed the Richards townsite, two communities grew up on either side of the future village. Longstreet, one of the toughest communities in Texas came into being two miles east, and the peaceful community of Fairview (or Dolph) rose about three miles west. Longstreet had two saloons, several stores, a race track, two gins, two sawmills and some bad characters who from time to time faced each other at high noon with six shooters blazing.” Richards, Texas: 1907 – 1987

“Richards is on Farm roads 1486 and 149 and the Burlington-Rock Island line in east central Grimes County. It was founded in 1907, when the residents of several communities in the vicinity of Lake Creek moved to a newly constructed line of the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway where it crossed the road between Fairview (or Dolph) and Longstreet. The area had been settled by Anglo-American immigrants in the early 1830s, but no community was established until the coming of the railroad. Residents of Fairview and Longstreet led the migration to Richards; some employed log rollers to shift homes and businesses intact to the new townsite. Richards was named by railway officials for W. E. Richards, prominent South Texas banker and organizer of the Valley Route and Townsite Loan Company.” — Texas State Historical Association, general entry by Charles Christopher Jackson

James Marion Boring, Sr. (r) and brother Tommy Boring (l)

proprietors of the Boring Cafe with

patrons in the small town of Richards, Texas circa 1930s

Hazel Ward Wells, Clara McCune, Esther Davis Wilcox

Marie Witt, Fannie Kate McCune, ?, Catherine Joyce Keisler,?

My mother Selma Louise Boring Morris (1927-2012) remembered working as a child in one of my grandfather J.M. Boring’s several business ventures turned “ad-ventures” in the tiny town of Richards, Texas where she grew up but had more memories of picking up the mail at the railroad depot to deliver to the town post office than she did helping to wash dishes at the Boring Cafe, or at least that’s how she told her story. Her three older brothers and mother worked with their father and uncle at the cafe, one of eighteen businesses in Richards in 1936 when the town had a population of approximately five hundred counting chickens and dogs according to my paternal grandfather Barber George Morris whose Main Street shop with its one barber chair was a gathering place for local town news a/k/a gossip.

No more gunfights at high noon thankfully because Richards was the town I called home from the time I was born in 1946 until I was thirteen years old. When I attended public school there, I had no fear of gun violence, no concern about safety except for the possibility of Russian attacks using atomic bombs which could be survived by hiding under our small wooden desks. The two-story red brick school building constructed in 1912 was the same one my parents had attended. They both had a brief hiatus from Richards when my mom went off to Baylor in Waco after she graduated from Richards High School, and my dad volunteered to serve in the Army Air Corps during WWII following his graduation two years before hers.

I never knew my grandfather Boring who died in 1938, but I love this picture of him and his brother at the cafe they owned while a little town in Texas struggled to find its way to prosperity during the Great Depression of the 1930s, an impossible task for many who were left behind when the trains began to travel in another direction. My grandfather Barber Morris was one of a handful of Richards businesses to succeed for the next sixty years as the town was unable to experience the growth of its neighbors on farm roads 1486 and 149 that profited from Houston’s breathtaking population explosion toward the end of the twentieth century.

**********************

America’s fascination with guns is a story that never ends. Pretty and I are deeply saddened by yet another massacre of innocent people this week in Lewiston, Maine by a gunman using a semi-automatic weapon. Our hearts go out to the families who have been affected by the traumatic losses they’ve experienced this week, the tragic events they will live with for the rest of their lives. We are also keenly aware of the dark days in Israel and Gaza, the ongoing daily deadly warfare in Ukraine. These are dangerous times that remind us of how fragile life is, how precious each breath we take. For all those who suffer in places we know and those unknown to us, we ask for comfort to the bereaved, compassion for the caregivers. Amen.