I’ve had people ask me why I‘m so opposed to the Marvin Nichols Reservoir. I’ll try to explain it as best as I can. In the early 1900’s my great grandfather bought a farm about two miles as the crow flies from Old Hagansport. On this farm he raised corn, cotton, and kids. Six in all. By all accounts he was a good neighbor and generally well thought of. My grandfather was the oldest of his sons, and one spring day they were clearing stumps with dynamite in order to increase the plowable acres. My great grandfather lit a dry fuse and it raced to the dynamite faster than he could race away from it.
His face was split apart at his chin and peeled backwards over his scalp. In addition, his left arm was macerated below the elbow. My grandfather led him to the house and a doctor was called. The doctor cleaned his wounds as best as he could and stitched his face back down as he lay on the kitchen table. He also amputated his arm below the elbow, both without anesthesia. Due to shock and infection, he succumbed to his wounds three days later. That left my grandfather at age 19 the sole breadwinner for his mother and younger siblings. For years after, he managed to eek out a living raising cotton and corn. He also managed to hold onto the farm through a depression and a world war. So when I say our land was earned by the sweat, blood, and even the very life of those who came before me, that isn’t an idle boast.
The people who would take this farm and others like it simply don’t understand (or care) what it’s like to be rooted to a place like this as surely as the the crops it produced. They can’t imagine the feeling of watching your grandchildren play in the same ancient pecan tree that your grandfather played in as a child. Nor can they imagine the wave of emotion that comes from finding long abandoned cotton rows that your great grandfather plowed with a team of horses.