Dissociated Thoughts

The Waterfall and the Castle

14 November, 2021

Prompt: A Mystery Genre prompt tonight. You are researching your genealogy and find that ancestors from different generations and different countries made visits to the same remote place. Tell us about this remote place. Why were your ancestors going there?


         I was reading again over MeMaw's notes. She had continued Grandmother Bragg's legacy of writing down all of the oral stories told through the generations of our family, along with her own stories. Grandmother Bragg's journal was next since it went farther back in time. So far, I had read stories dating all the way back to the early 1800's and there seemed to be a recurrent theme which niggled at the back of my mind. If only I could put my finger on it! And then it hit me. Right there on the page in front of me I saw what had been troubling my mind so much. Why on earth would everyone want to go visit Turner Falls in Oklahoma? And why did that place sound so familiar to me? So I called up my mom to ask her; after all, this was her side of the family.

After she had answered the phone and the usual niceties, I ask, "Momma, what do you know about Turner Falls? Why does it sound so familiar to me?"

Momma replied, "You don't remember? Your Dad and I took you and your brother there quite often while you were little. There are even pictures of us out there that are floating around somewhere around here."

         And I did begin to remember. I was there in the Fall. It was chilly so I had to wear a jacket and the leaves of all the trees in that part of the mountains were bursting with color. I remember the roar of the waterfall and how the pool around that set of falls reflected the mountains and clouds off its surface. I vaguely remember visiting a castle nestled amongst the trees atop one of the smaller hills as well. Most of all, I remember a feeling of rightness about the place. Momma didn't ask why I wanted to know about Turner Falls, so I didn't tell her. She never really showed any interest in her family's history. Maybe she got that from Grandma. My mom's mother always seemed angry when asked about her childhood. It was my great-grandmother, my MeMaw, who chronicled the stories told to her by her mother, which in turn were passed down to her by her mother.

         But even though my Mom and Grandma wouldn't tell the stories, they went to Turner Falls. They all did, even before it was named Turner Falls in the late 1870's after the man who "discovered" the falls when he and his wife set up home on Honey Creek quite near the beautiful waterfall. The stories tell of the falls long before Oklahoma became a state. It isn't clear as to why everyone had gone there, just that they had. Perhaps the falls felt sacred to my ancestors. They even drew my great-grandfather there after he arrived stateside from Germany, before he had set up home or found as his bride a beautiful Cherokee woman. What is it about this waterfall and my family? This was a mystery I surely had to solve.

Author's Note: ▼

Please note that I took poetic license with my own family history in this entry. WHile some of it is truth, not all of it is. Thank you for reading!