“That is a piece of El Morro.”
“El Morro?”
"An oasis in the high desert between Gallup and Albuquerque.”
“Feels sandy, like the beach.”
“Is is sand like the beach, but now it is sandstone. There is an enormous outcropping of sandstone in the desert with a magnificent pool of water at the base. That’s El Morro. It was the place for water and thus survival for hundreds of thousands of years for animals before man and Indians long before Whites.”
“Did you get this at El Morro?”
“No, that’s where it came from and I’ve been to El Morro, but I didn’t pick it up.”
“Then how’d you get a piece of it... and better yet...why do you have a piece of it?”
“My father gave it to me. It sat on his desk for as long as I can remember, and from what he told me it sat on his father’s work bench, and so forth all the way back to my great-great-grandfather. He picked it up.”
“Who?”
"My great-great grandfather, Patrick Henry Williamson.”
“When was that?”
“July 8, 1858.”
“How do you know that? The exact date I mean.”
“’cause he wrote it down?”
“Wrote it down where? Just tell the story, will ya? Who picked up the rock and why...and why do you have it.”
“There were two brothers, Williamsons, living in southern Ohio in the 1850’s who ran a hardware business. They decided to head west to avoid getting caught up in the Civil War. Family history says when they got to the Mississippi, one went south on a steamboat never to be heard from again, but Patrick Henry Williamson was in a wagon trail that stopped for water and rest at El Morro. He picked up that rock on his way to California, kept it and it has been hung-on-to as they say, all these years...150 years, this year.”
“But how were you able to know the date down through all this oral history telling? You said he write it. Where?”
“Patrick Henry carved his name on El Morro. That sandstone is so easy to carve, it has been a graffiti sponge for hundreds of years. Indians carved pictures for thousands of years and then, starting with the Spaniards, people passing by carved their names and the date.”“And your great-great-grandfather carved his name there?”
“Yeah and in a big way. Apparently he had near no processions, and was traveling with another family as a hired hand of sorts. When the wagon train broke camp to leave, Patrick Henry was not finished carving his name. It was taking him longer than he thought because the rock was a little harder than he expected and his writing was a good bit larger than necessary. The others left and he stayed, met other people and continued on to San Francisco with them but only after his carving was finished.”
“What if he had stayed with the others?”
“Yeah, what if....?
"Well, you wouldn’t have that view you have right now.”
“Can’t argue with that...can’t argue with that at all.”