Trailing ghosts, couple breathes new life into vapors of the past

He drives an old pickup. She favors an ancient vanity. Like a screen door momentarily stored on their front porch, anything vintage sparks a whirl of creativity until a fitting purpose is determined for whatever the piece might be. It's a family trait. The hand hewn log from which they made their mantle was saved from the first of the family homes here, built sometime in the late 1800's.

Ten miles east of Mt. Pleasant, Rex and Patsy Lamb track ghosts.

Better than a hundred years have passed since R.C. Dale brought the first of the family here. He came from Tennessee.

There have been moments the Lambs have stumbled across the vapor of his trail. One day Rex found a leather satchel in his grandmother's shed. Inside was a yellowed paper, creased, torn and taped. A graceful penman, schooled in another time had made column entries, the names of towns, ferries and the miles between.

Rex's grandmother made a margin note dated 1961, not long before she died.

"I do not know what this is, but I think it was where Granddaddy Dale's folks came to Texas," she wrote. In the hundred years since he made the trip, some of the places named have fallen off the map. But enough remain to trace a route following The Old Military Road down through Little Rock, to Washington to Fulton and then into Texas. That road followed an Indian trail that was older yet. Today I-30 follows the southern end of the trail. The interstate passes a half mile west of the place Mr. Dale stopped and built.

In 1999, Rex and Patsy built on the same spot.

"The way it's worked out, about every 50 years one of his decedents builds a house here," Rex said.

On another day, sifting through the past in a shed, Rex spotted an old wooden box. Sizing it up, he bent to lift it. It didn't budge on the first try. When he got it outside he opened it to find a solid pack of dirt dauber nests - beneath the bug-packed mud he found stone tools - ax and arrow heads.

The wooden box atop the piano was something stored in an old hen house and forgotten. It was filled with stone tools. The Winfield bank calendar came from the hometown where Patsy almost graduated from high school. The high school closed at the end of her junior year. She finished at Mt. Vernon, went on to become a teacher and got her first job teaching in a Franklin County oil camp school.

"When I was a boy I remember walking through plowed fields here," he said. "Even in those days, a rain always uncovered flint and stone tools." He found a rounded river rock, a smooth oval of stone of volcanic origin. Wherever it originated, whatever trading is part of its past, it came to rest here in the extended era of the Native American stone age.

In Titus County, Rex's father grew up after railroad spurs pushed north from the Cotton Belt line into White Oak and Sulphur bottom. Cars brought out timber destined for Hoffman's Mill, where he worked making barrel heads.

One day he brought home a massive white oak chopping block - his son remembers using it when the family killed and butchered hogs. That was still here too, when the son returned.

Rex and Patsy stayed gone 40 years. He did a military hitch. She was a teacher. After landing work at Lone Star Steel with his industrial technology degree, he went back to school, took a pair of degrees in computer science, and later retired from Greenville's E-Systems.

Built in 1956, the second house on the old home place he left was in a precarious state when they returned. They spent weeks sorting, inventorying the remains of the four generations of their family who've made the spot home.

In 1999, Rex and Patty finished the third home. It looks exactly as it was intended to look, like a tidy plantation home from another era, a life-sized replica that came to life from doll house dimensions. Before it was built, she knew exactly how it would look.

"She made little scale models of everything, pulling together the rooms," Rex said.

It reflects a reverence for the past.

The hand-hewn hardwood beam that's their mantle was a foundation timber in the original house.

From her church to the wardrobe his grandfather built, Rex and Patsy Lamb are all about preserving treasures from the past. It's a way of life, strengthening links to simple pleasures from another time.

The kitchen's pine counter tops were sawn and finished from heart pine in the second house. The chopping block in the kitchen is the same on which his father butchered hogs.

The eye for detail in building plans goes as deep as the square nails shipped from the eastern seaboard anchoring the pine floor. Their architect calls the result a plantation dog trot with New England influence.

Three years after arriving they finished the house; it was then that Patsy began pushing her bed and breakfast agenda. It's just across the drive from the house.

Next came the church.

About the time Mr. Dale arrived from Tennessee, five miles west at Cookville, the congregation of The Christian Church raised $60 to pay the carpenters and traded corn for lumber to build a new sanctuary.

By the time Rex and Patsy returned, the congregation had dwindled to two active members.

"We'd ride by on the way to church Sunday mornings," she said. "We always liked seeing someone there, keeping the church alive."

Like other ghosts they've tracked, they found a photograph from the days when the church was thriving, a group shot on the church grounds with just a bit of the building showing in the distance.

"I didn't know there were ever that many people in Cookville, much less at one church," Patsy said.

Her small obsession with the church heightened when she heard someone was trying to buy it, wanting the lot to build on. She wondered if it could be moved. It could have been - for a fortune. Tracking down the remaining members, she asked if she could buy it.

It was okay with Rex and it was okay with the church members, so the deal went through.

"It's such a classic structure, it seemed like a good thing to do," Rex said. They restored it - painting, cleaning, shoring up the foundation, but paying strict attention to authenticity, like keeping the iron ore piers set long ago.

He came home to raise cattle; after they'd built their home and completed a B & B across the drive, she lured him willingly into restoring the old church as a wedding chapel. In retirement, he's not without work. Whether the chapel catches on in a big way or not, neighbors Jim and Martha McCourt saw their daughter, Sarah, begin her married life here on an August Saturday afternoon.

They added simple touches that fit - carriage lights flanking the portico built above the church steps, lines running in keeping with the roof.

Recreating it as a wedding chapel seemed in keeping with its history as a church. They named it The Gatherings and last December it was included in a local tour of homes.

Eight months later, they booked their first wedding.

"Business hasn't boomed," said Rex, but that's okay.

Saving a building intended as a place for man to open his eyes to God is maybe more of a spiritual thing.