Londoner Who Loves Linden, Texas

~ lindenheritage
Therese Earl at http://musiccitytexas.org
Therese Earl at Music City Texas. Photograph courtesy of Jo Anna Duncan’s Front Porch Treasures Studio.

Therese Earl, one over 7,000 members of the Don Henley Appreciation Facebook group, visited Linden in September of 2015 to experience the people, places, and culture that influenced the music on Don Henley’s Cass County album.  She has been following the work of the Linden Heritage Foundation on Facebook after returning to England. When she saw the Foundation’s alert regarding an upcoming City Council meeting where the future of the towns now famous 1934 water tower would be discussed, she asked if the following letter could be distributed to the members of the City Council and public attending the meeting.

In my minds eye, I was taken back to childhood as a very small girl visiting family in rural Ireland. The ruin of a chieftain’s castle loomed in a front of my granny’s cottage and it would be the first sight of the castle turrets which thrilled me and my siblings who were squashed and squealing in a rattling old Ford car. The first of us to spot the castle would be rewarded with a silver sixpence.

The water tower in Linden gave me a thrill akin to that. It’s your castle, your “magnet” to those who will come to visit.Yes, the Henley connection to Linden is a strong pull for many who will visit Linden in the future and you should exploit that connection to some degree. However, I am sure that Don and many of his fans but especially members of your communtiy will agree that the tower is a feature which graces the town with an imagery to match any pile of rock amidst an Irish bog.

The photographs that our group took of the water tower are being swapped across Facebook and beyond. So many people have commented and contacted us to ask how we arrranged our trip; was  the tower easy to access; did we need permission to take photo’s etc.
There is much already in Linden to delight visitors and you do not need to turn it into “Donnywood” to encourage people to come. Keep it real and honest. Honour what you have in your town – and water, without which we cannot survive, which we all took for granted for so long but is now so precious – was delivered to you via that tower. Without it your lovely town would not be. Monuments to our past help us look forward to the future; they also make us thankful for our today.
 
Please do your best to preserve it.

Therese Earl is a native Londoner now living in rural Halstead, Essex.  You can follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/blue.eyles.