A couple of years ago, as I was on my way to
a convention in Austin, Texas. I found a quaint state park to camp at overnight
in Somerville, Texas. While eating supper at a diner there, some locals told me
the legend of Old Man Harvey. I couldn’t wait for the convention in Austin to
be over. The last day there, I packed my camper and headed straight back to
Lake Summerville. I spent two weeks there camping and interviewing the locals
about Harvey. I did what research I could and talked to some real nice folks.
What follows is an accurate re-telling of the legend of Old Man Harvey, as he is
called around those parts. The convention was nice, but the Highlight of my
trip ended up being my time spent learning about Harvey Schoepke.
***
In the late 1880s Harvey Schoepke was born in a small logging community known as Tennett, Texas. Tennett was very small. The residents had tried to get their own post office established but there just didn’t seem to be enough people to justify it. Tennett was unique in that it was the only location in the area where logging on any decent scale was possible. Most logging took place sixty or seventy miles to the east in the Piney Woods area. The area around Tennett is mostly rolling pasture land. However, there was once several square miles of beautiful hardwood forests there. John Tennett moved into the area in the 1850s and started a small saw mill. He called the area Tennettville, but that name never stuck. The locals just came to call it Tennett.
By the time Harvey was born, logging in the area was already on the decline. The families that lived in Tennett did their best to eke out a living from the land. Harvey and his friends had a great childhood playing around the backwoods creeks and small farms that made up the tiny community. Of course, there were always lots of chores to do, and there were countless days spent in the one room schoolhouse learning letters and math. But these drudgeries were always counterbalanced with barefoot fishing trips to the local watering hole or swimming naked in the creek.
As Harvey grew older, many of his friends moved away. Farms were sold. Farmhouses were overgrown and slowly reclaimed by the land. But Harvey never left Tennett. This was his home. He felt like he was a part of the land. Every day he worked outside from sunup to sundown. Every year his beloved community shrunk around him.
By the time Harvey was in his seventies he knew Tennett would soon be gone for good. Harvey’s phone didn’t ring often. But, when it did, there was always news of another funeral. Tennett was litteraly dying away. In fact, no one even called the area Tennett anymore. Tennett was now just a few lonely cow pastures outside the town of Somerville.
A few weeks after his 76th birthday, Harvey was out in the field repairing a barbed wire fence. He began to have severe chest pains. Harvey knew immediately that he was in bad shape. The thought crossed his mind that he should go inside and phone an ambulance. But, as he stood up and looked around he changed his mind. All that he had once known and loved was gone, overgrown by the uncaring briars and vines of time. Harvey decided that if he was going to die, then under the hot Texas sun in his own fields was as good a place as any. He had never left this area in his life. If he went to the hospital now, Harvey was afraid they might make him go to one of the big hospitals in Houston.
Harvey continued his work for a while longer. When he could stand the pain no longer he stood up and began to walk around the old home place. Slowly the old man was losing touch with reality. If anyone had been around to see him there they would have seen an old withered man stumbling and mumbling incoherently. He stood there with sunken bloodshot eyes surveying the lonely landscape. He then began to turn around and around. As he looked out at the empty fields he saw houses grow up out of the twisted thickets covered in muscadine grape vines. He saw family and friends emerge like mists from the shadows of the oaks overhanging the creek. Tennett was back! Large salty tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks and fell to the dusty clay ground. Harvey felt like he was nine years old again! The old man collapsed into the waiting arms of the sacred ground he loved so dearly.
A family from Spring, Texas owned some land nearby. They used to come up on the weekends and fancy themselves as cattle ranchers. This day, as they passed by the Schoepke place, they saw the old farmer laying dead in his front yard. When the coroner showed up he said Harvey had been dead for two days.
Now, this was back in 1962 when Mr. Harvey Schoepke died. His land went to some distant relatives from Katy, Texas. They came out to the old home place only once. While there they stripped out everything of value from the house then left the place to the grasshoppers and coyotes. Not long after, the property, and all the other land in the area was bought up. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was working on a dam to create a lake nearby. All of the structures in the area were bulldozed down, along with the old Schoepke place.
One warm April morning in 1967 the waters came rolling in. The empty fields and scattered oak trees that had once been Tennett, Texas were washed away and covered over by the rising tide of progress. The water slowly continued to rise until it came to rest at the site of the old Schoepke place. Gentle waves of indifference lapped at the newly formed shoreline. This was where Harvey Schoepke once lived. However, no one knew or remembered Tennett, Texas or the people that once lived their lives there. No one remembered Harvey Schoepke, the man who lived and died in this one spot.
I reckon the construction here started about 1979. The old Schoepke acreage, at the edge of Lake Somerville, was located on the backside of the lake, away from the busy marina and fishing boats filled with eager anglers seeking bass trophies. This made the area desirable to wealthy families from Houston who were looking for a quiet weekend home. A gated community was started and several nice houses were built along the shore.
The Morris family was the first to notice the little boy that roamed up and down the shore in the early mornings or the cool of the evening. He looked to be about 9 years old and could always be seen wearing an old tattered pair of overalls with the legs rolled up to expose his bare feet. The child seemed happy and carefree, wandering up and down the shoreline poking at frogs or chasing dragonflies. Cynthia Morris came to realize that the little ghost boy was a harmless spirit and she enjoyed the rare glimpses she caught of him.
One day, when Amy, Cynthia’s youngest daughter, was eight, she was able to get close to the boy while playing alone out by the water. Cynthia had never told Amy about the young ghost boy out of fear it would frighten her. Amy asked the boy if he wanted to play with her. He told her yes he did but he had to go home soon. When Amy asked where he lived the little boy pointed to the water. She assumed he meant the other side of the lake and did not question the boy further. After playing together for twenty minutes or so Amy heard her mother calling her from the house. Amy told the boy she had to go. As she turned to leave she asked the boy his name. He replied “Harvey”. With that the girl turned and left.
Cynthia Morris was setting the picnic table on the back deck getting ready for dinner. “Where were you?” she asked her daughter.
“I was playing with Harvey” replied her young daughter innocently.
“Who is Harvey?” Cynthia asked.
Amy pointed around the back corner of the house to where the shoreline was. Cynthia leaned around where she could get a full view of the water. As she did, she saw the little ghost boy disappear behind some tall grasses. Cynthia smiled to herself. She had wondered for some time what the little ghost boy’s name was. She waited many years tell her daughter that her playmate that evening was a spirit.
Families moved in, and families moved out of the small gated neighborhood on the backside of Lake Somerville. Time rolled on. As the years went by people began to talk about Harvey, the little ghost boy that wandered the area. Some had gotten close enough to ask him where he lived. He always replied “Tennett”. No one had any idea what that meant. One day, a man from Sugarland saw the boy and asked him where his parents were. He pointed out to the lake then disappeared. Things like that happened from time to time around the neighborhood. All of that changed in the late 1990s when a new “Cynthia” bought the Morris lake house.
A grouchy old woman named Cynthia Hodges moved into the Morris house. It was immediately clear to the rest of the small community that their newest member was going to be a pain. She complained about everything, dogs barking, kids playing, trash pickup, unmowed (in her view) lawns. “Lord she was an awful woman” a former neighbor told me. Anyways, when Cynthia Hodges realized that a ghost wandered up and down the shoreline behind her house she decided she would have none of it. Heaven help the little community if she didn’t start complaining about that also.
Ms. Hodges tried to get the board to pay for someone to come out and “banish” the spirit, as she put it. Of course, the board refused such a ridiculous request. Undeterred, Ms. Hodges decided she would find her own ghost expert to come out and “cleanse the land.” Then she planned to send the bill to the board once the deed was done.
Cynthia Hodges couldn’t have found a more sketchy “paranormal expert” if she tried. She had a man who called himself “Maxwell” come down from Austin and stay at her house for a week. Maxwell was a lanky, bent-over, pervert-looking, toupee-wearing scam artist who dabbled just enough in the black arts to give anyone who came into contact with him a permanent case of the willies - at least that’s what her former neighbors told me.
The last night Maxwell was at Cynthia Hodges house he declared that he needed to perform some sort of séance on the back deck of the house. He planned to lure the spirit to the house then entrap it so he could “banish it forever.” Those are the words he used which, unsurprisingly, is just what Ms. Hodges wanted to hear.
At sundown, Maxwell began some ridiculous ritual that went on for several hours. As shady a man as Maxwell was, he must have known at least a little bit about what he was doing. Eventually, a scared looking little boy who called himself “Harvey” appeared in their midst. Maxwell told the spirit to leave and never return. The little ghost boy looked like he wanted to leave the porch and run to the shoreline but he was trapped by some kind of spell or trap Maxwell had set up. The longer Harvey was trapped there on that porch, the more scared and desperate looking he became. After some time, a look of realization entered the little boy’s eyes. He wasn’t in Tennett, Texas. He wasn’t at his home. He didn’t recognize this place. He didn’t recognize anything anymore. The image of the little boy before them transformed into a sad looking old man. Then he was gone.
No one in the neighborhood ever saw the little ghost boy again. Just in case you’re wondering, Cynthia Hodges died on the back deck about a year later from a massive stroke. This may be the end of the story, but I’ve heard from some that there is an old man who wanders the back country roads between Burleson and Washington counties late at night. If you stop to offer him a ride he will climb in your car without saying a word. When you ask him where he is headed he will turn and look at you with big, sad eyes. As he disappears into a gray mist he whispers the words “Tennett, Texas.”
***
In the late 1880s Harvey Schoepke was born in a small logging community known as Tennett, Texas. Tennett was very small. The residents had tried to get their own post office established but there just didn’t seem to be enough people to justify it. Tennett was unique in that it was the only location in the area where logging on any decent scale was possible. Most logging took place sixty or seventy miles to the east in the Piney Woods area. The area around Tennett is mostly rolling pasture land. However, there was once several square miles of beautiful hardwood forests there. John Tennett moved into the area in the 1850s and started a small saw mill. He called the area Tennettville, but that name never stuck. The locals just came to call it Tennett.
By the time Harvey was born, logging in the area was already on the decline. The families that lived in Tennett did their best to eke out a living from the land. Harvey and his friends had a great childhood playing around the backwoods creeks and small farms that made up the tiny community. Of course, there were always lots of chores to do, and there were countless days spent in the one room schoolhouse learning letters and math. But these drudgeries were always counterbalanced with barefoot fishing trips to the local watering hole or swimming naked in the creek.
As Harvey grew older, many of his friends moved away. Farms were sold. Farmhouses were overgrown and slowly reclaimed by the land. But Harvey never left Tennett. This was his home. He felt like he was a part of the land. Every day he worked outside from sunup to sundown. Every year his beloved community shrunk around him.
By the time Harvey was in his seventies he knew Tennett would soon be gone for good. Harvey’s phone didn’t ring often. But, when it did, there was always news of another funeral. Tennett was litteraly dying away. In fact, no one even called the area Tennett anymore. Tennett was now just a few lonely cow pastures outside the town of Somerville.
A few weeks after his 76th birthday, Harvey was out in the field repairing a barbed wire fence. He began to have severe chest pains. Harvey knew immediately that he was in bad shape. The thought crossed his mind that he should go inside and phone an ambulance. But, as he stood up and looked around he changed his mind. All that he had once known and loved was gone, overgrown by the uncaring briars and vines of time. Harvey decided that if he was going to die, then under the hot Texas sun in his own fields was as good a place as any. He had never left this area in his life. If he went to the hospital now, Harvey was afraid they might make him go to one of the big hospitals in Houston.
Harvey continued his work for a while longer. When he could stand the pain no longer he stood up and began to walk around the old home place. Slowly the old man was losing touch with reality. If anyone had been around to see him there they would have seen an old withered man stumbling and mumbling incoherently. He stood there with sunken bloodshot eyes surveying the lonely landscape. He then began to turn around and around. As he looked out at the empty fields he saw houses grow up out of the twisted thickets covered in muscadine grape vines. He saw family and friends emerge like mists from the shadows of the oaks overhanging the creek. Tennett was back! Large salty tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks and fell to the dusty clay ground. Harvey felt like he was nine years old again! The old man collapsed into the waiting arms of the sacred ground he loved so dearly.
A family from Spring, Texas owned some land nearby. They used to come up on the weekends and fancy themselves as cattle ranchers. This day, as they passed by the Schoepke place, they saw the old farmer laying dead in his front yard. When the coroner showed up he said Harvey had been dead for two days.
Now, this was back in 1962 when Mr. Harvey Schoepke died. His land went to some distant relatives from Katy, Texas. They came out to the old home place only once. While there they stripped out everything of value from the house then left the place to the grasshoppers and coyotes. Not long after, the property, and all the other land in the area was bought up. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was working on a dam to create a lake nearby. All of the structures in the area were bulldozed down, along with the old Schoepke place.
One warm April morning in 1967 the waters came rolling in. The empty fields and scattered oak trees that had once been Tennett, Texas were washed away and covered over by the rising tide of progress. The water slowly continued to rise until it came to rest at the site of the old Schoepke place. Gentle waves of indifference lapped at the newly formed shoreline. This was where Harvey Schoepke once lived. However, no one knew or remembered Tennett, Texas or the people that once lived their lives there. No one remembered Harvey Schoepke, the man who lived and died in this one spot.
I reckon the construction here started about 1979. The old Schoepke acreage, at the edge of Lake Somerville, was located on the backside of the lake, away from the busy marina and fishing boats filled with eager anglers seeking bass trophies. This made the area desirable to wealthy families from Houston who were looking for a quiet weekend home. A gated community was started and several nice houses were built along the shore.
The Morris family was the first to notice the little boy that roamed up and down the shore in the early mornings or the cool of the evening. He looked to be about 9 years old and could always be seen wearing an old tattered pair of overalls with the legs rolled up to expose his bare feet. The child seemed happy and carefree, wandering up and down the shoreline poking at frogs or chasing dragonflies. Cynthia Morris came to realize that the little ghost boy was a harmless spirit and she enjoyed the rare glimpses she caught of him.
One day, when Amy, Cynthia’s youngest daughter, was eight, she was able to get close to the boy while playing alone out by the water. Cynthia had never told Amy about the young ghost boy out of fear it would frighten her. Amy asked the boy if he wanted to play with her. He told her yes he did but he had to go home soon. When Amy asked where he lived the little boy pointed to the water. She assumed he meant the other side of the lake and did not question the boy further. After playing together for twenty minutes or so Amy heard her mother calling her from the house. Amy told the boy she had to go. As she turned to leave she asked the boy his name. He replied “Harvey”. With that the girl turned and left.
Cynthia Morris was setting the picnic table on the back deck getting ready for dinner. “Where were you?” she asked her daughter.
“I was playing with Harvey” replied her young daughter innocently.
“Who is Harvey?” Cynthia asked.
Amy pointed around the back corner of the house to where the shoreline was. Cynthia leaned around where she could get a full view of the water. As she did, she saw the little ghost boy disappear behind some tall grasses. Cynthia smiled to herself. She had wondered for some time what the little ghost boy’s name was. She waited many years tell her daughter that her playmate that evening was a spirit.
Families moved in, and families moved out of the small gated neighborhood on the backside of Lake Somerville. Time rolled on. As the years went by people began to talk about Harvey, the little ghost boy that wandered the area. Some had gotten close enough to ask him where he lived. He always replied “Tennett”. No one had any idea what that meant. One day, a man from Sugarland saw the boy and asked him where his parents were. He pointed out to the lake then disappeared. Things like that happened from time to time around the neighborhood. All of that changed in the late 1990s when a new “Cynthia” bought the Morris lake house.
A grouchy old woman named Cynthia Hodges moved into the Morris house. It was immediately clear to the rest of the small community that their newest member was going to be a pain. She complained about everything, dogs barking, kids playing, trash pickup, unmowed (in her view) lawns. “Lord she was an awful woman” a former neighbor told me. Anyways, when Cynthia Hodges realized that a ghost wandered up and down the shoreline behind her house she decided she would have none of it. Heaven help the little community if she didn’t start complaining about that also.
Ms. Hodges tried to get the board to pay for someone to come out and “banish” the spirit, as she put it. Of course, the board refused such a ridiculous request. Undeterred, Ms. Hodges decided she would find her own ghost expert to come out and “cleanse the land.” Then she planned to send the bill to the board once the deed was done.
Cynthia Hodges couldn’t have found a more sketchy “paranormal expert” if she tried. She had a man who called himself “Maxwell” come down from Austin and stay at her house for a week. Maxwell was a lanky, bent-over, pervert-looking, toupee-wearing scam artist who dabbled just enough in the black arts to give anyone who came into contact with him a permanent case of the willies - at least that’s what her former neighbors told me.
The last night Maxwell was at Cynthia Hodges house he declared that he needed to perform some sort of séance on the back deck of the house. He planned to lure the spirit to the house then entrap it so he could “banish it forever.” Those are the words he used which, unsurprisingly, is just what Ms. Hodges wanted to hear.
At sundown, Maxwell began some ridiculous ritual that went on for several hours. As shady a man as Maxwell was, he must have known at least a little bit about what he was doing. Eventually, a scared looking little boy who called himself “Harvey” appeared in their midst. Maxwell told the spirit to leave and never return. The little ghost boy looked like he wanted to leave the porch and run to the shoreline but he was trapped by some kind of spell or trap Maxwell had set up. The longer Harvey was trapped there on that porch, the more scared and desperate looking he became. After some time, a look of realization entered the little boy’s eyes. He wasn’t in Tennett, Texas. He wasn’t at his home. He didn’t recognize this place. He didn’t recognize anything anymore. The image of the little boy before them transformed into a sad looking old man. Then he was gone.
No one in the neighborhood ever saw the little ghost boy again. Just in case you’re wondering, Cynthia Hodges died on the back deck about a year later from a massive stroke. This may be the end of the story, but I’ve heard from some that there is an old man who wanders the back country roads between Burleson and Washington counties late at night. If you stop to offer him a ride he will climb in your car without saying a word. When you ask him where he is headed he will turn and look at you with big, sad eyes. As he disappears into a gray mist he whispers the words “Tennett, Texas.”
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