Description
It is a family portrait taken in Giddings, Texas, sometime before August of 1912. Clarice was 15 years old and, as I understand the story, was “engaged” to the son of the town pharmacist. Giddings had a population of perhaps 1,200 people at the time, and the marriage was largely an arrangement between the two families. For the Hoseas, it would have represented a significant step up financially.
There was just one problem.
Clarice was in love with someone else.
His name was Pleasant Phears, a poor dairy farmer from the truly tiny town of Dime Box, Texas. Dime Box was miles away—at least half a day by horse and buggy—but Pleasant would make the trip to see her. Because their relationship had to remain secret, the two communicated by leaving letters beneath a particular rock: Pleasant would collect the note Clarice had left for him and leave one of his own behind.
They were young. They had very little. But they were in love.
And on August 24, 1912, Clarice made her choice.
Two days before her 16th birthday, and just one week before she was supposed to marry the pharmacist’s son, Clarice and Pleasant eloped. They climbed into a horse and buggy and headed for Dime Box.
Clarice’s father and older brothers—the men standing beside her in that old family photograph—went after them. But rain began to fall, the roads turned difficult, and they were unable to catch the couple.
Clarice and Pleasant were married that day.
They remained married for the next 67 years.
As I’ve gotten older, the days between August 24, the day they eloped, and August 26, Clarice’s birthday, have taken on more meaning for me. I find myself thinking about everyone in that story: the young man who was left behind, Clarice’s parents and brothers, Pleasant making those long buggy rides, and the consequences each of them faced.
But most of all, I think about Clarice.
There may have been easier ways to handle it. There certainly would have been safer choices. But at 15 years old, Clarice somehow understood something that many of us spend a lifetime trying to learn:
At some point, you have to decide which life is actually yours—and have the courage to choose it.
Clarice followed her heart.
And it led her to a little town in Texas called Dime Box.
More than a century later, that name is on a bottle of Pinot Noir.