Howdy folks! My name is Jerreck Moody McWilliams. Somewhere around the mid 00's my grandfather, Willis Moody McWilliams, decided to compile stories he had written over the years about his memories growing up in Dark Corner, USA: a region near present-day Lake Texoma best-described by this excerpt from his story on Moonshine Cave:
Dark Corner had no real boundaries before 1907, when the school districts were drawn; it was just there, in the eastern part of Marshall County near the Washita River. It was somewhat secluded and pretty much stayed so until the 1940's when the railroad was rerouted through it. Someone once said that to get to the remotest residence in Dark Corner you had to swing in on a grapevine. Even then, you were likely to find a note on the door saying: "Gone to the country." Those who lived in it knew where they lived and had a special feeling about this remote area. It was a close-knit community, but not without its problems.
He created the first versions of his book with the help of my father, John Moody McWilliams, who did a significant amount of investigative journalism for the stories as well as its design, and publishing. He also drew all of the illustrations.
Their project was very much hand-crafted and meant to be published in printed form. I remember dad and I spent a whole weekend punching holes through the first hundred or so copies that they "mass produced" by printing them from a half-a-dozen boxes of copier paper, and running those plastic loose-leaf binder hinges through them.
No design software was involved whatsoever because neither Willis nor John knew the first thing about a computer beyond "unplug it and plug it back in." Concidentally, as a guy running the IT infrastructure for one of the leading healthtech companies in the US - that remains a very valid solution even today.
Dad composed most of the pages by arranging the various pictures and illustrations onto copier paper along with typed-up cutouts of text and then scanning them. I've acquired a chunk of graphic design experience since then, and I look back at what we were doing and shake my head. But I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.
Dad passed away in 2019 from a heart attack at 50, and "Daddy Willis" (as he's known to his grandkids) has resided at Kingston Family Care Center for the last several years, unable to speak as a result of a stroke. I now have a son, Warren Moody McWilliams, with another (Cooper Dean McWilliams) on the way due around Christmas 2025, and have been meaning to publish these stories in more resiliant media than the paper copies I keep near my desk to ensure that these stories are more likely to survive for future generations - since the internet has so far been fairly permanent.
This website is my first shot at that goal. Right now it's purely text. I'll update as I have time.
Also - huge thanks to my wife, Sadie, for typing all of this up several years ago. We lost the original digital files, and she spent a ton of time transcribing it all from one of the printed copies.