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I Mistook the Owner for the Gardener: The Grisso Henderson Mansion

Published September 8, 2004

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

It’s a twelve hour ride from Eufaula, OK to Raiford. That’s fine when the days are fourteen hours long.

These days, they’re not.

The shorter days of late summer make one decide; ride late or pitch camp early? Some days I pick the saddle over the tent. Other days I settle for a mansion.

This week I went from one extreme to another in a day.

Bernie Harberts sleeping in bedroll under the stars at Fisher Ranch, Oklahoma, 2004 — What happens when you wait late to pitch camp, Fisher Ranch, OK.

This Saturday morning, I woke under the stars on the 18,000 acre Fisher Ranch. By starlight, I packed my gear onto Woody and Maggie and hit Highway 9.

That night we pulled into Seminole.

I was riding past the houses on the outskirts of town, mouthing the usual thoughts: “Where will I sleep tonight?”

Then across the road I spotted the mansion.

It was the real Italian Renaissance deal: the tiled roof, the bronze statues, the fountains and the gardener.

I walked up to the smiling fellow with the long hair and the laughing eyes and the golf ball picker-upper. “Hi, I’m Bernie,” I plowed in and he smiled back. “Hi, I’m Kenneth Henderson.”

If I’d read the National Register of Historic Places plaque in the driveway better, I’d have noticed. It said “Grisso Henderson Mansion.” Grisso. Henderson. Kenneth Henderson.

So I mistook the owner for the gardener and landed among friends.

“Gypsies in the Palace” comes to mind. Grisso Henderson Mansion, Seminole, OK. (Kenneth Henderson photo)

Woody the mule at the Grisso Henderson Mansion garden, Seminole, Oklahoma, 2004 — “Welcome to my garden” reads the plaque.

Rose and Kenneth Henderson provided me with a bed so wide I woke up in it cross-wise the next morning and my feet didn’t hang over.

More telling, they let me tie Woody and Maggie in their yard. Right out there between the fountain and the bronze gorilla. Now that’s the measure of a heart!

Shadow of Woody the mule on the wall of the Grisso Henderson Mansion, Seminole, Oklahoma, 2004 — Silhouette in Italian Renaissance. (Kenneth Henderson photo)

Rose and Kenneth know animals. They ran an animal preserve for nine years and when I asked Kenneth to make a photo of Woody’s shadow on his garage, he didn’t laugh but took the photo and then invited me to look at his photos.

Kudus, fallow deer, geese, buffalo, reindeer. Kenneth had photographed them all on his preserve. They wore the same content look Woody and Maggie wear after a big meal. Animals and babies just know.

Woody and Maggie dined on pears that night.

Boy is that ground going to be hard to sleep on again.

Thanks Rose and Kenneth for putting us up those four glorious days!

Here’s a much more in-depth history of the Grisso Mansion that Kenneth shared with me during my st ay.

More about riding Woody and Maggie from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

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