The film is an attempt to evoke, through paintings, the world of a small Texas town in an era long gone. The paintings are freely based on photographs, letters, and postcards, discovered hidden in a cigar box in the family barn by director Robert Benton, and dealing entirely with a courtship between his grandfather's brother, who was the local mailman, and a young woman who came to visit her relatives in Waxahachie, Texas, in the summer of 1909. They met, fell in love, got married, and shortly after the marriage, she died.