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I
don’t drink. I don’t
smoke. But I am addicted.
Give me a stack of East
Texas newspapers, and I’ll be hooked for hours.
Each weekend, armed
with a pile of newspapers graciously sent to me by some of the newspapers who
print “Bob Bowman’s East Texas,” I read
all about people, places and events all over East
Texas.
And I discover the oddest things, especially in the small-town
weeklies.
In the Corrigan
Times, I read an obituary about a minister’s wife. It called her “a true yoke
fellow in the ministry.” That was a new phrase to me.
Wanda Bobinger,
who writes an occasional column, “From the Archives,” in the Polk County Enterprise,
recently wrote a piece about old obituaries. One funeral notice said: “The Angel
of Death came for Mrs. Jones at 3 o’clock in the morning.”
Also in the
Enterprise, I read about a fire that burned downtown Livingston
to the ground more than 100 years ago. Only two businesses survived. The fire
began in a warehouse owned by a leading prohibitionist after the town passed an
election to ban alcohol.
In the Buffalo Press, I read about an
old-fashioned wagon train pulled by horses and mules that once passed through
the town. The train, the brainchild of Mike Smith of Texarkana,
was on its way from Arkansas to Arizona. I hope they made it.
Also in the
Buffalo Press, I read that the tiny community of Donie
once again has its own post office.
Donie
is south of Teague in
southwest Freestone County. The site was probably settled in the 1880s. In 1898
the residents applied for a post office under the name of Douie, which was misread
in Washington as Donie.
Washington was making mistakes even then.
The columns I like most in small
newspapers are the “Looking Back” features.
A recent issue of the Pittsburg
Gazette reported that 70 years ago lightning struck a tablecloth at the home
of T.H. Peterson. Some 85 years, a phony photographer was doing a good business
in town by shooting photos and never delivering them.
In the Van Zandt
News, I learned that the Howell family once had a stagecoach stop at their
farm on the way from Marshall to
Dallas. When the stage topped the hill
near the farm, the driver would start ringing a bell, signaling the Howells to
have a fresh team of horses ready.
My favorite newspaper name is The
Jefferson
Jimplecute, and I loved former editor Vic Parker’s column, ‘”Heard Around
Town.”
He once talked about a attorney who asked a doctor, “Now, doctor
isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know it until the
next morning?” The doctor asked the lawyer: “Did you actually pass a bar exam?”
Bob Bowman's East Texas
February 13, 2011 Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
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