"History by George"
by Louise George

"Personal interviews with Texas Panhandle men and women born in the early years of the twentieth century rewarded me with hundreds of stories illustrating their everyday life. I like to share those stories just as they were told to me. " - Louise George
E-mail: lgeorge@NTS-online.net

"History by George"

A Scary Thing -
Dust Storm in the Texas Panhandle, April 1935 >

Masterson, Texas
In 1927 three companies combined their resources to construct an industrial plant to produce and process natural gas from the enormous reserves in the Hugoton Gas Field, which extends through the Texas Panhandle, the Oklahoma Panhandle and part of Kansas...

Columns

Every Sunday Morning 7-12-06

A Little Problem 6-14-05

Hired Hands 5-15-06

Football "Fields" in 1930 4-13-06

A Determined Young Lady 3-1-06

Remembering Christmas 12-14-05

School Days 10-18-05

A Scary Thing - Dust Storm in the Texas Panhandle, April 1935 9-15-05

Masterson, Texas 8-27-05

Everyday Life in a Camp 8-27-05

Quite an Experience 8-8-05

Dumas, Texas, 1920 6-15-05

More Work 5-14-05
Back then, it was dry land farming. We didn’t make very much.

From Place to Place 4-17-05
"...Imagine riding in the bed of a wagon over a bumpy trail across the prairie hour after hour under a blazing sun, or in a sudden downpour, a dust storm or a cold winter’s wind, with only an old quilt to sit on or use as a shield against whatever elements the weather threw at you...."

Work, Work, Work 3-12-05
Zuleika O’Daniel: “I don’t remember how old I was when I learned to milk a cow...."

Hard Times 1-21-05
Reba Guess: Droughts, dust storms and the depression years in the Texas Panhandle

My Mean Old Grandfather 12-12-04
Mill Burnett Boyd: "I could hear them talking about shearing the sheep and then dipping them before they shipped them...."

For Better or Worse 11-1-04
In their own words some of yesterday’s brides tell about their weddings and the early days of their marriages

A Real Character 10-16-04
Mill Boyd: “There’s a funny story about my Grandmother Burnett. You talk about a character, she was a character."

Buyer Beware! 9-28-04
Ola Covey: “I knew from what they said around the courthouse that the bootlegging was going on...."

For Fun 9-16-04
Nola Sheldon: “I don’t remember when I got my first doll. We tied things up and made dolls out of it..."

How I Got My Name - Zuleika Kendrick O’Daniel as told to Louise George 9-1-04

Louise George

Louise Carroll George was born in 1932 on a farm southwest of Tulia, Texas. When she was six, her family moved to Cushing, Oklahoma. She has joked through the years that when her dad realized his mistake, he got them back to Texas as quickly as he possibly could. The family moved to Amarillo permanently in 1945 and Louise graduated Amarillo High School in 1950. The following year she married J.A. George. They had five children. J.A. went to work for the Bureau of Mines, Amarillo Helium Plant in 1956. The following year he was transferred to the Exell Helium Plant at Masterson, located between Amarillo and Dumas. The family lived there for over eleven years. In 1969 they moved to Dumas where Louise worked twenty-three years as an employment interviewer for Texas Employment Commission.

Louise never gave a thought to becoming a writer until she was nearly sixty years old. It was almost an accident that led her in that direction. While preparing photograph albums as Christmas gifts for her grown children, she decided to write each child’s story with the idea of preserving their early memories. Friends and family members who read the stories encouraged her to continue in the newfound hobby. In 1992, the committee compiling a book about Moore County’s history in connection with its centennial celebration, enlisted Louise as a contributor. She researched and wrote a chapter on the history of churches in the county for the book called 100 Moore Years.

Years earlier when J.A. went to work at Exell Helium, the family moved into one of seventy-five houses built near the plant for workers’ families. The housing area was commonly called a camp. A nearby camp had thirty-two houses. Approximately five-hundred residents in the two camps and on surrounding farms and ranches made up the community. Other than the camps, there was a school, a church, a tiny country grocery store and not much else. Living there was a unique experience and the George family remembers the years they lived there as their “best” years. By 1984, Masterson was a “ghost town.” (That is if you could ever call it a town.) The camps, school, church and store were all gone. After retirement, Louise wrote her first book to record the history of the community. No City Limits, The Story of Masterson, Texas, was published in 1994.

A desire to pay tribute to the women of her mother’s generation was the inspiration for her second book entitled Some of My Heroes Are Ladies, Women Ages 85 to 101 Tell About Life in the Texas Panhandle. The nine women featured in the book were chosen because they spent all or most all of their lives in the Panhandle. As the one-hundred-one year old said, “We just pretty well saw this area settle up like it is today.” As they were watching the area settle up, they worked hard and faced hardships that we can only imagine and they did it with a quiet dignity that is difficult to find in following generations. In the book, in their own words, they tell all sorts of stories - from hilarious to positively heart wrenching.

Newspaper articles, speaking at various clubs in the Panhandle about her books, and interviewing for and writing the next book keep Louise busy nowadays. In fact, she rather resents the ordinary things that take her away from those activities. No one is more surprised than Louise about this unexpected calling that came to her so late in life, but she’s having a ball!

Contact Information:
Louise George can be reached at (806) 935-5286, by mail at Box 252, Dumas, TX 79029, or by e-mail at lgeorge@NTS-online.net.

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