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Thurber Booze
by Mike Cox | |
Now
a ghost town, Thurber
existed only as long as it could produce something.
Coal mining brought
the Eastland County town into being in late 1886. When the Texas and Pacific Railroad
pushed across West Texas in the early
1880s, it needed fuel for its steam locomotives. A large vein near what became
Thurber produced plenty of bituminous coal.
Then someone realized that
all the red clay around Thurber would make good bricks. In 1897, the Texas and
Pacific Coal Co. opened a brick plant on company property. Workers from Italy,
the United Kingdom, Mexico and other countries produced vitrified paving bricks
used on the streets of Amarillo,
Austin, Tyler
and many other Texas cities. |
| | The
Thurber Brick yards.
Old post card TE Archives |
When
wildcatters discovered oil around the nearby town of Ranger
in 1917, Thurber prospered from that production. The Texas and Pacific Coal Co.
added "and Oil" to its name and Thurber
boomed, reaching a population of up to 10,000.
Though
those three phases of Thurber's history - coal, bricks and oil -- are well known,
much less known is that the town became a production center for a fourth product:
illegal booze.
For that information, posterity has Ed Owen to thank. Throughout
his long career as a geologist, Owen studied more than strata and fault lines.
He later recorded his experiences and observations in a tidy print, chronicling
everything from his family and educational background to weather.
Samuel
Ellison, Jr., Joseph J. Jones and Mirva Owen (the geologist's sister-in-law) edited
Owen's writings for publication by the Geology Foundation at the University of
Texas at Austin. Published in 1987, "The Flavor of Ed Owen -A Geologist Looks
Back" is a hard-to-find soft cover with considerable insight into early 20th century
Texas.
Working for oil producer Lew H. Wentz, Owen established his headquarters
in Eastland in 1927. There he soon
became familiar with Thurber, where labor difficulties and the conversion of coal-fired
steam engines to oil burners soon resulted in the closure of the Thurber mines.
Despite the cessation of coal mining, scaled-down operations continued at the
Thurber brick plant.
"The prohibition era came on at the right time,"
Owen wrote, "so now Thurber
is the bootleggers' domain. It is the mecca for the thirsty for miles around,
for these manufacturers have imagination and are also energetic retailers."
The observant geologist found the range of Thurber-made liquid products quite
remarkable.
"The pride and joy of the Italians is 'grappo,' a throat-searing,
soul-trying distillate of grapes and apricots," Owen continued. "Emil sells homemade
beer that approaches some of the old-time brewers' quality. The specialty of the
Dutchman's house is peppermint whiskey. It has a cloying, sweetish taste, but
the Dutchman will calm your fear of poison by trying it on the nearest three or
four of his 14 children."
Someone named George sold red wine by the gallon.
"Some people can get drunk on it," Owen observed, "but most get sick too soon."
While Thurber
stood as the "gourmet capital of the bootleg industry," the pickings elsewhere
in West Texas were rather sparse in Owen's opinion.
A man in need of a
warming brace could get "sugar whiskey" at Coleman,
tequila smuggled on mule back from Mexico, home brew at "Mac's house" in Humbletown
(a short-lived oil boom town near Cisco
in Eastland County) and of course, "the madam of the honkey tonk at San
Angelo made gin."
Even so, heavy customer demand forced Mac to sell
his beer before its time, the Coleman sugar whiskey came out "too raw or burnt"
and the San Angelo madam's gin was "as unsatisfying as the other articles of commerce
in the honkey tonk."
Concluded Owen: "So Thurber has broad paths beaten
to its humble doors."
The Thurber brick plant closed in 1930, though Texas
and Pacific maintained some presence in the town.
When Congress decided
in 1933 that its experiment in social engineering called prohibition had failed,
Thurber went into its final decline, having no more commodities to offer.
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