I am a fossil it seams because I still mainly listen to AM. Now it is WBAP. Used to be the one in San Antonio. Since I mainly listen in the car--never in the house--I need stations that will travel with me.

These local FM's have too small a range--won't even get me from Temple to College Station without having to look for a new program.

So even on coast to coach trips, I can latch on to one of those "clear" channel stations and never have to touch the dial again.

If I want music I play cd's and get to select what I want to hear rather than be a captive to someone else's choices.

same here, been listening to WBAP since I was a teenager, through all the format changes. Also remember KOMA, KVOO, and whatever Louisiana station had the Louisiana Hayride on Sat. nights. Our TV stations were Abilene & Abilene. No UHF stations, cable or satellite. Wind, etc caused much havoc. Seems like we have come full circle, now my Dish can't find a signal if the wind blows too hard, or it rains, hails or snows too heavily.

The 50,000 Watt Clear Channel AM radio station in Shreveport, LA was KWKH. It carried the Louisiana Hayride on Saturday nights from 1948 to 1960. The sponsor of the Hayride broadcast for those 12 years was (if I an not mistaken) was Stan's Record Shop in Shreveport.

Remember listening to that LA station also as well as KOMA.

One of them also had orchestra music live from the blue room?

And I remember listening to post Audrey reports on a LA station late into the night.

In my part of WT, most of the time in Borden County, at night in the summer we would be sitting in gliding porch furnitures on the front porch, listening to baseball---after Houston finally got a team the Astros, but before that I think the team we could get live was the Cardinals.

I also know that my mom did a "rattlesnake hunt" before she would let me go outside to play. Just took "watch for snakes" for granted as a caution like people today tell kids 'don't talk to strangers."

3GA ... You were listening to WWL in New Orleans broadcasting live from the Blue Room of the Roosevelt Hotel (now named the Fairmont.) The orchestra leader was Leon Kellner from 1945 to 1971. I went to sleep many nights listening to that smooth big band sound.

Other Clear Channel AM stations of the times were:
WSM Nashville 650
WMAQ Chicago 890
KCMO Kansas City 810
WHO Des Moines 1040
KWKH Shreveport 1130
WOAI San Antonio 1200
KVOO Tulsa 1170

The reason some stations came in stronger than others even though all transmitted at 50kW was that stations were allowed to direct their broadcast beams (to keep from wasting part of their power broadcasting to an empty ocean.)

Yep, that Blue room was my bedtime music also.

West Texas has always been plagued by a shortage of water ... for whatever use you needed it for. The earliest settlers in the 1880s and 90s lured to West Texas by promoter speils of Garden of Eden luxurious landscapes soon discovered that their Eden was dry as a bone. So the search for a supply of water for people and livestock became the first order of business for those pioneers.

Many chose wisely to stop at locations near the few rivers and the larger natural springs. Others who elected to "dry camp" just had to haul water from a water source to their abode. Some created their own source if land nearby had a deep gulley where by hand digging a spring could be fashioned with enough flow to support a family or livestock. But usually for drinking water the pioneer would hook up oxen or mules to a wagon or sledge and spend a day traveling to and from the nearest large spring with barrels for water. At my grandparent's dugout home in Jones County a wagon sheet (tarp) was tied up so as to funnel rainwater into tubs to collect drinking water.

By the 1890s as frame homes were beginning to dot the plains, the roofs of those houses became the primary means of collecting rain water for drinking and household use. Gutters and downspouts channeled this water into hand dug cisterns. This was a significant advancement in West Texas life.

Now cisterns for storing water were not invented in West Texas but rather were common practice into Biblical times. It was a common practice over the world ... and the construction techniques had probably not changed much over the ages. West Texas cisterns that I had the pleasure of being inside (they had to be cleaned every few years) were a jug shaped, hand dug affair, with the neck about three feet in diameter extending about four feet below the surface of the ground then the bowl rounded out to about ten feet in diameter. The cistern was lined with brick and then sealed with plaster. The cistern brick extended as a wall about three feet above ground level. The top was securely covered to keep baseballs and stray cats out.) The usual location of the cistern was a short way from the house but some folks had the forethought to dig the cistern first and have it on the back porch of the new house. The usual means of getting the water out was by rope through a pulley to a bucket ... a hated chore after a few years. Some folks had eased that process somewhat by having a hand pump on top of the cistern cover.

Cistern water was nice ... rainwater with no stray minerals and a constant temperature of 60 degrees or so.

But there were drawbacks, as all good things in West Texas seem to have. First, sparrows got the idea that the gutters were installed for their nesting benefit. Keeping the gutters clear of nests was a delegated responsibility ... and the first question asked during a rain was "were the gutters clean?" So, sometimes, cistern water was filtered through bird nests. And there was always sand on the roofs and in the gutters, but sand was everywhere so no problem. After a rain if the water was "cloudy" a pound of alum was dropped into the water to clear it. If we pulled up a bucket of water full of "wiggletails" we poured a cup of kerosene the cistern. If during a dry spell the cistern went dry the remedy was to haul water from the nearest source or in later years have a load delivered from town in a tanker truck. Before that load of water was poured into the cistern folks took that opportunity to clean it out. A couple of kids were volunteered to go into the well with brooms and brushes and buckets to do the cleaning. The sidewalls and bottom were cleaned and rinsed with all the accumulated grunge shipped topside by bucket.

Now cistern water was very special around a farm and its use was restricted to household use and for my mother's flock of chickens. The farmer just had to make other accommodations for livestock and other purposes. I will discuss those accommodations later.

From the description above one would assume that cisterns were only on farms. Wrong. From the 1890s to the 1950s they were common in West Texas cities and towns also. It was well into the 40s and 50s before towns had municipal water supplies with drinkable water. Many pumped water into their towns from nearby creeks and small lakes but there was no treatment so (even though many drank it) the water was suitable only for sanitation. So gutters, downspouts and the old reliable cistern were maintained as a way of life well into what I consider the modern era in small town West Texas.

The below ground cisterns that I described above were most common in West Texas. But there were above ground cisterns as well, more common in towns. These were mostly galvanized metal tanks elevated a few feet on a platform. The above ground tanks had the advantage of one being able to pipe into the house but the pressure was miniscule (5 pounds if elevated 10 feet.) Plus, the water in above ground tanks was hot in summer and cold in winter ... unlike the year round 60 degrees below ground.

In the small West Texas wide spot in the road where I was raised, there was a "water" system of sorts. About ten houses were on a single line that had been paid for the the home owners. There was a pump dropped in a small tank/lake that sent the water to our homes. No purification process. We all drank it and bathed it in. When the tank "turned" the water would be brick red and stain all the clothes in the laundry. After a tub bath, there would be a layer of sandy grit at the bottom of the tub. Families on the line split the electric bill for the the system every month.

We also had times the tank went dry, and then the county would brink in tanker trucks filled with water, and most people had a small tank on a trailer to use as a back up.

The school had its own system of wells, so it always had water.

I thought most people had to haul water--never knew it was a rarity till I was much older.

I never thought anything of it, and the water did not kill us.

Most houses had bottled drinking water for young children, since the local well water left many with mottled teeth.



Those signs at city limits about the water system being safe were not visible in my small town.

Also when the rains would come, the first question for most was did the tanks run round-and frankly tank water was more important than grass growing water. You could buy feed more easily than tanking in water. When the water was gone, people usually sold off their herds, and the price of beef would drop steeply.

The second condern was always if there had been enough rain to make the river run. We had a dry fork of a major river that ran through the county and went to a lake in the corner of the county. That lake supplied water to several neighboring towns.

[This message has been edited by 3rd Generation Ag (edited 5/8/2006 7:58p).]

If I could divert the conversation back to the radio discussion for a minute, that's something that is right up my alley. I was born in 1984, so I'm a few years behind fossil and 3GA, but even though I grew up in the cable television and Internet age, radio has always fascinated me, especially AM. I've always been amazed by the stations from all over the country that I could pick up with an AM radio. Out in Stamford, I caught a St. Louis Cardinals game or two on St. Louis' KMOX (1120 or 1140, I believe), and I've caught KVOO, WWL, and other stations from Oklahoma City, Shreveport, Little Rock, and who knows where else. The one most near and dear to my heart, though, is WBAP.

I grew up listening to Mark Holtz and Eric Nadel call Texas Rangers baseball games on "The News & Talk of Texas". I started listening to Rush Limbaugh on WBAP when I was a third grader, and remember well the days of Hal Jay & Dick Siegel in the afternoons, and "the salesman that sells from both sides of the desk" (never really knew what that meant), Sam from Sales.

They had quit playing music by the time that I became a WBAP listener, but my dad used to tell me of the days when he grew up listening to Jim Baker and Don Day (and I've listened to Don Day plenty of times in his new gig on Country Gold Radio out of Ft. Worth), how they used to make fun of "sissies" that listened to FM, and how they once had a contest to mail them your radio knob-once you put it on 820 AM, there was no need to ever turn it again.

Nowadays, whenever I'm home for the summer, I try to listen to as much Rush as I can on WBAP, and for some reason, I enjoy hearing the news and traffic updates for Dallas-Ft. Worth. 710 KGNC out of Amarillo is a pretty powerful station, and I can pick it up on most occasions; they carry Rush, and have hourly commodity prices, which is fun. 1080 KRLD out of Dallas is the home of the Texas Rangers nowadays, and since B-CS doesn't have a station carrying the Rangers, I let Eric Nadel & Victor Rojas bring me the action through the static.

As for the "border blasters", they were WELL before my time, but I've read a lot of stories about them. That's quite an amazing bit of history, with how powerful those stations were, and like fossil said, the unique personalities that came on the air. I don't know if any of you have XM Radio, but I've become a huge fan of it. They have the "decades" stations that cover the 40's through the 90's, and play just music from that decade on the stations. The 60's and 70's stations are my favorite (I've always enjoyed my parents' music more than that of my generation), and they've recently "resurrected" the famed Wolfman Jack with bits of his show for an hour each weeknight. On Sundays, they carry the Wolfman Jack show from 6-11 pm, so I like to ride around town, cruise up to Sonic, and listen to the Wolfman, almost feeling like I'm in "American Graffiti". Also on Friday afternoons, they've started trying to recreate some of the old AM giants of the 60's with actual on-air soundchecks from stations like New York's WCBS in between songs.

Thanks for allowing me to reminisce with you, though my depth of knowledge and experience is dwarfed by my fellow West Texans on this thread.

Harvesting rainwater and storing it in cisterns (supplemented in dry years with water deliveries) took care of the basic needs for drinking, cooking and laundry for a household ... if the family were water-frugal, which all were.

But water for uses other than the household were harder to come by ... such as water for livestock and garden irrigation. The water pond described by 3rd Generation Ag were not available in the first 30 or 40 years of West Texas growth because the equipment was not available for building large storage ponds (called "tanks" in West Texas) before the end of WWII. Fresnos could be used to scoop out small ponds and possibly dam up some gulleys for temporary water but these did not have the size or depth to last long in dry weather. Towns would try to store water by damming up creeks and digging out "pump holes" for early municipal water supplies and these were fairly effective until a "gulley washer" washed out the dam. Abilene's first attempt to create Lytle Lake in 1897 worked well for a few years until the earthen dam washed away. So until after WWII and the advent of bulldozers, surface water could not be counted on for stock water and other non-household uses.

So the alternative to surface water entrapment left only water from below ground. The Panhandle was above the great Ogallala aquifer, a large part of West Texas covered parts of the Edwards aquifer, and other aquifers such as the Seymour were under central West Texas. Those parts of West Texas not blessed with aquifers of "good" water had to make do with gyp water which was plentiful but tainted with the calcium sulphate from the sedimentary gypsum rock that capped it. The taste and smell of gyp water made it undesirable for any household uses ... but it was OK for livestock. Gyp water from a windmill on a hot day could be downright refreshing if a person were thirsty enough.

But whether the ground water choice was good Edwards or Ogallala or bad gyp, in those earliest days of West Texas, that water might as well have been on the moon. Getting to the water was the problem because the machinery needed to make it available was in short supply and high demand.

The earliest water drilling equipment was cable-tool (or percussion) rigs. A few of these rigs were probably available in the 1890s and they continued in common use until the 30s (some even the 40s.) The Santa Rita #1, the first oilwell on University of Texas land, was drilled by a cable-tool rig and completed in May 1923 (646 days to drill 3,000 feet averaging 4.7 feet/day.)

The cable tool was a dinosaur beast of a machine but was best available for the period. Basically the way it worked was a heavy steel pipe with a pointed end was suspended from a cable and a bull-wheel/walking beam mechanism raised that weight a couple of feet and let it free-fall into the bore hole. Five to 20 gallons of water were poured into the borehole to make a slurry of the chipped rock and earth stirred up by the heavy bit. Then the boring tool was pulled out of the hole after an hour or so of pounding and a baling pipe with a trap gate on the bottom was lowered into the borehole to bale the slurry out ... then the process repeated. Eventually the cable tool would locate water ... say, three weeks to go 100 feet. When a level with a good supply of water was reached the crew would use various means to create a cavity in the water-bearing strata, baling continuously to clear out sand accumulation. When satisfied with the flow rate and volume the rig would be moved and a windmill tower and water trough would be brought in to complete the water supply. It was slow and laborious but that is what made cattle raising and some early irrigation possible in West Texas. Livestock had been in West Texas since earliest times but in those days were free to roam and find water ... after fences came along, farmers and ranchers were limited in the numbers owned by the amount of available stock water within his enclosed property.

To a degree drilling for water was hit or miss in West Texas, but many drillers guaranteed adequate water from wells they drilled if they were allowed to pick the exact location. The drillers who made this guarantee selected the location by devining (or "witching" or "dousing"for water. The method for devining was to use of a small forked tree branch (diameter of a pencil ... about 18 inches long) with palms upward holding the legs of the Y and walking about the area. When the end of the limb dipped the driller said "We will dig here." Farmers as a rule did not dispute his choice. The driller believed enough in his ability to base his guarantee on it.

Another point, rotary drilling rigs were available in West Texas as early as the 20s, and they were faster drilling than the cable-tool. But rotary rigs required a sizable supply of water to circulate through the drill column to flush out cuttings from the borehole and out into a slush pit. Many farms and ranches did not have a readily available source of water so the cable-tool was better suited since it used less water.

Life in early day West Texas was not easy. In many cases for things we take for granted today those early settlers had to wait for the machinery to be invented before they achieved basic steps toward progress. They had to wait for trucks to be developed to haul large water tanks before rotary drilling rigs could speed up the search for water. They had to wait until hydraulic cylinders were adapted for bulldozer blades in WWII so large tanks and lakes could be developed to store great quantities of water. Fortunately someone had invented cisterns 2,000 years ago, and someone learned to find water sources with a willow branch a few centuries ago, and most of all someone had placed a gene for resourcefulness in man's DNA in some earlier time.







[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/9/2006 8:19a).]

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/9/2006 8:25a).]

3GA and WestTxAg ... I enjoyed your posts about the early day AM radio stations. Just a few more facts about the power of those stations. Local AM station usually transmitted at 5,000 Watts for an effective range of about 100 miles. The Clear Channel stations (and there were about 50 in the US during the 30s) transmitted at 50,000 Watts had an interference free guaranteed range of 1,000 miles. Many stations began dropping out of the 50,000 Watt competition because the costs to power those transmitters forced them out. I am sure now with FM stations nipping into their local revenue that very few stations still operate in the old Clear Channel range.

In the 30s and 40s radio in rural homes was a luxury. The radios operated on two big batteries ... an A and a B. I don't know but I figure one was about 6 volts to heat the filaments in the vacuum tubes and one was about 24 volts to power the driver. My dad was the only one in the family authorized to turn the set on. He would invite his farmer neighbors in to listen to championship fights but otherwise it was only operating only on Saturday and Sunday evenings for the various comedy shows. In 1948 when electricity came to farms, smaller and cheaper radios became available and that introduced the world to me.

Everything changed beginning in 1954 with introduction of the small battery operated transistor radios that were portable. Music, sports and news were now available to everyone, everywhere. It was inconceivable how anyone could live without radio ... then TV came along ....

My brother needed a well dug in the early 90's and the well diggers refused to dig unless he called out the "witcher" first. Since it was going to cost $100, my brother tried to balk...but the diggers insisted that they had drilled lots of dry holes in the area and had never missed when using this gentleman..

This witcher was an older gentleman who used two pieces of wire instead of the branch. The wire was heavy duty fencing wire bent in the shape of an "L". According to him, the underground water would run from the mountains to the gulf coast, so the water would travel from northwest to southeast. Basically, he walked the property holding the wires out in front of him. As crossed over the underground stream, the wires would spin in his hands toward each other. As he crossed the stream, the wires would pull apart.

We thought it was fake, but the fellow handed us the wire and let us try. He said it doesn't work for everyone, so we all tried it. I held the wire as tight as I could but could not keep it from spinning in exactly the place where they had already crossed for the witcher.

Yep, I saw people witch for water many times. Most of the area ranchers had wells with windmills--and did use that for stock water when it was not good enough for house water.

Since dad grew up on the plais--above the caprock--his farm always had a good well. My West Texas days were all below the caprock.

Speaking of "gully washers" Dad has some interesting old photos of a great flood that came to Colorado City and washed out the railroad bridge. Made with the old cameras of the day, it is till amazing to see that much water anywhere in West Texas.

My grandparents settled in West Texas about a hundred years ago. They certainly were there during the hard times, but also since life was the same for everyone, I think they just accepted the hardships as a part of life.

My mother-in-law was able to "witch" for water. We had some land and were going to have a well drilled and she got a green cut witching stick and told us where to drill. She was correct. This was in Tom Green Co which doesn't have the most abundance of water.


Regarding the radio stations, I still remember being in Big Bend during Thanksgiving of '72 and listening to the tu game on KRLD or one of those boomers. This was down at Santa Elena Canyon, which is pretty far away. Always could get KOMA, no matter where I was in West Texas.

speaking of gully washers....we didn't have them where I grew up...too flat and very few, if any gully's....what we had was "turd floaters"....

if the storm was big enough, and we got enough rain, the dried cow patties would actualy float off

Who killed the natural springs, the small streams and rivers in West Texas? Was it a natural occurrence or did man have a hand in this untimely death?

My grandfather told me that in the late 1880s when he first ventured into West Texas that water sources for travelers were sparse but could be found without much difficulty. Even at his dry piece of land he was able to fashion a spring in a gulley that supplied his few livestock.

As a kid in the 30s and 40s roaming about the rolling plains in parts of three counties I knew where watering holes were located that supplied livestock, wildlife and hunters. In deep washed gulleys and small canyons natural springs could be found in areas where the gypsum bedrock was exposed and cracked open (or blasted open with dynamite.) These places could be spotted from a distance by the presence of a small willow grove or other small trees. Where several of these springs were along a continuous route quite frequently they eventually turned into a small flowing creek. These creeks could eventually merge into a stream such as the Clear Fork of the Brazos (or the Salt Fork or the Double Mountain Fork.) This was true also in the Pecos and Colorado Rivers watersheds.

I remember in the 30s and 40s when Cottonwood Creek on the south side of Roby was (with the help of a low concrete dam located about a mile past the pump hole) was about 30 feet wide, 6-10 feet deep and continuous flowing ... and within 15 miles of its head water natural springs. This creek fed into the Clear Fork about five miles further along which was a very nice river ...quite wide in places with deep holes for trotlines and bank fishing, etc, and lined with Cottonwood trees and willows.

The natural springs, the small flowing creeks and nice sized river tributaries of the Brazos were made possible by the torrents of runoff water after big rains that kept the gulley, stream and river beds scoured of sediment and vegitation that would have choked out their life.

But this all changed after WWII.

Shortly after the War, the Soil Conservation Service stepped up in a big way ... with now available funding and with new heavy equipment to work with (such as bulldozers, earthmovers, big graders), they were ready to do battle with nature. (Bless them, their heart was in the right place, but oh the havoc they wrought in those early 50s times.) The battle cry in Congress was to combat soil erosion which definitely was a problem in West Texas ... and they did that well. But what were the consequences that we are dealing with today?

The first order of battle to the delight of all West Texas farmers was to start building stock tanks ... right along the main draws and gulleys on farms. And those stock tanks were a godsend for those folks who had maintained livestock on the output of windmills. The downside of this was that within 10 years the stock tanks had silted in destroying them ... and down stream many old springs were silted over because of the reduced flow that ordinarily did the scouring. The stock tank could be refurbished by cleaning out with heavy equipment ... but not the springs.

Another target of Soil Conservation was erosion in row crop fields. The solution was terracing in the rolling hill parts of the plains. Now terraces were earthen works graded up like a levee connecting points of equal elevation ... and level water should flow gently around the ends of the terraces. But in practice terraces captured water in pools that would take a week or more to evaporate or seep into the soil. Large fields would be covered with mini-lakes after a large rain. Terraces captured that water and prevented it from joining its brother H2O molecules on the way to the Cottonwood, the Clear Fork and the Brazos. Where did that water that seeped into the earth go? Most of it seeped under the soil, along the gypsom rock floor under the soil to lower levels ... the "Flats" or the bottom land of farms. These seeps in the flats now made that land hard to work because it remained moist ... and it had a high salinity from its underground travels ... and it invited invasion by salt loving plants, specifically Salt Cedar (tamarisk.)

And once the Salt Cedar got started in the flat land it followed right on into the gulleys, the creeks and the rivers.

Salt Cedar is unique in West Texas plants. It thrives in moist places and will send roots to any distance to collect all water available. It thrives in soils of high salinity and actually creates additional salinity in areas where it invades. This salinity kills out other desired plants and trees. Salt Cedar can be burned, poisoned, plowed up (with great difficulty) but it cannot be killed out as long as a piece of it is left alive.

So the two big natural springs that were on our place in the 30s and 40s are dead under a deep layer of silt, the old stock tank is dead .. full of silt, Cottonwood Creek once lined with Willows and Cottonwood trees is down to a trickle and a mass of Salt Cedar filling its old streambed and sucking it dry, and the Clear Fork of the Brazos is not more than a small creek.

Times change and there is no way that my old stomping grounds can ever be restored to the way they once were. An agriculturist would point out that progress has been made and I must agree that the farm land is now more productive. But I still miss those springs, the small flowing creeks and those rivers that used to grace that land. It was always so quiet, cool and peaceful beside the big spring in our "canyon" with its 10 foot deep sides ... watching the water bugs and frogs doing what water creatures do. And you would have had a great time swimming on a hot summer day at the "pump hole" on Cottonwood Creek and swinging out on the rope attached to a limb of that big Cottonwood tree ...or going with your dad fishing with cane poles on the Clear Fork in early July after the crops were "laid by" and no more field work was to be done until harvest. Good old days were not always bad.






[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/9/2006 4:17p).]

KVOOOOOOO

Sam from Sales on WBAP was a unique character and not that old for having been around as long as we think. He and some buddies actually leased mother-in-law's land in Eastland county for hunting. As funny as you think he was on the radio, liquor him up a little at the deer camp and we all wet our pants laughing at his antics.

several years ago, I did some work with KNTS the old AM station here in Abilene. They have the three tower array on the north side of town at I-20. In the old transmitter building, they had the original transmitter from the the old days as KRBC radio in the 20's or 30's. Looked like a 8 foot tall Wurlitzer juke box with beveled glass and 12inch tall tubes inside. A real piece of work. In the main control room at the transmitter, which was a small cinder block room with no windows, they had an old 45 record player with the Star Spangled banner already cued up and a old microphone setup for those emergency broadcast situations.


When we redid the old family house in Anson, we filled in the cistern that was on the back porch with all the scrap and trash that we pulled out of the old house. I remember very clearly looking at my uncles old 1950's comic book collection and thinking, "nah, I'd never read any of those" and tossing them in the hole. No telling what went in there to be covered up with cement when we poured a new foundation.

I've enjoyed fossil_ag's history. I personally learned more about Fisher County in the spring semester of 1966 as frog Canfil's ol' lady than I needed to know. Since I was only two fish holes from Mark's uncle (Tom '66) and provided his meal service most of that semester at Sibsa, I learned considerable Rotan history. I can personally attest that I don't know how Mark's dad (Raford '70) lived through 1966-67. I was sure we'd have to bury him in the Quad in front of Dorm 5. Our outfit (Spider D) unknown to me in 1965 was a Fisher Co. legend (cult, per se) already.


Hullabaloo, Caneck! Caneck!
Hullabaloo, Caneck! Caneck!

The Sheik's description of using the old cistern as a convenient trash receptacle probably occurred quite frequently in those older home after running water was piped in and the cisterns went idle. And those filled and sealed cisterns are laying out in West Texas like time capsules just waiting for an archeologist with time on his hands to dig through. One can only imagine the treasures and stories such a dig would uncover.

The cistern at our old home place was abandoned and covered years ago. I can just see the puzzeled look on that archeologist's face when he finds a baseball at the bottom of our old cistern. There is a story.

It was during WWII, probably about '43, and times were lean as they usually were during those years. Christmas was looming and outlooks were bleak for us four boys, but still we were anxious for a surprise of some sort.

So before dawn Christmas morning we crept into the living room where stocking were hung. Great surprise! We had something in each place. I was first to discover my gift from SC was a baseball and a bat. All four were overjoyed at such extravagance and out we went immediately to get a ball game going even though the sun was not up yet. Being the giftee, I was first batter and I swung mightily with my new bat at my new ball. Foul tip ... and that ball made a perfect arch and went into the open top of the cistern. Darn! But a brother said, that's OK we have this old softball ... that old ball had been in the yard for who knows how long and full of mud probably weighed four pounds. So another pitch and another mighty swing with that new bat ... and a hit ... and that bat broke in two. So just as the sun was peeking over the horizon on Christmas morning, I was fresh out of Christmas gifts. But my brothers abandoned me in my moment of misery ... because they still had gifts to open.

I have told that old story to my family every Christmas for years ... accompanied by their groans of "Oh no, not again." And all those years, I could just envision that baseball still laying there all pristine with only one scuff in the bottom of that cistern waiting for someone to pick it up.

Now Sheik, you asked for it by bringing that subject up.

Spider ... It was interesting hearing that Fisher County was well represented in the Corps in the 60s. I was not aware of that. We had a sizable contingent from Roby, Rotan, Hobbs and Sweetwater in the early 50s. We would have had more had it not been for the 7-Year Drought.

Immediately after WWII, times were good in all of West Texas. The Veterans were coming home, settling into jobs or on farms, starting families, and businesses and towns were cranking up again and booming. Community activities like schools, churches and service organizations were springing back to life. But then in 1949 it stopped raining.

The definition of a desert is an area that averages less than 10 inches of rain in a year. Now starting at Abilene (Taylor County) with an annual rainfall of 24 inches, each county westward averages even less down to about 15-17 in the Pecos-Big Bend area. So West Texas counties in normal rain times are not too comfortably above desert conditions. And even if a county reaches its average, if the rains fall at the wrong times that county cropwise is no better than desert.

So 1949 cotton crop year was a bust because after enough rain for planting additional moisture was spotty to non-existant for most of West Texas (and the Edwards Plateau and South Texas.) And for the next seven years that did not improve. If farmers took a chance on scant moisture to plant, unless they lucked out with the spotty showers, that cotton and feedstuff withered. On average I would estimate that individual farms saw cotton yields drop 75-90% for each of seven years. And feedstuff like redtop cane, high-gear (hegari), and sudan grass weathered no better.

You can see the results of this today when you get off the highways in West Texas and travel country roads in the row-crop areas. Every quarter mile or so you see the remains of old homesteads ... a falling down house and barns, or maybe just a cistern in a grove of chinaberry trees. From '49 to into the early 50s families lived in those homes and their kids attended local schools. Veterans with their new families occupied many of them. But with failing crops most of those who were share-cropping had to move on. The towns of Abilene, Ft Worth and Dallas gained most of migrators. During this time folks who had large land holdings were able to gain more ... probably not because they wanted more of the same but because it was available and like a losing poker player were just doubling their bet hoping to eventually break even.

Now the drought did not just affect dry land crop farmers ... but was probably even more devastating to cattlemen. Those new stock tanks went dry, grass did not grow ... pastures were dry and brown and dead. Feeding cattle was not feasible because there was no feed available. In about '52 the government made available cotton seed meal mainly to the few dairy farmers in an attempt to keep those herds going, but the stock raiser just had to pare down herds. In West Texas the remaining range feed was mesquite beans, in South Texas the ranchers burned preckly pear. But by the mid-50s most cattle and horses in the western half of Texas had been sold. West Texas had all appearances and characteristics of Mexico's Chihuahua Desert. That period of time was as bad as the time of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression ... except at least folks were more mobile and could move on to escape the Grapes of Wrath II.

God Bless The A&M College of Texas, as it was called then. The same administration that did the utmost to help students in the Depression days of the 30s cranked up for West Texas students in the early 50s. I received a scholarship worth $1600 ... to be allocated at $200 per semester during registration. That $200 paid for all tuition and fees, my dorm room in the Corps, uniforms, laundry and dry cleaning, all sports and activities. In addition, I was awarded a job as a Student Waiter in Sbisa Dining Hall that paid for all my meals. I got a job in a bookstore to pay for books and supplies. Most of my contemporaries in the Corps at that time were in the same boat. (Is it a surprise to you that my class at our 50th Reunion a couple of weeks ago donated $150,000 to the A&M Foundation to establish perpetual annual scholarships to deserving student workers?)

I won't go into the details of the drought during that period. I know every family in West Texas at the time was affected in some way so your parents and grandparents can best fill in those details.

So give a thumbs up to those tough folks who survived that era in West Texas: '30-'40 Great Depression; '41-'45 WWII; '49-'56 7-Year Drought. Despite hardships they kept their families together and managed to pass along a legacy of fortitude during hardship ... and even in most cases, a degree of accumulated wealth ... not just in material goods but in a proud and respected family name.





[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/11/2006 12:58p).]

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/11/2006 4:56p).]

Outstanding post, fossil.

Dr. Perry Atkinson's name should ring a bell with all good Ags vaguely familiar with their surroundings. Dr. Atkinson's world-wide fame came about through his initial groundwork in developing Integrated Pest Management ... a strategic plan for integrating all forces of nature and science in combating insect pests (or its obverse, developing a plan that corrected the misuse and overuse of chemicals in combat with insect pests.)

The leverage that Dr. Atkinson used to his advantage to get his vision off the ground was the furor caused by Rachel Carson's book, "The Silent Spring," that reported in calamatous terms the effect of DDT on bird life. That was in 1960. Dr. Atkinson now had listening ears in Congress for his initial funding of his monumental pest management work.

Dr. Atkinson, a prominent scientist already in 1960, did not need a popular piece of fiction to guide him in his scientific research. I am sure he had developed basic knowledge and understanding of insect pest control inadequacies the same way I did in a West Texas cotton field. But Carson's book was handy in that it got the attention of dowagers in New England who were just becoming interested in a new fad called "environmentalism."

Insecticides was not a common term before the early 40s in West Texas. Prior to that time we had a few products we used for insect pests but it was not really a science. Pyrethrum in kerosene was a fly spray, powdered sulfur in lube oil worked well for dog mange, lube oil was also used for cattle grubs and heel flies, rotonone had some uses and sulfur cakes were sometime burned inside a house to fumigate for insects. But field crops like cotton were another matter ... up until the 40s in West Texas there was no real weapon to battle leaf worms, boll worms and boll weevils. One of the main reasons for not trying chemicals for insect control for crops in earlier times was that the farmer was more concerned about the health of his mules than to expose them to possible toxic substances.

But remarkably, with the advent of tractors in the late 30s and early 40s farmers now were interested in means of controlling insects ... but at that time there was no literature or product warnings or an EPA to be concerned about toxicity to humans! So about that time most cotton farmers began to use some form of chemicals to combat the Big-3 cotton pests... and there was no apparent concern about the possible health affects to the farmer!

In 1940 there were no commonly prescribed insecticides to choose from ... period. Let's explore the first my dad used to control an outbreak of cotton leafworms that year. Paris Green. It was a bright green dust that was spread by a tractor-mounted duster early in the morning when dew was on the leaves. When underway in the field the tractor and driver were enveloped in a fog of green. Us kids hung out around the field and helped to refill the dust hopper when needed. Paris Green was effective against leafworms and later in the year boll worms. We used Paris Green two years and quit because it created such a mess ... anyone in the area was coated green and the dust was in the nose, mouth and I suppose every other orifice and was a mess to clean up from.

Now what I discovered about Paris Green a few years later: The chemical name was copperacetoarsenite. It was first used to kill rats in the sewers in Paris hence the name. It was used as a pigment in paint and was used as paint on hulls of ships because it killed barnacles. When used as a cotton insecticide dust it was mixed equal parts with lead arsenate.

In 1943 or so we changed to another insecticide dust ... calcium arsenate. This was a nicer dust to use because it was a nice pink color. We prefered it over the emerald green of Paris Green and it washed off easier but it got in all the same locations. We used that and other arsenic based dusts up until 1951 or so when sprays became available.

The point is, there were virtually no commercially available field crop insecticides until after WWII. And therefore, no generally accepted procedures for handling, dispensing, warnings about toxicity or other warnings about health risks. To my knowledge we suffered no ill effects ... nor did I know of anyone who did. That is a mystery to me.

In 1942 the Army first began testing chemicals for insecticidal value and cataloged about 3,000. In 1943 DDT was developed and in 1944 Du Pont began manufacturing it on commercial scale. Toxaphene and Chlordane were developed in 1945 and 1946 and through information gathered by the Army these new organic insecticides became available to farmers with some degree of information.

In 1953 I had a summer job measuring cotton acreage (first of the acreage control programs.) One field I was amazed at the number of dead jackrabbits, crows, etc., littering the field. I asked the farmer what he had been spraying and he proudly told me the poison was Malathion ... (my first encounter with that.) He was very satisfied that by doubling the poison to water ratio he got a 100% kill on insects. Such was not unusual at the time.

I will be the first to agree that EPA and environmentalists have carried their crusade against possibly harmful chemicals and products beyond the extreme ... especially in banning DDT which was one of the most effective and human-safe insecticides ever produced. But in the process they did also ban the bad stuff we used in the older times so I am satisfied with the overall result. It is a wonder what we did in the 40s and 50s did not kill us all.

Looking back today on the changes over the years of means and methods of controlling insect pests I am amazed at how ignorant folks were in those earlier times. The concoctions available were lethal to man and beast and it is downright scary that food products in the field and in storage were treated with similar agents and without a lot of regard to potency and lingering effects.

But thanks to scientists like Dr. Perry Atkinson some sanity was returned to the equation and the world is a much safer and productive place. I do not know where Dr. Atkinson or his IPM associate grew up but I suspect all or most helped in fields like in West Texas in the 40s and 50s and realized just how great the need was for information and technology in controlling insect pests.



[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/16/2006 6:36a).]

quote:

---

I have told that old story to my family every Christmas for years ... accompanied by their groans of "Oh no, not again." And all those years, I could just envision that baseball still laying there all pristine with only one scuff in the bottom of that cistern waiting for someone to pick it up.

Now Sheik, you asked for it by bringing that subject up.

---

The way I'd fix that if I was part of your family, is every Christmas you'd have baseball and a bat under the tree.

I remember well driving down the roads up on the plains--where cotton was planted back then--and the sky would be misty with poison as the crop duster would fly end to end on the field--some of them barely above the tops of the cars on the highways. I wonder about the life expectancy of those pilots--the ones who survived the actual flying. And the farm families would be in houses right by the field that was sprayed.

Crop duster overspray still helps(?)to this day. Our house in Angelo was actually out towards that huge metropolis of Wall. Cotton fields all around us. While we did have to fight fire ants, other bugs were not an issue.

And I haven't grown a 3rd arm or anything after 18 years there. We did thoroughly wash out the 2x4 trough that was the Labs water bowl and swimming hole.

Even flys would disappear after the dusters came around. And that was nice as 3 horses tend to draw them!

The days of Paris Green were long gone before crop duster airplanes came into use. From an airplane the dust drift would have been widespread. Can you envision everyone in the neighborhood coated in Emerald Green? (A green Lab?)

It is hard to believe that stuff was used on West Texas cotton fields in the early 40s ... and the farmers who were first to use it were considered progressive.

Cotton for the past hundred years or so has been King in West Texas agriculture, and until the end of WWII, cotton production involved more persons and families than any other industry. But after the war modern farm machinery displaced many farm families, and job opportunities in cities lured many more off the farm, so the result was larger farms, fewer farmers and a general decline in rural West Texas communities. Lost in this off-the-farm migration was a general knowledge of cotton culture that farm families had passed down through several generations ... that was forgotten when the last two or three generations moved to town. Chances are most of you are descendants of cotton farmers, two or three times removed. The following notes are offered as a refresher to enable you to converse with Uncle Jed when you visit him on his dryland cotton farm.

The word Cotton comes from an Arabic word al qutun, as did the Spanish word algodon for cotton fiber (and you thought algodon on the label of a shirt recently meant some synthetic fiber.)

The cotton specie grown in the US is Gossypium hirsutum. The term Gossypium pertains to the characteristic of certain plants to contain gossypol in their fruit. Gossypol is a substance in cotton seed that is a natural defense of the plant to some insects ... and is toxic to some animals. Cattle with chambered stomachs can digest whole cotton seed in limited amounts (about 5 lbs/day.) Processed cottonseed products that have gossypol removed can be safely fed in larger amounts.

Surprise. The plant that is first cousin to Cotton is Okra. It also contains gossypol. (Now you have an excuse for not eating boiled okra ... but a lame one because boiling or frying neutralizes gossypol ... beside that, you probably could not consume a lethal dose.) If you are observant you will recall that the cotton blossom and the okra bloom are virtually identical and both last three days before falling off. Also, the green cotton boll and the okra pod are similar in construction.

A Fine West Texas Cotton Patch


Question for the day ... were West Texans ever cotton pickers? Answer: probably not. In the old days cotton picking was the term for deftly plucking the locks of cotton from the burr and placing it in the cotton sack. The method in West Texas was to slide the fingers under the burr and pull the burr with the cotton locks and place all into the sack. This was called "boll pulling." The reason was West Texas, because of the wind, requires a type of cotton where the locks adhere more tightly to the burr than in say Louisiana where they pick cotton. This same principle applies to mechanical means of harvesting ... West Texans primarily uses strippers that strips locks, burrs, leaves, etc., from the plant. In Louisiana they use cotton pickers with a bunch of spinning spindels that pluck the cotton locks.

You all have seen trucks loaded with cotton bales on the way to Galveston. How much does a bale weigh and how much picked/pulled cotton is required to make a gin bale. A bale of lint cotton weighs approximately 500 pounds. To get a bale of cotton by stripper requires approximately 2,000 pounds ... this will yield about 500 pounds of lint cotton, 500 pounds of cotton seed, and 1,000 pounds of burrs and other trash. (The ginning process removes the burrs and trash, and separates the seed from the lint.) Clean picked cotton required about 1,000 pounds of cotton to gin out a 500 pound bale of lint and 500 pounds of seed.

How does the plant arrive at an open boll of lint cotton? Easy. Like any other flowering plant at some point in maturity it will produce flower buds. These buds on cotton are called "squares." The squares eventually open and produce the blossom. The cotton blossom falls off in three days, leaving a small boll about the size of the end of your pinkie. A funny thing about that little boll is that it has all of its fibers inside already and every fiber is as long as it will ever get. What happens as the boll matures is that the fibers get larger and stronger. These cotton fibers are almost pure cellulose. Now think of a single fiber ... it is shaped like a soda straw and inside will be 20-30 layers of cellulose coiled in a neat spiral of natural springs (shaped like 20-30 helixes.) This is the feature that gives the cotton fiber a high degree of strength, durability and absorbancy. Growing conditions determine the number of helixes that will be present in an individual fiber ... and this is what is measured by the test of "micronaire" (a test of the tensile strength of the fiber in cotton grading ... the term used is the "mike." Another test used is fiber length (called staple) ... this is determined by genetics which in West Texas is about 7/8 to 15/16 inch and is considered short staple. The staple length and micronaire measurement are what determine the spinning quality of the fibers. (Pima cotton and Egyptian cotton are long fine staple cotton and are a different variety from hirsutum.)

Every bale of cotton upon coming out of the press at the cotton gin has a big wad of lint cut out and labeled for eventual grading by government experts at that art. The grade eventually determines the market price for that particular bale. In grading, in addition to the staple length and "mike" measurement, the lint is graded for color and trash content. Lint stained from blown red dirt, rain while in the field, and green leaves in stripping all lower the grade as does trash not cleaned out during ginning. This is the reason West Texas cotton is always at the bottom of these grades because of the stripping process and blowing sand. (Because additional processing is required to clean it ... otherwise it ends up as cotton ducking or tarpaulins instead of ladies' blouses.)

Cotton lint is hand graded by persons with extensive training. In earlier times there were about 60 possible grades but this was reduced to about 30 25-30 years ago. In recent years attempts have been made to mechanize this with high tech scanners etc., but none have come close to the accuracy of the trained human eyes. So grading is still done by hand and eyes.

Cottonseed is an interesting product. The seed is separated from the lint during ginning. Now the seed is not attached directly to the cotton fibers within the boll and ginning separates it easily ... but the seed has tiny fibers of its own on its coating. The fibers are about 1/8 inch long and are called "linters." Linters are shaved off the seed in the first processing step at a cotton oil mill. These linters are bundled and sold to make your fine cotton paper. Then the cotton seeds are crushed to produce cottonseed oil which is used like any other vegetable oil. The cottonseed hulls are poor quality cattle feed but the innards are used in cottonseed meal, cake, bran and other high-protein cattle feed.

Now the hazards of being a cotton farmer ... weather and insects (fluctuating prices are just the everyday gamble of any farm product.)

Cotton requires a good moisture seasoning in order to germinate and get that early growth. In the older times farmers waited with tractors or mules at the ready for that first April or May rain to start planting. If the rain did not come by mid-May they were in a world of hurt because of the length of the growing season put them near the first fall frost date. Nowadays, statewide regulation determine the first planting date because of the Boll Weevil eradication program ... so now timewise, West Texas farmers are operating on the very edge.

The best growing conditions for cotton are hot days and cool nights. If the crop was started with a good planting seasoning, the plant has a tap root that will seek out moisture if any is down there so it is hardy in dry weather ... but some rain in June or July is necessary to make a decent crop. But once the bolls are formed, no more rain is wanted. Rains after the bolls are set do not help the fruiting ... and instead causes the plant to produce more leaves. An extra helping of late leaves just means more staining and trash which will drive the grade down ... and a lower price.

Now for insects. There are a lot of them but the Big-3 are Leaf Worms, Boll Worms and Boll Weevil ... nasty little creatures. Leaf worms can be handled pretty well by farmers now with better insecticides and spray equipment. But before the 60s they were terrors. They attacked the growing plants during a cool or rainy spell ... and honestly, overnight you could go back to the field the next day and virtually every leaf in the field would look like lace ... what was green the day before would be white. That brought about a frantic search at feedstores, cotton gins, coops, etc., for Paris Green or any Arsenic compound dust to do battle. In a days time a crop could be lost (for sure over a weekend.) I remember those days when the entire family would be out doing whatever necessary to get the poison dust applied ... and the neighbors would be doing the same. Then you waited several days to see if you had been successful ... if green reappeared.

Boll worms and boll weevils were more insidious. You had to be continually checking individual plants for signs of infestations. Weevils would sting the forming boll at early stages and deposit an egg. The first sign would be squares on the ground where they had fallen off the plant. Pop them open and find a weevil grub. Same applied for boll worms. The stages could go from no signs to total infestation in just a day or so. The problem was once the worm or weevil were inside the boll it was too late ... at first sign you had to invest in spray or dust or risk losing a crop in short order.

There was a country-western singer back in the 50s known as Tex Ritter (you may be more familiar with his son John Ritter) from Panola County, Texas. Tex had a song about the Boll Weevil that went ... "the weevil got half the cotton, the merchant got the rest, and all he left the farmer's wife was one old cotton dress"... I reminded my mother of that old song at her 90th birthday party and she laughed ... and then she cried ... she remembered those times when we battled the worst nature had to throw at us.

Cotton farmers in the early days were a tough breed. Every year and every day was a gamble ... and in the Fall they accepted their winnings or their losses with equal grace and prepared for the next year. Just know that your old great granddad and all his cotton farming family and friends are now resting comfortably in Heaven ... the Lord knows they had their Hell on earth.







[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 8/7/2008 2:24p).]

How many credit hours do I get for taking your West Texas History course,, Fossill?

You do know it!

My only knowledge of cotton "pulling" is selling the cotton bags at my future father-in-laws hardware store while I was in high school in the early 70's. I guess they still gleaned the fields by hand and labor was cheap enough to justify the time to get every last piece of cotton.

Don't think they do that anymore, judging from what I have seen left on the plants after the strippers come thru and the piles that have missed the compactors.

EMC77
This pic may show one of the cotton "bags" (cotton sacks) you sold back in the 30s. In those days the sacks were usually homemade on a Singer sewing machine rather than store bought. They were made of heavy weight muslin, 54 inch width folded and seamed to make about a 18 inch tube, and a 4-6 inch wide shoulder strap attached. Sack lengths ranged from about 6 feet for kids to 12 feet for strong men. Kids and female pickers would weigh up at about 30 pounds and men would go on to 70-80 pounds. The reason was that a full sack was heavy to pull down the row and was tough on the shoulders. The sack full this fellow is in the process of weighing was probably 60-70 pounds.



Chances are that these youngsters had some help filling their sacks ... but every farm kid, and every visiting city cousin, was introduced to cotton picking at an early age. (After the introduction most declined all future invitations to pick cotton.)



In the 40s and early 50s a good price for a bale of cotton was 25 cents a pound so a 500 pound bale would bring $125 and the 500 pounds of seed would bring about $20. So at that rate the farmer just could not afford a lot of expense for the picking. Thus cotton pickers were fortunate if they could get $1.50-1.75 per hundred for the cotton they picked in the field ... thus, a family or gang of 10-12 migrant workers were paid $30-35 for picking 2,000 pounds of cotton in a day.

When sacks were filled with cotton they were carried to the wagon or trailer for weighing. On person tallied the weights and emptied the sacks.
The talley man was usually the farmer or a member of his family.

Older cotton scales were beam type with a balance weight (you have probably seen them decorating walls of bar-b-cue places.) The arm of the scale (the beam) was graduated 0-150 pounds and the weight that was moved to the balance point on the beam was called a "pee" (you have probably seen one at grandma's house used as a door stop.)

The talleyman did the weighing and kept books for each picker. After weighing the sack was passed into the wagon and it was also the talleyman's job to empty the sack unless he had a kid assistant for that chore. The reason for the farmer to take direct interest in the weighing and sack emptying was that otherwise the talley weight and the gin weight of the loaded wagon would be vastly different ... and rocks and dirt clods the size of a basketball would litter the wagon floor after the gin suction pipe had removed the cotton from the wagon.


[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 5/19/2006 3:13p).]

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 9/29/2006 4:37p).]

[This message has been edited by fossil_ag (edited 8/7/2008 2:53p).]

^
|
|
|
|

Is that you fossil???????










Couldnt' resist that hanging curve ball.......

[This message has been edited by EMc77 (edited 5/19/2006 12:29p).]

EMc77 .... That is not me because I preferred the 6 foot sack. My dad said that he dearly hated to pick cotton and therefore would not make us boys pick ... except, when all were teens he made us four boys pick one 2,000 pound load to see what it was like. He was right ... after that I hated to pick cotton too.

... "I left the field one evening, my fingers so cold and sore, from fair-to-middling cotton, three hundred pounds or more ..." -- Johnny Cash.

I had forgotten the length of those bags. The ones we sold were like 12' if I remember. Then the poor ol' cotton farmer complained about the price.

Of course they wouldn't be a farmer if they didn't complain, now would they??

Gonna be in Angelo next weekend. Wonder if it has gotten enough rain lately to green up.....any?

Question?

Does anyone know how much it cost to attend A&M for a session (semester) in 1947?

Saturday Night in West Texas in the 50s.

It was a typical small town Saturday night for teen age boys on a hot summer evening in the 50s. The town had closed down at 10pm and the only sign of life was 8 or ten of us boys sprawled on the sidewalk and on the hoods of old cars just waiting for something exciting to happen (which never happened) or maybe for someone in the group to come up with an idea of something exciting we could apply our limited talents to.

This one particular night one of the fellows made the announcement that he had overheard the pumper for some oil wells on Cap Newman's Ranch say that in drilling a new well on the ranch that they had pumped one of Newman's large stock tanks almost dry ... the bass lake that was rumored to be loaded with huge bass.

All 16-20 ears perked up to full point immediately upon hearing this revelation. Now the Newman Ranch had been located in the southeast part of Fisher County for many years and for just that many years rumors had been floating around among kids about goings on at Newman Ranch. Now none of us knew Cap Newman, or even knew if Cap Newman was still alive ... but the tales that had been handed down were that he was a tough old codger who guarded his ranch night and day with fence riders and that he would shoot all trespassers as potential cattle rustlers. But even more intriguing to my generation of kids was that on the ranch were two new large stock tanks, one stocked with catfish and one stocked with bass. And then tonight, the most elegant rumor of all, that the bass tank was almost dry and there must be hundreds of large bass just laying there ready for the taking.

Zing! Adrenline and testesterone exploded together and that small crowd erupted in unison, "that tank needs to be seined to save those fish!" (Now being one of the members of that group I will not admit that the compulsion to save the fish necessarily was meant as an act to commit larceny on Cap Newman's stock tank ... or whether it was in genuine concern for the safety and welfare of huge largemouth bass wallowing in a mudhole ... but in short order we had what I thought was concensus that the fish needed to be rescued!)

The conversation grew heated. One kid said his dad had a 40 foot seine, 6 feet deep with a quarter inch "tickle chain" on the bottom. Another allowed as how he had heard Newman had riders patrolling his fenceline all night in jeeps. Another who knew all about trespass law said we could park the car on the county road and that was completely legal. Another said he had a bunch of tow sacks we could carry the fish in. We finally all agreed that no one with a lick of sense (meaning only the ranch cowboys) would be skulking around ranchland in the middle of the night. A quick plan was roughed out and everyone scattered to round up necessary equipment for this midnight raid on Cap Newman's bass tank.

At the appointed time not all of the fearless group showed up ... only five returned ... the kid with the seine, the kid with the tow sacks, one kid with a small flashlight, the kid who knew how to find the tank hopefully in the dark, and me with the transportation. Heck, we could pull this off by ourselves; we didn't need those other chicken livered scaredy cats. Let's roll.

We motored to the Newman Ranch fenceline with no problem to the spot our guide was sure was closest to the tank. Then we unloaded the gear. Dadgum, that seine was heavy and it took two to carry it. Then we climbed over and through the fence and started out on Newman land. Now many of you have walked through West Texas ranch land in the daytime and found it to be a chore, dodging mesquite brush, chaparral, preckly pear cactus, Spanish daggers, rocky outcrops, and various other impediments. You should try the same trek in the dark. "Ouch, ooooooh, oof, aayee, #@%^$#" were continuous yelps until after a quarter to half mile we reached the clearing where the tank lay. And it shimmered in the moonlight ... much bigger and probably much deeper than our intel agent had described. Well, that is OK, we can do it anyway and we unrolled the seine and set out to clear that tank of bass. Two kids were on the poles on either end of the seine and one would dog-paddle in the middle to help move the seine along.


Man-o-man, this is work! That seine got heavy in the water and the floats on top did not help that much ... plus the bottom chain kept snagging on whatnot on the bottom ... plus the mud we were trying to walk in had no bottom.

Finally we got into deeper water that we had not expected to exist and moving the seine became easier but a new hazard was encountered: bass when threatened by an enclosing net tend to jump over it to escape. We had heard the kachung, kachungs in the dark in the middle area of the net but did not think much of it until our net man in the middle let out a scream ... a bass had hit him square in the face. He came out of the water like a flash and after some coaxing took my place on one of the poles and I took the middle position ... and I held the net over my face like a catcher's mask. In a short time we were exhausted and knew we would never reach the far shore so we agreed to hold one end stationary by one man and have three try to round up to that stationary pole.

Now in seining there are two means of gathering your catch: one is to circle the seine into shallow water and then get inside the circle and catch the fish by hand ... and the other is to "drag out" onto the bank and wrestle with the flopping fish on land. With all the fish we could feel hitting the net we thought the round up would be easiest. It was when three of us were inside the rounded net for a minute or so until one kid let out a scream "Water Moccasin" at which moment we all exited the roundup. So we changed to Plan B and dragged the net onto the shore.

Lordy Mercy, I have never seen so many fish in my life. We were on the bank among them, stuffing them into tow sacks as fast as we could. Four tow sacks full of large mouth bass with many up to four or five pounds. Jackpot! So we met our quota, our limit, our goal ... we had just done what kids in Fisher County had dreamed about for years ... we had just pulled a caper on Newman Ranch. Now was the time to toss all the discard fish back, roll up the seine and head for the car.

Oooops! Another breakdown. The plan was for the two who had carried the seine in to carry it back to the car with the other three carrying the four sacks of fish. Wrong! That seine, now wet and muddy must have weighed 300-400 pounds ... and one person could barely lift one sack full of fish. Oh, no. There was only one solution: for four to carry the wet seine, and one person carry half a sack of fish. So we dumped three and a half of our tow sacks of fish back into the tank.

The trek back to the car through Cap Newman's pasture was even worse than the trek in ... with each of us loaded down like pack mules. Finally just about daybreak we reached the car ... totally exhausted, full of scrapes, stratches, thorns and cactus needles. And a total of about 25 pounds of fish. When we realized our predicament on the bank of the tank each of us had selected one of the largest fish caught ... that weighed about 5 pounds. That was our bounty, our booty, our great payoff for the most miserable adventure I ever hope to encounter.

Of course, in a small town, by church time that morning everyone in town, including the County Sheriff, knew all about our previous night's escapade and it was quite a buzz for a few days after. We were very quiet about the details of the night, especially about the size of our catch ... but admittedly we did add a bit of swagger to our walk because we had pulled off a caper that even our dads had dreamed about for years ... invading Newman Ranch.

But deep down, I know the person who got the greatest kick out of our adventure was Cap Newman, alive or dead, at the abject misery that five kids went through while trespassing on his ranch ... for five stinking fish.

Terry L ....
I don't know about 1947 but the cost in 1952 was $200 per semester for tuition, fees, Corps uniform, laundry and dry cleaning, and sports/events pass. Meals at Sbisa were 25 cents/meal.

If I remember correctly, tuition then was $25/semester flat rate.