LETTERS
We want to hear from our readers. Send letters to: Editor, Texas Co-op Power, 1122 Colorado St., 24th Floor, Austin, TX 78701, or e-mail us at letters@texas-ec.org. Please include the name of your town and electric co-op. Letters may be edited for clarity and length and will be printed as space allows. Read additional letters at www.texascooppower.com.
MARCH 2010
Photo by Jody Horton
Inquiring Minds
The watermelon that farmer Shelby Johnson hoisted on the cover of the January 2010 issue weighed 135 pounds. The guys who hang out at a feed store in Bartlett Electric Cooperative territory were especially interested in its weight. We suspect there was some wagering going on.
—Kaye Northcott, Editor
Sold on Texas Co-op Power
We are fairly new residents in Austin County. We love your magazine. Guests in our home always pick it up and peruse it. Now we leave copies in the guest room for their reading enjoyment. Texas Monthly could learn something from you!
Terri Smith
San Bernard Electric Cooperative
Lineman to the Rescue
On December 24 at 11:30 a.m., my power went off. This was right in the middle of what the weatherman called a 50-year snowstorm. I called lineman Bryan McKee because the J-A-C Electric Cooperative office was closed for Christmas, and his number was listed as on call. I explained my problem and tried to get ready for a cold spell.
Thanks to great service, my electricity cut on again at 1:50 p.m. Then the phone rang. It was Bryan calling to make sure I was back in power.
It was funny that on December 28 I got an ad from another electric company wanting me to change service. All I could think was NEVER, NEVER would I want another electric service.
Patrick Smith
J-A-C Electric Cooperative
Recipes Request
Recently, my mom experienced some severe health issues resulting in her moving into my home for daily living assistance. Along with my mom came her forwarded mail. Much to my surprise, I discovered your magazine in her mail. The recipes are wonderful. I have tried several of them with each one being outstanding. They have renewed my joy of cooking again.
I would like to make one request of your publishers: It would be wonderful for the recipe pages to be printed on one side only. This would allow your readers to cut out the recipes for proper filing and future use.
Lu Daniel
Sam Houston Electric Cooperative
Editor’s note: We try not to print recipes on the reverse side of a page, but if there are three pages of recipes, this is not always possible.
Mighty Cute Mites
Reading the story about the Mighty Mites football team by Jim Dent in the December 2009 issue (“The Mighty Mites: The Orphans Who Could”) brought back many fine childhood memories. I grew up in the Poly area of Fort Worth, and my father, John Waddell, worked at the Masonic Orphans Home for a while. On many Sundays, my dad would go over to the home and pick up some of the boys, many of whom played football, and bring them over to our house for a meal. My mother usually made fried chicken and cherry cobbler.
This was in the late ’50s and early ’60s when my sister and I were entering our teen years, and we thought those guys were so handsome. I was especially smitten by one, Kermit Smith. I have often thought of those days, of Kermit and of where he is today. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Jane Waddell Rosamond
Bandera and Nueces electric cooperatives
Movie in Works
The article and cover photo on the Mighty Mites were wonderful. The story is currently in the process of being made into a movie (see www.12mightyorphans.com), and we are posting the latest news that we can announce there. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
Ann Morton
Director of Communications, 12 Productions
Stay Away from Controversy
I, and many folks I’ve spoken to, are extremely disappointed that you would publish such a one-sided article in the December 2009 issue on the Rio Grande border fence (“Borderline: When It Comes to the Texas/Mexico Wall, No One’s Sitting on the Fence”). OUR government has chosen to erect the border fence for OUR protection, both physical and economic. Although some disagree with parts or even all of it, it isn’t the mission of OUR magazine to blatantly attack or downgrade every aspect of this effort.
Al Schwerman
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
JANUARY 2010
He Likes Us
What a DY-NO-MITE publication. I eagerly await the arrival of each new one—more so than my paid subscriptions.
Dan Branson
Deep East Texas Electric Cooperative
Solar Water Heating the Old Way
Re: “Solar Water Heating the Easy Way” in the October 2009 issue. I lived in Honolulu in the early 1950s. Most of the houses had a link on the roof—galvanized pipe in a zigzaggy pattern with a glass cover. This was the hot water system. That was 50 years ago.
Ruth Davis
Central Texas Electric Cooperative
West Texas Tough
Elmer Kelton and I were in Crane Elementary together. Elmer rode a horse to school; I rode the school bus.
Our population in Crane County consisted of rattlesnakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, coyotes and huge jackrabbits. We survived two dust bowls, the Great Depression, the great oil boom and World War II. Our vegetation consisted of mesquite trees, prickly pears and tumbleweeds.
It is said, “If you aren’t tough when you go to West Texas, you are tough when you leave.”
Thanks, Elmer, for the legacy that you left for all who read your books about our West Texas heritage.
Harriette Gorman
Bandera Electric Cooperative
DECEMBER 2009
Paying Tribute to Elmer Kelton
Thanks for the tribute to author Elmer Kelton by Jeff Tietz in the October 2009 issue. One of the great thrills I have had as a freelance writer was having lunch one day in Boerne with Elmer and Ann Kelton. We talked about the beautiful Salzkammergut region of Austria, where Mrs. Kelton grew up and met her husband during World War II, and afterward how they lived in a little trailer while he studied journalism at the University of Texas. Mr. Kelton also mentioned that he worked at The Daily Texan there and remembered his own thrill of interviewing the popular country singer Eddy Arnold.
Apart from being an extraordinary writer, Elmer Kelton (who died on August 22 at the age of 83) was a gracious and unpretentious human being.
Ron Hunka
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
Nuts About Pecan Story
I loved the article about Texas pecans (“Pick of the Crop,” October 2009) and will never complain about the price of pecans again ... and the photo of pecan pie was just delicious!
The story brought back memories from the ’30s of a little girl sitting like a little bird at the feet of her grandpa, waiting, mouth watering, as he carefully carved each end of a pecan, slit it down the side and pulled out two perfect nuts—he gave me one and kept the other for himself. It was a wonderful communion between two souls as we savored our pecans.
My husband, Jack, and I love your magazine, especially the stories of olden times, and the recipes are great! We also appreciate our electricity from Magic Valley Electric Cooperative. We never lost power while we endured Hurricane Dolly last year in our home south of San Benito.
Oma Lee and Jack Van Heel
Magic Valley Electric Cooperative
Fighting the Flu
“The Forgotten Pandemic,” the article on the 1918 flu pandemic that ran in the August 2009 issue, was of special interest to our family. My mother, Ottie Lee Hargis Childs, was 10 years old in the fall of 1918. She lived in rural East Texas with her parents, Roy and Annie Hargis (who was pregnant) and her siblings, Ruby Mae (8), Joe Frank (6), Myrtie Louise (4) and William Lake (2). All of the family had the flu except Ottie Lee. Because of the fear of the disease, no one would come in to help, but the neighbors chopped wood and milked the cow, leaving food and wood on the porch for the family. Ottie Lee became the family’s nurse, laundress, cook and caretaker until everyone recovered. That experience was the foundation for the rest of her life of caring for her family and others, until her death in 1999 at the age of 91.
Note: Later, three more children were added to the family—Mary Serena, Annie Royce and Ross Wilton. Myrtie Louise Hargis Spence, the last of the children to survive the flu, is now 95 and lives in Hurst. Their youngest sister, Annie Royce Hargis Pittman, lives in College Station where she is a member of Bryan Texas Utilities.
Gloria Childs Johnson
Bryan Texas Utilities
NOVEMBER 2009
Phantoms Raid Your Electricity
I noticed in your article “2 Good 2 Be True = False” (Power Connections, July 2009 issue) that you mentioned saving on electricity by unplugging devices that are not being used. I have heard this and wondered how true it is. Can you explain why and how it works and how much of your electricity bill you can expect to save? It seems that if your switches on your device work properly, unplugging the device should not be necessary.
Gene Shull
Wood County Electric Cooperative
Editor’s note: The usual suspect is “phantom” or “stand-by” power such as that used by televisions, computers and microwaves. They continue to consume small amounts of electricity when they are turned off. This is the power that allows a TV to come on instantly without warming up. Some estimates are that phantom electricity accounts for up to 10 percent of a household’s electricity budget.
Sweetwater Scouts Met Football Great
I remember meeting Sammy Baugh much the way Joe Holley did (“Slingin’ Sammy Baugh,” September 2009 issue), only it was my scoutmaster, not my father, who presented Mr. Baugh to me and my fellow Sweetwater Boy Scouts. We had gone out to Baugh’s ranch to climb some of those rocky hills that dot that area of Texas. Just as Mr. Holley, I had no idea who Baugh was. I do remember him as being very tall and slender and “old.” I now realize he was only in his 40s at the time and was probably coaching at Hardin-Simmons University. Of course, since that time I have read of his gridiron exploits at Texas Christian University and with the Washington Redskins. But until I read the article in Texas Co-op Power, I did not know that he began his athletic career in my hometown. Had my family not moved from Sweetwater to Irving the summer before I started junior high, I am sure I would have seen his name in the trophy case at Sweetwater High.
Stanley Statser
Wood County Electric Cooperative
Sammy Was Slingin’
You outdid yourself with the article on Sammy Baugh by Joe Holley. I got to accompany my uncle out to the Baugh ranch one day, and when we arrived, there was Slingin’ Sammy Baugh throwing a football through a swinging tire. I was impressed and have been to this day on the accomplishments of a great football star.
Carl Bailey
Comanche Electric Cooperative
Home Schooling Has Advantages
In his August 2009 letter, Roy Mitchell takes to task one of the Quebe sisters for her remark about being home-schooled “to get us away from the bad influences of public school.” Perhaps her comment, which appeared in a June 2009 Texas Co-op Power article about the Quebe Sisters Band, wasn’t as flippant as he believes.
Many Texas families choose to home-school for this very reason, believing that the risks of a public education clearly outweigh the benefits. Besides a generally better education (as evidenced by studies that compare home-school and public-school student scores on standardized tests), safe environment and learning to work with other students and adults of various ages, home-schooled children are monitored for their individual progress.
This is not to say that there are no benefits to public education, as Mitchell noted (for example, learning to work with people with different beliefs, ideas, cultures and ethnicities). However, it might be hard to defend Mitchell’s apparent proposition that there are no bad influences of public school. Otherwise, their reason for their school choice is as valid as any other.
Ben Debusk
Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative
Family Survives Pandemic
I read with much interest the article “The Forgotten Pandemic” (Footnotes in Texas History, August 2009). I know it was indeed the flu that took three of my mother’s siblings and her father in the space of one month from May to June 1918. My mother was born two months later and named Wesley after her father. Left pregnant with four remaining children, my grandmother, Anna Horn Johnson, had her faith as a devout Christian tested. She, like countless others, “survived” this tragedy and raised her family well.
Catherine Hall-Womack
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
Come to Mesquite Show
I enjoyed your September 2009 article “The Much-Maligned Mesquite.” Since I retired nearly six years ago, I spend most of my time in my shop making useful items from mesquite on my wood lathe. The wood from the mesquite tree is ideal for wood lathe work.
As a member of the Texas Mesquite Association (www.texasmesquiteassn.org), I would like to invite everyone to the Texas Mesquite Art Festival in San Angelo, scheduled for April 16-18. You will find everything imaginable made from mesquite at the festival. There is even one man who makes kitchen sinks out of mesquite.
Terry Nance
Guadalupe Valley and Nueces electric cooperatives
Mesquite Serves As Cattle Feed
Your September 2009 article on mesquite was informative, but there is one very important and interesting facet of this wood that was not mentioned. You may suggest to the author, Clay Coppedge, that he investigate the nutritional value afforded to range cattle. I have personally saved my herd by feeding them mesquite beans during the tough times we face so often here in South Texas.
Abel Arredondo
Karnes Electric Cooperative
OCTOBER 2009
Paradise Found
My wife and I recently spent part of a day rummaging around Booked Up in Archer City, Larry McMurtry’s bookstore.
The 200,000-volume bookstore south of Wichita Falls would have been one of those best-kept secrets without Jeff Tietz’s article (“A Bookish Paradise,” August 2009 issue). The soft-spoken manager, a persistent purring black and white resident cat that welcomed us, an immediately recognizable musty smell of old books, row after row of really old and not so old one-of-a-kind books of all sorts, sizes and shapes was a unique and memorable event.
In addition, our Dairy Queen lunch, where one of the local pearl-buttoned cowboys showed my wife how spurs are fastened to cowboy boots, will be one of those moments never to be forgotten.
Mike and Deanne Silverstein
Farmers Electric Cooperative
Coupon Websites Save Dollars
In your August 2009 Recipe section (“Have a Plan Before You Go to the Store”), you gave information about cost-saving tips while grocery shopping. I have been clipping coupons for the past year using two websites that basically did all the pricing work for me. One site is www.thegrocerygame.com. There is a nominal charge for this site. The other is www.couponmom.com, a free site. These sites do all the homework for you, so no notebook or research is needed.
Just buy the Sunday paper and keep the coupon booklets in a folder, as sales are cyclical. Each website references the Sunday date of the coupon and from which flier it can be clipped. For products not listed with coupons, say meats and produce, the websites list all those items on sale that week and the percentage savings on those items. You’ll also discover there are some weeks when items with coupons are actually free!
Ginger Belsha
Houston
Bravo for Bandanas
“An Ode to the Bandana” by Kenneth L. Canion in the August 2009 issue was a great story. I've been a tomboy bandana user since I can remember. I still use them today. I once tied one to a calf’s tail out in the pasture because at the moment we didn’t have a way to mark it for special treatment later. When working, I like old, soft, worn-out ones and camouflaged colored for hunting and sharp-colored ones for dressing up. And add hunting face mask, trail marker, animal tag and fashion accessory (other than Western wear) to Canion’s list of uses.
Thank you for reminding folks of another simple thing that seems to be falling by the wayside. I can’t leave home without one!
Judy Bishop Jurek
Wharton County Electric Cooperative
Editor’s note: “An Ode to the Bandana” did not appear in all editions of Texas Co-op Power, but it can be found at www.texascooppower.com.
Grandmother Survived 1918 Influenza
The article about “The Forgotten Pandemic” in the August 2009 issue reminded me of a story I heard my grandmother tell. She was born in 1904 and had “the influenza” as she called it, when she was 14, which would have been in 1918.
When Maggie Adeline (Hayes) Emerson had the influenza at 14, she was so ill that her parents took her to the hospital in Ada, Oklahoma. Maggie saw funerals every day from her room, but she remembered one day in particular when she watched six funeral processions go by in the same day. Thankfully she recovered, but came home to find that two of her friends had died.
Thank you for helping me to make a family connection to “The Forgotten Pandemic.”
Jan Greenlee Hayes
South Plains Electric Cooperative
Pandemic Might Be Worse Today
I appreciated the article by Shannon Oelrich (“The Forgotten Pandemic,” August 2009 issue), which brought out many important facets about the 1918 pandemic. However, one important fact seems to have been omitted. As I understand, the virus actually began at Fort Riley, Kansas. When American soldiers went to Europe, they introduced the virus to the European continent. The virus then mutated into its most deadly form, and the returning soldiers brought back with them the more dangerous strain.
The lesson here is that the same critical result could apply to the H1N1 virus (swine flu). However, the world is much smaller today, and interaction between people around the world heightens the prospect of international exposure and the potential of a mutation may be greater than that of the 1918 virus.
Ramon C. Noches
Austin
SEPTEMBER 2009
Belle Starr a Corker
I loved your July 2009 article on outlaw Belle Starr (“Bawdy Belle Starr,” Footnotes in Texas History). She possessed such rugged individualism with a minor in femininity. I had not been reading your publication until this article caught my eye. I am hooked now—interesting and informative writing. Thank you.
Espevia Gutierrez
Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative
Now That’s a Lot of Dough
Your July 2009 issue had a recipe for Knock Your Socks Off Buttermilk Pie that caught my eye. I live in Gunter. We were having a Fourth of July Festival with a baking contest. The Gunter Fire Department then had a fundraising auction including baked goods. I thought my pie wouldn’t bring much. Well, I was wrong. The buttermilk pie won first place and sold to Wayne Hall for $525. I think it set a record price in our pie auction.
Keep up the good work.
Barbara Bennett
Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative
Visit www.texascooppower.com for our Recipes Archive.
AUGUST 2009
Quebe Sisters Story a Thrill
It was thrilling to see the cover photo and article on the Quebe sisters in your June 2009 issue. They are doing a fine job of preserving a part of Texas’ music culture. We need more articles on such wholesome, family-oriented influences. I have had the opportunity to hear them perform at social and cultural meetings. They have always done a fine job and are deserving of the publicity you have given them.
Jeffrey Murrah
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
Quebe Sisters’ Teacher Deserves More Credit
That was a great article about the fiddlin’ Quebe Sisters Band, but the story didn’t give near enough credit to Sherry McKenzie (she is married to band member Joey McKenzie and helped teach the sisters how to play fiddle). It couldn’t happen without her. She has an ear for music you wouldn’t believe. She stays behind the scenes mostly. When she and Joey got married they went to a fiddle contest at Athens that day. You have to do what is important to you on your wedding day.
Bob Park
Sam Houston Electric Cooperative
In Defense of Public Schools
As a longtime supporter of public schools, I must question the author and editor who decided to include the flippant remark made by one of the Quebe sisters in your June 2009 issue disparaging a rural-area school system. The comment was that the sisters were home-schooled to “get us away from the bad influences of public school.”
Most folks who receive your magazine send their children to public schools. The public schools are a cornerstone of our country, but sadly, some folks feel free to verbally trash them at will. Public-school students not only learn in the classroom, but they learn to work with and understand people with different beliefs, ideas, cultures and ethnicities other than their own.
Roy Mitchell
Bryan
Petrified Wood in Luling
I really enjoyed the article on Glen Rose’s petrified wood in the June 2009 issue (“Irreplaceable Works of Art”). There was a man in Luling who had such a love for petrified wood, he went all over the state collecting it. He used the wood to build a retainer wall and fence running down the sides of his home in the 1000 block of South Laurel Avenue. If you are ever that way and are interested, you might take a look.
Rodney and Shirley Decou
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
Duck for Ninepins
As a former pin boy for ninepin bowling at the Marion Bowling Club, your article about the sport in the May 2009 issue (“Still Standing After All These Years”) brought back a lot of memories of flying pins from both alleys when farmers from the area came up to bowl. In 1953, there were no partitions between alleys to keep pins from flying from one alley to the other—or even out the open windows that allowed some air circulation to cool off the bowling alley. Ninepins are farther apart, and that made for flying pins instead of them being stopped by another pin. Pin boys knew which bowler had the most power and would crawl as far forward in the alley as they could to avoid being hit by a pin.
Harold Huth
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
JULY 2009
Honor Texas Heritage
I love to read your magazine—lots of fun articles. I would love to see a write-up on Texas dance halls. This is another Texas heritage being brought back to life by Texas Dance Hall Preservation, which has helped restore Sengelmann Hall in Schulenburg. The dance hall was mentioned in your May 2009 issue in the “Hit the Road” travel column.
Paula Jungmann
Bandera Electric Cooperative
Editor’s note: “Texas Dance Halls” was our cover story in January 2006. There are plans to return to them in a future “Hit the Road.”
Which Was First?
In the May 2009 issue of Texas Co-op Power is an article about the first washateria. A report from my wife’s kinfolk indicates the original was in Hollis, Oklahoma, a year earlier than the Fort Worth one.
Dee Brannan
New Braunfels
Editor’s note: According to the family genealogy, the Helpy-Selfy Laundry was founded in 1933, a year before the much-publicized Laundromat in Fort Worth.
JUNE 2009
Pottery Abounds
In your April 2009 Hit the Road article “Tyler to Marshall,” you say Marshall Pottery is the only company in Texas still producing wheel-thrown utilitarian gray stoneware.
That is so untrue! We own Bluebonnet Pottery near Brenham at the entrance to Lake Somerville and have been in business here since 1983. We have been producing wheel-thrown utilitarian gray stoneware for 26 years here in Washington County. We have been told we are the best-kept secret in Washington County!
Although we aren’t as large as Marshall Pottery, we do make our own pottery right here in our studio, and it is just myself and my husband who do all of the work. We invite people to stop in at our studio and see the work being done right here. There are a lot of other potters in Texas who also make wheel-thrown utilitarian gray stoneware.
Bonnie Todee
Brenham
Editor’s note: We apologize for the oversight.
MAY 2009
‘The Strutters’ Are Great, Too
Clay Coppedge’s article on the Kilgore Rangerettes in the February 2009 issue (“Sweethearts of the Gridiron”) was great reading. I kept waiting to see the name of Barbara Tidwell mentioned in connection with ex-Rangerettes doing well. She will be honored in October for the 50th anniversary of a drill team she organized many years ago called the Texas State Strutters from Texas State University in San Marcos, formerly known as Southwest Texas State Univer- sity. They have had fame under her direction to match the Rangerettes.
Nelda Dunn
San Marcos
More Servings, Please
There are lots of great articles in your magazine. It is “clipped to pieces” after we finish reading it! We prepared the Sauerkraut Potato Salad from the March 2009 issue and loved it! The only change I recommend is that the recipe serve even more than 12, because everyone wants seconds. Thanks to B.J. Willis for sharing it.
Susan Wilson
Cherokee County Electric Cooperative
Rainwater Harvesting
The resurgence of rainwater harvesting (“Make the Most of Rainy Days,” March 2009 issue) brings back the joy and pleasure of a shower in rain-water; or a cold glass of pure “cloud juice”; or that hot cup of morning coffee with no hint of chlorine from treated water or hardness from the well water.
Having now relied on captured rainwater for all our indoor—and much of our garden—water needs for 10 years, you could not pay us to go back to that hard, hard water we can pump from underground.
Dave Collins
Pedernales Electric Cooperative
Hoeing Got Us Through Hard Times
I enjoyed reading the story “A Hard Row to Hoe” by Camille Wheeler (March 2009 issue). Growing up southwest of Lubbock on a dry-land cotton farm, my two sisters and I had some of the same memories of summertime: getting up and in the field at 7 a.m., home at 12 for Mom’s lunch, then back to the field from 1 to 6 p.m.
We learned the same lessons of contributing to the family, getting along with each other and helping each other out when we got to the “flat” and the end of the row. Lessons that have been applied all through our lives.
It was in the summer of 1968 that hoeing helped our family deal with the unexpected death of our father, Boots Cozart. We stayed in the field longer than usual so that when we went to bed we would be too tired to think of our loss. Mom, who before sometimes hoed with us, went out with us every day that summer. Even our brothers, who drove the tractors, joined us in the field at the end of the day.
Sometimes I still go out and hoe in our cotton fields, but I am truly thankful for the modern-day miracle of chemical-friendly cotton.
Pat Stephens
Lyntegar Electric Cooperative
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