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.
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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