RSS 2.0 NEWS FEEDSGleaned: News from Aug. 30, 1933
Posted 05.26.06 at 8:25 AMGleaned from The Dinner Horn (The Afternoon Edition of the Paris Morning News) on Aug. 30, 1933:
» Inmates of the Choctaw County jail Tuesday ended a bread and water diet imposed when authorities discovered five hacksaw blades allegedly smuggled into the prison last Friday by a woman trusty.
» The Lamar County Chamber of Commerce voted to contribute $100 to the expense of promoting the building of Red River dam above Denison.
» The Texas Pacific Railway was advertising roundtrip fares to the Chicago World’s Fair for $17.50, slightly higher in sleepers.
» 3 Beall Brothers on the southwest corner of the Plaza was having a sale: summer dresses 98 cents, men’s summer union suits 25 cents, men’s dress shirts in fast colors 59 cents, and new cotton tweed suiting 25 cents per yard. (Read it and weep.)
Comments: 0 | Article Continues ... Continue Reading & Comment »John C. Gambill
Posted 05.16.06 at 9:59 AMOne of the treasures of Lamar County is the Gambill Goose Refuge, founded by John C. Gambill in the fall of 1922 when a flock of Canadian Geese landed on his 600-acre farm northwest of Paris, Texas, in the Hopewell area. I remember the original farm, which was a wildlife refuge, because Jim Bob (Sally) Gambill, and I were school friends, and I loved to go out there with her. He had all kinds of injured and recovering birds and animals caged around the house, forming a sort of compound. However, it was Mr. Gambill’s wish that his geese, especially, would be cared for after he was gone, which led to the establishment of the Gambill Goose Refuge on Lake Gibbons. The flocks of geese which had come to the Gambill farm each winter were successfully lured to the refuge on the lake.
Few know that in 1976, the goose refuge was to be eliminated from the Texas wildlife management plan, but Sen. A.M. Aikin, Jr.’s reputation as dean of the Texas Senate and guardian of the appropriations bill saved the 2,000 geese at the refuge.
When the Director of Wildlife included the Gambill Goose Refuge among items to be cut, Commissioner Jack Stone of Wells asked, “Have you talked to Sen. Aikin about this?” When he replied that he had not, Stone suggested that he “do so.”
At a briefing shortly after, Stone again asked if the matter had been cleared by Aikin. Receiving a negative reply, Stone said he didn’t think it was good politics and that “you can’t take all the politics out of something like this.” Stone continued, saying “Sen Aikin has told me, ‘Leave my area alone.’” Stone said, “Those people up there like to drive out and watch them feed those geese.”In the end, the goose refuge stayed, and studies of deer environments and food plots were eliminated.
During my recovery from surgery two years ago, my brother drove me all over the county trying to entertain me, and we drove out to the goose refuge more than once. He took many good pictures, but we were never able to see the huge clouds of geese that I remember from childhood. I guess it was the wrong time of the year.
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Storms
Posted 05.10.06 at 1:53 PMIn this season of spring storms, I’m reminded of tornado in ‘82, which predated (but not by much) the installation of warning sirens in Paris. In April I usually drag out “the tornado book,” a huge album which has every scrap of news coverage printed about “our” tornado, and put it on display in the archives, and it still receives a lot of interest.
At that time, I lived at the end of Smallwood Road near Elk Hollow Golf Course, and my parents and I stood in our front yard and watched the funnel pass between our house and U.S. 82 East. We saw it hit Paris Lumber Company in the distance and literally toss it up in the air. I remember police cars touring the city with sirens blasting full force—I was on my way home, passing through the Tudor St. area, and I couldn’t imagine why they were blowing their sirens. When I got out on the loop, I noticed the wall cloud, and I thought, “Oh, my goodness, that’s a bad looking cloud.” I parked and even got out of the car to look at it, and I was standing there gazing at it when an enormous dark column just dropped out of it. I could see the circular rotation on the outer fringe of it (it was not a “funnel” when I saw “my” tornado).
I jumped back in the car and streaked for “home,” and I was in great danger of being struck not by the tornado, but by other motorists. People were fleeing and trying to get home—it was about 4 p.m. I remember standing out in our front yard, after I got home, and watching the thing go past about a mile or two south of us. Almost immediately, the electricity went off and the phone lines went dead. We listened to the news on the car radio for a while. I also remember that immediately after it passed, the hardest rain I’ve ever seen fell for several minutes; it was like a solid curtain of rain. I waded through it to the barn to check on my saddle horse, and he was very calm.
Comments: 2 | Article Continues ... Continue Reading & Comment »Treasure Hunting
Posted 05.05.06 at 11:33 AMThe recent passing excitement concerning the covered water well on the new CVS site, formerly the Salvation Army Thrift Store at 530 Lamar in Paris, brings up the subject of treasure hunting. The well was covered with a concrete slab that reads “Here Lies $1,000,000,” scratched into it by the late Ted Brown and by Gene Rader over twenty years ago. It apparently dates from the late 1800s, and there has long been the hope that at the bottom might be a treasure in gold coins of the type which would have been pitched into such a place. Evidently, the old well is still capped; if it was excavated during the CVS construction, I did not hear about it.
Then I found two similar stories in The Paris News. On August 6, 1948, it was reported that workers tearing down the Texas Company service station at 201 South Main uncovered a safe when they dug up the foundation. Since the Wells-Fargo Express office was located on the same site at the time of the 1916 fire, the safe was believed to have been “left behind” in the haste to escape the rapidly spreading flames.
Comments: 0 | Article Continues ... Continue Reading & Comment »Belle Starr
Posted 04.21.06 at 10:00 AMDid you know that Belle Starr, one of the most famous female bandits, was once held in the jail in Paris? The story has always intrigued me. I once had a good Quarter Horse mare named Belle; she was gentle and sweet, unlike, I suspect, the real Belle Starr, but about as luckless. She was standing beside a light pole when a bolt of lightning hit the transformer on it, bounced off, and struck her dead. Maybe if I hadn’t named her “Belle” . . .
According to historian Spencer Jones, in a 1972 news clipping, a Paris paper reported that Sam J. Parker, a resident of Collin County before his death in 1940, had become a Texas Ranger after the Civil War. He arrested Belle (then Belle Reed) in present day Delta County in the late 1860s. He took her to Paris and turned her over to the sheriff, and she stayed a few days in the old jail on S. Main St. but was released for lack of evidence.
She started out in life as plain Myra Belle Shirley, and when she wed the outlaw, Sam Starr, in 1880, the famous Belle Starr was born. Her first husband had been none other than Cole Younger, who was shot in a Minnesota bank robbery while a member of the James Gang. However, she didn’t have long to live it up in the outlaw world because she was shot in the back by an unknown assassin in 1889. Sam had got it himself a few years earlier at a dance in 1886. Never one to lead the single life long, she married Jim July and made him change his name to “Starr.”
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