Carol C Taylor Blog

City Drug Store in Jacksboro, Texas located on the southeast corner of Belknap and Main Streets. They still serve a great lunch and super ice cream cones.

During much of the 20th century drug stores played a vital part in rural America, especially in North Texas.  The druggist, never called a pharmacist, was a surrogate doctor prescribing the right cough syrup or liniment for aches and pains.  He knew what to take for a toothache or how to soothe poison ivy.  In fact, everyone addressed both doctors and druggists as “Doc.”

But that wasn’t the only function of a drug store.  The makeup counter was a source of wonder for young girls and a necessity for women.  All those creams and powders promised magical beauty for females from Texarkana to Childress.  It was like going to a real department store in Dallas or Fort Worth, only much less expensive and much closer. The lady behind the counter really knew how to put on her makeup.  Sometimes she would give free demonstrations.  You would step out onto the sidewalk feeling like a movie star.

There were racks of greeting cards, display cases of costume jewelry, plus plenty of colorful wrapping paper.  And then there were the comic books and magazines.  Seldom was a reader disturbed and told to buy before perusing the goods.  Somehow my mother always seemed to be ready to go before I finished reading.  But Mother wasn’t keen on comic books; they weren’t real literature to her.

Who could forget the soda fountain and lunch counter? That was the highlight of a visit as far as I was concerned.  My maternal grandparents lived on a ranch west of Archer City.  Almost every day my grandfather went into town to get the mail.  If I was there we went to the drugstore that was conveniently located next door to the post office.  We would enjoy a single dip vanilla or strawberry ice cream cone before getting into the pickup and heading back to the ranch.

Later when I was in high school in Jacksboro everyone went to the drugstore for lunch.  We often piled up to ten girls in the car and headed to City Drug about a mile from the old high school.  Who cared what we ordered, we were so busy talking and giggling.

Clerks who worked in the courthouse across the street dropped into the drugstore for coffee breaks and a little shopping.  It was a place where men gathered to talk price of cattle, politics and any hopeful prospects of rainfall.

On Saturdays kids converged on the drugstore when the double feature matinee was over.  My dad told me that in his day before World War II, couples would go to the drugstore after the movies.  I read in an old newspaper that high school students in the twenties had ice cream parties in the drug stores with delicate pastries as well as sodas and other treats.  It was quite the thing to do.

Today most towns have big box pharmacies with similar goods but without the special feeling.  Druggists counsel you about a new prescription but seldom ever recommend something to put on poison ivy.  Maybe the clerks know your name but probably they don’t.  I know there are very few soda fountains still around.  But in Jacksboro the old City Drug Store is still in business, in fact by all indication, a booming business.  The place has modernized somewhat; but the counter and booths are full at lunch.  Comic books can still be found inside the front door.  Makeup and costume jewelry tempt customers.  It’s comforting to find some things never change.

Since next Sunday is Mother’s Day, I have a suggestion for something different to do this year.  The Texas Historical Commission is offering free admission to the twenty state historic sites that day.  Three of them are in North Texas.  All would make a fun outing for the whole family.  And even if you can’t make it for Mother’s Day, all are fun to visit anytime.

Docent shows children how Mrs. Eisenhower and other women cooked in the 1890s.

One is the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site in Denison.  President Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower (1890-1969) was born in a small house there.  His father worked for the railroad, probably the Katy, and shortly after Ike’s birth the family moved to Kansas where Ike grew up.   Many years ago we ventured up there while our son was working on a Cub Scout badge.  I distinctively remember the kitchen being small but seemingly very efficient. It’s a great place to see how most people lived in that day and age.

Usually historic homes are grand affairs that were maintained first by the family, then the community before being transferred to the Texas Historical Commission.  The remaining two homes fall into this category.   Both have undergone recent renovation to stabilize them but still contain original furnishings.

Mr. Sam’s 1947 Cadillac in the garage.

The 1916 Sam Rayburn Home is located on a 121-acre farm west of Bonham.  Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) or “Mr. Sam” as he was known in North Texas served in the United States House of Representatives for 48 years.  During that time, he served as Speaker of the House and third in line for the presidency from 1940 to his death in 1961.  Rayburn is remembered for bringing his constituents into the 20^th century with such amenities as electricity in rural areas.  In 1935, when electricity was wired to his Bonham home, Mr. Sam paid for the light poles himself.  All of the furnishings are original to the home, also occupied by Mr. Sam’s brother and sister and their families.  In the garage is his 1947 Cadillac, a gift from US Congressmen that year.

Home of General Senator and Mrs. Sam Bell Maxey in Paris, Texas.

The third house museum is the grand Sam Bell Maxey (1825-1895) home in Paris.  The High Victorian Italianate Style mansion was completed in 1868 for the attorney, West Point graduate, Mexican War veteran, Confederate General from Texas, and a two-term United States Senator from Texas.  In fact, with all those titles, Maxey was referred to as General Senator Maxey.  His wife went so far as to be known as Mrs. General Senator Sam Bell Maxey.  Shortly after the Civil War, General Maxey called a meeting of prominent North Texas men to agree that the war was over, and that all citizens should be urged to accept and obey the laws of the United States.  Unfortunately, the meeting did not successfully convince North Texans, or Texans anywhere, that the supreme law of the land was United States law.  It would take a long time for such ideas to sink into the minds of many former Confederates.

For more information call 512-463-7948 or visit www.texashistoricsites.com.

Grave of John Bunyan Denton(1806-1841) located on the south side of the old Denton County Courthouse lawn in Denton, Texas.

John B. Denton, Methodist preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter, traveled miles in his thirty-five years.  Yet, he also traveled miles in death.  Buried in two different locations before arriving at his final resting place in 1901, he now lies in the serene lawn of the Denton County Courthouse in Denton, Texas.

Denton, the man, was born in Tennessee in 1806 to an itinerant Methodist preacher and his wife.  He was orphaned by the time he was eight years old.  Adopted by a family named Wells who migrated to Arkansas Territory, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith.  At age twelve, he ran away and worked for a time on an Arkansas River flatboat.  Eight years later he married Mary Greenlee Stewart in Louisiana.  The couple were parents of  six children.  It was Mary who taught John to read and write well enough to become a minister and attorney.

Shortly after his marriage John joined the Methodist Episcopal Church South and served as a travelling preacher for ten years in southern Missouri and Arkansas.  Sometime in late 1836 or early 1837, he crossed the Red River into Texas with his friend the Methodist missionary Littleton Fowler.  The two left from Hempstead County, Arkansas headed to Clarksville where Fowler had relatives.  After traveling with Fowler into Nacogdoches, Denton returned to north Texas where he was named pastor on the Sulphur Fork Circuit.   It was there that Denton sent for his wife and children to join him.

On March 1838 Denton wrote his friend Fowler that the congregation in Clarksville pledged four to five thousand dollars for a new church building.  Martha Stroud in her book Gateway to Texas: History of Red River County believed that the church in Clarksville was established when Denton arrived.

During this time period gospel preaching was an irregular event when every “wayfaring” preacher was invited, or even begged, to hold services where even a few families could congregate.  Denton was described as vigorous and colorful.  One fellow minister compared him to a “diamond in the rough.”  He described himself as impetuous.

In 1837 Denton was scheduled to preach at a camp meeting at Shelton’s Camp Ground when the meeting was suddenly cancelled due to recent Indian Depredations.   But Denton settled into life on the north Texas frontier.  He obtained a 2nd Class Land Certificate for 640 acres in Red River County on October 4, 1838.  He ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Republic of Texas Congress.  Yet by the close of 1838, Denton formed a law practice with John B. Craig, also a Methodist preacher, in Clarksville.  Since he was the junior partner, Denton rode the Court Circuit and frequently preached wherever District Court was held.

Like most men on the northern frontier of the Republic of Texas, Denton served as captain in a company of rangers.  Sometime in late 1840 or early 1841 in what is now Denton County he preached at least one sermon to the Rangers on Long Prairie.

All lands east of the Cross Timbers in north Texas were devoid of native inhabitants by the days of the Republic of Texas.  Remnants of tribes from the United States, known as immigrant tribes, looked for places to live in peace; however, it took very little to incite both whites and Indians into deadly skirmishes.  On May 22, 1841 such a skirmish occurred at the battle of Village Creek six miles east of the site of Fort Worth.  Led by General Edward H. Tarrant, the rangers attacked the village with no loss of their men.  At that point Tarrant directed Captain Denton to take a scouting party of twenty men to locate the remnants of the tribe.  As he led the party up a slight hill, John B. Denton was shot in the chest and fatally wounded.  His troops tied his body to a horse and returned to the rest of the party.  They buried him on the prairie past Bird’s Station on the east bank of Oliver Creek at its confluence of what would soon become known as Denton Creek.

In 1861 Denton County rancher John S. Chisum exhumed Denton’s body and moved it to his ranch near Bolivar.  Chisum abandoned his ranch for land in what became Lincoln County, New Mexico.  When he left Denton County during the Civil War he left the gravesite unmarked.  In 1901 the Pioneer Association of Denton County decided to move the remains from the old Chisum Ranch to the courthouse square in the town of Denton. After diligent search and thorough identification, the remains were buried with appropriate ceremonies.  Ironically, the rites were performed by Reverend William Allen, a Methodist minister who as a teenager rode with Captain Denton and the pursuant chase when Denton was killed.

Mesquite leafed out in April 2011.

Old timers were able to predict the weather pretty accurately without all the gadgets twenty-first century weathermen and women use.  They were accustomed to watching trees and the sky and habits of animals.  Two such signs are the Easter cold snap and mesquite trees.  Both are pretty good indications of the arrival of spring weather.
Don’t set out tomatoes or other tender plants until after the Easter cold snap is heard along the length of the Red River every year.  Since Easter Sunday can fluctuate from the end of March until the last week in April, one would assume that the variables are too great for this old adage to work.  But work it does.

This year, 2013, we had one of the earliest Easter dates possible, the 31st of March.  Towards the end of the month, skies started to cloud up and some brief rains came.  We are in a drought period so we had no torrential rains.  Then the first week in April was like a return of Old Man Winter.  On the morning of April fifth, the condensation on the windshield froze when I left my car outside overnight.  By the next afternoon the sun was out and temperatures reached into the 70s.  No wonder there is a saying in Texas that if you don’t like the current weather, wait a few hours and it will change drastically.

As I write this, the temperatures are still pleasantly moderate but skies hold hope for rain.  We need it badly and maybe, just maybe, we will get a good soaking rain soon.

Mesquite tree with few leaves on April 3, 2013. Is it still winter in North Texas?

As for mesquite trees, these arboreal weeds are good for predicting spring and that’s about all.  It is one of the last trees to bud out in spring.  When the mesquite starts to leaf out, it is a sign that spring is really here.   In the attached photos, the top photograph was taken in early April 2011.  The tree was full of leaves, the grass was turning green, and prickly pear was blooming.  This picture was taken less than a year after devastating wild fires in Young County, Texas.  It was an encouraging sign that we might get rain and a return to normal weather.  Sadly, such was not the case.  Little rain came but high temperatures did last through that summer.

But the lower photograph was taken on April 3, 2013 near the 2011 picture.  What a difference.  The weather has not been conducive for the mesquites to bud out.  It’s still cloudy and cool.  And that may be a good thing, after all.  Keep your fingers crossed for all of us in Texas.  We desperately need rain.

The Emory Cemetery in Rains County, Texas and the grave marker of Emory Rains, for whom the town and county are named. 

At first glance the spacious, well-kept Emory Cemetery west of the Rains County courthouse, appeared to be fairly new, at least created around the late 1890s, which is considered new, in North Texas. Being an admirer of Woodmen of the World headstones in their many forms, I was amazed to find none in sight.  After all, Rains County was, and still is, a farming area.  Woodmen of the World lodges were found throughout southern farming regions.

As I drove away I noticed close to the road a wonderful, old stone with an upheld hand and index finger pointed to Heaven.  The sunlight was just perfect to see the craftsmanship.  There was another stone beside it and both were enclosed in a lovely old wrought iron fence.  I knew I had to return after I finished other business in town.

A marker with a carving of a finger pointing to Heaven

This family plot is surrounded by a beautiful old wrought iron fence

When I returned a couple of hours later, the sun was further west, causing a glare when I tried to photograph the stones with my cell phone.  I resolved then and there to carry my good camera with me anytime I left home.  But as I walked through the old part of the cemetery, a short distance south of the main cemetery, I was amazed at the variety of tombstones found.

There were three or four family plots surrounded by intricate fences.  Throughout the entire cemetery, graves were neatly arranged in rows facing east, as southern custom dictates.  Very old cedar trees added a dignity to the place.

Stacked sandstone pieces

A mysterious metal marker

At one site I thought I saw four boards placed together vertically in the ground.  On closer observation, they were not boards but smooth sandstone rocks.  No markings were visible but this was clearly a unique gravestone.  Two metal markers, one larger than the other, probably marked the graves of a parent and child.  The metal was rusted, so of course no names or dates could be read.  But both looked like a candy box, maybe one inch deep, placed vertically in the dirt.  Both had one side missing.  That was something I had never seen.  Zinc markers were used in the late 19th century, but these were not zinc.

Several stone markers had the characteristic roses, willow trees, hands pointing to Heaven, and the Golden Gates.  The tallest monument marked the grave of Emory Rains, the man for whom the town and county are named.  Finally I found one Woodman of the World stone, in the classic tree form standing very near an old cedar tree.
The old section was located on a small rise a short distance from the center of town.  Most of those buried in there were some of the earliest settlers.  I plan to return with a better camera and a notebook to write down observations. Enjoy the photos below.

Two sides of the same marker – a large bible carved in full relief.

A hand holding a Bible represents faith

Here are two children’s markers: one has the Lamb of God and the second one has two doves on a tree

These tall columns stand out in a cemetery. The one on the right has a draped urn carving on top.

These beautifully carved roses symbolize beauty

The lone Woodmen of the World marker in Emory Cemetery