ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[MaineWriter]

Ding Dong, TX

Just because Ding Dong is in Bell County doesn't mean those two facts have anything to do with each other. If you think it does you're either half-right or half-wrong, depending on your disposition.

Ding Dong was named for a Bell all right, but not Peter Hansborough Bell, the third governor of Texas and the man for whom Bell County is named. Nor is it named for the "Ding Dong Daddy of Dumas" or the junk food of the same name. The Wicked Witch did not die there. Ask not for whom the bell ding dongs . . .

According to historical accounts, the Bells in question were Zulis Bell and his nephew Bert Bell. In the early 1930s the two Bells bought and ran a country store on the Lampasas River about midway between Killeen and Florence, at a place then known as McBryde Crossing.

The Bells hired a talented sign painter by the name of C.C. Hoover to paint the sign for their new store. But Hoover was no mere sign painter. He had done some fine oil paintings and could draw as well as letter. Fred Foster at Stokes-Blair Hardware Company in Florence knew of Hoover's talent so when the young man showed up at Foster's store to buy paint for the job, Foster advised him to put his creative talents to use.

"Why don't you do something original with this sign," he suggested to Hoover. "How about drawing two Bells with the name Zulis in one and Bert in the other. Then print 'Ding Dong' on the sign." In this manner manner, the deed was done. The little community around the store took on the name of Ding Dong, and there you have it.


Just because Ding Dong has made a name for itself by, well, the way it named itself doesn't mean it's easy to find. You don't even have to blink to miss it. You can be looking for it and still miss it. A couple of dozen people have a Ding Dong address. The 777 Estates lists a Ding Dong address, but that subdivision is on the outskirts of Ding Dong, not Ding Dong proper. If you pass the turn to Maxdale -- FM 2670 -- you have gone too far.


Ding Dong first came to the attention of wider America via the syndicated feature "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," which gave the town its 15 minutes of fame. Travel writer Bill Bryson mentioned the town in his book, Made In America. Another book, Passing Gas: And Other Towns Along The American Highway by photographer Gary Gladstone, pays tribute to Ding Dong with a photograph of carpet salesman and fire chief Harold Rowe posed in front of his fire truck in Ding Dong.

Jim Bowmer of Temple, who wrote the book The Unknown Bell County about local folklore and legends, remembers that Hugh Farr, a fiddler for the Sons of the Pioneers, told the audience of a Johnny Carson Tonight Show that he was raised in Llano, Texas but born in Ding Dong, in Bell County. Noted conductor Walter Winchell, when asked whom he believed to be the greatest natural violinist of the 20th Century, named Fritz Kreisler for his left hand and "the right hand of that gentleman who plays violin with the Sons of the Pioneers, I don't recall his name."

That would be Hugh Farr, from Ding Dong, Texas.

Late Dallas newspaper columnist Frank X. Tolbert stumbled across Ding Dong in his wanderings around the state and thought it was a shame the town did not have its own bell. What was a Ding Dong without a bell? With Tolbert's urging, the town received a bell from the Santa Fe Railroad in 1962. It weighed 250 pounds and was given to the unofficial mayor of Ding Dong, Charlie Hold, by two Santa Fe vice presidents. Hold took over the store from the Bells in 1950. Hold told Tolbert, "That big red-mouthed bell you got our town has been kindly of a mixed blessing. A lot of smart jacks stop off here and rings that bell at all hours of the day and night. Gets mighty bothersome."

Ding Dong's last moment in the spotlight came in 1964, when members of the Killeen Lions Club International tried, as a joke, to secure Ding Dong as the site of the district convention. Mayor Hold was said to be none too happy about it.

As Gladstone's book makes clear, Tennessee takes the prize for State With the Weirdest Names. Texas is a close second, but it's hard to compete with Sweetlips, Gizzard's Cove, Suck Egg, Bucksnort, Dull, Only, Peeled, Chestnut, Nutbush, Defeated and Nameless.

They don't name 'em like that anymore, which may be a good thing. But in becoming too sophisticated to call our homeland Ding Dong or Suck Egg, we find our refinement may have come at the expense of a peculiarly American sense of humor.

Leslie

[memento]

Gay Hill, Texas

Gay Hill is a historic town with strong business and cultural ties to Independence, Texas. Once known as Chriesman Settlement - the name was changed when the Republic of Texas established a post office in the town sometime before 1840.

Thomas Gay, a partner in the local store was the namesake of the town. His brother James Gay had a town named after him - also called Gay Hill - in neighboring Fayette County near LaGrange.

Residents included Horatio Chriesman, R. E. B. Baylor, and John Sayles. Glenblythe Plantation - owned by Horticulturist Thomas Affleck was near Gay Hill and a historic marker on Thomas Affleck is found on FM 390.

Oak Female Seminary was located in Gay Hill from 1853 to 1888 and a Masonic lodge was established before the Civil War. In 1860 Gay Hill had a population of about 300.

The town split into "Old" and "New" Gay Hill in 1881 when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway laid tracks through Washington County. "New" Gay Hill is two miles west of the original site.

[jpwagoneer1964]

La Barge, Wy


LaBarge is located in the northern end of Lincoln County just across the Lincoln-Sublette County borderline. Although it is not in the county, the citizens of Sublette County shares some very close ties with this town. LaBarge is in the same school district as Big Piney and Marbleton. It has an elementary school but the older students are bussed 20 miles to the Big Piney Middle and High Schools. Because of this the families of these towns have known each other for generations. LaBarge's economy also depends on the large amount of energy resources available in both Sublette and Lincoln Counties, as do many of the neighboring communities of Sublette County.

My Road Trip today: San Diego, Ca to Los Angeles,Ca.  338 miles, about 8 1/2 gallons of gas.


Mark

[MaineWriter]

Evergreen, TX

Evergreen doesn't have a sign to announce it. There's nothing to tell you that it was the oldest community in Lee County. The only reference is a metal sign on a gate to the Evergreen Cemetery.

The town was laid out in 1856 and the town prospered until like many towns, it was by-passed by the railroad in 1870. This time it was the Houston and Texas Central that went East -West through Giddings. What could be worse? How about being by-passed by two railroads? In 1890 The San Antonio and Aransas Pass (SAAP) went through Lincoln (South-North) and the last holdouts in Evergreen gave up and moved there.

Leslie

[Fran]

Navarro Mills, TX

Navarro Mills was established in the early 1850s and was the site of the first corn mill in the county.  A post office operated there from 1874 until 1891.  Two schools were open by 1906, one with thirty-one white students and one with forty-two black students.  In the mid-1930s Navarro Mills had a store, a church, and a number of houses.  The estimated population in 1936 was twenty-five. During the 1950s the town grew to a population of fifty, with two businesses.   By the mid-1960s only a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered houses remained.  In 1990 Navarro Mills was a dispersed community with an estimated population of fifty.

[jpwagoneer1964]

Sugar Land, Tx

The land in and about the City of Sugar Land was originally owned by the Mexican government and was granted to Samuel M. Williams through Stephen F. Austin. There were several factors which governed Williams receiving this gra nt, among them was the fact that he spoke Spanish, was well educated and wrote a fine Spencerian hand. Williams called this land "Oakland Plantation" because there were many different varieties of oaks on the land -- Pin Oak, Post Oak, Water Oak, Red Oak and Live Oak. During this period of time, land grants were measured from one oak to another.

Sugar became a part of life in the area when S. M. Swinson, captain of a small freight boat, made a meandering journey along the United States coast from New York to Velasco. Along the journey, commodities were picked up at various points and dispensed of as the journey proceeded. One of the stops was Cuba, and as it happened, it was during the height of sugar cane season. A small load of sugar cane stalks was taken on board and later delivered to Samuel M. Williams. The next time Swinson came to the area, he saw sugar cane growing "as high as a man on a horse" and immediately returned to Cuba to purchase more stalks. Soon after, a mill was built to squeeze the juice from the stalks.

Today, the present refinery is located approximately on the spot where the first mill was built. After the death of Samuel Williams, the family attempted to keep the mill alive; however, this was not possible, and the mill was sold to Benjamin Franklin Terry and William Jefferson Kyle. Kyle was born in Hawkins County, Tenn., in 1803, and Terry was born in Kentucky in 1821. In 1849, both Kyle and Terry, who were living at the time in Brazoria, left Texas along with 20 or 30 others to go to the gold fields of California. By the time they reached California, they had increased in number and had approximately 60 wagons, two companies of pack mules and two sets of engineers. Terry and Kyle prospected gold in California, making quite a fortune.

In 1853, they returned to Texas and with a portion of the fortune purchased the "Oakland Plantation" from the S. M. Williams family. The land, rich in sugar cane, was appropriately renamed "Sugar Land." The mill was operated using rollers and mule power and the open-kettle process. Molasses was drained off in troughs to 1,000 pound hogsheads for shipment. The railroad from Stafford to Richmond was built by Kyle and Terry. Plans were to run the railroad from Stafford, where the timber met the prairie, direct to Richmond and would have missed Sugar Land; however, Kyle and Terry paid $25 per acre for 2,500 acres of land, paying $7,000 in cash, with the remaining balance due in a series of notes up to year 1858 at which time the notes were fully paid. The big bend, which is currently in the railroad between Stafford and Sugar Land, is a result of this land purchase and Kyle and Terry's desire to have the railroad run through Sugar Land.

In 1860, the Kyle and Terry properties were valued at $250,000. The Sugar Land plantation passed through other hands in years to follow and was finally purchased from the bankrupt Colonel E. H. Cunningham interests by I. H. Kempner and W. T. Eldridge in 1907, at which time the sugar refining process was expanded to what is now known as Imperial Holly Corp. In 1907, the town of Sugar Land began growing at a rapid rate, with operating expenses amounting to around $50,000 per year.

In the fall of 1959, the heretofore company-owned town began the process of incorporation and on Dec. 15, 1959, T. E. Harman was elected the first Mayor of Sugar Land to serve with five Aldermen. The first City Council meeting was held on Jan. 19, 1960.

The City of Sugar Land was incorporated in 1959 as a "General Law" city and remained such from 1959 until Jan. 17, 1981, at which time a special city election was held for the purpose of establishing a home rule municipal government. Voters approved the adoption of a home rule charter in accordance with the constitution and statutes of the state of Texas. The type of municipal government provided by this Charter was known as "mayor-council government," and all powers of the City were invested in a Council composed of a mayor and five councilmen.

In January 1985 pursuant to charter requirements, a five-member charter review commission was appointed and charged with the responsibility of reviewing the operation of the City government and determining whether such Charter provisions required revision and, if deemed advisable, to make recommendations to City Council for amendments to the Charter. As a result of this review, the commission recommended that several areas of the Charter be amended. A special city election was held Aug. 9, 1986, to submit the proposed changes to the electorate for consideration. By a majority of the voters, amendments to the Charter were approved which provided for a change in the City's form of government from that of "mayor-council" (strong mayor) to that of a "council-manager" form of government which provides that the city manager be the chief administrative officer of the city. Approval of this amendment provided for the mayor to become a voting member of Council, in addition to performing duties as presiding officer of the Council. An Amendment on May 5, 1990, changed the composition of the City Council to a Mayor, four councilmembers to be elected by single-member districts and two councilmembers by at-large position. This composition remains in effect today with term limits of eight consecutive years.

[Meryl]

Dumbell, WY

[moremojo]

Llano, Texas

--the county seat of Llano County, situated on the northern fringe of the Texas Hill Country. Historic county courthouse recently the beneficiary of restoration, which has benefited the area's tourism. A late great-uncle of mine was once the superintendant of this community's school district, and a good friend of mine has long-standing family associations with the place.

[jpwagoneer1964]

Oakland, Texas

Oakland, Texas was a popular site inthe late 1800's to approximately theearly 1940's. It had a school, a church, two stores, and a blacksmithshop. It was located between Ivanhoeand Bonham, Texas. It's located on F&M 898. There are still residents living in this community.
REMAINS: There are remains of this town. There is a cemetery as well. And THERE IS a post office. Oakland texas has its OWN post office. There are about 100 residents in Oakland, Tx.

Oackland was also the brand name of a family car produced by General Motors from 1908 until 1931. In the late 1920's each of the upper four divisions of GM brought ot a 'campanion. make to fill any pricing gaps. Oakland's was Pontiac. Cadllac's  La salle was the only other to be produced more than a couple of years (1940).
 This fine example is a 1928.

[MaineWriter]

Dime Box, TX

There's an Old and a New Dime Box. The name comes from the practice of leaving a dime in a box at Brown's Mill to get a letter delivered to Giddings. This was before a Federal Post Office opened in 1877. "Old" Dime Box is the second oldest (Evergreen is the oldest) town in Lee County.

The PO opened under the name Brown's Mill or a variation thereof, and in short order a lot of mail was misdirected to Brownsville. The postal people were livid. They had a reputation for refusing names that could be confusing with existing post offices, but this one got right by them. Ordered to change the name, the townsfolk submitted Dime Box and it was accepted.

In 1913, the Southern Pacific Railroad came within 3 miles of the town and almost everyone moved for the convenience this afforded. Enough remained to retain the name and they decided to become Old and New. This is a rare ending to a familiar story - but there you have it.

"New Dime Box" opened the 1944 March of Dimes Campaign and the town was featured in Life magazine. The Postmaster General even showed up to be photographed on the front porch of the store with an oversized mailbox which was sent to the White House. Today an oversized vintage dime stands in a transparent case in downtown Dime Box.

Leslie