I’ll be out of town until Friday, meanwhile it’s time to plant kale, turnips, garlic, and lettuce.

During the mega-drought from 7,500 to 6,000 years ago, North America heated up and La Nina became permanent. We’re headed into our third year of La Nina so you probably know that this climate mode is characterized by drought, punctuated by tropical storms from the Gulf and especially cold spells in winter. During this time moisture-loving grasses disappeared, leaving the ground exposed to erosion. A new study of the Brazos River from this time probably holds true for the Bosque River, large, violent thunderstorms scoured away huge amounts of soil along the rivers, meandering back and forth over the centuries and removed earlier camp sites. All this silt settled below Waco and along the Texas beaches. It wasn’t long before drought grasses like buffalograss and the gramas spread over Texas, along with very low glycemic food plants like prickly pear, Texas thistle, yucca, and mesquite. There were stone ovens to bake away the toxins from various roots and tubers, but these foods could be eaten raw. The glycemic index is a measure of how fast your body processes sugar, it runs from 0 to 100, with a doughnut rated at 100. The study of coprolites (dried human feces found in caves) suggest that an Altithermal meal would run about 25 glycemic units. These Native Texans and especially the ones who lived in far West Texas where the Altithermal drought never ended, developed near perfect digestive efficiency, but at a price, the coprolite studies show that they consumed up to 300 grams of indigestible fiber per day. People today are consuming an unhealthy 15 grams. This near perfect metabolism has crashed into potato chips and hamburgers today – leaving the descendants of these people vulnerable to obesity and diabetes.

The present highway from Stephenville to Fort Worth (377) began as a bison migration route, then Indians used it as well. By the 1870s it became “road” used by the Chidister Stage line, then a gravel road, in October of 1891 a railroad was completed along this route.

Lena Lewis, “Erath County: A Compilation,” Stephenville, Texas, 1938. Unpublished manuscript, Tarleton University library.

Teddy Blue recalled a storm on a cattle drive in 1882: “Nobody knows now what those storms were like, because nobody has to stay out in them anymore, but believe me, they were awful . . . I was out in one that killed 14 head of cattle and six or seven horses and two men. . . one was so scared he threw his six-shooter away, for fear it would draw the lightening, and I remember old Matt Winter, with the rain pouring down and the lightening flashing, taking off his hat and yelling at God Almighty, ‘All right, you old bald-headed son of a bitch up there, if you want to kill me, come and do it.’ It scared the daylights out of the rest of us.”

Edward Charles Abbott, (“Teddy Blue”) We Pointed them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher. Ed. Helena Huntington Smith. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939, 1971.

In 1872 Rube Burrow left his home in Alabama for the “Eldorado of the Southern emigrant, Texas.” He settled with his uncle, Joel Burrow between Alexander and Dublin this fall. Not adjusting well to farmwork, he made a living gathering unbranded cattle and driving them to market in Fort Worth. In 1888, Jim Burrow joined his brother on Cottonwood Creek, after a few years as cowboys, the brothers became train robbers. On October 5, Jim was captured during a robbery and died in a Texarkana jail. In 1890, Rube Burrow left his hat at a train robbery, the hat was traced to Stephenville and then to Rube. He left for Alabama until things cooled down. (There is a legend that he tried to spend the night on the ghost cabin at McDow Hole, on Green Creek.) He was captured in Linden, Alabama, on October 7, he escaped by asking for his bag of ginger snaps which contained a pistol. Instead of leaving town immediately, Burrow searched for an hour trying to find his favorite rifle. Before he could leave town he was shot and killed. Word reached Erath County later in October that the desperado Rube Burrow had been thrown from a train and killed by “many mysterious wounds.” But it was later discovered that this was another man named Burrow.

George W. Agee, Rube Burrow, King of Outlaws, and His Band of Train Robbers. Cincinnati: C.J. Krehbel & Company, 1890; and Ed Bartholomew, Album of Western Gunfighters. Houston: The Frontier Press, 1958.

On October 1, 1892, A Stephenville woman stood in front of her stove during a thunderstorm. Lightening struck the flu, came out the open stove door, burned a hole in her apron and dress, struck her below the knee, and continued down to the floor, splitting her shoe on the way. Dublin Progress

For the first decades in Stephenville’s history, hogs were allowed to roam the streets as a primitive form of garbage collection. In October of 1885, “One of the most exciting elections ever held in Erath County ,” attempted to establish a hog law to stop the practice. For some reason many people in town favored the inexpensive waste control and the measure was voted down again, 1160 to 433. The anti-hog people, called prohibitionists, had increased by 200 this time. Fort Worth Daily Gazette

Ex-Sheriff W.B. Slaughter, along with John Gilbreath, worked to break the power of vigilante rule in Erath County. On the night of October 2, 1884, while walking home through the square, Slaughter was attacked from behind a wagon and beaten to death. [Some say he was struck with a Thurber brick] He died from his wounds the following March. Stephenville Empire

1885: Joe Parker invested his last 25 cents in a peck of sweet potatoes last spring. From those he produced hundreds of slips which he planted in his quarter-acre garden at Alexander. On September 21, in Stephenville, he sold 10 bushels of the 100-bushel crop for $10. Stephenville Empire

1923: The Eureka persimmon, developed in Erath County by Joe Fitzgerald around 1903, ripens in two stages: :About a fourth will ripen the first week in September. These early fruits will not keep and are just for local markets. The remaining fruit grows larger, and turns from red to yellow by the first of November. These later fruits can be stored as late as February. Joe Fitzgerald, Family Papers, Stephenville, Texas

Today we have freezers that will soften and ripen the fruit in a week. I squeeze them out of their bitter skin on my oatmeal, when I can get them.

In the last week of September, 1908, a new bridge near Clairette built by convict labor, collapsed as men, teams, and buggies posed on it for the photographer. There were several injuries. Stephenville Tribune