There could be locusts. Like the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) that lived along both sides of the Rocky Mountains in prairie areas. Entomologists believe that they depended on tall grass prairie plants where they lived in small numbers like the grasshoppers to which thy are related. But then, as a survival mechanism, when they become crowded during drought, chemical cues and frequent bumping into each other trigger a metamorphosis into a longer creature with larger wings that had rather eat than breed, and an urge to fly hundreds of miles. The swarm has been described as a “metabolic wildfire,” was a drought-related phenomenon on the Great Plains since before Euro-American settlement. They arrived like a “great white cloud, like a snowstorm, blocking out the sun.” They ate not only the grass and valuable crops, but also leather, wood, sheep’s wool, and sometimes even the clothes from people’s backs. A famous sighting in the 1870s was calculated by telegraph operators to be the size of California (described in Laura Ingall Wilder’s historical fiction novel, On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1937) bore down on Erath and Bosque Counties; it was described by Ed Nichols: ” . . . while playing in the yard one day, I noticed grasshoppers lighting on the ground. Chickens and turkeys ran out and began gobbling them up. They continued falling so fast that I ran in the back door and told mother. She looked out and hurried to close the door . . . chickens kept picking them up until they could hold no more and died . . . In two hours time there was there was not a green thing left . . . That night a hard rain fell, washing them into the branches and creeks. Numbers of stock died from drinking the water.” Since the invasions happened in August or later (there are descriptions of a swarm that was overtaken by a cold front and unable to fly, fell to the ground like hail.) switched to winter wheat, which matured in the early summer, before locust were able to migrate. The locusts became extinct by the 1890s probably because more and more prairie soils were plowed.

Ed Nichols. Ed Nichols Rode a Horse (as told by Ruby Nichols Cutbirth.) Dallas University Press and Texas Folklore Society, 1943; Jeffery Lockwood. “The Death of the Super Hopper: How Early Settlers Unwittingly Drove their Nemesis Extinct, and What it Means for us Today.” Organic Ancient (February 3, 2003); The Rocky Mountain Locust, Wikipedia.

August 12, 1891: A tornado, “Like a large rolling ball,” struck Dublin today, destroying several houses, the dance hall, and blowing the spokes out of a buggy’s wheels without moving the buggy. Stephenville Empire

In the August, 1912 Stephenville Tribune, Will Hickey wrote that Alarm Creek, where he grew up, was once fresh, spring fed, with an abundance of fish. But when the area timber was cut, and the grass grazed away, the creek dried up, “It’s glory has departed forever.”

1840: “The Rio Bosquere is a beautiful clear stream which enters the Brazos from the west. Towards the head of this stream the country is beautiful, and the land rich and well timbered.” The Comanche called this area Teha Lanna, the land of beauty.

George W. Bonnell. Topographical Description of Texas, 1840. Reprinted by Texian Press, 1964, 79-95.

August 20, 1908: Before Social Security: “Our county poor farm has more pitiful cases of destitution than at any time in its history. Perhaps if our boys and girls were just a little more prudent they might save up enough before reaching decrepit old age to save them from a pauper’s fate.” Stephenville Tribune

In the early 20th Century single-shot bolt-action and rollingblock 22s became inexpensive enough for for every family to have one. The main targets were owls and hawks because they preyed on chickens at a time when these fowls were a very important food source. My family in the 1950s had a horror of hawks and would drop everything to get a shot, even though I never saw one bother our chickens. So many hawks and owls were killed in the 1920s that rat populations exploded in Erath County. Individual farms held rat-hunts that yielded hundreds. The August Stephenville Tribune reported in 1920 that Bob Croft had all 72 of his recently hatched chicks stolen during the night. A search discovered that rats had packed all of the chicks into a nearby stump; eleven of them were still alive. A mostly ignored article later that month reported that “Harper Herring’s Stephenville barn is not overrun by rats as are so many other other area barns. He recently found out why – two screech owl nests – each containing two young owls. Each nest was provided with a heap of rats for them to feed on.” A county-wide rat-killing contest held the following April in which $50 was offered for the most rat tails collected. The winner was from Huckabay with 6,800 tails. Stephenville Tribune

September 10, 1922, Reverend B.B. Hooper was conducting a revival meeting at Duffau, part f the service included 25 robed Klansmen that marched in, forming a crescent around the front. They read a letter to the congregation: “We, the Order of the Knights of Ku Klux Klan, reverently acknowledge the majesty and supremacy of the Divine Being, and recognize the goodness and providence of the same. We heartily indorse the good work you and the protestant ministers are doing . . . ” Stephenville Tribune

“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.” Friedrich Nietzsche

In October of 1922, 31 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched into the Stephenville First Baptist Church, lined up in front of the congregation and presented a well planned program. The congregation sang the Star-Spangled Banner, and afterwards the Klansmen filled out as quietly as they came in. (This is the same year that blacks were removed from West End Cemetery). Texas House Bill 3979 forbids the teaching of critical race theory to stop students from discovering the deep roots of white supremacy in our history. Stephenville Tribune (October 6, 1922)

1924: 1In Stephenville 1000 Klansmen were fed sandwiches, fried chicken, ice cream and cake. “The hooded Klansmen gathered on the east side of town and silently, but surely, marched to the square.” I was told by C. Richard King that during an earlier march, Judge Oxford stood facing the approaching klan on Washington street, and punched the leading marcher in the mouth. Stephenville Tribne (July 1924)

1922: “Remember . . . the all-seeing eye of the Invisible Empire, knights of the Ku Klux Klan is upon you.” Stephenville Empire (March 1, 1922)

1890s: “In the summers the Erath churches had debates on the Bible as they understood it. As they had a different understanding of it, those debates always ended in a fight.” Sue Sanders, Our Common Herd