It is theorized that the mind was originally divided into an executive (the spirit world) and the follower (man). One part of the mind spoke to the other by audio hallucination. The notion is that there was an ancient bicameral mind that was not conscious or subjective in which the apparent spirit of a raven, a rock, or a burning bush could warn or instruct. This ancient mentality is demonstrated in comparison of earlier and later tablets of the Gilgamesh story, the Mycenean Iliad and later Greek literature, and earlier books of the bible, particularly Amos and Ecclesiastes. Each refers to direct communication with the gods without introspection, in a world before nature became an ecomachine. The bicameral mind was replaced with modern consciousness as civilization became more complicated, self-awareness has expelled man from the garden. Having lost the certainty of direct spiritual contact, religion set to work instituting the idea of a fall from divine favor. Its possible that the Comanches that were relatively isolated from Western consciousness that was beginning to pervade neighboring Indians, perhaps had still retained a bicameral mind and lived in the present, still free of the curse of self-reflective thought. Still open to the advice of an old oak. Unfortunately for the victims of Comanche raids, a nonconscious mind, with no subjectivity, did not register empathy.

Julian Jaynes. The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company

In 1895 Sam Roberson opened a bath house in Stephenville with both hot and cold running water. Friday was set aside as women’s day. Stephenville Empire At the Dublin Bath house, in 1883, “six bathers , in a perfectly nude condition, engaged in a fight” Stephenville Empire

On June 30, 1908 a small astroid, perhaps 160-200 feet thick, exploded before reaching the ground near the Tunguska River in Eastern Siberia. Thought to have been about 15-megatons, this explosion flattened an estimated 500 acres of forest. It was the largest impact on earth in recorded history caused worldwide climatic effect. A noctilucent cloud developed over much of the earth, illuminating night skies. Great storms sunk ships at sea, destroyed lives and property all over the United States, and blew over oak and peach trees in Erath County. Instead of heating up like a typical Erath summer, the following weeks were springlike, and [ July, 24th] according to “George Lidia who came to Erath County in 1859, who been a close observer of the seasons, remembers none equalling the present summer for rain. . . . The nights have been delightfully pleasant with few really warm days.” It just so happened that Col. L. S. Polk and Bruce Cage decided to try a large crop of sugar beets this summer, hoping to “establish at Stephenville a great factory for converting beets into sugar.” No doubt it was a bumper crop – but alas, Erath summers were never that cool or wet again.

Stephenville Tribune, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Among the agricultural Indians that lived along the southern end of the Bosque River and in East Texas, June was the time of the First Fruits Ceremony in which past deeds were forgiven and everyone experienced a sense of renewal. No one were allowed to eat any of the new vegetables until after “a ceremony both mysterious and remarkable” known as the feast of the new fruits. It consisted of dedicating the first beans and corn (separate ceremonies) to the sun and earth and purifying the village . On the appointed day the pathways through the village were swept and the council house cleaned and decorated with wildflowers. All drank a hallucinogenic, emetic [mescal bean] tea and spent the day singing and purging themselves before they they ate, “worthy of the first fruits of the year.”

Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969.

In 1901 “A lady teacher having applied for a position in the Stephenville public schools had an interview with one of the trustees, and then withdrew her application , stating that the views of the trustee as to what is required of a teacher are about on a par with that of a wolf’s views on the sermon on the mount.”

Erath Appeal

In June of 1905, ten miles east of Stephenville, a man was arguing with his wife. He then threw a knife at her, missed and killed the baby. “He ran for the camphor and tried to revive the child;” when that didn’t work, he shot and killed himself. Stephenville Tribune

A two-year -old boy went with his father to a cotton gin and when his father was ready to leave he couldn’t find the boy. The search went on for hours without finding the child. Months later, in June of 1909, word was received from England that a child’s body was found in a cotton bale from that gin.

Stephenville Empire

1908: “Tuberculosis, called the great white plague, is becoming a serious menace to life in Erath County, and many homes have already been made desolate. By following rigid sanitary rules the disease will be prevented; of course, those who now have it will die.” Stephenville Tribune I was told by a Brownwood blacksmith that I interviewed in the 1970s that in the early 1900s, when he lit his forge each morning and waited for the green, high sulphur (Thurber) coal smoke to dissipate, that women with TB would pay him 50 cents a week to crowd around the smoky fire, with quilts over their heads, and breathe all they could stand of the black smoke. The coal smoke treatments probably did nothing for them – but people need to feel that they are doing something when faced with a fatal disease.

The hailstorm of June 14, 1916 was talked about for years. “Roofs were ruined, windows broken and all farm crops were beaten to the ground. Chickens, birds, and all kinds of small animals were killed . . . This great storm made impressions which will never be forgotten . . . ” Stephenville Tribune

In June of 1900 M.A. Brown stepped into the door of the Simmons’s barber shop in Dublin and shot Dave Simmons through the heart – causing him to cut the throat of the man he was shaving. Erath Appeal