Colonel R.D. Hunter, president of the Texas & Pacific Coal Company at Thurber, who died in 1902, was described as a “feudalist of old who dreamed of a strictly monopolistic empire.” He is best remembered for the fence he built around Thurber to keep out unsavory influences. The entire town was fenced with six foot high barbed-wire to keep out the peddlers of dry-goods, grocers and all kinds of farm products . . . . Captain Sawyer rode the gates, and believe me, nobody got past him.”

Thurber Papers. Thurber Collection, Southwestern Collection, Texas tech University, Lubbock, Texas

In 1904, “A lady walked into the grocer’s shop with a fighting light in her eyes. ‘This here,’ she observed with a sniff as she banged a yellow substance on the counter, ‘is the soap that gets all the linen as white as snow . . . and lets the happy housewife spend the rest of the day playing with the children?” The clerk replied no, it was cheese. Thurber Journal (a newspaper, I can’t remember which one)