by Bryan Mealer
“This is where your great-great-grandfather’s house once stood,” Clarence said, then fell silent.
His own mind went back three-quarters of a century. He told me about playing as a child along the wagon road that ran “just there” past the poplar. About cooling jars of fresh milk in the spring that still flowed near the old barn. A pile of chimney stone was all that was left of the house. It was all trees now, choked by vine and poison oak, hardly resembling a place where family had been born and died and where an eighty-year-old man could be plunged back into the breathless days of youth. But for that half hour or so, I saw it all.
Back home, Clarence pulled out a recent Christmas card and said, “You know, Bud still has a daughter out in Arizona.” There was an address on the envelope, and within days I was on the phone with Frances, whom nobody in my family even knew was still alive. The following month I sat at her dining room table. She described the terrible years after her father died, trying to care for her siblings, and how they’d been left to drift. After divorcing Tommy, she’d raised her girls and stayed in politics, working to get conservatives elected in order “to save America,” as she described. She finally retired after Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, her mission complete.
For eight hours we rummaged through boxes of old photos and letters. Everyone she’d grown up with was dead: her parents and siblings, Tommy and Howard Dodd, Bob Wills and the stars of the Grand Ole Opry. In fact, one of the last places Wills played fiddle before he died in 1975 was the Stampede in Big Spring. Someone else had to raise his bow and pull it across the strings.
Lately Frances had been thinking a lot about Howard, who after their divorce came home to Big Spring, became a fireman, remarried, and raised a family. One night she’d sat up in bed and realized she’d forgotten the sound of his voice, and the problem was that there wasn’t anyone who could help her hear it again. Nobody left to call who could affirm the memories that surfaced at random, like how the Georgia pines seemed to stretch to heaven that summer when she was five, or the way little Jimmie held her finger when they walked to get water, his smile and the tiny chip on his tooth. Those memories were hers alone now, with all their heartache, music, and laughter.
Acknowledgments
First, I’d like to thank the members of my family who have endured my many questions over the years, fed me and took me in, and have traveled with me on this journey of discovering our history. Thanks to my parents for laying it all on the line, trusting I wouldn’t leave them hanging in the end, and to Ann Yanez and Frances Varner for doing the same.
Thanks to Tammy Burrow Schrecengost and Cheryl Carter Joy at the Heritage Museum of Big Spring. Thanks to Jason Blake and Ray Tollett, Pat Mares, John Currie, Myra Robinson, Verna Davis, Ben Fountain, Scott Anderson, Diana Davids Hinton, Wanda and Perry Gamble, Larry Don Shaw, Jake Silverstein, Buddy Beach, Jacques Hyatt, Hugh Porter, Hilary Redmon, Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, David Peters, Sarah Smarsh, Ray Perryman, Lonn and Dedie Taylor, and the staff at the Hotel Settles. And thanks to Lorin McDowell for offering me a quiet place to write.
Thanks to Tumbleweed Smith for opening doors and for being a friend, and to James Johnston, whose two books on Big Spring, Crossroads Canaan and Movies and Magic Houses in a West Texas Whereabouts, fortified my research, along with our many conversations over Ruby’s BBQ and Mi Madre’s enchiladas.
And thanks to my readers whose comments and advice were crucial: Michelle Garcia, Lee Simmons, Kiley Lambert, and John Kenney. I owe special gratitude to John Baskin, whose wise counsel over the years, and careful attention to this manuscript, have helped to make me a better writer. And thanks to Michael Brick, who never got a chance to see these pages.
Thanks to my editor, Colin Dickerman, for urging me to find the bigger, sweeping story, and for his calm guidance throughout, and to Bob Miller for backing us up. Thanks to James Melia, Marlena Bittner, and the rest of the Flatiron team. Thanks to my agent, Heather Schroder, for helping me to continue doing this thing that I love. And finally, thanks to Ann Marie Healy, who’s still by my side as we march onward into the dream.
Notes
Part 1
Chapter 1
The Honest Man’s Friend and Protector, their crimes, and fights with the law from The Atlanta Journal Constitution, March 6, 1890.
John Lewis helping moonshiners and descriptions of family land and death of his mother, taken from interview with Clarence Mealer, Douglasville, Georgia, July 4, 2014.
Other history of Georgia, including flora and fauna, taken from two sources: The Annals of Upper Georgia Centered in Gilmer County by George Gordon Ward (Thomasson Printing and Office Equipment Company, 1965) and History of Pickens County by Luke Tate (Walter W. Brown Publishing Company, 1935).
Migration to Texas in 1890s, population explosion in Texas, and farming practices taken from three sources: Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by T. R. Fehrenbach (Da Capo Press, 1968), Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State by Randolph B. Campbell (Oxford University Press, 2003), and The Road to Spindletop: Economic Changes in Texas, 1875–1901 by John Stricklin Spratt (Southern Methodist University Press, 1955).
Details of Newt Mealer’s travels came from interview with Clarence Mealer, previously cited.
Hoboes in the 1880s and ’90s taken from “In Search of the American Hobo” by Sarah White (Media project for the American Studies Program, University of Virginia, 2001).
Description of cotton market in Hillsboro, Texas, taken from 100% Cotton: A History of Cotton in Hill County by Jack and Jane Pruitt (Jack Pruitt Books, 1993).
Bateson family history taken from Cleburne Morning Review and Abilene Reporter-News, various editions, and interview with Rosemary Bateson, via telephone, January 16, 2015.
John Lewis property in Hillsboro from deed records, Hill County, Texas.
Details of boll weevil scourge in Texas came from two sources: The Boll Weevil Comes to Texas by Frank Wagner (Grunwald Printing, 1980) and Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South by James C. Giesen (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Details of boll weevil refugees in Roby, Texas, and crop reports from Abilene Reporter and Abilene Daily Reporter, various editions, 1908–13.
John Lewis land purchase in Eastland from deed records, Eastland County, Texas.
George Bedford shootout and death from The Amarillo Globe, December 27, 1927.
Chapter 2
Details of John Lewis’s debt, traveling to Burnet County, interactions with Frank Day, and losing the farm were taken from John Lewis’s lawsuit against Day and C. M. Murphy filed in District Court, Eastland County, Texas, April 1919.
C. M. Murphy leasing land to oil company from deed records, Eastland County, Texas.
Details of World War I, dependence on oil, and domestic fuel shortage taken from The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin (Simon & Schuster, 1991).
Texas booms in the early 1900s taken from various newspaper accounts and from two books by Walter Rundell Jr.: Early Texas Oil: A Photographic History, 1866–1936 (Texas A&M University Press, 1977) and Oil in West Texas and New Mexico (Texas A&M University Press, 1982).
Details of Ranger boom taken from various newspaper accounts and from Oil! Titan of the Southwest by Carl Coke Rister (University of Oklahoma Press, 1949) and two books by Boyce House: Oil Boom: The Story of Spindletop, Burkburnett, Mexia, Smackover, Desdemona, and Ranger (Caxton Printers, 1941) and Were You in Ranger? (Tardy Publishing, 1935).
Frank Day and Jess Willard’s relationship taken from Were You in Ranger? by Boyce House, previously cited.
Representative D. J. Neill statement to the Texas Legislature taken from The Bartlett Tribune and News, August 23, 1918.
Accounts of Spanish flu in Texas found in Epidemic in the Southwest, 1918–1919 by Bradford Luckingham (Texas Western Press, 1984) and accounts of flu in Ranger taken from Oil Boom: The Story of Spindletop, Burkburnett, Mexia, Smackover, Desdemona,
and Ranger by Boyce House, previously cited.
Descriptions of Frank Day and the story of the farmer giving Day his land from Were You in Ranger? by Boyce House, previously cited. Details of Willard and Day hitting the wagon with their car from the Hearne Democrat, July 2, 1948.
Details of oil boom in Desdemona, Texas, taken from “Diamonds and Galoshes” by Anne Dingus, Texas Monthly, January 1986; Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil by Bartee Haile (The History Press, 2015); Oil! Titan of the Southwest by Carl Coke Rister, previously cited; and the two books by Boyce House, previously cited.
Information about Goldie Mealer’s death in Desdemona taken from interview with Barbara Tyler, Odessa, Texas, May 13, 2015.
Elijah Mealer’s death in France from U.S. military records.
Jack Dempsey’s fight with Jess Willard from various newspaper accounts, particularly The New York Times, July 5, 1919. Frank Day hobnobbing in Willard’s suite from Were You in Ranger? by Boyce House, previously cited.
Kids playing with roman candles and torches from interview with Barbara Tyler, previously cited.
Details of Best, Texas, from “The Best and Worst of Times” (Associated Press, July 12, 1987), “The Discovery and Early Development of the Big Lake Oil Field” by Martin W. Schwettmann (M.A. Thesis, University of Texas, 1941), and Oil! Titan of the Southwest by Carl Coke Rister, previously cited.
Santa Rita well information found in The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery: From the Beginning to the Depression by Samuel D. Myres (Permian Press, 1973), and Cark Coke Rister’s Oil! Titan of the Southwest, previously cited. Other information taken from Santa Rita: The University of Texas Oil Discovery by Martin W. Schwettmann (Texas State Historical Association, 1958).
James McCormick’s abuse of Bertha taken from interview with Frances M. Varner, Scottsdale, Arizona, August 19, 2014. Additional interviews, via telephone and in Big Spring, Texas, continued through February 2017.
Deepest well in the world from The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited.
Chapter 3
Descriptions of Permian Basin geology taken from The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited, and Gettin’ Started: Howard County’s First 25 Years by Joe Pickle (Howard County Heritage Museum, 1980).
Descriptions of the Llano Estacado and Comanche presence found in Gettin’ Started by Joe Pickle, previously cited, The Great Plains by Walter Prescott Webb (Grosset & Dunlap, 1931), and Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne (Scribner, 2010).
California gold rush and details about Captain Randolph Marcy found in Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne and Gettin’ Started by Joe Pickle, previously cited.
Buffalo hunting and bone scavenging taken from several sources: Howard County … In the Making by John R. Hutto (self-published, 1938), Fort Concho and the Texas Frontier by J. Evetts Haley (San Angelo Standard-Times, 1952), Fort Griffin on the Texas Frontier by Carl Coke Rister (University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), and “The West Texas Bone Business” by Ralph A. Smith (West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, Vol. 55, 1979).
Railroad workers, Chinese and Irish, and the cowboy neighbors taken from Gettin’ Started by Joe Pickle, previously cited.
Details about early Big Spring ranches taken from Joe Pickle and John R. Hutto, previously cited, and History of Howard County: 1882–1982 (Big Spring Chamber of Commerce, 1982).
Details about drought and blizzard on the McDowell Ranch taken from interview with Lorin S. McDowell III, Big Spring, Texas, May 15, 2016.
Early farming and sod buster details from Gettin’ Started by Joe Pickle, previously cited, and Big Spring: The Casual Biography of a Prairie Town by Shine Philips (Prentice-Hall, 1942).
S. E. J. Cox and his time in Big Spring from Easy Money: Oil Promoters and Investors in the Jazz Age by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien (University of North Carolina Press, 2009); the Big Spring Herald, July 4, 1975; and Cox’s official “Program Souvenir: Opening and Dedication of the General Oil Company’s New West Texas Field” (August 1919).
The life and times of Joshua S. Cosden from the Big Spring Herald, various editions; living in a tent in Bigheart from El Paso Herald-Post, May 11, 1932; contruction of the refinery in Tulsa from the Muskogee Times Democrat, December 1, 1913; capacity of Tulsa refinery and what it produced, from the Morning Tulsa Daily World, August 12, 1915; million-dollar life insurance policy from the Morning Tulsa Daily World, February 24, 1916; details of mansion in Palm Beach, Cosden’s reputation in the press, and his admiration for The Great Gatsby from the Palm Beach Post, January 24, 1982; Nellie Neves divorce details, quote from Cosden’s first wife (“He’ll make a comeback…”) and quotes from society writers (“Men and women whose surnames had been in Blue Book and Social Registers…”) from the Palm Beach Post, January 5, 1930; millionaires buying up Cosden’s racehorses from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 13, 1927. Other information came from the books Then Came Oil: The Story of the Last Frontier by C. B. Glasscock (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1938) and The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited.
Details of Big Spring during the oil boom of 1927–29 and Hotel Settles construction and opening, from the Big Spring Herald, various editions.
Dora Roberts information from History of Howard County: 1882–1982, previously cited.
Cosden in receivership from the Big Spring Herald, November 14, 1930.
Damage to small towns during Great Depression from The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited.
Trouble in the cotton market, low prices, from the Big Spring Herald, December 13, 1929.
The most cotton grown in United States in 1926 from “Cotton Production Remains a Multibillion Dollar Asset,” The Oklahoman, February 23, 1986.
Chapter 4
The family’s return to Georgia and details about John Lewis’s parents from interviews with Frances M. Varner and Clarence Mealer, previously cited.
The family riding trains to California, railroad bulls, and rumors of a murder from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited, in addition to interviews with Katie Jones Cathey, Big Spring, Texas, May 5, 2014; Rodney Lee, Odessa, Texas, December 2, 2012; and Bill White, Dickinson, Texas, April 29, 2014.
Details about kids riding trains during Great Depression from Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression by Errol Lincoln Uys (Routledge, 2003).
Life on the Jones farm in Knott, Texas, came from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited, and unpublished essays by Earl Jones, Odessa, Texas, (dates unknown).
Cotton boom in Big Spring from the Big Spring Herald, August 24, 1932, and various other editions.
The Dust Bowl’s impact on Big Spring from the Big Spring Herald, various editions.
The federal government buying cattle under the Agriculture Adjustment Act from the Big Spring Herald, June 29, 1934.
Story of government killing the Joneses’ cattle from Earl Jones (essays, previously cited) and interview with John Currie, Big Spring, Texas, February 20, 2015.
Oil market rebound during the Depression from Big Spring Herald, various editions, and The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited.
Bob finding work with oil companies from interviews with Bill White, previously cited, and Wayne Jones, via telephone, May 23, 2014.
Chapter 5
Bud working for Shell, family’s new house, life in Forsan taken from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited.
Dust storms in Big Spring and Forsan from the Big Spring Herald, various editions, May 1933 through April 1936.
Dri
lling deeper holes in the Permian Basin from The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest, Vol. 1, Era of Discovery by Samuel D. Myres, previously cited.
Lee Pruitt beating Allie from interview with Barbara Tyler, previously cited.
Bud’s death from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited.
Bob and Opal’s meeting, courtship, and wedding from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited, and Zelda Odom, San Antonio, Texas, February 26, 2013.
Chapter 6
Hard times for Bud and Bertha’s children after Bud’s death from interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited.
John Lewis’s death from official death certificate and the Big Spring Herald, June 13, 1938. Severe storm damage in Big Spring from the Big Spring Herald, same edition.
Reverend W. A. Nicholas details from the Abilene Reporter-News, various editions.
Bob Wills details from San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills by Charles R. Townsend (University of Illinois Press, 1976) and interviews with Frances M. Varner, previously cited.
Part 2
Chapter 1
Wink, Texas, details and life during the Depression from interviews with Zelda Odom, previously cited, Oil Booms: Social Change in Five Texas Towns by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien (University of Nebraska Press, 1982), and Life in the Oil Fields by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien (Texas Monthly Press, 1986).
Clem Wilkerson details, salvation on the street, from multiple interviews with Homer Wilkerson, Big Spring, Texas, from October 2012 through February 2017; plus interview with Bill and Veda White, Dickinson, Texas, June 27, 2012.
Mary Lou Wilkerson death from the Big Spring Herald, November 19, 1937, and interviews with Homer Wilkerson, previously cited.
