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Legendary race card driver and Texan A.J. Foyt driving a dirt midget car, in 1961. Look at that dirt flying!

Photo by Peter Hamer.

The rain comes down on Preston Avenue in Houston, 1957. A classic array of signs, an awesome car ... too great! Taken by the renowned Henri Cartier-Bresson for Life Magazine.

Such colorful characters populate the annals of Texas history. This is Christopher Columbus Rogers, born in Anderson County near Palestine, Texas, in 1846, the son of county sheriff William Rogers. Christopher spent the Civil War as a guard at a Confederate prison and, after the war, worked as a printer at a Palestine newspaper. Rogers had a violent nature, evidenced by his murder of Dan Cary, a Republican marshal in Palestine. After killing Cary, Christopher operated a saloon in Tyler for a time, where he killed a fellow saloonkeeper, Mose Remington, in a gunfight. In 1874 he was elected city marshal of Palestine, an office that he held until his death 14 years later. Palestine was a tough, violent railroad town at that time; maybe it took a tough, violent man to marshal it.

During his tenure, Rogers is reputed to have taken the lives of nine more men. In 1887 he was involved in a gunfight with a friend, Tom O'Donnell, who was resisting arrest. In the melee, O'Donnell was killed and Rogers was suspended, pending investigation of the killing. Rogers, while sitting unarmed in a saloon in 1888, got into an argument over the O'Donnell incident and was stabbed to death by a man named Bill Young. He is buried in Palestine's East Hill Cemetery.

The Texas Quote of the Day:

"I know that in Ames, Iowa, they fancy themselves being experts on the wind, but in Lubbock, Texas, we'll put our wind up against your wind in Iowa."

----- Mike Leach, former head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raider football team

Ed Powell makes a final statement before being hanged on Sept 29, 1891 in Gatesville, Texas. Seated next to him is Jim Leeper, who is also about to be hange. They had been convicted of murdering a cotton farmer. This is the only legal hanging to ever take place in Coryell County.

The Alamo in 1906. If you look closely, there's a banner on the left with advertising for "The Lion and the Mouse." A reference to the Aesop's Fable? The name of a saloon? Hmmmm ... It's still worth visiting, even with the hype and the trinkets. I like staying at the Menger and taking photos of the Alamo at night.

The U.S.S. Constitution aka "Old Ironsides" in Port Arthur, 1932. Super photo of a historic moment!

Scene in Palestine, undated. Perhaps some of the Palestine folks can tell us if these buildings are still there. By the way, if you go to Palestine, don't make the mistake I made the first time I visited and pronounce "Palestine" with a long "I" as in "brine." No sirree bob. There's a long "e" sound in the name of that town, as in the word "seen." It only took me being corrected about 14 times before I finally got it. 'Course, I'm a bit slower than most folks. 😀

Wherever you are in Texas tonight or even if you're just in the Texas of your imagination, Austin's Black Pumas want to lay down some riffs to make your groovin' behoovin'. Nice version of a classic song.

#Youtube

Verna's Cafe in Port Arthur, 1970s. Note the target signifying crawdad races at the bottom right of the mural. I've seen a few of those in the past. Beer is always involved. Verna's was located at 1221 Procter Street, the site of a vacant lot now.

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger during a torrential downpour at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on Halloween Night, 1981. The rain started about 2/3rds of the way through the show and for some reason it just supercharged Mick and the boys. Traces of Texas reader Ricky Gibson sent this photo to me. I learned it was taken by well-known photographer Jay Dickman, contacted Jay, and asked him if I could post this. He agreed, adding that the image is available on the Morrison Hotel Gallery website.

The printing on the photo tells you what this is. It is Bob Rosborough's personal photo of the car that Bonnie and Clyde stole from him in Marshall Texas.

Pretty dang awesome!

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

Galveston Bay is the largest estuary on the Texas coast and the seventh largest in the United States. An estuary is defined as "a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea." Estuaries are transition zones between river environments and ocean environments.

Ranchers in San Angelo, Texas, 1940. Such utterly classic West Texan faces and attire. I wonder what they were talking about. When it would next rain, perhaps, or maybe the finer points of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Who can say?

Photo by Russell Lee.

A house in Crystal City, 1939. Simple, spare, rudimentary, makeshift ... all apply. Life in such a structure would necessarily be tough and elemental. Hot in summer, cold in winter. I've known a few people who grew up in such places and all of them said the experience toughened them and gave them incentive to never again do so. Taken by Russell Lee.

This 1964 photo of the Starship Enterprise studio model used in filming Star Trek was taken outside the production model shop in Burbank, California. It was commissioned by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, a Texan who was born in El Paso in 1921.

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

The great Roger Miller was born 88 years ago today, on January 2, 1936. Many folks think he's from Oklahoma but Roger was born in Fort Worth. He was a great songwriter, of course, but also a great musician, generally speaking, being a very good drummer, bass guitar player ... whatever was needed. He died in 1992, way too young. Here's what the last 50+ years have taught me: if you hear "King of the Road" at any point during the day, the chorus will echo around in your head for at least the remainder of that day and maybe even into the next, depending on whether or not you hear "He Stopped Loving Her Today" somewhere. 😀

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