Mercedes Tribune (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 50, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 24, 1923 Page: 3 of 8
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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1923
MERCEDES TRIBUNE
50
GOOD
CIGARETTES
,< m
GENUINE
“BULL”
DURHAM
TOBACCO
A searchlight of 1,280,000,000 can-
dlepower is now being produced.
Californian, arrested for speeding,
sans brakes or tail lights, was found
hauling dynamite. Probably used it
for starting in this cold weather.
Men folks really wear ties in
August as well as in January, but
along about this time of the year
the tie counter clerk must find that
hard to believe.
6 6 6
is a Prescription for Colds* Fever
and LaGrippe.. It’s the most speedy
remedy we know, preventing Pneu-
monia. 48-lot
INSTITUTE WORK
LEADERS NAMED
Mercedes, Texas
(Continued from page 1.)
We, the undersigned public school
officials and teachers of Cameron and
Hidalgo .County, realizing that the!
time has come when the defects of j
our present school system through- j
out the State of Texas and so glar- j
ingly evident and so obstructive to j
the progress of all our schools as to!
threaten the very existence of the
entire system—if system it may be
called—of public education in the
whole State; and realizing further
that a general reaction having already
set in in favor of the reconstruction
of this defective so called system of
schools, now is the psychologic time
to act in cooperation with the State
Department of Education, the State
Legislators, and all other agencies
whose offices may be invoked, to aid
in this great work; therefore,
Resolved, that
LMnmmHiuimnmmmuummiimiHnju
“ ' • “
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El
A Story the ||
Highlands |l
: “
= i WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE ||
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Copyright, 1922, by the Macmillan Co.
People are
telling us—
that we have never before offered- such wonder-
ful values as are to be offered in the EDMONDS
‘FOOT-FITTERS.”
If you want comfort, workmanship, style and
the finest leather to be had at a reasonable price,
you will have your feet fitted with EDMONDS
“FOOT-FITTERS” at Featherston’s, the only ex-
clusive shoe store in Mercedes.
In Black and Tan
.50
One price
One price
Featherston's
Home of Good Shoes
Course--
Modern Farming Demands
Modern Machinery
And equally of course, the best results in cleaning and
pressing may be expected from the establishment which U
equipped with the most modern machinery. It is only be-
cause Cope possesses such machinery that he is able to
turn out ODORLESS cleaning which is ODORLESS.
WE MAY NOT BE THE CHEAPEST, BUT WE ARE THE BEST
ROYERS'
WE CALL FOR AND |l O
DELIVER. PHONE 1 O
Mercedes,
'Texas.
^»QOCKK>00€>000€>00000000000000€>000000»0000000000000000€>C
Acala Cotton Seed
Direct from Watson the Breeder
$2.25 PER BUSHEL
Homegrown seed $1.25 per bu.
E. L. ROTHROCK
At the Farmers Gin
i^QOtX$QQC>OQOOOOOOQf>OQOOOOOQOOOOOOOOOOOOOQOOOOOOOOOOOtS:
we heartily endorse
9 -
the program of plans as set forth
in the public speeches of our Gov-
ernor, the Honorable Pat M. Neff, as
submitted to the State Legislature
and endorsed by the State Depart-
ment of Education and the State
among other things,, the following
Teachers’ Association, comprising,
items which we consider vitally es-
sential to the establishment of a real
public school system worthy of the
great State of Texas:
1. The appropriation of $4,500,000
from the general revenue to supple-
ment the state available school fund
for ,the year 1922-23.
2. The levy of taxes upon incomes,
inheritances, amusements, luxuries
and natural resources for the benefit
of public education sufficient to raise
a school fund of at least $25.00 per
capita ot the children of scholastic
age.
3. The appropriation of $2,000,000
for the aid of the rural schools for
each of the years, 1923-1924 and 1924-
1925.
4. If constitutional, permitting a
county to vote itself into an inde-
pendent school district and to vote a 1
tax, the proceeds to he disbursed hv!
the County Board of Trustees accord-!
ing to the needs of the districts.
5. The appropriation of adequate
funds for the support of the State
Department of Education and the
higher institutions of learning.
* 6. The placing of all school dis-
tricts having fewer than 500 scho-
lastics under the complete supervis-
ion of the county superintendent and
the county board of trustees.
7. Re-enacting the law requiring
trustees to pay teachers for attend-
ance upon institutes.
8. Providing for taking the scho-
lastic census by means of actual en-
rollment in the public school during
the preceding year.
9. Requiring the English language
to be the basis of instruction in a1!
schools both public and private.
10. An exhaustive survey of the
entire educational system to be made
by national experts who are non
residents of the state.
11. Certification of county super-
intendents and providing for filling
vacancies in the office.
12. All children from the age of
six to twenty^one to have the privi-
lege of free school. The free kinder-
garten age is from four years to six
years the free school- age should be
gin with the close of that period.
13. Compulsory school age to be
raised to sixteen, or the completion of
the seventh grade,and length of term
extended to 120 days.
14. Districts to be permitted to
issue bonds to buy or construct teach_
erages, provided the district co be
accommodated has two or more teach
ers employed in a single school.
Signed:
Nannie Mer Buck, Superintendent
Mercedes Public Schools.
Paul W. Phipps, Superintendent
Harlingen Public Schools.
Marie B. Morrow, Primary Teacher,
Mercedes Schools.
Pearl Lowry, Rural Teacher, Hidal-
go County Schools.
G. C. Jones, Superintendent San
Benito Public Schools.
Carl A. Hendrix, Principal Harlin-
gen Grammar School.
H. C. Baker, Superintendent Edin-
burg Public Schools.
P. D. Kennamer, County Superin-
tended! Cameron County Schools
J. S. Bunn, County Superintendent
Hidalgo County Schools.
J. Lee Stambaugh, Superintendent
Pharr-San Juan Public Schools.
C
Greenland is a land of ice. Ice has
been accumulating in the interior of
Greenland since the dawn of history.
It is estimated that at present the ice
fields cover an area, of 600,000 miles
and are on average a mile and a half
thick.
In spite of all the shooting, statis-
tics show married men live longer.
A West Virginia man of 83 lias just
ridden his first street car. This is a
long time to wait for a street car.
If cussing the weather made us fat
we would all he trying to reduce.
RGSSING the Missouri river into
Kansas, the west-bound traveler
begins a steady, upward climb,
until he reaches the summit of the
Rockies. The journey through Kansas
covers in four hundred miles nearly
five thousand feet of the long, upward
slant. In that long hillside there are
three or four distinct kinds of land-
scape, distinguished from one another
by the trees that trim the bottom.
The hills and bluffs that roll away
from Hie river are covered with scrub
oaks, elms, walnuts and sycamores. As
the wayfarer pushes westward, the oak
drops back, then the sycamore follows
the walnut, and finally the elm disap-
pears, until three hundred miles to the
westward the horizon of the "gently
rolling” prairie is serrated by the
scraggy cottonwood, that rises awk-
wardly by some saudbarred stream
oozing over the moundy land. Another
fifty miles, and a Garden City, high up
on the background of the panorama,
even the cottonw ood staggers; and
here and there, around some sinkhole
in the great flat prairie, droops a deso-
late willow—the last weary pilgrim
from the lowlands.
When the traveler has mounted to
this high table land, nearly four hun-
dred miles from the Missouri, he may
walk for days without seeing any green
thing higher than his head. He may
journey for hours on horseback, and
not climb a hill, seeing before him only
the level and often barren plain,
scarred now and then by irrigation
ditches.
The even line of the horizon is sel-
dom marred. The silence of such a
scene gnaws the glamor from the
heart. Men become harsh and hard;
women grow withered and sodden un-
der its blighting power. The song of
wood birds is not heard; even the
mournful plaint of the meadow lark
loses its sentiment, where the dreary
clanking drone of the windmill is the
one song which really brings good tid-
ings with it. Long and fiercely sounds
this unrhythmical monody in tin
night, when the traveler lies down t<
rest in the littler sun-burned, pine
board town. .The gaunt arms of th(
wheel hurl its imprecations at him as
he rises to resume his journey into tin
silence, under the great gray dome
with its canopy pegged tightly down
about him everywhere.
Crops are as bountiful in Kansas as
elsewhere on the globe. It is the con-
stant cry for aid, coming from this
plateau—only a small part, of the state
—which reaches the world’s ears, and
the world blames Kansas. The fail
springs on these highlands lure home-
seekers to their ruin.
Hundreds of men and women havi
been tempted to death or worse, b]
this Lorelei of the prairies.
A young man named Burkholdei
came out to Fountain county in 1S85
He had been a well-to-do young fellov
in Illinois, was a graduate of an inlant
college, a man of good judgment, or
sense, of a welbarranged mental per
spective. In 1885 money was plentiful.
He stocked his farm, put on a mort-
gage, and brought a wife back from
the home of his boyhood. She was a
young woman of culture, who put a
bookshelf in the corner of the best ol
the three rooms in the yellow pine
shanty, in which she and her husband
lived. She brought her upright piano,
and adorned her bedroom floor with
bright rugs. She bought magazines at
the “Post Office Book Store” of the
praire town, She was not despondent
The vast stretches of green cheered
her through the hot summer. There
was a novel fascination in the wide,
treeless horizon which charmed her for
a while. At first she never tired ol
glancing up from her work, through the
south window of the kitchen, to see the
level green stretches, and the road that
merged into the distance. She sat in
the shade of the house, and wrote
home cheerful, rollicking letters. As
for roughing it, she enjoyed it thor-
oughly.
The crops did not quite pay the ex-
penses of the year; so “Thomas Burk-
holder and Lizzie his wife” put an-
other mortgage on the farm. The
books and magazines from home still
adorned the best room. And all
through the winter and spring the pre-
vailing spirits of the community
buoyed up tlie young people. It was
during the summer of 1887 that the
first hot winds came. They blighted
everything. The kaffir corn, the grass,
the dust-laden weeds by the wayside
curled up under their fiery breath from
the southwestern desert. Mrs. Burk-
holder stayed indoors. The dust spread
itself over everything. It came into
the house like a flood, pouring through
the loose window frames and weather-
boarding. Mrs. Burkholder, looking out
of her window on these days, could see
only a great dust dragon, writhing up
and down the brown road and over the
prairie for miles ami miles. The scene
seemed weirdly dry. She found her-
self longing, one day, for a fleck ot
water in the landscape. That longing
grew upon her. She said nothing nj
it, but in her day dreams there was
always a mental itching to put watet
into the lusterless picture framed by
her kitchen window. It was a kind
of soul thirst, In one of her letters
she wrote:
“The hot winds have killed every-
thing this year, but most of all I grievt
for the little cottonwood saplings
the ‘eighty’ in front of the house
There is not a tree anywhere In sight,
and as the government requires that
we should plant trees on our place, as
a partial payment for it, I was so in
hopes that these would do well. They
are burned up now*. You don’t know
howr lonesome it seems without trees.”
She did not tell the home folk that
,her piano and the books had gone to
‘buy provisions for the winter. She did
not tell the home folk that she had not
bought a new dress since she left Illi-
nois. She did not let her petty cares
jburden her letter. She wrrote of gen-
eralities. “You do not know how I
miss the hills. Tom and I rode twenty
;miles yesterday, to a place called, the
Taylor bottom. It Is a deep sink-hole,
iperhaps fifty feet deep, containing
;about ten square acres. By getting
Jdown into this we have the effect of
!hills. You cannot' know how good and
:snug, and tucked in and ‘comfy’ it
seemed. It is so naked at the house
with the knife-edge on the horizon,
land only the sky over you, Tom and I
.have been busy. I haven’t had time
(to read the story in the magazine you
.sent me. Tom can’t get corduroys out
|here. You should see him in overalls.”
Mrs. Burkholder helped her husband
look after the cattle, The hired man
went away in the early fall. This she
did not write home, either. All
through the winter days she heard the
keen wind whistle around the house,
and when she was alone a dread
blanched her face. The great gray
dome seemed to be holding her its
prisoner. She felt chained under it.
She shut her eyes and strove to get
away from it in fancy, to think of
green hills and woodland ; but her eyes
tore themselves open, and with a hyp-
notic terror she went to the window,
where the prairie thrall bound her
again in its chains.
The cemetery for the prairie town
had been started during the spring be-
fore, and some one had planted there-
in a - solitary cottonwood sapling. Its
two dead, gaunt branches' seemed to
be beckoning her, and all day she
thought she heard the winds shriek
through the new iron fences around
the graves and through the grass that
grew wild about the dead. The scene
haunted her. It was for this end that
the gray dome held her, she thought,
as she listened during the cold nights
after planting time in 1889, the land
was gloriously green. But before July
the promises had been mocked by the
hiss of the hot wind in the dead grass.
That fall one of their horses died.
Saturday after Saturday Burkholder
went to the prairie towm and brought
home groceries and coal. It was a
source of constant terror to him that
some day his wife might ask him how
he got these supplies. She hid it from
herself as long as she could. All win-
ter they would hot admit to each other
that they were living on “aid.” On
many a gray, blustering afternoon,
when Burkholder was in the village
getting provisions, a straggler on the
road might see his wife coming around
the house, with two buckets of water
in her hands, the water splashing
against her feet, which were encased
in a pair of her husband’s old shoes,
the wind pushing her thin calico skirts
against her stiff limbs and her frail
body bent stiffly in the man’s coat that
she wore. Her arms and shoulders
seemed to shiver and crouch with the
cold, and her blue features were so
drawn that her friendly smile at thd
wayfarer was only a grimace.
In the spring many men in Fountain
county went East looking for work.
They left their wives with God and
the county commissioners. Burkholder
dumbly went with them. In March, the
covered w^agon train began to file past
the Burkholder house. By April it
was a continuous line—shabby, tat-
tered, rickety, dying. Here came a
wagon covered with bed quilts, there
another topped with oilcloth table coy-
ers; another followed, patched with
everything. For two years the mover’s
caravan trailing across the plains had
taken the shape of a huge dust-colored
serpent in the woman’s fancy; now it
seemed to Mrs. Burkholder that the
terrible creature was withering away,
that this was its skeleton. The treGr
less landscape worried her more and
more; the steel dome seemed set tight*,
er over her, and she sat thirsting for
water in the landscape.
After a month’s communion with her
fancies, Mrs. Burkholder nailed a
black rag over the kitchen window.
But the arms of the dead sapling in the.
cemetery gyrated wildly in her sick
imagination. It was a long summer,
and when it was done there was one
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“Her Blue Features Were So Drawn That Her Friendly Smile at the Way-
farer Was Only a Grimace.”
to the hard, dry snow as it beat
against the board shanty wherein she
lay awake.
In the spring the mover’s caravan
filed by the house, starting eastward
before planting time. When the train
of wagons had passed the year be-
fore, Mrs. Burkholder had been amused
by the fantastic legends, which the
wagon covers—white, clean, prosper-
ous—had borne. “Kansas or bust,”
they used to read when headed west-
ward. “Busted” was the laconic
legend, written under the old motto
on their first eastward trip. “Going
back to life’s folks,” had been a com-
mon jocose motto at first. Mrs. Burk-
holder and her husband had laughed
over this the year before, but this
year as she saw the long line file out
of the west into the east, she missed
the banners. She noticed, with a men-
tal pang, that those who came out of
the country this year seemed to be
thankful to get out at all. There were
times when she had to struggle to con-
ceal her cowardice; for she washed to
turn away from the fight, to flee from
the gray dome, and from the beckon-
ing of the dead, cottonwood in the
graveyard.
The spring slippedrawray and another
sultry summer came on, and then a
long, dry fall. Mrs. Burkholder and her
husband worked together.
There were whole weeks when she
neglected her toilet; she tried to
brighten up in the evening, and duti-
fully went at the magazines that were
regularly sent to her by the home
folks.
But she seemed to need sleep, and
the cares of the day weighed upon her.
The interests of the world of culture
grew small in her vision. The work
before her seemed to demand all her
thought; so that serial after serial
slipped through the magazines unread,
and new literary men and fads rose
and fell, all unknown to her. The pile
of magazines at the foot of the bed
grew dustier every day.
The Burkholders got their share of
the seed-grain sent to Fountain county
by the Kansas legislature and, just
more vacant house, one more among
hundreds far out on the highlands.
There is one move mound in the bleak
country graveyard, where the wind,
shrieking through the iron fences and
the crackling, dead cottonwood
branches, has never learned a slumber
song to sob for a tired soul. But there
are times wffien the wind seems to
moan upon its sun-parched chords like
the cry of some lone spirit groping its-
tangled way back to the lowlands, the
green pastures, the still waters, and to
the peace that passeth understanding.
Traveling Trout.
No company of anglers can long be
together without having a discussion
regarding the sea trout and what man-
ner of fish he really la According tQ
the latest scientific view a sea trout
is merely a trout which has been to
sea and come back again. A propor-
tion of the trout in certain districts
have, in fact, adopted a way of life
similar to that of the salmon, driven
to it possibly by need of food, or per-
chance obeying some ancient Instinct
of the race. Why some trout should
migrate and others stay in fresh wa-
ter is a mystery deeper than the
wholesale migration of the salmon,
and it is not exactly helped by the
existence, and flourishing, of a kind
of half-way type of fish which is
known as the estuarine, or slob trout,
and which lives in brackish water,
growing sometimes to a great size.
When Fish Walk.
Two Arabic travelers of the Ninth
century reported the existence of an
Indian freshwater fish which was able
to walk about the land.
The same fish was later described
by the scientist Waldorf, who saw
this finny creature in a fissure in a
palm tree not far from a pond. As it
climbed it pressed its pointed and ex-
tended gill covers against the side
of the crack, threw Its tail back and
forth, pressed the thorn of its anal
fin against the support, and closed its
gill covers with a jerk. In this way
it advanced a step.
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Holland, W. D. & Buell, Ralph L. Mercedes Tribune (Mercedes, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 50, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 24, 1923, newspaper, January 24, 1923; Mercedes, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1002739/m1/3/?rotate=270: accessed June 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library.