| |
Random Notes from East Texasby
Bob Bowman | |
A
half-dime and other coins:
Like others in East
Texas, William Williams, 73, likes to poke around ghost towns with his metal
detector.
What he has unearthed only inches from the ground’s surface
may surprise you.
Williams once found a half-dime from 1853. Just for
the record, a half-dime isn’t a nickel; it had its own denomination, but it was
considerable smaller than a dime. Williams also dug up a three-cent piece from
1866, another rarity, as well as a one cent piece the size of today’s quarter
from 1885 and another the size of a fifty-cent piece.
Some of Williams’
discoveries are real U.S. coins, but others were created for sawmill towns such
as Pine Island, west of Lufkin,
where his father once worked. The coins were often called “tokens” and often used
by sawmill owners to pay their employees. The tokens could be redeemed for merchandise.
The
Holy Oak:
Images of Jesus and Mary are always popping up in strange
places, such as a tortilla in 1977, a grilled cheese sandwich in 2004, and on
a dental X-ray, also in 2004.
But when Timo Bueno, an employee of a construction
company, paused for a lunch break on Jimmy Ezell’s property at Buffalo
in Leon County, he looked up at a limb which had been cut.
There, he saw
an image of Jesus in the end of the limb.
Since then, folks have been
coming to Buffalo from
all over to see the image and Ezell regrets that the end of the limb, which might
have contained additional images, was burned.
After all, a ten-year-old
sandwich with the Virgin Mary’s image recently sold on e-Bay for $28,000.
An
East Texas link with Canada:
When
Canada celebrated the 150th anniversary of its first oil discovery in 2009, an
historic East Texas product became
a part of the celebration.
Lufkin Industries, Inc., of Lufkin,
which celebrated its centennial in 2002, donated a vintage 1938 pumping unit to
the Canadian Discovery Centre in Devon, Canada. The Devon facility hosted portions
of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebration.
Bob Bowman's East Texas
February 23, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman | |
|
