No Mystery, It’s From Perry Post Article in 1952

Milam County Historical Commission
Milam County, Texas

All Credit for this article
goes to Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter

Editor's Corner - Mike Brown

Rockdale Reporter - 2015-12-17

For once, the impenetrable Internet was, well, penetrable.

This photo of downtown Rockdale, looking east from the Cameron-Main intersection, turned

up on the Internet during the past week and drew a lot of nice comments.

I mean really nice comments, lots of people saying good and positive things about our

town.

What it didn’t draw was a quick identification of the photo.

It was obviously taken a long time ago. All you have to do is look at the cars and the

configuration of the buildings to tell that.

There were some guesses as to when it was taken.

But there’s no mystery about this photo. It was taken in the fall of 1952.

The first “clue” is an easy one. The original was in color.

Not a lot of color photography in the era of these vehicles and especially not a lot of

color photography in Rockdale.

After that clue, well, there are some of us who just plain recognized it.

It was from the Dec. 27, 1952, Saturday Evening Post article “Rockdale: The Town Where it

Rains Money,” by our native author, George Sessions Perry.

It was taken by photographer Bill Shrout, obviously from the top of the building that

houses Western Divas today and was the longtime Hodges’ Man’s Shop.

Here’s the background. The year 1952 was a special one in Rockdale’s history.

Alcoa was building its smelter and the town was booming. Rockdale tripled in size.

When Texas published its monthly lists indicated building activity that year suddenly

there was Rockdale right up there near the top and competing with places like Dallas and

Odessa, not towns its size.

In fact, Rockdale’s building permits that year totaled $1,430,972. And that’s in “1952

dollars,” whatever they were.

(It would be 21 years before Rockdale’s building permits eclipsed a million dollars

again, and that was only because of the permit for the new Richards Memorial Hospital.)

Perry was an established author, had written dozens of articles for the Post. So he was

the logical choice to write its article about the nation’s newest boom town.

And that’s what Perry did, describing Rockdale’s new status.

The photo caption notes a new innovation for our town—parking meters along the highway.

Shrout’s other photos with the 1952 article include construction at Alcoa (of course), an

unnamed trailer park, a party at the H. H. Coffield home and horseback riding at

Coffield’s Diamond H Ranch.

And my favorite. A photo of a grocery store co-owner waiting on customers.

The grocery was the old McLeod and Timmerman’s. The co-owner was the late Albert

Timmerman Sr.

The photo was taken just a few paces from where I’m sitting here writing this column 63

years later.

I grew up, quite literally across an alley from Mr. Timmerman.

It may not “rain money” here any more but it can sure rain memories.

mike@rockdalereporter.com