Milam County Historical Commission
Milam County, Texas
Milam County, Texas
All credit for this article goes to
Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
Mike Brown
and the
Rockdale Reporter
Happy 1917, even if I know what it brings
Editor's Corner - Mike Brown
Rockdale Reporter - 2016-12-29
I’d like to go back in time but that’s impossible. Even so I get to do the next best thing and I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Probably should explain.
For the past seven years I’ve written a “100 years ago” section for the history column you find on this page.
It was previously called “10-20-40” but about 2010 or so The Reporter’s back files become more-or-less continuous. There were substantial gaps before 1910.
I really enjoy doing it. Ironically the 100-year-ago stuff is all new to me. I wrote most of the things in the 10 and 20 and 40(!) year ago paper.
What you need to know about the 100-year-ago experience is that I don’t cheat. By that I mean I don’t skip ahead in the Reporter files to find out what happens to stories that are playing out in the “current” week.
I didn’t start out to do this. But I soon realized by reading the paper weekby- week as they read it in those long-ago years, I was almost experiencing the lives of Rockdale folks back then in real time.
Is that crazy? Probably, but I think it’s crazy and cool.
I get to live with them week-to-week. If I encounter a name and wonder “didn’t he or she die in 1933?” or something, I don’t look it up. Inside the moment, we don’t get to do that. I’m very much enjoying being in the moment where the cotton prices are big front-page news and the (silent) Dixie Theatre is donating part of its proceeds from an eight-reeler to the Women’s Club.
But I’m worried about my town as 1916 turns into 1917. You see, I know something they don’t.
But soon will.
I know that the global war, which has been nothing but background noise in The Reporter for two and a half years is about to reach out and impact our/my placid little town.
In the year we are “entering,” a president who campaigned on keeping America out of war will lead us into one. That would be Woodrow Wilson. World War I will provide both his greatest moment and his ultimate downfall.
World War I will change us profoundly and permanently. I don’t have to cheat and look ahead to know that.
By the end of “this year” there will be a news photo in The Reporter of the first draft call of Rockdale area boys. Yeah, I know they’ll come back men but those faces who lined up on the front porch of Mayor H. E. Meyer’s Bell Street mansion were boys. Trust me.
I drive by that porch almost every day. I think about those faces.
I know a city council meeting in 1917 will break up because word is received that a Rockdale man, Cpl. Rudolph Fiesler, has been killed in France. He won’t be the last.
I know that two brothers who used to be sprawled out on the cotton in the back of a wagon on the way to be ginned here will die within days of each other in the waning moments of the war.
Hicks and James Carlyle. Rockdale’s American Legion Post will be named for them.
There will be good times again in Rockdale. But this is the start of the bad stuff.
MB
mike@rockdalereporter.com
.
Editor's Corner - Mike Brown
Rockdale Reporter - 2016-12-29
I’d like to go back in time but that’s impossible. Even so I get to do the next best thing and I’m having a lot of fun with it.
Probably should explain.
For the past seven years I’ve written a “100 years ago” section for the history column you find on this page.
It was previously called “10-20-40” but about 2010 or so The Reporter’s back files become more-or-less continuous. There were substantial gaps before 1910.
I really enjoy doing it. Ironically the 100-year-ago stuff is all new to me. I wrote most of the things in the 10 and 20 and 40(!) year ago paper.
What you need to know about the 100-year-ago experience is that I don’t cheat. By that I mean I don’t skip ahead in the Reporter files to find out what happens to stories that are playing out in the “current” week.
I didn’t start out to do this. But I soon realized by reading the paper weekby- week as they read it in those long-ago years, I was almost experiencing the lives of Rockdale folks back then in real time.
Is that crazy? Probably, but I think it’s crazy and cool.
I get to live with them week-to-week. If I encounter a name and wonder “didn’t he or she die in 1933?” or something, I don’t look it up. Inside the moment, we don’t get to do that. I’m very much enjoying being in the moment where the cotton prices are big front-page news and the (silent) Dixie Theatre is donating part of its proceeds from an eight-reeler to the Women’s Club.
But I’m worried about my town as 1916 turns into 1917. You see, I know something they don’t.
But soon will.
I know that the global war, which has been nothing but background noise in The Reporter for two and a half years is about to reach out and impact our/my placid little town.
In the year we are “entering,” a president who campaigned on keeping America out of war will lead us into one. That would be Woodrow Wilson. World War I will provide both his greatest moment and his ultimate downfall.
World War I will change us profoundly and permanently. I don’t have to cheat and look ahead to know that.
By the end of “this year” there will be a news photo in The Reporter of the first draft call of Rockdale area boys. Yeah, I know they’ll come back men but those faces who lined up on the front porch of Mayor H. E. Meyer’s Bell Street mansion were boys. Trust me.
I drive by that porch almost every day. I think about those faces.
I know a city council meeting in 1917 will break up because word is received that a Rockdale man, Cpl. Rudolph Fiesler, has been killed in France. He won’t be the last.
I know that two brothers who used to be sprawled out on the cotton in the back of a wagon on the way to be ginned here will die within days of each other in the waning moments of the war.
Hicks and James Carlyle. Rockdale’s American Legion Post will be named for them.
There will be good times again in Rockdale. But this is the start of the bad stuff.
MB
mike@rockdalereporter.com
.