Category: Marble Falls and the Area Around it.

Crazy Times, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., Smithwick, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

The Car Business

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I often talk about all the different cars I drove when I was a kid. I may have shown up to school in a different vehicle just about any day. To say we were in the used car business would be an over statement. Cecil Lewis was an entrepreneur of his own kind back in the day. He dabbled in about anything that made a little money or kept his sons busy. Buying and fixing up used cars was but one of his ventures. In my early days working for Charlie Ulbricht, I watched him do body work out of … Continue reading The Car Business

Crazy Times, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., My Friends, The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Before I Became Civilized

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Back in high school driving around and drinking beer or even stronger libations was a common practice. Most all the nights run together, one not being different from the other. Occasionally something happened that sets certain nights apart. Getting intoxicated and left up at Roadside without any clothes on, ending up in jail for the night, now that was memorable. A night when a quite a bit older fellow decided I needed to be taken down a notch or two, so we met up in the Lakeland Minimax parking lot and entered into an extended slugfest that could have lasted … Continue reading Before I Became Civilized

Crazy Times, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

A Typical Friday Night Growing Up in Marble Falls in the 1960s

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We would drive through town, go up the roadside park up on the hill, south of town, turn around then drive to the far north end of town. Turn around and repeat that same course dozens of times during a Friday or Saturday night. The whole circle would be no more than a couple of miles. Very few cars would speed, mostly just cruising up and down looking cool. Gasoline cost 35 cents per gallon, so for $5.00 you could drive around all night long. Most of us were drinking beer and having a good ol time. There were drugs … Continue reading A Typical Friday Night Growing Up in Marble Falls in the 1960s

Amazing Things, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

Dennis Gerald Skinner – Burnet County Hero

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Yesterday a story was floated around here about a young child that was brought before the whole school or at least his class and given licks for taking something that didn’t belong to him. I wasn’t present when it happened but somehow I remember hearing about it. It was sort of a legendary thing around campus, I guess. I knew Dennis in a very minor way, running across him from time to time. The last time, he came and interviewed with me for a job, sometime in the late 1990’s. I remember we met at a job site near US … Continue reading Dennis Gerald Skinner – Burnet County Hero

Amazing Things, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., The History of TexasLeave a comment

Bat Guano Mining Around The Area and Blowout, Texas

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Bat Guano Mining During The Civil War:https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dkc09 I have never heard of this place or such a thing happening over by Johnson City or Round Mt. or Willow City. Blowout, TexasMore on primitive bat dooky mining and the hazards associated.http://www.texasescapes.com/MichaelBarr/Blowout.htm Blowout Community, a settlement fifteen miles northwest of Johnson City in northwestern Blanco County, dates back to 1854. That year a party of two dozen homesteaders from Kentucky settled on the east side of Comanche Creek near Comanche Spring, about three miles below the creek’s origin. As more settlers moved into the area the small community of Blowout developed upstream … Continue reading Bat Guano Mining Around The Area and Blowout, Texas

Marble Falls and the Area Around it., Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

The Dam Across The “Marble” Falls

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There was a discussion today on The Angora Chronicles Facebook Group about Marble Falls being named that, when it is really famous for its pink granite. I explained that Marble Falls got its name due to the natural falls that occurred just a few hundred feet upstream of the US 281 bridge that crosses the Colorado River on south end Marble Falls. I also said that there was a naming mistake calling the rock there marble when it is actually a much harder rock, dolomite. The dolomite found in the Marble Falls area is darker in color, to an almost … Continue reading The Dam Across The “Marble” Falls

Cecil Lewis, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., The Early Days6 Comments

The Pure Stone Company of Marble Falls, Texas

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Vernon Earl “Skinny” Childers, read a report published in 1951 by The University of Texas that stated that the most “exceptionally pure limestone” anywhere could be found in the Marble Falls area. He had a vision that the calcium carbonate product, a powder fine substance made by pulverizing this limestone would be used in a variety of industrial applications. With the superior quality of this limestone deposit, there was a great business opportunity so in 1952 he formed Pure Stone Company and started building a crushing and processing facility in Marble Falls down adjacent to the railroad depot. The limestone … Continue reading The Pure Stone Company of Marble Falls, Texas

Marble Falls and the Area Around it., My Friends, Smithwick3 Comments

Charlie & Minnie Campbell – A Love Story

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This is a story about an old couple that showed up in Smithwick when I was just a kid. When people said their name, they always left off the p and b. It was Charlie and Minnie Camel. Minnie and Charlie arrived in an old Studebaker car with everything they owned, including a couple of dogs. They never had children. They claimed they had no other close family. They just had each other. Minnie was from Oklahoma. She always said she was part Indian. While she had a round pie plate face, she did have real high cheek bones. A … Continue reading Charlie & Minnie Campbell – A Love Story

Amazing Things, Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., The Early Days, Thoughts and MusingsLeave a comment

My Wife Always Tells Me To Pace Myself

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This was a FaceBook post I originally made back at the end of 2014, just a few months after the inception of the AngoraChronicles. My problem is when I think of something I have to get busy with it then and there or I may never get it done. It’s that way with writing stories. When something pops in my head, I need to get it written or I may never think of it again. That may be the reason that in just a few months time I’ve written about everything that’s happened to me and around me in a … Continue reading My Wife Always Tells Me To Pace Myself

Amazing Things, Crazy Times, Funny Happenings, Marble Falls and the Area Around it., Thoughts and Musings2 Comments

The Fortune Teller

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If a fortune teller tells you something, maybe you should listen. We traveled from Marble Falls to San Antonio for our 1970 senior trip. Whoopee, that was a dandy trip of less than a hundred miles, after putting in 12 hard years. Late in the afternoon we ended up by Breckenridge Park at an amusement park and arcade. Several of us, Madeline included, which is now my wife of over 49 years, decided to go to a fortune teller. When it was my turn she read my palms or something and said ” one day you will write a book”. … Continue reading The Fortune Teller