The Way It Was: Bible saves the life of young soldier
These were some of the stories reported by the Texarkana Gazette this week in history:
100 years ago
Oct. 12, 1915:
REPAIRING FOURTH STREET Oct. 13: FARMERS WOULD BUILD GOOD HIGHWAY BETWEEN TEXARKANA AND MCKINNEY BAYOU
Mass meeting held at County Court House yesterday, and movement received a hearty endorsement. A group of farmers prosecute a canvass at once looking at the building of a good road from this city to McKinney bayou crossing. The route is to extend along the old Genoa road to the town. A committee will circulate petitions among real estate owners in a territory 6 miles wide and 17 miles in length.
Oct. 14:
“RAZORBACKS” DISAPPEARING
After flourishing for many years in East Texas, the noted “razorback” hog is gradually disappearing. Fred David, state commissioner of agriculture said, “I have found they are being replaced by finer bred stock but is impressed by the absence of razorbacks,” during a visit to the area.
Oct. 15:
BIG SHOWS COMING
Texarkana is in for big open-air amusement events within the next few weeks, the great Ringling circus is booked for the 29th of this month, to be followed on Nov. 7 by the 101 Ranch Wild West show, both at the head of their class in the show line.
Oct. 16: 6,000 PEOPLE ATTENDED SUNDAY SCHOOL IN THE CITY OF
TEXARKANA, ARK-TEXAS
Sunday school work in Texarkana has opened for the cool-weather season in good earnest. Summer sojourners have long since returned, and the children careful and attentive parents have, as a rule, been placed in favorite Sunday schools, as well as in day schools. Pastors, officers and teachers have after a long summer of dullness taken a new lease on life. After conducting an overall city count, the numbers are encouraging.
Oct. 17:
HOW WE READ
Oliver Wendell Holms owned up to his preference for reading in books to reading through them. “When I set out to read through a book,” the autocrat wrote, “I always felt that I had a task before me, but when I read in a book, it was the page or the paragraph that I wanted, and which left its impression and became a part of my intellectual furniture.” If we were only franker, most of us would confess to being like Holmes in this matter of our reading.
Oct. 18:
PRAISE
Praise may pull up a shallow nature, but it always brings something of humanity to a deep one. Love and commendation are sweet, but just because they are worth so much the true and earnest spirit is touched with a sense of its own unworthiness as it receives them, a longing to be better fitted for the trust reposed in it. It is not the flash of scorn, but the light of love that reveals us, ourselves, and stirs us to our best effort.
50 years ago Oct. 12, 1965: TEXARKANA COLLEGE RODEO SCHEDULED
The Texarkana College Rodeo Club will present its annual rodeo Nov. 11-13 at the Four States Fair Grounds. College students from a number of schools will participate, competing for prizes that include belt buckles and a saddle. The rodeo will be conducted by National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association rules. Appearing at the rodeo will be Miss Texarkana Bertie Lela Good. Miss Four States Fair and Rodeo of 1965, Sandy Williams, will also appear.
Oct. 13:
BIBLE SAVES LIFE OF YOUNG SOLDIER
A mother rejoiced with renewed faith and prayer Monday when told the Bible she gave her soldier son saved his life in a Viet Nam ambush. A sniper’s bullet pierced the tiny New Testament that Pfc. William David Parker had stashed in his helmet, remembering the instructions of his mother always to keep it with him. “I told him to read it, and it would help him,” a proud Mrs. William T. Parker said. “I sure am glad I gave it to him.” The sniper’s bullet hit Parker’s helmet, plunged through the New Testament and spun out the side. His only injury: A slice of skin off his skull.
Oct. 14: WIFE’S PAY GETTING BETTER
About 14 million married couples bring home two pay checksIn one of every 10 couples, the wife’s is for as much or more than her husband’s.
Oct. 15: BURGLARS CLEAN OUT JEWELRY STORE
Burglars took an undetermined amount of diamonds, watches, money and jewelry from Gordon’s Jewelry, 205 W. Broad St., after they hammered their way through a brick wall into the vault Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. They cut a section from the floor to gain entry to the back of the store and, from there, hammered a 9-inch hole through the 12-inch brick wall into the vault. Total lost is undetermined until an inventory can be done by the company.
Oct. 16: POLLY POINTERS
When I am baking, I keep a No. 2 can full of hot water in my sink. When I have dirty or sticky spoons, I put them in the hot water, and by the time I am ready to wash the dishes, they are practically soaked clean.
Oct. 17: WORLD’S FAIR COMES
TO END SUNDAY NIGHT
The New York’s World’s fair 1964-65—A billion-dollar monument to modern man, his space-age gadgetry and his yearning for better life shuts down forever Sunday night. Fading quietly into the history books and the memories of its 50 million patrons, the giant exposition will not be forgotten easily.
Oct. 18: ODD FACTS
The West Point mess hall has an automatic dishwasher 26 feet long, with a capacity of 10,000 pieces per hour. ALSO— Oldest living things on earth are believed to be a stand of bristlecone pines in California’s Inyo National Forest, estimated at 4,500 years of age.