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August 2019 Letters

TCP Talk

Letters and comments from our readers

Drive-In Dating

I dated during the late ’40s and early ’50s. The drive-in theater was where, on Saturday night, they only charged $5 for a carload of people [Drive In, Chill Out, June 2019]. Saw many a movie there over the years.

Helen Perry | Via Facebook

No Concept of Electricity

Reading about your 75th anniversary made me think of a story my father told me when I was a kid.

Just before World War II, when they were electrifying rural western Louisiana, my father was a foreman for Brown & Root Construction. One day, he was in a small town near the Louisiana-Texas border, finishing up checking out a new substation. A group of the townspeople approached him, and one man stepped forward and said, “We hear we are going to get electric lights soon.”

Dad responded with, “That’s right. As soon as I am finished here, I will radio the crew over in the next town and they will turn on the power.”

With that, the man asked, “How long will it take to get here?”

Dad said, “It will be here as soon as they turn it on.”

Without another word, they all turned and walked away, thinking my father was making fun of them. He said he never forgot the look on the man’s face as he turned away.

Today, we take electricity for granted. It’s hard to imagine a time when there were those who had no concept of it.

Jack L. Tyler | Arlington
Pedernales EC

Hungry Mockingbirds

Feedin’ Time [Focus on Texas, June 2019] has a photograph of a nest of unidentified baby birds. Fittingly, they are the Texas state bird—northern mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos).

Ray C. Telfair II, Certified Wildlife Biologist | Whitehouse
Cherokee County EC

This Little Piggy

Those working on the pig rescue program [This Little Piggy, May 2019] seem like caring, compassionate people. Perhaps all of us, however, need to look farther out our kitchen windows today and see something else—like Katy Hamner and Avery Graves helping kids with diabetes [A Butterfly’s Touch, May 2019].

Ruth Henson | Goldthwaite
Hamilton County EC

Flight of a Lifetime

I really enjoyed your article about ex-Navy pilot Trey Hayden taking clients over the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi [What Moves You?, April 2019]. I was stationed aboard the USS Bennington aircraft carrier 1962–1966. I spent my time seven decks below in the engine room. In March, Hayden took me on the flight of a lifetime.

Bernie Phillip | Devine
Medina EC

Great Reading

For such a little magazine, Texas Co-op Power has a lot of good articles. In May, you had three that were of special interest to me—the one on Tom Lea [Tom Lea’s War], the one on R.E.B. Baylor [Baylor, the Man] and the one on Sul Ross State University [Higher Education].

Lea is one of my favorite authors. I didn’t go to Sul Ross, but a couple of my classmates from Bandera High went on football scholarships.

Ralph Reaves | Kingsland
Central Texas EC