Hopkins Co. TX - Livery stables

From:  June E. Tuck  <jparks@neto.com>

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From the historical files of June E. Tuck, who does not validate or
dispute any historical facts in the article.

Daily News-Telegram 1946

(Edited)

Livery Stables of By-Gone Days in Old Sulphur Springs

By Hugh Bryson

The livery stable and wagon yards were major industries while first
Monday was an institution. This is the Sulphur Springs I know best. My
father kept two horses in our back lot for a long time after we bought
our Maxwell auto. They had nothing to do but graze. Dad was unable to
maintain a zest for living without the odor of horse liniment pervading
the premises and even now I can awaken wistful memories of the old
homestead on Connally street when I think of the aroma from natural
manure wafting its fragrance through our blooming locust trees on an
early spring day. Long before my time the Glasscock livery stable was
equivalent to the railroad station, bus station and airport combined. I
heard so much about this old livery stable when I was a small boy that it
has assumed almost legendary proportions. This was the headquarters for
the stage coach which my father drove from Sulphur Springs to Mineola
when he was a boy. The Cotton Belt had not been constructed, nor neither
had the narrow gauge railroad known as the East Line later converted to
standard gauge by the Katy, and now the LR and N.

The livery stable had been sadly neglected by historians with the
exception of Bill Nye who had a lot to say about it, but there is little
to say about the livery stable of my time. The years have dimmed my
recollection of my father^Òs livery stable. I remember the office was
decorated with pictures of Dan Patch, Harvester and other old-time
harness horses and beneath each picture a record of his gait and speed.
It seemed to me at that time that each horse in the stable was endowed
with a personalty of its own. The customers had their favorites. This was
also true of the drummers who made regular trips to outlying villages and
since this was the only mode of transportation the experienced driver
knew his road like Mark Twain knew his Mississippi. Along trip over a
rough road on a cold winter day with nothing for protection but a storm
curtain was quite different from the way we sail over the same road in a
comfortable well heated car today.

Now let us consider the wagon yard. Park Cambron told me a while back
that he took in over $154. in a single day at his wagon yard and then had
to turn away wagons and teams. That was a lot of kale in those days.
Melton^Òs blacksmith shop stood on the present post office site. His
residence was just back of it on Connally street and across the street
was a wagon yard store, an oblong frame building. This store was in
charge of my old bachelor uncle Tom Kirkpatrick. I have spent many winter
evenings around the long wood stove and here amidst fumes from Henry Clay
and corn-cob pipes and showers of tobacco juice I have listened to some
tall tales, one of the products that has made Texas famous.

There was a bullet hole in the side door leading to the yard. The
extenuating circumstances surrounding this bullet hole have been lost
amidst the many different accounts I have heard. But do know this, a man
shot at another man and missed. Life moved slowly and living was simple
and uninvolved in that world in which we grew up.