LATHROP ACRES CIRCA 1951

OR

HORNED TOADS, TUMBLEWEEDS AND GOATHEADS

By the former Mayor of Lathrop, Mac Freeman

In an email from my sister, Kelsey Daniel: Mac, remember when we first moved to Lathrop

Acres? It was 1951, and the only thing that was there were tumbleweeds, goat heads

(stickers that will flatten bike tires and make you fall on your rear end, if you step on one in

your bare feet) and horned toads. The girls hated the horned toads and the boys loved to

tease the girls with them. In the fall the tumbleweeds would stop traffic up on old highway 50

(now I-5). The boys could make great forts with a lot of tumbleweeds. We could also spray

paint them and make snowmen.

But there was something else tumble weeds can be used for. We didn’t know it then or we

probably would have tried it. I was looking in my Texas Country Reporter Cook Book and saw a

recipe for Texas Tumbleweeds. West Texas has a lot of tumbleweeds. The cookbook says in

the late spring when the tumbleweeds are about four to five inches high, pull them up and cut

off the roots and wash and sauté them with chopped onions, then add a can of tomato paste

and one-half cup of water. Add salt, pepper and garlic. Simmer for about twenty minutes.

Serve as a side dish or over Spanish rice or red beans. Nobody in Lathrop should have gone

hungry with all the tumbleweeds we had back then.

My return e-mail went something like this: Yes, Kelsey, I remember the tumbleweeds. We did

build huge forts across the street from our house on Schilling Street. It’s a city drainage pond

now. I do remember that we wouldn’t let the girls have a part in building them with us. They

snuck out there and built one that put ours to shame. I never built any forts after that.

Other memories of the 1950’s are second and third degree sunburns. There was no sunscreen

then, and with my complexion I sunburned easily and often. One of the reasons I can’t make

myself go barefoot today is because of my childhood in the 1950’s. Every time I’d take my

shoes off, I’d step on glass, goatheads or the hot sand or asphalt. We had no air conditioner

in that one bedroom house with seven in the family, and usually some relative or homeless

friend staying with us. There was no bathroom, just an outhouse. Our sixty foot deep well

wasn’t too far from the outhouse. To this day I don’t usually drink water, remembering what

the water looked like. Lenora, (my sister who edits these stories) told me she doesn’t drink

water for the same reason. Dogs ran free and everybody tried to have a bigger, meaner dog

than their neighbor. I remember the young men in that neighborhood used to attach a gunny

sack to their hubcaps and drive up and down the street hoping a dog would bite the sack and

go flying and rolling down the street.

There were no parks in Lathrop at all. The only place to play football, softball or even golf,

was Lathrop Elementary School on the corner of fifth and Thomsen. It was built in 1951 and

dedicated in 1952. The problem was all the gates were locked around the eight-foot high

cyclone fence. So, on weekends, holidays and summer vacations, we would throw all our

sports equipment over the fence, and climb over. I can’t remember how many pants and shirts

I ripped climbing over that fence. We would have fun for a few hours or all day, if not caught

and made to climb back over the fence and go home.

There was a steel shed built on Thomsen Road by the northwest softball diamond, about two

hundred feet from home plate down the left field line. Lathrop’s one school bus was stored in

that shed when not in use. The bus driver was Nile Elliot or Mr. Bartenhagen, I can’t remember

which, they were both school bus drivers later, when Lathrop grew large enough for two

buses. I remember I was so proud if I could just hit the ball off the shed roof. Rod Wiedeman

would consistently hit the ball way over it.

Since it was about a mile walk to the school, we would sometimes have to play in a weed field

where Walgreens is now. I remember that most of us living in the acres were not on the school

football team. We thought we were so good that we challenged the Lathrop School football

team to a game after school. They accepted, came down and beat the socks off us. Tim

Brumley, Robert Mattes, Rod Wiedeman and Chuck Poindexter are some of the names I think

were on the school team. Me, Larry Say, Gene and John Archuleta, Danny Romero, Pete

Vallejo and Denny Assunsion were playing on the Lathrop Acres team. I was once tackled and

landed on broken glass, cutting a two-inch gash in my hip. I finally got the bleeding stopped

and finished the game. When we got home I put a band-aid on it. I knew my dad’s philosophy;

if you aren’t dying you don’t go to the doctor or hospital.

When you have lived fifty-six years in one small town, you should have many memories, good

and bad. Some of my friends complained that there was nothing to do here. I think we found a

lot of self-made memories that I wouldn’t take anything for.

Copyright  ©   2007 Lathrop Rush -

last updated: March 8, 2008

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