Looking back...

100 YEARS AGO...

Rockdale was honored by a short speech and words of greeting and appreciation from Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio, President-Elect of the United States. He stopped long enough to make a three-minute speech to the assembled crowd.

J.A. Touchstone, manager of the Milano gin, found a note sticking in his door key hole which read: “If this gin isn’t closed in ‘three days’ we will burn it to the ground, ‘the Four’.” It was found out that the note was written by four girls. The paper urged those girls who wrote the note to confess to the constable and if it was a Halloween prank they had better say it.

We buy fat hogs every third Monday, so bring your hogs to Rockdale and get a top price for them.

The Red Cross was engaged in its annual “roll call” which is nothing more or less than a collection of annual dues, so Rockdale people need to enroll.

FORTY YEARS AGO...

Rockdale’s preliminary population total is 5,570, Mayor Bill Avrett reported. That figure is termed preliminary by the U.S. Census Bureau which won’t provide the final count until next year.

Rockdale City Council members approved a 47-cent city tax rate for 1980-81 and okayed a budget for the new fiscal year with $1,396,057 in proposed expenditures.

Texland Electric Cooperative was conducting feasibility studies ultimately leading to a lignite-fueled power plant utilizing area lignite.

Southwestern Bell implemented increased rates under bond, but the increases were smaller than amounts requested by the company in its original rate filing, district manager Dennis Richter announced. The rate increases under bond total $152.8 million. The company’s request was for $326.3 million.

TWENTY YEARS AGO...

Democrat Kerry Spears roared to her second landslide victory this year in the general election, and this one was for keeps. Spears easily turned back the challenge of Republican Rique Bobbit by 5,745 to 2,337 in the only contested county-level race.

The fate of Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations, and its 1,900 jobs with an annual payroll of $100 million, was in the hands of the Railroad Commission. Emotional testimony was part of the two days of hearings as the TRC gleaned public comment on an “unsuitability petition” filed by Neighbors for Neighbors a group that hopes to stop Alcoa’s lignite mining plans in Bastrop and Lee counties.

William Earl Ray, who has Rockdale connections, directed the play “Ain’t Misbehavin” at a theater in Portland, Oregon.

The Rockdale High School Drama Club sponsored a talent show in the high school auditorium.

TEN YEARS AGO...

Herbie Vaughan, who served in virtually every leadership position in the Rockdale Volunteer Fire Department during a 25-year RVFD career, was named fire chief in a meeting of volunteers. Vaughan is also Milam County Precinct 3 constable and will continue to occupy that office, where he has served six years.

Thursday will be a day of honors, memories, fellowship—and perhaps a few tears—for Rockdale-area veterans. Veterans will be honored with two meals and several programs in a day that will feature tributes at all four Rockdale ISD campuses.

The much anticipated mega-deal between Alcoa and Velocita Holdings is at least one year from closing but the two parties are ready to get down to work.

Actor Dana Andrews, who lived in Rockdale briefly as a boy just after World War I, was to be the subject of a definitive biography and its author was in Rockdale last week gathering data.

Carl Rollyson of the City University of New York’s Baruch college addressed a group of interested persons Thursday at the city library to say his efforts had turned up something interesting.