100 YEARS AGO....
Final touches were being made to the new Ladies Ready-To-Wear Department at the Ben Loewenstein Jr. Store. The new department featured mahogany trim and hardwood floors.
The Thursday Garden Club observed its sixth birthday at the home of Mrs. Ed Simms with Victrola music by “Misses Rountree and Coker.” The club was founded the same week World War I began in 1914.
H. C. Meyer of Rockdale was elected president of a group of boosters seeking extension of the national Bankhead Highway from Texarkana to El Paso. The highway then extended from Washington D. C. to Texarkana.
For one dollar per month, Hill’s Book Store in Rockdale would delivery daily newspapers to the door of Rockdale residents.
FORTY YEARS AGO....
Rockdale ISD trustees agreed to install an all-weather track at Tiger Field as early as the spring of 1981. Board members also decided to attempt more negotiation with the low bidder on the district’s new bus barn.
School trustees also accepted RISD responsibility for drainage problems in the Dyer Addition since opening of the new juniorhigh school, and agreed to a $20,000 project to divert runoff from the area.
Ed Hefti of Bryan set a record that could never be broken in the first skeet shooting competition at the new Rockdale Gun Club. Hefti was a perfect 100 out of 100.
Police were requesting “patience” after the first day of classes at the new junior-high school with traffic backed up, bumper-tobumper, from Murray Avenue to the school unloading zone.
TWENTY YEARS AGO....
Rockdale Hospital District directors were looking closely at whether to proceed with an election to expand the district’s boundaries from those of the city to the school district after learning, even if the measure passed, the RHD would have to lower its tax rate substantially, to avoid a tax rollback election, and end up generating the same amount of money it was already raising.
Two men, being held at gunpoint by an assailant wielding a pair of pistols, escaped by fleeing down the Union Pacific railroad tracks.
The Rockdale Fair Association hosted a two-day goat show at Fair Park.
Area volunteer firefighters were being called to one grass fire per day as triple-digit heat and a lack of rain were plaguing the area. Rockdale, Gause and Milano volunteers battled a blaze near Gause that consumed 30 to 40 acres.
TEN YEARS AGO....
A drug sting netted 11 arrests in Cameron and Rockdale, three of which were at a residence in the 100 block of Travis Street, almost directly across the street from the Patterson Civic Center where a Chamber of Commerce workshop was in progress.
On a 4-2 split vote, the Rockdale City Council raised the hotel-motel occupancy (HOT) tax from 5.5 to seven cents.
The legendary 1955 Aycock High School state champion football team was honored at Tiger Field during the Rockdale-Austin Eastside Memorial football game to observe the 45th anniversary of that victory.
Rockdale High School’s Tiger gridders turned in their blue uniforms for purple during the game, to honor Aycock athletes. (Purple and gold were Aycock’s colors.) Rockdale won, 58-0.
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