100 YEARS AGO...
At the Rockdale opera house the home talent of Thorndale presented a play entitled “Dust of the Earth,” as a benefit to the “Captain L.L. Lee Post No. 131,” American Legion of Thorndale. The play was also recently presented in Thorndale and met with the approval of the audience.
County Agent George Banzhaf discovered a bunch of sick hogs in the Cameron area which looked suspicious to him. He was afraid it was cholera and called Dr. Zedlitz of Rockdale who gave the opinion that it was indeed cholera.
Due to bad weather, the attendance at the truck growers meeting in Rockdale was small, and another meeting had been called for later in the month at the Chamber of Commerce room. All farmers in the Rockdale area were urged to attend.
FORTY YEARS AGO...
For the fourth consecutive year, Ralph Wilson Plastics Co. was sponsoring its annual Free Enterprise scholarship program for Central Texas high school seniors.
Carl Ryan Huddleston was Rockdale’s first baby born in 1981. The first baby made his appearance at at Richards Memorial Hospital, weighing eight pound, six ounces.
Building permits slipped considerably in 1980, as compared to 1979’s record level, but still totaled nearly 2 million, while housing starts slipped to the lowest level in 12 years. Permits totaled $1,964,324 during the year, a decline of almost $1.5 million from 1979’s record of $3,4015,068. The 1980 total was Rockdale’s fourth highest all-time total.
The City Council gave City Manager Robert Luckey the go-ahead to compile survey data leading to the probable annexation of a large area north of the city limits including the new junior high and the proposed 60-unit federal housing project.
TWENTY YEARS AGO ...
No, the “Texas 7”—the nation’s most wanted fugitives—were not spotted near Milano but law enforcement personnel did have a couple of anxious moments. A white “suspicious” van was spotted, but it turned out it belonged to four hunters.
A 2.5-year project to widen US 79 in west Rockdale was set to get underway in a week. Plans called for widening US 79 from CR 306 to a point one mile west of FM 908 in Rockdale.
Rockdale City Council members, fresh off a successful renegotiation with Waste Management garbage service, turned its ire to Classic Cable in its meeting.
A Union Pacific train crew, passing the Pear Street crossing made a grisly discovery, the remains of a Rockdale man who had been struck by another train during the night.
TEN YEARS AGO...
Blackhawk Healthcare was technically dead but there weren’t any mourners at Rockdale Hospital District board session. The RHD formally closed out the Blackhawk era by rejecting the essentially defunct company’s still-on-the-table bid to purchase the Richards Memorial Hospital, then looked aggressively to the future. Jeff Madison, who was the RMH administrator instrumental in helping the facility get back on its feet in the early 2000s, returned as a consultant.
Dr. Jason Johnson, Agri-Life extension economist and keynote speaker for the 2010 Central Texas Cow-Calf Clinic, was a bottom-line kind of guy. “Don’t name your cows,” he told an audience of 130 gathered in the Milano Livestock Exchange. “Gertrude may not ever ride that trailer (to the slaughterhouse) but I’ll bet No. 22 will.”
Sure, Texas weather has a reputation for being unpredictable but this was ridiculous. On Feb. 23, 2010, a surprise five-inch snow blanketed Rockdale, taking its place in weather history as one of the top half-dozen snowfalls in the 86 years official weather records have been kept locally.
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