100 YEARS AGO....
Three workers were killed when a bridge—under construction over Donahoe Creek near Granger—collapsed. A truck loaded with lumber to use as flooring had been driven onto the bridge. Amazingly a worker under the bridge, and the truck driver, escaped serious injury.
A wet summer got even wetter and rainfall in the headwaters of several Milam streams sent the San Gabriel and Little Rivers out of their banks, along with Brushy Creek. Crop, road and bridge damages were reported.
J. A. Kyle of the Hicks community told Reporter Publisher John Esten Cooke he would not make a guess at the 1920 cotton crop “because I missed it so badly last year.”
The Reporter reported: “Tick eradication work in Milam County has simmered down to (only) the opposition (to cattle dipping) because only the opposition has ticks.”
FORTY YEARS AGO....
An estimated 600 evacuees from the Texas Gulf Coast, fleeing Hurricane Allen, made temporary homes in Rockdale, many in local motels but some in Red Cross shelters.
City Manager Dan Roark submitted his resignation, saying he was accepting a job with an Austin environmental engineering firm.
On a split vote, the Rockdale City Council sided with a petition by residents and turned down a Planning & Zoning Board recommendation to re-zone a portion of Hickory Street for apartments.
A 20-year-old Rockdale woman spent seven hours in a ditch with a head injury before she was located the next morning by searchers. She survived and was being treated in an Austin Hospital.
TWENTY YEARS AGO....
Rockdale voters overwhelmingly (605 to 186) voted to raise the tax cap in the Rockdale Hospital District from one to 50 cents in an attempt to keep financially-troubled Richards Memorial Hospital open.
In anticipation of the first day of classes in the Rockdale ISD, the portions of Brazos and Pecos Streets which linked Meadow Drive with Rockdale High School received new hard-toppings.
Ted Retchloff was named the new Milam County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy, replacing Thomas Harris. Harris had been named new Rockdale Police Chief.
City council members grilled a representative of Rockdale’s garbage collection service over issues ranging from not picking up trash, spilling trash in yards and driving the wrong way on the only one-way street in the city (Calhoun Blvd).
TEN YEARS AGO....
A come-and-go crowd estimated at 400 attended a Big Blue Band reunion at The Ranch which featured former band directors Bill Grusendorf, Don Thoede and Jim Perry.
A sudden mid-summer thunderstorm didn’t drop a lot of rain on Rockdale but it provided some brief relief from the heat. The temperature dropped 27 degrees in a matter of minutes, going from 107 to 80.
Rockdale police were asking the public’s help to solve a home break-in which netted over $8,000 worth of guns and electronics.
Milano’s Lady Eagle volleyball team was off to a huge start, compiling a 7-1 record, most of it on the road.
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