Opinion // Leon Hale

All aboard for Palestine

This column first appeared on July 9, 1998.

Look here what came in the mail. A letter from Jack Hinton who was mayor of Jewett, Texas, when I was keeping up with him back in the '60s and '70s.

In country towns like Jewett the mayor may stay in office years and years. Much longer than Bob Lanier ever did here in Houston, or even longer than Oscar Holcombe, who kept getting re-elected so many times they named a street for him, and a wide one, at that.

Back when I was traveling all the time, before my stomach rebelled and said I couldn't eat anymore barbecue or chicken fried steaks, it seemed like every time I stopped in Jewett the mayor was still Jack Hinton. He always said nobody else wanted the job. Of course he already had a steady job, running the bank. He was president of it, I guess, but I never did ask.

You've probably been through Jewett whether you know it or not. It's right in there between Buffalo and Marquez, on U.S. 79 in Leon County. About 40 miles southwest of Palestine, if that helps you any.

I always enjoyed stopping there because Cokey Evans at Jewett Drug had a pea-shelling machine in the back of his store. You could stop along the highway and buy a bushel of blackeyes or purple hulls and take 'em to the drug store and get those babies shelled. A great service. Sort of the same as somebody cleaning your fish for you.

I liked hanging out in that store. Seemed to me it had a beauty shop in the back, along with the pea-shelling machine.

One day I walked in there and saw this sign, displayed beside a beautiful bedspread. Sign explained that a certain local girl was getting married, and this bedspread would be a gift for her.

Beneath the sign was a list of names, people who had contributed money toward this present. Some had given as much as $5 but most just a couple of bucks, and one or two had signed up for half a dollar.

I liked that as a comment on how small towns operate. Jewett had a lot of widows then, and other folks living on a short budget, and they couldn't buy that girl a fancy wedding present. But they could give a dollar or two toward a really special gift. I'll bet you that spread is still in use today, a wedding gift from half the people in town.

But the best day I ever spent in Jewett was when we flagged the train.

I was visiting the mayor at the bank — this must have been in the middle '60s — and he was talking about the advantages of living in his town, the way all mayors do, and he mentioned that Jewett had passenger train service.

Well, I knew Missouri Pacific ran a hotshot passenger train up through East Texas on the way to St. Louis. I'd seen it pass through Jewett, in fact. But it didn't even slow down.

Hinton said yeah but if anybody wanted to get on it, the train would stop. I wondered how the engineer knew when to stop and Hinton said, "We get out there and flag it down."

That idea stirred me up. Flagging a train sounded like something out of the previous century, and I needed to see it.

Hinton looked at his watch and said the train wasn't due for another hour and a half. If we could find a passenger, he'd flag the train.

We passed the word and within an hour we'd rounded up eight or 10 children who'd never ridden a train. We had one fellow 30 years old, been living beside those railroad tracks all his life and never had boarded a train.

We ended up with about half a school bus load, and as many adults as kids. We walked across the highway and stood in a bunch and waited for the train. You could hear that big sucker chugging and roaring long before it came in sight.

When finally we saw it I thought: That thing's running so fast Hinton will never get it stopped. But he did, and with nothing but a white handkerchief, held over his head with both hands.

So our bunch got aboard and rode 40 miles to Palestine and we organized a little motorcade to drive up there and collect the passengers and haul them back home.

It has always pleased me to imagine that this was the last time a passenger train was flagged down to take on passengers.

Which is probably not true but I still like to think so.