Remember When
Two 1973 Snowstorms Blanket La Grange – Two snowstorms less than a month apart likely set a record for La Grange and Fayette County. Following a siege of freezing rain, sleet and biting low temperatures, the second snowfall on Feb. 8 dumped three to four inches. Thomas Guenther took the aerial shot of La Grange from a plane piloted by his dad, Frank J. Guenther. The Little League field is in the lower left corner and the public schools and campus are in the upper right hand corner. After the storm, culprits who stole two snowmen, one off the ground and another off the top of a car, also broke a windowpane at the Earl Schultze home. On Pearl Street, Mrs. Dolly Sylvia and her son, Victor, reported that the five-foot snowman they made and dressed as a hippie with a floppy hat, beads and a peace symbol was vandalized. Aerial photo courtesy of Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives.
La Grange City Council instructed Mayor L.W. Stolz Jr. to write letters to 15 property owners who were at least 10 years in arrears with their property tax payments. If the letters didn’t bring results, City Attorney Michael Klesel was directed to initiate litigation. Some of the tax arrears went back as far as 1939.
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Nagel of Round Top announced the sale of their Don Nagel Garage to Mr. and Mrs. Barney Lee Georges. The Nagels had established the Round Top business on Hwy. 237 and operated it continuously for 44 years. The new owner, who renamed the garage Barney Georges Garage, had been the Nagel’s employee for the prior 18 years. Mr. Nagel said he planned to go into the chainsaw and lawnmower sales and service business at his home located directly across the highway from the garage.
The last survivors of an old pioneer family, Miss Mary Elizabeth Croft of Winchester, who died in 1972, and her sister, Mrs. George Croft Rivers, who died in 1969, left a legacy to The University of Texas at Winedale. The executor of the estate, Roy Karisch of Winchester, made the formal presentation of a pine bookcase, collection of books and a scarce Currier and Ives print. The ladies, who loved local history, were direct descendants of William Rabb, who settled at Rabb’s Prairie in 1821. According to family legend, the bookcase was made for the Methodist church at Rutersville in 1837 and came into the possession of William Rabb’s son, John Rabb, when the church was torn down or moved, sometime prior to 1860. The books were part of the personal library of John Rabb. The Currier and Ives lithograph in its original frame was a vue d’optic or optical illusion combining the portraits of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. It was the property of John Rabb’s sonin- law, David Porter.
The Round Top-Carmine Cubettes were on the move again. Coach Floyd Etzel’s lassies, defending state Class B girls’ basketball champions for the second year in a row, closed out District 57-B play with a perfect record to focus on the regional tournament at San Marcos.
Fifteen cars of a northbound Southern Pacific freight train derailed between West Point and the Colorado River Bridge Thursday night. The cars were reported to have been loaded with lumber and building materials. Days later, a spectacular and costly train wreck created havoc near the small Bastrop County town of Upton, about eight miles north of Smithville, keeping crews working through the night.
Mr. and Mrs. Anton Luecke were the lucky winners of a portable color TV set, the grand prize awarded at the opening of the La Grange branch of Austin Savings.
Quinn Vernon Williams, a senior at La Grange High School, won a $1,000 Houston Livestock Show scholarship. He was to be recognized on the Astrodome scoreboard at the Tues., Feb. 27 performance, Fayette County Night at the Rodeo.
Funeral services were held for: M.T. Morris, 76, of La Grange; Mrs. Wilhelmine Mueller, 89, of Rutersville; Edmund E. Pfertner, 66, of La Grange; Edwin Pampell, 57, of Winchester; Bennie J. Polasek, 44, of La Grange; Fred J. Kuehne, 76, a native of Carmine; Mrs. Petrolina Kocurek, 80, of Fayetteville; Robert Johnson, 83, who was buried in Little Bethel Cemetery; Ernest H. Radenz, 32, of Waldeck; andAnton Oeltjen, 80, of La Grange.
Jimmie Wayne Hinze of Carmine earned a Master of Science in Architectural Engineering degree from The University of Texas at Austin.
La Grange’s Leopards kept up their end of the torrid District 13-3A cage race by blasting the Yoakum Bulldogs, 78-51. The Leps came out of an 18-26 halftime deficit to run rampant over the Bulldogs. The Lep point leader was Billy Miller with 16, followed by Stephen Kovar and Johnny Johnson each with 14. Robert Poole and Hal Lindeman each had 10. The win put La Grange in back of the league leaders – the Columbus Cardinals, who took the driver’s seat with a 44-34 victory over former pace-setting Wharton.
At the annual Fayette County Program Building Committee meeting, four local dairymen were presented with production certificates. The herds of Eugene Kainer, Albert Ernstes, Marvin Otto and Anton Tietjen had averaged 450 pounds of butterfat per testing year.
The third grade at Hermes Elementary School was invited to appear on KTBC-TV’s Uncle Jay and Packer Jack program. The children went to Austin on Wednesday to tape the segment that was to air the following Saturday. While in Austin, Rep. John Wilson had his staff give the youngsters a tour of the state capitol. The youngsters also visited the LBJ Library and the University of Texas Museum.
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