Member News

This past July 15-19 Association members Bill O'Neal, and Chuck Parsons participated as speakers at the WWHA (Wild West Historical Association) Roundup, a four-day event, held each July in a historically significant town or city. This premier event included a welcoming reception, author, historian, researcher, and collector presentations, vendors selling new and scarce out-of-print, first edition books & pamphlets, Old West collectibles, art, and ephemera. For complete details of the Wild West Roundup check on line at www.wildwesthistory.org.

Don't forget the quickly approaching Fall 2009 Association meeting, September 24-26 at the Hotel Fredonia in Nacogdoches.

Join us Saturday, October 17 for our Fall 2009 Symposium, “ Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie & Clyde—A Symposium Remembering After 75 Years.” Luncheon reservations need to be made by October 7.

Gene Preuss's book To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of School Reform in Texas, was recently published by Texas A&M University Press. Gene is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston-Downtown, and has been chosen for this issue's “Member Spotlight.”

Chuck Parsons's book Luling, another title in the popular series, "Images of America" was recently published by Arcadia Publishing Company. It is a pictorial history of the Central Texas Watermelon Capital of the world – Luling. The book is soft cover and contains 128 pages and 192 photographs dealing with historic Luling from the 1870s up to the present.

Not to be outdone, Bill O'Neal is also completing a pictorial history of Carthage in the Arcadia series and former director Archie McDonald, along with Stephen F. Austin State University's Hardy Meredith will soon publish an Arcadia publication on SFA athletics We have also learned that Paul Spellman is working on an Arcadia book on Baytown.

We would like to welcome Paul Sandul, new Assistant Professor of Public History, to Stephen F. Austin State University and to East Texas. Paul comes to Nacogdoches from California State University-Sacramento. He will surely be an asset to expanding public history endeavors in our region and will also contribute to the Association. Welcome aboard, Paul!

Please make plans to attend the Spring 2010 Association meeting in Fort Worth on February 26-27, 2010. It will be a monumental event as for the first time in history the East Texas Historical Association and the West Texas Historical Association will hold a joint gathering. We will headquarter at the beautiful Marriot DFW at Champion's Circle. The Marriot is adjacent to the Texas Motor Speedway and is truly a luxury hotel. We will also have many unique outings, tours, and special events planned that will make the meeting memorable. Mark your calendar for this once-in-a-lifetime meeting!

For those wishing to propose a session or presentation at the spring meeting, you can send any proposal to the East Texas Historical Association office at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or to East Texas Historical Association, P.O. Box 6223, SFA Station, Nacogdoches, TX 75962-6223.

Make plans now to attend the Texas State Historical Association's 2010 Annual Meeting. The 114th annual meeting will be held March 4-6, 2010 at the Marriott Quorum Hotel in Dallas, Texas located at 14901 Dallas Parkway, just south of Beltline Rd. at Dallas North Tollway.

Anyone who has any news they wish to be included in the newsletter should
send the information to Deanna Smith at deanna.smith@sfasu.edu

This issue “spotlights” Gene Preuss, author of the recently published monograph To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of School Reform in Texas, (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009). He is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston-Downtown, and is also currently involved with research projects on topics including, former Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos and Minority Education during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administration, and The Development of African American Public Education in Texas, 1865-1980.

Gene and his wife Mari Nicholson-Preuss live in Houston with a whole passel of dogs. Mari is also an educator and finishing her doctoral degree with the University of Houston. In addition to his extensive research, writing, and teaching, Gene somehow finds the time to serve on the Board of Directors for the West Texas Historical Association, on the Membership Committee of the Texas State Historical Association, and on the East Texas Historical Association's Editorial Board. Dr. Preuss is a regular at our meetings; find him this September and congratulate him on his new book and many other accomplishments.

PORCHES
By Archie P. McDonald

Porches are part of the Southern legacy of East Texans. Europeans arriving in the sixteenth century built houses much as they had known them in former homelands, but the length and intensity of Southern summers drove them outdoors, especially if there was a shade by day and a breeze in the evening.

Southerners learned to build houses with as much ventilation as possible, including the familiar dog-trot (officially breezeway) cabin or house, so all four sides had exposure to outside air, especially where the cabins shared a roof that created the breeze way between them.

When houses grew larger, porches front and back and sometimes wrapped all the way around, took the place of the breezeway. Porches expanded living space at less expense than interior construction and provided a workplace for activities too untidy for inside or cooler than the kitchen where wood-burning, and later kerosene-burning, stoves, cooked meals.

Even in the 1930s and 1940s, Southern folks sat on porches to churn butter, shell peas, snap and string green beans, skin squirrels, sharpen knives or axes, mend or repair, shine shoes for Sunday, or perform almost any chore required, whether rural or urban.

That list of porch activities, including courting by the young and eligible, made a well-placed swing desirable. Cowhide bottom rockers worked best for the rest. Over time, the hair would be worn from the hide by hours of occupancy by visitors, and the wooden frame, even if varnished at some earlier time, grew dark with age. Those who study such things claim that a porch is neutral territory where visitors may be received who might not be welcome in the house—such as bill collectors. But a porch, and perhaps the kitchen—are also the heart of a home, its most intimate meeting place for a family. To be received in either, rather than retained in a formal parlor, is to extend acceptance to an acquaintance.

Porches are making a comeback in the modern South. A school of architecture known as New Urbanism advocate the porch—and particularly the front porch—to reduce energy consumption (electric lights, A/C, etc.) by a family spending more time outside than inside, and to increase security. Sitting on a porch automatically makes people Neighborhood Watchmen, and their presence keeps children, seniors, and the neighbor's property more secure. Evil doers, they argue, are more likely to move on or be stopped if they do not.

Porch sitters may or may not be aware of such advantages. For most, the activity requires no justification because it is self-filling. And for busy folks, that rocking chair lets one sit, rest, and keeping moving at the same time. Add a cool breeze and beverage—such as sweetened iced tea—and, as Phil Harris once sang, “That's what I like about the South.”

Potential articles should be submitted electronically to Scott Sosebee, editor at sosebeem@sfasu.edu as well as a hard copy mailed to East Texas Historical Association, PO Box 6223 , SFA Station, Nacogdoches , TX 75962. Ideally, they should be 25-35 pages in length, endnotes cited in The Chicago Manual of Style format, and be on any aspect of East Texas history, broadly defined.

The Journal is a peer-reviewed publication and a research-based publication. If you wish to receive a copy of the style sheet or have any questions, direct all communication to sosebeem@sfasu.edu