However, I have been thinking that the increased appraised value on the barn and most of it has been in the past forty years, I have improved the value by using some old tin that I had on my barn that was located up close to the Lake Ray Roberts State Park. This has been the third barn I have built using this tin, you can imagine the holes that have been driven into the tin as it has been added to three different barns.

About five years ago, I added some of the tin to my old barn. I still have a large stack of the used tin and would like to increase the size of my personal library and work shop in my existing barn, but I am afraid that if I use any more of the Holey Tin that my valuation would go up to an Almighty two hundred thousand dollars.

So I think that I will leave my Holy junk to the drip buckets and wait to see what my value increases too next. I can assure you that it is not going down, as business does sometimes.

While I was going through my Holy stuff the other day, I found a water bill that the City of Aubrey sent my grandmother. It was for the whopping total sum of $2.00. This was during the late fifties and sure enough during the late thirties it was $1.25 per month.

I also found an old bond that the City of Aubrey issued back in 1938. The bond had been voided out, the bonds matured at different amounts and were payable every six months. The bond was signed by Mr. O.A. Lipstrew as Mayor and J.E. Bonar, the city treasurer was J.W. Smotherman.

It was in the amount of one hundred dollars and was one of seventy-two that the city used to pay the State Comptroller. The package included water lines to the approving citizens and a one hundred-foot high water tower that has been since taken down due to its rotten condition.

Now the cheap water bills didn’t have anything to do with the valuation that we enjoy, but the city was also fifty cents a year back then and the bond states that no tax can be levied to pay the bonded well of water and tower, and therefore, the entire bond package had to be paid with water revenues.

I can remember that my grandmother would let me draw the water from her well that was located up near the back part of the house. The water was a hard iron ore water that made good drinking water as well as iced tea and hot coffee. The only catch was that we had to draw a good bit of water in the bucket all during the day to meet the demands of the pure water.

Our water is of good to excellent flavor now and the demand is far greater than it was back in 1938.

Instead of a photo this week, I am presenting a copy of an advertisement that appeared in the Aubrey paper back in the year of 1916. As we have mentioned, the Onegans had a crude printing press that allowed the same quality of printing that is shown in this week’s column.