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October 7, 2004 |
Lewis Green Jr. Caddell's family at his home in Aubrey, Texas |
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A few decades ago when the Aubrey United Methodist church was visited by the Bishop, he conducted a survey about how members of the church felt about being consolidated with the Methodist church in the next smaller town to our north and also about the possibility of being consolidated with the almost defunct Oak Grove Methodist church. We discovered that Oak Grove did not want to consolidate, and therefore, we were reluctant to consolidate with the town north of us. As the Bishop was conducting the meeting, he felt the tension mounting amongst the old regular attendees, and stated that Aubrey would however be growing in the near future. When time came for open discussion from the members, not too much was said about the idea of consolidating with the other churches. I gathered up my statistics and commented that Aubrey was growing, and that I had been in business in the town for a number of years and we could feel the growth. I had served as Mayor of our town and on the city council and on the school board for twelve years and knew that our town was growing. At this time the police department, fire department and ambulance service were being developed and the town was going through growing pains. The planning and zoning committee were hard at work developing new ordinances to accommodate the coming growth. The Bishop asked how the telephone system was growing. I had to think a minute because it had just been within the past week, that I myself was curious about how many telephones we had and had made a quick count of the subscribers listed in the directory. I explained to the Bishop that there were 23 phones back in the early teens. He asked back, "but how many do you have now." I responded 1,167. By this time the Bishop was really curious, he asked, "Mr. Goin, just how do you know this?" I responded, "I counted them." By this time the members of the church were laughing. After this conversation, the Bishop asked for a hand count of those interested in consolidating, and the laughing Methodists decided that we were in a fast enough growing community for us to tough it out and stay where we were. We began meeting at the regular worship hour of 9AM and sharing our pastor with the smaller town to our north. It was early this Monday morning that several of our first customers came and sarcastically asked how did I know that there were 10,000 people here for the Peanut Festival, and then before that customer left, the next customer came in and asked the same thing. After the intense questioning, I replied, "I counted them." But seriously, as many of the parades I have ridden in and just simply counting, I can honestly remark that there were 10,000 people in the streets of Aubrey on October 2, 2004. And just to think the Bishop was not here to witness this head count. I do want to thank Mr. Harry Kidd and his son Matthew along with Cory Sanders and Tracy Yarbrough for their help in firing up the old 34 D and the old 35A John Deere Tractors. I was really impressed to see the old D all bright and green and yellow as it appeared in the parade. The old D has been in Jackie’s and our family for its entire seventy years of life. I bought the old A in 1958 and cleared land where the Isle De Bois park is currently. It helped me pull stumps out of the ground and to plant the little pine trees that are so tall now. The photo is unrelated to the above story, but the descendants of the Caddell family came in to see me. They were wanting to see if I had any old photos of the Caddell house as it appeared some many years ago. The old house was located on Caddell street about where Roy and Judy Lantrip live today. I will write more on this early day pioneer family in a couple of weeks. I have another photo that Dorothy Caddell Evans left with me this past week. |
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