There is no evidence to suggest that a famous publicity stunt took place in the bucolic field south of the town of West, Texas, except a lonely historical marker. There are no other signs of the town of Crush, Texas. But, in 1896, the town of Crush was headline news.

That year, an employee of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (better known as the Katy Railroad) had an idea for a publicity stunt. He had noticed how people gathered around an accidental train wreck. People loved a good disaster. He concluded that surely a staged train wreck would draw a crowd.

The man convinced his employers that staging a collision between two trains would be a wonderful marketing opportunity. Special excursion trains could bring spectators at $2.00 a person. Paid advertising could be displayed on the trains. The event would get nationwide publicity. This would be the greatest publicity stunt of all time. Brilliant!

The man’s name was William George Crush [I am not lying]. He chose a crash site about three miles south of the town of West, TX. With Waco, Austin, Dallas and Temple not too far away, he knew he could draw the crowds there. The area had a good slope nearby that made a natural amphitheater. In that area, a second set of tracks was built alongside the regular tracks as a stage for the show to come.

Two steam engines that were about to be retired were readied for the event. Engine 999 was painted green with red trim, and Engine 1001 was painted red with green trim. Each engine pulled several stock cars with canvas advertising billboards for the Dallas Fair and Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Mr. Crush knew that with the size of the crowd he expected, he had to be ready to entertain (and to control) the people. He rented a Ringling Brothers tent for a dining hall, built concessions stands, had water provided by eight tank cars, built a jail for the inevitable pickpockets and thieves, and hired 200 lawmen to help keep the peace. For days before the event, the trains chugged on the track for practice runs so they could get the timing right.

September 18th, 1896 was the big day. Crowds started arriving early in the morning at the newly-named “Crush, Texas. A newspaper account from the time said that the excursion trains were arriving at a rate of one every 12 minutes. Buggies, wagons, and horses brought spectators, too. By the time of the event, the crowd was estimated to be between 30,000-50,000 men, women, and children, all decked out in their Sunday best.
The trains were nose-to-nose on the track, their cow catchers touching. As the event was about to begin, the organizers realized that the spectators were too close to the track, and it took an hour to move them back. The trains slowly huffed and puffed as they backed apart until there was a distance of two miles between them. William George Crush, on horseback, raised his arm high and dropped it as a signal for the trains to begin.

The engineers started the 35 ton locomotives towards each other, full steam ahead. One engineer jumped off the train after about 500 yards, but the other didn’t jump off the train until his had gone half a mile. The crowd was thrilled by his daredevil antics.

At 60 mph, the trains collided with a deafening roar. Then, the unexpected happened (oh come on, I know you expected it). The boiler of one of the trains exploded with a second ear-splitting roar, sending a shower of metal debris into the crowd. Well, duh.

One newspaper reporter of the time said, “Words bend and break in an attempt to describe it.” A smokestack sailed through the air for a quarter of a mile. Yes, people got hurt. Two people were killed by the flying metal, many were wounded or crippled. A photographer from Waco was stuck in the eye by a flying metal bolt.

The event made the news, for sure. As any good catastrophe deserves a song, Scott Joplin, the ragtime musician, quickly wrote a tune. He called it “The Great Crush Collision March.” I can’t imagine what it would sound like.

George Crush was fired immediately. But, the name of the Katy railroad was on everyone’s lips across the nation. It did get the publicity that the railroad wanted. So, Mr. Crush was later rehired.

The town of Crush was dismantled as quickly as it appeared. Farmers in the area occasionally plow up bits of iron from the locomotives. Other than that, the Great Crash at Crush is rarely remembered or talked about today. It did have its fifteen minutes of fame.

I’m headed to Beaumont, Texas this week to tell some stories in the schools. I was supposed to go there earlier this month, but our mini-blizzard came through and postponed it; once a hurricane did so, too. Usually it just rains when I go there. My husband said “usually” means “always.”

My mother thought it was “lucky” when I went to Beaumont. Perhaps that is because she scratched off a $20,000 winning lottery ticket when I was there [Yes, people do win the lottery, but you probably won’t. Please do not buy tickets because of my trip.] Momma bought herself some “new knees” and helped her financially ailing daughters with her windfall.

After that, Momma always told me to buy lottery tickets when she heard I was headed to Beaumont. She laughed when she said it, but she was deadly serious.

In 2003, I reluctantly scheduled a one-day trip to work for a regular client in Beaumont. I say “reluctantly” because it’s a 790 mile round trip. That’s a lot of driving in two days.

As I began my journey from Denton at around 7 a.m., rain was pouring down so hard that my windshield wipers couldn’t keep it clear. With the visibility so bad, I couldn’t drive faster than 45 mph. I thought, “This is going to be a long trip!” I didn’t know the half of it.

Driving through Fort Worth (35 miles and almost two hours later) I had to navigate a construction zone on Interstate 35. A careless driver knocked one of those orange construction cones down, and I had no way to dodge it. As I ran over it, it lodged under my car. I dragged that cone to the next exit, pulled over, and struggled for ten minutes in driving rain trying to pull it out from under my car. I tried backing off of the cone. I tried driving over it. Nothing worked.

Finally, a trucker passed me in his big rig. He saw my dilemma and pulled off the road. Down he climbed from his cab and came running toward me in the rain. In other circumstances, I might have scrambled the other direction.

The man was huge. His shoulders were so broad he seemed to have no neck. He was bald and tattooed and didn’t look like a very savory character at all. He smiled at me and his gold tooth gleamed. The man was an unlikely looking Knight in Shining Armour. “Are we having fun, yet?” he asked.

Then he proceeded to drag the cone out from under my car using brute strength. He tipped an imaginary hat to me and without another word ran back to his truck to drive away. Chivalry is not dead.

Many hours later, I was driving on a two lane road near Cleveland, Texas. My brakes were wet and making horrible noises, which wasn’t helping me to keep calm. I noticed water rising in the ditches on either side of the road. Then, a deer bounded in front of my car! I tapped the brakes and hydroplaned nose first into the ditch. As I stood pulling my hair at the side of the road, a beaten up pickup pulled over. Two “bubbas” got out, hitched up their overalls and pushed my car back on the road. Did I tell you that Chivalry is not dead?

On I went to Beaumont, but when I reached town, I discovered the streets were flooded. Cars around me had stalled out in the high water, so I pulled into the parking lot of the mall and called my hosts for the night. I was told that, since the rain had finally stopped, the streets would probably drain in less than an hour. They said to just wait before driving again.

By the time the water drained off, it was dark. I started my car and headed toward my destination along a street that a local person had told me would “probably be safe.” Suddenly, I hit a low spot and water washed over my side windows. Immediately I pulled into a driveway, but my power steering was gone and when I stopped my car sputtered and died. It wouldn’t start again.

I had no choice but to get out and walk twenty-six blocks, in the dark, in water up to mid thigh to the home where I was lodging that night. The next morning, we started trying to find a mechanic, but there were none available. They were all busy working for their regular customers. With weekend coming on, it began to look as if I might be stuck in a hotel for several days. I didn’t know what to do, but called the husband of a friend, who knew “everybody.” I thought that if there was a mechanic to be found he would know about it.

Bob said, “Don’t worry, just leave your key on the front tire and go to work. You’ll get to go home tonight.”

I was skeptical, but I trusted. I figured that my car repair bill would eat up everything I made that day and more. That afternoon, Bob called and said, “You’re good to go.” He told me that he had loaded my car on his flat bed trailer, drove it to Vidor (18 miles away), and called in a favor from a mechanic friend. The serpentine belt had slipped from my car. They put it back and checked the car for damages—there were none. He wouldn’t let me pay him a thing, even though he lost a half day of work helping me. Do you remember what I said about Chivalry?

Halfway home, when I stopped to get gas, I called my sister to whine about my pitiful trip. She said, “Did you buy a lottery ticket while you were in Beaumont?”

I said, “Are you crazy? Why would I waste the money? I have no luck at all!”

“Oh, yes you do,” she said. “Think about it. Where would you be if all those people hadn’t stopped to help you?”

Oh my. I don’t want to admit it, but my little sister is wise. But, I’m thinking that perhaps I didn’t have “good luck”–I had “good people.”

I may buy a lottery ticket when I’m in Beaumont. But, I think if I get there and back safely, I will have won.

The month of January is National Hot Tea Month. I suppose our legislators had nothing better to make decisions about on the day they resolved that. However, I guess it would excite me if I were a member of a Tea Cartel.

I’ve been meaning to post about tea all month, but I’ve had a hard time getting too worked up about it. My daddy always said that hot tea was a “sissy drink,” and I’m my daddy’s daughter. I’m a coffee drinker, myself. I like my coffee strong enough to walk over and climb in the cup all by itself.

It’s not that I don’t like hot tea; actually, I do. It’s just not the first drink I reach for when I’m thirsty. Hot tea was something momma gave us to soothe a sore throat. I just don’t think of having a cup of tea unless I’m feeling poorly.

Now iced tea is a different story. When I was growing up, I thought it was one word: “icetea.” Really what we drank was “sweetea.” Sweetea is one word. If you are from the South, you know that. You also know that to make it, you brew the tea and put the sugar in it while it’s hot. That’s the only way it tastes right.

I did get the opportunity once to “take tea” at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. It is an experience not to be missed if you are in the area. The hotel is very elegant, but they allow tourists into the dining room in “smart casual” attire. Bubba can’t go in his tank top and torn jeans. The food was marvelous. I don’t remember the actual tea, because I was too busy trying to elbow my way to the fruit tarts. Yummy!

I thought I was taking “high tea,” but it turns out I was taking “afternoon tea.” There’s a difference. Jane Pettigrew wrote an excellent article for The Tea Muse to explain afternoon tea and how it got started in the 1800s. The difference between the two is simple. “Afternoon tea” is more of a ladies social diversion with delicate desserts and hors d’oeuvres and “high tea” is served later in the evening as more of a manly meal with meats, fish, eggs, bread, and cheese.

I found a blog called Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea and Chocolate in Between that is an interesting site. She has a lot of recipes and many links to other sites of the same ilk. I actually found her site when I was researching something else. Er, umm, I was trying to find out what “Spotted Dick” was. I’m not being a potty mouth (and I don’t know anyone with a “condition”). It’s actually a suet pudding with dried fruit that comes to the surface and looks like spots. You know it’s from England, because the Brits are the only people who can use a name like that with a straight face. You can find it in cans at World Market if you don’t believe me.

But, I digress. Green tea is supposed to be healthy for you to drink, but that’s not going to get my attention. Liver is supposed to be good for you, too, and I’m not going to consume it either.

I’m told that if you save your used tea bags in the refrigerator you can put them on your eyes for about 10 minutes to relieve puffy and fatigued eyes. I’ve also heard that tea will soothe a sunburn or an insect bite. Recently I ran across an article that said you can soothe tired feet (and remove the odor from stinky feet) by soaking them in a tea bath. I’m sure there are lots of other uses.

If you are a tea drinker, have a cup of tea, or a tea party, to celebrate National Hot Tea Month. If you aren’t, you can join me for an RC Cola and a moon pie.