Somehow I missed this story when it was breaking news. In 1994, Susan Montgomery Williams set a world record. Now, don’t you know her Mama’s proud of her? Susan won the bubble-gum-blowing championship with a bubble that was 23 inches in diameter. I have no idea how many sticks of gum she popped into her mouth to accomplish that feat, but I bet she looked like a cow chewing its cud. Bless her heart; I hope that wasn’t the biggest accomplishment of Susan’s lifetime.

I don’t chew gum much anymore, but I might start again now that I know it’s tied to a prominent figure in Texas history. Granted, the connection to Texas is a bit roundabout, but that gum you chomp has a history that leads to my home state. People, I’m a storyteller so I can make all roads lead to Texas, if you give me enough time.

If you aren’t from Texas, it’s doubtful that you know much Texas history. You wouldn’t remember the Alamo if John Wayne hadn’t made a movie about it in 1960. If you aren’t from Texas, where our schools cram the glorious history of the Lone Star State down the throats of our students, that battle long ago means nothing to you. But, to Texans the battle of The Alamo is a symbol of freedom.

To refresh your memory, Texas was once a part of Mexico, but the “Texians” wanted to be independent (you have to excuse us for that, it’s obviously our heritage). The Texas Revolution began, and brave defenders of freedom, including Jim Bowie and Davie Crockett, came from all over the United States to help the Texians in their cause. On March 6, 1836, a heinous fiend named General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led an enormous Mexican Army in battle against 183 brave Texians who were trapped in a little known Mission called the Alamo, in San Antonio. In brutal hand to hand combat, all of the Texians were slain and their bodies burned. The battle cry “Remember the Alamo,” helped the Texians rally to defend the cause and eventually freedom from Mexico was won.

You’re thinking, “What does that have to do with chewing gum?” Bear with me; that fellow Santa Anna is the connection. Santa Anna was a one-legged opportunist who loved battle as much as he desired power. He fought on both sides of every battle of his day, trying to come out a winner. This Master of Macho became the dictator of Mexico, but was overthrown and was exiled. Santa Anna stayed for a time with an entrepreneur named Thomas Adams in Staten Island, New York.

Rubber for tires and toys and boots was big business in that part of the 1800’s, but it was expensive. Santa Anna told Adams about a sticky substance called “chicle,” which was the sap of the sapodilla tree from South America. The people of Mexico chewed that sap, but making chewing gum wasn’t the plan. Adams wanted to mix chicle with rubber to make a less expensive product. Santa Anna wanted to raise money to re-take Mexico, so he arranged for a shipment of a ton of chicle to Adams.

Neither plan worked. Santa Anna later died penniless and powerless in 1876. Adams experimented with mixing chicle and rubber but they wouldn’t bond together. He planned on dumping the chicle in the river, but fate intervened.

At a general store, Adams noticed a little girl buying wax to chew. He remembered Santa Anna saying that people of Mexico chewed the chicle and a great idea was born. Adams began selling the chicle packaged as gum, which eventually changed into the brand called Chiclets.

Now, if this has inspired you to slap a wad of gum in your mouth to replicate Susan’s great achievement, you should check out this website first. There is an art to blowing a big bubble. Whatever you do, don’t try blowing big bubbles outside, or you will have to find out how to get gum out of your hair. Wouldn’t you know it, Susan sells a product that will get chewing gum out of anything, and the above website will tell you how to contact her.

When you chew that gum, remember not to get a bovine expression on your face, there just isn’t anything less appealing than that blank gum-chewing expression. Also remember that in pre-Colombian Aztec society, the prostitutes popped their gum to advertise their trade. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t make your Momma proud.

I’m a worry wart, and I won’t apologize for it. It’s not my fault, I was born that way. It’s the San Andreas Fault. With an adult child living in San Francisco, I can find plenty to worry me. The City is a marvelous place, but any city has a dark side, too. I worry about him being accosted by some stranger. I obsess about the cost of living there. I fret about him having to take public transportation or walk everywhere (I’m a Texan– therefore think it is unnatural not to have a car). But mostly I get all shook up over earthquakes.

Before our last visit, I bought a book in Wal-Mart Bookstore (I only rarely shop there) called A Day That Changed America—EARTHQUAKE!, by Shelley Tanaka. It’s a children’s book written about Wednesday, April 18, 1906. That’s when one of the most famous natural disasters rocked the western coast. The story is told through the eyes of four of the young survivors from San Francisco. It’s fascinating and horrifying. Just what I needed to make me totally paranoid.

My baby is sitting on top of the San Andreas Fault. He has only told me about experiencing one tremor. I’m sure there have been more, but it might have disturbed him to hear my voice go up two octaves when I tried to talk about it with him. He doesn’t want to burden me. I keep hoping he will decide to move to someplace safe. Someplace where there won’t be any dangers like earthquakes. Maybe someplace like—Missouri.

Wrong, again, Shelly.

THE largest recorded earthquake in United States history occurred near New Madrid, Missouri. In fact, there were a series of quakes that took place from December 1911-February 1912. There were three earthquakes of greater than 8.0 in magnitude. “Aftershocks included two more events around magnitude 8.0, five more at magnitude 7.7, ten more at magnitude 5.3, and eighty-nine at an estimated magnitude of 4.3. This seismic release was the largest ever recorded in the continental United States.”

Teachers didn’t enlighten me about that in school. I accidentally found it thumbing through a book on earthquakes (to satisfy my morbid curiosity), then looked it up on-line. Because that part of the country was sparsely settled during the time period, there wasn’t enormous loss of life or major damage to cities. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t get the attention that the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 gets in the curriculum.

However, the devastation was great after the New Madrid quakes. The first of the three main quakes was so powerful that it rang church bells in Boston (1,000 miles away), knocked over chimneys in Maine and made the Mississippi River run backwards at one point. More than 150,000 acres of forest were destroyed, the Mississippi River changed course, whole areas of land were swallowed up and new lakes were formed. For the people who lived there, it must have been terrifying.

The Virtual Times has several accounts from survivors of the quake. Excerpts from letters written by George Heinrich Crist, who lived in central Kentucky at the time, are especially vivid.

Interestingly, ten years before the earthquake, a man predicted that “In the midst of the night the earth will begin to tremble, giant trees will fall, rivers will run backward, new lakes will be formed, and old ones will disappear.” It happened on the exact day that Tecumseh, a Shawnee warrior and chief predicted. He took that as a sign that all the tribes should unite against the whites to take back their land. Unfortunately, that didn’t go so well. His brother led the tribes to defeat at the battle of Tippecanoe. Tecumseh didn’t see that one coming.

You can go to this site and read the predictions of damage to the area if another major quake were to hit. Or, you can just take my word for it. It wouldn’t be pretty. Modern day predictors of catastrophe say that there will be another earthquake as great as the New Madrid earthquakes, and they say it can happen any time.

My son can relax now. I have another focus for my worry.

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.