Monday Meanderings - 11.12.2018

Watching the election unfold this week reminded me of my small contribution to the process - way, way back when I was a paperboy in Breckenridge Texas.

Whenever a major election took place, the election headquarters for Stephens County was in the County Courthouse, fittingly enough. But the newspaper office - several blocks away - had the teletype machines and connections to the State headquarters in Austin.

So on election nights, the Breckenridge American called in all the paperboys and we couriered the latest counts from the courthouse to the paper office, and carried State news to the folks in the courthouse. It was a high-priority, don't-stop-for-anything process, and we competed fiercely for the shortest elapsed time covering the distance, skidding our bikes right up to the paper office door, hopping off to hand the latest count (which was tabulated by court-house staff hand counting paper ballots). Crowds would gather on the street in front of the paper office to see the numbers change on the blackboard (borrowed from the high school) which was positioned in front of the building.

Inside, the counts would get forwarded electronically (if the teletype line was up, which was not always guaranteed) to Austin. And sometimes, the publisher just picked up the phone and called Austin. It was a lot faster. And state-wide results would come back the same way, and the available paper boy would take this information to the courthouse - at a much more leisurely rate - and hang around until they had counted another batch of local ballots.

In Stephens County, it didn't take long to count the ballots. Breckenridge was, and still is, the only incorporated town in the county, and the folks in communities like Caddo, Gunsight and Necessity came into town to vote, if they cared. So it the excitement generally ended early, which is okay, because it was a school night.

The one exception to that was the year Jack Cox, a local boy who had gone off to Houston to be in the oil business ran against Price Daniel for governor of Texas. Everyone hung around for a while to see how that came out state-wide. I was in college by then, but came back to town with my journalism-major roommate to watch democracy in action. Jack lost handily, and we went off to the Dairy Delight to check out the girls. So much for politics.