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THE WHEELS OF OUR LIVES by Scott Hill Bumgardner  Apparently Gronk, the caveman, was inspired when he observed a round rock roll down a hill. This mystery man’s invention really, well, to use a bad pun, “started the ball rolling.” The wheel revolutionized the world of transportation and machines. It simplified the moving of materials and people with carts, chariots, and wagons. Its use in virtually all machinery, with the coming of the mechanized age, eventually gave us trains, automobiles, and much more. My life has been greatly enriched with not only the use and misuse of automobiles, but with the stories of my family’s wheeled past. The value of wheeled transportation really struck home when I discovered the stories of my ancestors’ flight from their home in the “Run Away Scrape” during Texas’ revolt against Mexico’s tyranny. In April of 1836, my fourth great-grandmother, Lucy Thomson Kerr, was left in charge of the family at Gay Hill near Brenham. She was confronted with the frightening news that Santa Anna’s troops were approaching. The Mexican Army’s approach was accompanied by rumors of death and devastation to all who were in the area. She gathered the children and servants to quickly load most of their worldly possessions into a wagon that was hitched to several yoke of oxen. The path of escape was made difficult by storms and flooding streams. Lucy and family finally had to abandon the wagon and team to reach safety away from the approaching army. Once fate had smiled on the Texas Army, the family made preparations to return to their home. In order to secure a wagon for the return trip, Lucy had to sell a half-league, or twenty-two hundred acres, of prime Texas land. Now, I think those were some expensive wheels! Jumping forward to the Christmas season of 1914, we find Lucy’s descendant, Marguerite Ruth Hill invited for a ride in another set of expensive wheels. Marguerite’s friend, Bess 23 Reynolds, and her brother Bill Reynolds were delivering live Christmas turkeys to the needy in their family’s 1912 Packard. This top-of-the-line, fine set of wheels seems to be an unlikely livestock delivery vehicle, and perhaps that is why a turkey escaped, leading the young folk on a merry chase. It was this exhilarating time that was remembered as the event that sparked a relationship, eventually leading my grandparents, Bill and Marguerite, into a lifelong marriage. My grandfather Bill also told tales of how he traveled north to buy a locomotive for the family business, the Livingston Lumber Company. He traveled to Pennsylvania where he handed over cash to purchase the H. K. Porter engine number one hundred. Upon completion of the purchase, Bill piloted the locomotive from Pittsburg back to Livingston, Texas, at the ripe old age of sixteen. Even in his mid-eighties, he would smile in remembrance of that engine and the pride he took in having the most powerful locomotive in that neck of the woods. Grandfather often told of helping push the railroad carriers’ cars over steep hills that their less powerful engines couldn’t negotiate. 24 “Back in the Day”: Reflections on Times Passed H.K. Porter engine purchased for the Livingston Lumber Company, 1915 This all took place when wagons were still in common use. The lumber company employed two thousand workers, many of whom used livestock to snake the timber down to the mill or loading areas. This was also around the time that Bill’s future wife, Marguerite Hill, was hitching the family horse to a buggy each morning at their home located at the intersection of Caroline and Anita Streets in Houston for her dad’s trip to work at Peden Iron and Steel, on the northern edge of the downtown area. Grandfather William Lafayette Reynolds would remain tied to the wheeled world; this Aggie engineer would later build a career working for Ford Motor Company at their Houston plant. The other side of my family also had their stories of wheeling around. Dad, J. C. Bumgardner, was a bored wander-lusting kid from Abilene during the height of the Depression. He tells of hitchhiking all over West Texas. At eighty-seven years of age he still has vivid recollections of some of the people that picked him up. He recalls the founder of the Frito Company, which is now FritoLay , picking him up in a Model A panel truck, where...

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