Imperial Valley press., 1937-03-21
Rich Town
Listed
AS Poorest
Disconsolate Crowds
Shuttle Through
Streets
By Henry McLemore

This tiny city sprawls over
almost the exact center of what
men have called the richest strip of
earth in all the world. Beneath it,
bubbling and gurgling, crawls a riv-
er of the black gold that is oil.
Twenty-Five Thousand derricks,
each a marker for a well, lift their
gaunt heads in and about 1t. Twen-
ty-five thousand sand flares, each
guarantee that the well over
which it sheds it's crimson light is
flowing, burn night and day.
But tonight the derricks stood not
as symbols of fabulous wealth, but
as markers for the dead, and the
flares were funeral torches for the
hundreds of children who perished
in the schoolhouse catastrophe
which has no equal in the history
of the United States.
Oil town folk are hard folk. Liter
ary realists have portrayed them
many and many time as the hard
est of folk. They're big and tough,
and they live the same way. Oil
town are notorious for their hell
for-leather riproaring times; for
their anything goes at anytime
spirit
You should see this oil town to-
night. The only places where
there are crowds are the tele-
graph companies t"try and be
here by twelve stop Bobby will
be buried i'm early afternOOnD;
the funeral homes emo, il amt
her. Oh GOd!"); and the hOspi-
tails cbe as quiet as you can,
please.")
The crowds that stand dumbly
around these places in New London
nave duplicates in thirteen other
East Texas towns, because this vii
lage had no facilities for handling
the more than 400 bodies; the dis
patch of thousands of kilograms,
and calls. In Tyler, in Kilgore, in
Henderson, the backyards of fun
eral homes were packed with cof-
fins; hospitals and churches were
laden with the injured.
Here, and in Overton, the over
flow even made it necessary to util-
ize the space in garages, laundries
and abandoned buildings.
Main Street here tonight was the
Street of Sorrow.
Oil folk are accustomed to trag-
edies-minor tragedies. Hardly a
month passes that a "roughneck
doesn't get burned to death, or a
trigger" lose his footing on the top
OF a hundred foot derrick. But this
eXplosion-this devastating blast
which tore asunder school buildings
nearly half again as large as a
football field, wiping out third of
the enrolment - rendered them
helpless.
1 can best describe the condi-
ti0ns at the site of the once
beautiful, 100000 New London
school house by quoting a 'roust-
about 1 talked to as he swung
Continued on Page 8, Col. ~
his pick into the debris.
I'm an Englishman," he said,
"and 1 went through four years
OF the war. And this is the first
time l ever saw anything that
was worse.
For one quarter block there was
nothing but ruin.
watched four tractors fasten
their cables to the entire side of a
wall that had fallen in, sealing a
classroom. The ten-ton slab was
yanked aside, and three little bodies
removed. A blackboard, miraculous
ly intact, still had arithmetic in
scriptions chalked on the board.
1 watched mothers and fathers
superintend the croW-baring of
their children's lockers. 1t was al
most more than one could bear as
they were handed sweaters, base
ball gloves, tennis racquets, and
books. Some of the lockers were
half a block away from the build
lng-half buried in the muddy red
clay.
L talked to a mother and father
whose little girl, having forgotten
her coat when she left school early,
returned and was halfway up the
walk leading to the main entrance
when the building went straight up
in the air. Somehow, nothing struck
her.
talked to the school plumber,
who, tive minutes before the blast,
missed a needed tool and walk
ed outside to his car to fetch it.
talked to parents, who. ear
Iier i'm the day. had whipped their
children for playing hockey.
They cried with joy as they told
me of the punishment they had
meted out.
But there were more than 400
that I didn't talk to.
And that's why tonight the rich
est town in the world is the poor
est.
SIZES FOR nJVOpCC