Visiting Grant Town Grandparents,

The 1930s Road from Seguin to Mingus

(This story was written by Louis Scopel, recalling childhood trips to Grant Town. Grant Town was a “suburb” of Thurber, located just to the west, northwest. Many structures remain.)

“Travel from Seguin to Mingus was a trip attempted usually not more than twice a year for reasons mentioned below. The distance was 245 miles on primarily on US 281, usually a highway in good condition. The trip usually took from five to eight hours depending on stops etc. Most of our trips were in a 1936 Plymouth 4 door. US 281, was wide enough for two cars and was pretty mundane on most occasions. Plenty wide as you seldom met another vehicle every thirty minutes, or at least, so it seemed. Once we left New Braunfels, the next stop light was in Stephenville. The 1936 Plymouth diligently purred along with an under dash radio keeping dad aware of the latest baseball scores. 

We normally left when dad closed down the poultry processing plant for the weekend and he took a quick bath – he smelled better then. By then Mom had items packed and ready to go. Mom knew how long these trips were as she packed plenty of provisions! There was the thermos of coffee but containers of cookies, several cakes for Gi Gi and John Franks. And there would be another bag of fruit and sandwiches. She seemed to believe we might get stranded somewhere sometime. Anyway we would soon be purring along after leaving civilization in New Braunfels or so it seemed with our head lights piercing the darkness. In later years I compared them to two candles! 

When traveling in colder weather our heating system worked great—three of us in the front seat with a blanket amply dusted with crumbs, tucked across our laps. On one trip, as we approached Marble Falls, our headlights started getting dimmer. When we arrived in Marble Falls we located a lonely street light and dad opened the hood – immediate diagnosis was a loose generator belt but that did not seem to be the problem. A quick consensus convinced us to continue on to Burnet as it seemed larger and the county seat.

So we continued and as luck would have it, there was a Texaco station open, and the young man was accommodating enough. Yes, they did have a part time mechanic but he had went home for the week end, however, with a bit of prodding he agreed to come in and look at the Plymouth’s charging system. We agreed this was better than on the side of the highway – we had food and a rest room. After arriving, the mechanic determined it was the generator but questioned where do you locate one at this time of the night on a weekend? Amazingly our mechanic located one, left and came back with it under his arm. In short order the generator was ‘ginning’ again and the lights were comparable to two candles once more.

Our trusty Plymouth would usually rattle across the cattle guard in Grant Town between 10 and midnight waking everyone and announcing our arrival – and time to eat and catch up on news.  If my aunt Pauline was there, there would be dishes and bowls of fudge and divinity etc.

{When Thurber shut down many people moved out to Grant Town. "My mother and grandparents came to Thurber from Italy to work in the coal mines,” Scopel said. “When they shut down, my mother's folks moved to Grant Town and my dad's, along with many others, moved to Manvel south of Houston.”}

            Noted historian Leo Bielinski has written about Grant Town, and shares:

“Jimmy Grant opened a saloon just outside the city limits of the Texas & Pacific Coal and Oil Company-owned Thurber. His saloon was frequented by miners who could talk freely about unionization without fear of company intimidation. Some immigrant Thurber miners moved out of Thurber to Grant Town to own homes and small businesses. The area became known as Grant's Town, shortened to Grant Town.”

"Today it is part of Mingus, but the locals still refer to it as Grant Town. During Prohibition, there was bootlegging in Grant Town, and after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, several honky tonks opened up.”

"Johnny Biondini, Louis Scopel's uncle, summed up the family's move from Thurber to Grant Town after the coal mines shut down in Thurber: 'In Thurber we had all the modern conveniences like running water, gas heat and electricity. But when we moved to Grant Town, just a quarter mile away, we had to adjust to coal oil lamps, well water and wood stoves. There are just a few left who lived in Grant Town before WWII."

“Thurber had a barbed wire fence around it to keep Thurberites buying in the company store. Jimmy Grant's saloon was just outside this fence. The immigrant Italians made up a fourth of Thurber's population, but the company store did not stock the different salamis, cheeses, olive oils etc. (which the Italians wanted). So in addition to Grant's saloon, there were several Italians who set up small combination grocery store/saloons in Grant's Town, just outside of the barbed wire fence to cater to the Italians on Thurber's nearby Italian Hill: Sealfi, Ronchetti, Mezzano, Corona, Castaldo and Raffaele [and others].”

"There were several prominent bootleggers in Grant Town during the Prohibition era. Not just Italians, but all nationalities were involved in bootlegging. When the mines began shutting down in the 1920s, bootlegging was a way of surviving and had none of the Chicago style gangsterism. There was little stigma if you bootlegged. The nearby Ranger Oil Boom was profitable for the bootleggers."