THOSE OF US who have been around for all or most of the Yamborees don’t need much stimulus to get in the mood for another one. But I decided to set my personal stage by checking out Mirror microfilm files to recall what was going on 50 years ago when the 22nd Yamboree unfolded.

The year started out with another vegetable emphasis: Gladys Robinson was pictured at her family’s Kinel’s Cafe offering black-eyed peas for good luck.

In February, Gilmer High science teacher Johnny Hines was photographed with four male students holding kits supplied to the school to detect radiation from potential atom bomb fallout. (This despite the conventional belief that it wasn’t until the 1960s that students were instructed how to “duck and cover” in case such war broke out).

MARVIN WATSON, pesident of the Northeast Texas Water District, told city water utility administrators meeting in Ore City that it was everyone’s job to get new industrial jobs for the area. (Could he have dreamed then that within years he would be serving as Postmaster General in the admistration of President Lyndon Johnson?)

Yams were also in the news that month, when it was announced that new varieties were being added to the Porto Rican kind; Redgold was the most popular.

April saw the passing of T.B. Lewis, who had arrived in 1939 as Upshur County extension agent. Aside from playing a key role in development of the dairy and beef cattle industries, he had worked closely with the Agricultural Experiment station (located south of town on U.S. 271) to help make yams a leading money crop.

With 38 years’ service, T.B. was dean of Texas county agents at the time of his death.

ADDRESSING the Upshur County Council of Home Demonstration Clubs, Chamber of Commerce Secretary Mary Lee Baird touted the Yamboree in terms that still resonate: “The Yamboree gets more work out of more people out of a 2-to 3-month period than you would believe possible.”

Today the volunteer work is more year-round, but the basic thought is the same.

By summer of 1959, a huge peach crop was reported and growers, including Matt Ward, Noble Ray and Gaston Williams, had started shipping. The first Peacheree was held, but it lacked the staying power of the Yamboree which, from the first, has been dominant here.

IN JULY THE first polio case of the season was reported, and The Mirror carried a story about Federal Judge T. Whitfield Davidson ruling that Dallas schools did not have to integrate, though he remarked that the day would come “in time.” Dallas Supt. W.T. White inaccurately predicted the day was 20 to 25 years in the future.

Thurgood Marshall, later to be the first African-American Supreme Court justice, attended the hearing on behalf of the NAACP.

When the Yamboree queen’s race ended on Oct. 2, Ann Buie had emerged as the winner over five other contestants. The contest brought in a grand total of $4,409. Her pageant followed a dance theme; she reigned over the Court of Terpsichore.

FOR DANCERS other than those in the pageant, there were two outstanding live bands. Bob Shelton and his Jones Junction group, who appeared daily on KSLA-TV in Shreveport, were the Barn Dance musicians and Ted Weems’ orchestra played for the Queeen’s Ball. Weems’ 1932 recording of Heartaches had been revived 15 years later and was still his signature piece in 1959.

All-Service Club luncheon speaker was Bryan Blalock of Marshall, self-styled “hillbilly from the Piney Woods” and spokesman/public relations man for the Borden Co. Southern division, predicted a “golden decade” ahead for East Texas. New plants springing up around Lone Star Steel Co. could turn the area into “a little Pittsburgh or Birmingham,” he predicted.

THE NEW LAKE O’ the Pines was filling up and was expected to be at its permanent level by the spring of 1960.

Our Perryville correspondent reported that Ray Price and his family had visited his parents, Mr.and Mrs. Walter Price, on their way back to Nashville after a trip to the State Fair in Dallas.

Etex Telephone Co-op, managed by Max Moore, had a new board of directors and held its first annual membership meeting.

John Henry, newly arrived to succeed T.B. Lewis as county agent, proved a quick study when it came to catching the Yamboree spirit. In one of his first weekly columns in The Mirror he wrote that the Yamboree requires something of nearly everyone in the area “in the way of time, work, money, worry and sacrifices.” He said he was highly impressed with the enthusiasm exhibited by these people.

sgreene@tatertv.com