NOOKS AND CRANNIES of Texas history are illuminated in the folklore that is preserved by the Texas Folklore Society. At its 100th annual meeting in Nacogdoches last month, there were several of these little-known stories.

Black Diamond, whose sad demise was the subject for Henry Wolff Jr. of Victoria, was a rogue elephant that was “executed” on Oct. 16, 1929, a few days after he had killed a woman.

Born in India in 1898, Black Diamond had come to Texas with the Barnes Circus, which had been bought by John Ringling.

BLACK DIAMOND and other elephants were parading through the Corsicana circus grounds when he attacked a Kerens woman, apparently thinking she had taken his beloved handler away from him.

A Dallas Morning News story said that the elephant had trampled on the woman, but a close bystander denied that. The 6-ton monster animal had previously killed two circus workers.

It was at Kenedy in Karnes County that Black Diamond was marched to the edge of town and shot by several gunmen, who took 105 shots to bring him down. The head was removed for mounting and was kept at a funeral home in Kenedy for years. It has since been preserved by the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which has loaned it to the Watkins Construction Co. museum in Corsicana. One of the elephant’s feet was made into a footstool.

NEWS TO ME, though perhaps well known to this area’s many fishermen and women, was the fact that in the 1950s the State of Texas prohibited the sale of fish caught from rivers. Before that, especially in the Great Depression of the 1930s, there was a thriving trade in catfish, buffalo and other bottom feeders found in rivers such as the Red and the Sabine.

Wildwood Dean Rice of Bonham, wearing overalls, told of his role in this enterprise. He has traveled the Red River, recording its folklore. Many of the river denizens today are descended from river people, the Missouri and Red having been highways into the interior.

Fishing the Red was dependable in the face of Depression starvation, Wildwood Dean said, but it was no way to get rich, and lasted only a few years. These market fishermen were different from commercial fishermen, he explained. They made their own rules and created their own markets, which sometimes included bartering to doctors and others.

By the 1880s, salmon runs in the Northwest and Scandinavia were declining, and the nets and boats used to catch salmon were becoming surplus. It was a displaced salmon fisherman who taught Dean’s dad how to net river fish. Hunting, fishing and gathering wild foods were a good way to supplement the family income, Dean recalled, but the Depression made it more urgent.

Catch and seine nets used in salmon fishing were of little use east of the Rockies, so fishermen on the Red developed a net that was a forerunner of the barrel, or hoop, net. Wildwood Dean displayed a tool he made of bois d’arc wood to make hoop nets.

These river fishermen used a Joe boat, made of pine boards, and a marvelous design, according to Dean. By the 1950s, when the new rules took effect, channel and flathead catfish had nearly disappeared from the Red River, he said.

Not coincidentally, this was the decade when catfish farming began in East Texas. A fish farm in northeast Upshur County was started but never really got off the ground. Evidently there were not enough Texas fish farms to create the kind of industry that thrives today in Mississippi.

THE POSSUM, a creature that roamed with dinosaurs, preceded humans by millions of years and will no doubt still be around when we have faded out. They’re so prolific that huge numbers can wander fatally onto highways at night without making an impact on the species overall.

It’s not surprising that they crop up often in folklore. Melvin Mason and Woody C. Swinburne told the Texas Folklore Society audience how Possum Walk Road near Huntsville came to acquire that name in 1887.

It seems that W. L. Holloway, a land owner, donated three acres for religious purposes; a combination church and school house was built and named Union Hill.

One Sunday morning as church services were under way, a possum entered from the front, walked down the center aisle and left by the back door. No doubt the stunned congregation felt such an event should be commemorated, and that was how the Walker County road from Union Hill to Huntsville got a new name. Union Hill Church still stands but is now used only for funerals.

Trinity County also has a Possum Walk Road and cemetery, which memorializes the time a family doctor ran into a possum while making a house call.

Possums are really popular in geography, especially in the South, the speakers said.

sgreene@tatertv.com

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