THE TEXAS ALMANAC, a vital reference book covering nearly all things Texan, has been sold at The Mirror for as long as I can remember. The Belo Corp. started the Almanac in 1857 as an offshoot of its Galveston News. (This was years before Belo founded the Dallas Morning News.)

So I was surprised to learn last year that the Morning News had donated the Almanac to the Texas State Historical Association. I was reminded of the change last week when a Federal Express man delivered to my door a copy of the 2008-2009 Almanac, which turned out to be a premium for my renewal of membership in the state historical body.

Stuart M. McGregor had one of the longest runs as editor, serving from 1925 to 1961, and my late friend Fred Pass, editor from 1973 to 1981, was one of four who served between 1961 and 2003. The current editor is Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez, who has been occupied recently with work on the forthcoming 2010-2011 edition of the almanac.

It will be distributed by the Texas A&M Press Consortium, of which the State Historial Association is a member. Modern printing technology, which enables the almanac to publish even the 256 county maps in four colors, makes for a much more attractive, but no more valuable book than it has always been.

THE CURRENT Almanac includes “A Brief Sketch of Texas History” which, in 30 pages, is able only to scratch the surface of the timespan from pre-history to 1980.

The section on the great East Texas Oil Boom of the 1930s touches on the problems of “hot oil” running and proration (state government’s attempt to limit production from hundreds of wells that were glutting the market. “Hot oil” was sold in defiance of the regulations.)

It’s well documented how the discovery of this giant oil field caused a population explosion in our part of the state. Kilgore and Gladewater overflowed with followers of the boom, who also spilled over into Gilmer and drastically increased Longview’s population.

Honky tonks dotted the Gregg County landscape as workers sought relaxation after long days on the drilling rigs.

A FASCINATING account of this part of oil field history was given at the recent meeting of the East Texas Historical Association in Nacogdoches.

The speakers were Robert Nieman of Longview, whose subject was Mattie’s Ballroom in Kilgore’s Boom Town Days, and Martha Josey of Karnack, who spoke on the lessons taught her by her grandmother, Mattie Castlebury, the “oil field dance hall queen.”

Nieman has recorded an oral history project in which he talked to people who had known Mattie Castlebury when she ran Mattie’s Ballroom in Kilgore at the height of the boom and purchased the club on the Longview-Kilgore Highway that became known as Mattie’s Palm Isle (later the Reo Palm Isle).

One of the people interviewed was former Gregg County Sheriff Noble Crawford, who had known Mattie in Borger, one of several oil field towns where she had run dance halls before coming to Kilgore in 1931.

WHILE THE REST of the country was starving in the Depression, oil boom areas were “swimming in a sea of money,” Nieman related. Kilgore went from 800 to 8,000 population virtually overnight, he said, and the newcomers were “not all church people.”

Nieman also recorded the recollections of the famous Texas Ranger, Manuel Trazazas “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, who remembered that the Rangers had a lot of trouble clamping down on illegal gambling in various night spots.

Mattie Castlebury, who had been born in Corsicana in 1890, was a successful entrepreneur at a time when that was a tough role for women, Nieman commented. She had been married four times and had two sons. She opened her ballroom in a building that was “kind of put together,” Nieman said. The two seasons were summer and February; with no air conditioning, there were sides that would open up in sunner, There were six small buildings to house the staff, built around the ballroom.

WHEN A customer walked in the first thing he or she saw was Mattie in the box office, wearing a black dress.

The ballrooom was in a predominantly black area and Mattie became a potent political force by buying poll taxes for black people and suggesting how they should vote.

Taxi dancers were a feature of the ballroom, hiring out for ten cents a dance. They split the proceeds with Mattie, 50-50. Her friends said Mattie was very protective of the taxi dancers, investigating them to make sure she hired no prostitutes.

Mattie closed her ballroom in 1943 when she bought Palm Isle on the Longview-Kilgore highway from Hugh Cooper. Her granddaughter remembered that she paid off the purchase debt in six months, and took advantge of the “Big Band” era to bring such bands as Harry James, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman to Palm Isle.

WEDNESDAY and Thursday matinees were known as “pressure cooker days” because women could go dancing in the afternoon then rush home to cook a fast supper for their working husbands in their pressure cookers. (Microwave ovens had not yet come on the market.)

Mattie sold Palm Isle in 1951 and it became the Reo Palm Isle.

Mrs. Josey said her grandmother moved the old Mattie’s Ballroom building to aa place near Karnack now known as the Josey Ranch, where she herself now lives. Mattie died in 1959 and is buried in Longview’ Memory Park, she said.

Mrs. Josey is a barrel racer who has won many awards including an Olympic gold medal; she has been elevated to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

Martha Josey was 16 when her grandmother died. She remembers her as a power, a credit to her profession and altogether a very s pecial person.

She was “a very special person, “ driven to succeed. In fact, the granddaughter figures that’s where she got her own competitive spirit.

My own childhood memories make it easy to believe, as the two speakers said, Mattie Castlebury ran a very clean place. Mrs. Josey’s mother told her early on that Mattie “wouldn’t take any ---- ----.

Certain highly respectable adults of my acquaintance were quite fond of making a Saturday night trek to Mattie’s Ballroom in those exciting oil boom years. So I was happy to hear she ran a tight ship.

sgreene@tatertv.com