So Rough and Ready must at one time have been considered seriously as a town site. Across the right-hand road (looking south) from the tanyard was a cemetery, and I imagine it must still be there as silent proof that Rough and Ready was actually at one time the site of Monticello. In the plains and desert country of the Southwest one frequently comes upon an abandoned cemetery (usually referred to by local citizens as "Boot Hill", indicating that those resting there in solitude died with their boots on), and in every such case one can find remnants of adobe buildings that once formed part of a town. West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, all have their "Boot Hills" and their abandoned towns. Some were cattle towns, and some mining towns, but all were considerable communities at one time. To me the most romantic and pathetic of these is the town of Tascosa, once a flourishing metropolis nestling in the breaks of the Canadian river where the old Jones and Plummer trail touched the stream in passing through the Panhandle of Texas. It, too, has its "Boot Hill." The first court house erected in Monticello of today stood about midway of the block on the west side of the public square. It was still standing when I was a boy, and it divided honors with the first "old court house" on Rough and Ready Hill. But the term was used in my day to distinguish the old court house on the west side of the square (long devoted to other purposes) from the beautiful and never-to-be-forgotten brick building erected in the center of the square in 1870. That was the court house of my generation, and it was temple of justice, town hall, community house, theater, and grand ball room all in one. For months it was used as a skating rink, and some times religious services were held there. The first service of the Protestant Episcopal Church I ever witnessed was held there, conducted, I think, by the Rev. Dr. Walton, whom I afterwards knew very much to my gain. Temperance lectures were delivered there during the days before Monticello drove out its saloons, and many political leaders spoke here during heated campaigns. Often these were prominent in state and national affairs. Of these the two I recall most distinctly were Governor James P. Eagle and Governor William M. Fishback. Some of us still remember the "Grand Bals Masque" held in the second story of that beloved old court house. Lawlessness was nothing like that of the past few years, but those in charge of these almost annual social functions always deemed it wise to add a line at the bottom of the hundreds of invitations issued on such occasions, advising the "favored" recipients that "Officers of the law will be present to preserve order." It is a most satisfying recollection that there was never any disorder at these social affairs, and I have wondered many times why the "warning" was always printed at the bottom of the neat and proper invitations, also though, as a member of the "Committee on Invitations:, I helped to authorize it on several occasions. I learned to swim in the larger of the six or seven barrow pits from which dirt was taken to make the bricks that went into the walls and beautiful tower of the court house of 1870. These pits were known as "The Jordan Ponds," from which I gather that the bricks were made by Jim Jordan, or some other of the old-time Jordan family from which came Billy and Josephine and the beautiful Ella Jordan. Billy had lost an eye during or just after the Civil War, and when I saw him last he was living at Wilmar. Josephine was the wife of Walter S. Jeter, in my day proprietor of the largest mercantile establishment in town. His store was in the middle of the block on the east side of the public square, and his residence faced Gaines street, opposite the Tom Edwards (afterwards the Shelton & Wells) livery stable. The Jeter store was one of the five brick buildings in Monticello when I first knew it. The others were the McNeely brick on the northeast corner of the square, the court house, jail, and calaboose. The Jordan ponds were located a mile and a half or two miles north of town some hundreds of yards from the Tyro road and opposite the Curl Trotter farmstead. A private road turned to the left around the small cottage occupied by Henry Matthews, who conducted a Negro barber shop, passed to the south of the ponds and wound roughly northwestward past the Belser (formerly Hemingway) place, and the William Allen farm and "played out" somewhere north of Gaster Hill. Curl Trotter and Lynn Brooks were the two outstanding Negro politicians of my youth, and had to be reckoned with by every successful politician of the county. There were still some remnants of Carpet-Bag rule in those days, and Negro voters were plentiful until the Australian ballot was adopted, along with the educational qualification, which was actually more theoretical than real, and yet which caused most Negroes to stay home on election day. Thus "black heels on white necks" followed "bayonet rule" into happy oblivion. All about the Jordan ponds were piles and beds of broken bricks from the kilns burned in 1870, and these accounted for many a stone bruise that caused the boys of my day to "favor" one heel or the other when walking or running. All boys under fifteen regularly went barefoot from early spring to late fall, donning shoes only on Sunday and for social functions, and some times not even then. So stone bruises were common enough. There were also numbers of extremely thorny honey locus trees in the vicinity, and these often gave the boys as much trouble as the broken bricks. End of article __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online! http://photos.yahoo.com/