By Mary Ann Roser and Melissa Segrest
Do you remember the friendly person dressed in a tan shirt who walked up your drive to your house every month? He or she peered at your electric meter, decoding its dials, numbers and circling arrows. The person quickly typed numbers into a curious black device and then left, only to return the next month.
When Hurricane Laura made landfall in the early hours of Aug. 27, 2020, its devastating winds, rain and storm surge left hundreds of thousands of people without power across Louisiana and East Texas. Central Texans dodged damage from this storm, which enabled Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative to help out hard-hit utilities.
To better serve members in the fast-growing western portion of its service area, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative has opened a new service center for field operations personnel in Caldwell County.
Employees began working out of the facility located between San Marcos and Lockhart in Maxwell this summer. The facility will give line workers and other field employees access to needed material, tools, equipment and fuel, and ultimately reduce outage response times in Hays, Caldwell, Gonzales, Guadalupe and surrounding counties.
BY ED CROWELL
When Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative powered the first light bulbs in rural Central Texas in 1939, the World’s Fair in New York was unveiling an all-electric home with a dazzling kitchen, complete with a refrigerator, electric range, dishwasher, coffee maker, garbage disposal, food mixer and an automatic toaster.
By Clayton Stromberger and Denise Gamino
If you were born at least fourscore and seven or so years ago, and grew up in these parts, you may remember what it was like in 1939.
No one was in a huge rush back then. The highway speed limit was 45 mph — lower for trucks. More than half the state was rural. Kids in the country rode a horse to confirmation class. Air conditioning meant opening a window or sitting on the front porch with a hand-held fan from church. Screen time was for when the mosquitoes came back.
Story by Ed Crowell
Military troops learn to live and sleep in unusual spots — from inside a desert foxhole to wedged between a rock and a hard place.
Now, some Texas soldiers will have an opportunity to rest, comfortably, in a revolutionary new barracks in Bastrop County.
At Camp Swift — the National Guard’s main training facility in Texas — some troops will sleep in the largest structure in North America built by a giant robotic 3D printer.