Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today.

My guest is Joe Holley, author of Power How the Electric Co-op Movement Energized the Lone Star State.

Joe, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Christine.

It's always fun to come to Aggie Land from my home near UT Austin.

Oh, we want to talk about that.

We will talk about electricity.

There you go.

can I ask you to just introduce this book to us?

You know, this is a book about a movement among the folks, people, rural Texans, to bring electricity to their lives.

50 years after Galveston, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas, it had electricity.

And here are several million Texans living in the dark.

And they finally got it by sort of pulling themselves together and insisting that they get electricity.

And that's where it's about that movement, the electric co-op movement.

So for let's start at the very beginning, though, for people who don't know what is an electric co-op, what does that mean?

Electric co-op is is an organization, of members as opposed to a company.

And the board that runs the electric co-op is elected by the members.

it's nonprofit, and it is set up to respond to their needs and their concerns, as opposed to a profit making.

independ.

well, an independent company, you know.

so, when did when did that first wave of electricity come that came to those big city?

Obviously those are going to be the priorities places.

But when did it start to happen?

What did it move into?

It began in the early 1800s.

I mean, the early 1880s, not long after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and perfected, power and electricity, and the cities began to get electricity not long after that, in the early 1880s.

And it wasn't until the 1930s, 50 years afterward, that the electric co-op movement finally brought electricity to rural Texans.

There's a little passage, if you don't mind.

Of course.

I was, at Columbia University in, in the 70s, and my writing teacher, writing professor was a fellow Texan named William A Owens.

And his, his books about growing up in Texas in the early 20th century are classics.

And he grew up near a town called Detroit, not Detroit, Detroit in northeast Texas, and also Blossom and Pin Hook.

He had been to Paris, not that Paris, but Paris, Texas.

But he didn't have electricity.

He his mother was a single mother, had three boys.

They grew up on tenant farms, you know, picking cotton, hoeing corn and so forth.

They did not have electricity.

He'd do his homework by, you know, smoky kerosene oil lamps.

When he was 15, he got to go to Dallas and visit, and, and and here's what here's how you remembered it.

He remembered the, the streetcars, electric streetcars and lights downtown.

Far ahead.

He's on a streetcar, far ahead.

I saw the word majestic, and above it, a strange and beautiful bird.

And red and green and yellow with cranes.

Legs that stepped up and down, up and down.

Not going anywhere but staying where it was.

It's red and green top, not high against the sky.

Making me forget everything but the knowing that I was in Dallas and this was a part of Dallas.

Without a word, I went to the back of the streetcar and watched until we passed the curve that separated the light and dark parts of Elm Street.

So electricity transformed rural Texas.

I think this kind of history is so important because, as you say, these dates and it's not that long ago.

No, it's not that long.

It's exactly right.

But for someone, my age, I've never given it a second thought.

I think I think about it in a storm if it goes out.

But this is a this is a matter of fact for me.

And it's so important to have this, like you said, there's so many stories in here, oral histories and stories from the people who this changed their lives.

And it's important for us to remember to stop and take a moment to remember how extraordinary this must have been.

It's not that long ago for someone your age.

For someone my age, it's even closer.

Like my mother grew up in a little town called Bigfoot.

Bigfoot, Texas.

It's 40 miles south of San Antonio.

She would go to San Antonio with her, with her dad and and there are electric lights in the 20s.

In the 30s, she'd go back home to Bigfoot.

She's just, like, below.

And she's studying by a kerosene lamp until she graduated valedictorian of Bigfoot High School in 1932.

But, it's just amazing that it took that long.

And it took the people organizing themselves and insisting after all that time is something to be done.

So, yeah, what was the reason that it kind of stalled out at these larger cities?

And I guess money was an issue and money is an issue.

Yeah.

And and we're a pretty big state.

So I'm guessing geography played.

In fact, if you are an investor owned utility and you're in business to make money, it's relatively easy to bring light and power to Dallas, Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, because your customers there are enough of them and they're they're close together so that it's it's a relatively easy, relatively easy process.

But if you're out in the country, they're not enough people and they're too far apart to make it a money making, effort on their part.

So they just wouldn't do it.

You probably know, Robert Caro, who wrote the multi-volume biography of LBJ, and he talks about the hard, hard life that Hill Country women lived.

I mean, they're cooking on wood stoves.

They're having to go down to the to the creek or a hand dug.

Well, they're ironing with, with what they call sad irons, these heavy iron wedges, they're trying to to iron and it's hard on them.

And he talks about how women who you would guess were in their 60s, were actually in their 30s because life was so hard.

And he also talks about how on, on a Saturday morning, let's say, their husbands would get up and put on those shirts that she had ironed their wives had ironed their clean pair of khakis, and they'd go into town and talk to the electricity provider and the electric company and say, we're not in the business of charity.

We're in the business of making money.

So sorry.

I like the way you describe it in the book.

Is there being kind of two Americas?

Absolutely.

We're in what we can, what we would maybe think of as a modern era, the 20s and the 30s.

You don't think of.

Right?

Still working by candlelight or lamplight.

Yeah, right.

And there is, like you said, millions of people who are still living that that older lifestyle life was hard.

And when they got a chance to get away, they'd move to Dallas or Waco or wherever or when World War Two comes along, you know, they see that there's another way to live.

And they the country begins or the, the countryside begins to lose population.

So how did the movement start?

How do they how did they start getting together to demand their their power?

You know, they had been demanding for decades.

And finally, when Franklin Roosevelt was elected president and the depression is going on, he realizes that that these are people living in another country, as you say, and also that he can create jobs if he if he tries to bring electricity to rural, not only rural Texas, but, rural people all over the United States, he has an ally in another in a Texan, Sam Rayburn, a congressman, you know, tough, really, really a good politician who also grew up in rural Texas outside Bonham.

And as he told people he's he's seen his sisters and his mother, their hands red and raw from washing clothes.

you, you know, outside, I suppose.

And he knew how hard life was.

He had another one in a young congressman from the Hill country who had also seen how hard it was out in the Hill Country, a fellow named Lyndon Johnson.

And with their help and with the help of a senator named George Norris, they came up with a model that would bring, potentially bring electricity to to rural America.

I'm glad you brought up Sam Rayburn.

That's a name that looms large in this country.

And actually, there's an elementary school not too far from where we're sitting named Sam.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah, because he did a lot of wonderful things for the people.

Yeah, exactly.

So also, of course, Lyndon Johnson did some great things for us to.

Yeah.

Sam Ray was a crotchety guy, but he got things done and he was totally principled.

He wouldn't take money from lobbyists and and he was interested in making life better for his mostly rural constituents in North Texas.

So once they had this plan together, how does how does the work of actually getting.

Yeah, it's and the plan or the model turns out to be a lending organization as opposed to an agency.

They would come in and build a power plant and streamline for them.

And this lending agency, the Rural Electrification Administration, I got it out.

And now you're going.

That's right.

Yeah.

Hey, are we going to call him down?

set up this plan that if you and your neighbors want power to come to your area, then you have to pay a minimal fee, $5, $5 joining fee.

And there have to be enough of you to make it worthwhile to string lines out into the countryside.

And so there would be, they would usually identify one person and they would call him or her the ramrod, and that person would travel around the area that was going to be electrified, trying to persuade people to join us.

And your life will be better.

And a lot of them were terribly suspicious, not only of government paperwork, but they thought how they were going to get.

It's maybe a a light bulb that hung by a wire in the middle of their their living room.

They didn't quite comprehend how drastically electricity would change their lives.

I wanted to talk about that idea of having that local advocate because, like we've been saying, this is the 30s.

This is a time when people are very suspicious of somebody, mean their house with paperwork to sign and maybe, you know, getting the money together is a hardship.

Yeah.

$5 was a something for people.

Yeah.

So having that local, that person that they can potentially trust tell them no, this is a good idea, that that's probably the only way.

One of my favorites is a woman named Mabel Douglas in Douglasville, Texas.

Her husband ran an auction barn called Po'boys.

He, like the sandwich, and she ran the dewdrop in cafe and sort of a little boarding house and various other enterprises, and she would help him and she realized she she got it.

She realized how their lives were going to change with electricity.

So she took it upon herself to drive through the piney woods, on woods, dirt roads, in her model T, knocking on doors.

And then she would go to Washington and say, why aren't you approving our application?

These are people who need it.

These are people who can afford it.

And finally, some congressmen said, let's just do it to get her off our backs.

And they did.

And now they have boogie Boogie dash cars, electric co-op.

And, Mabel Douglas got that for her neighbors.

She served on the city council for years and years and years.

She was mayor for years and years.

Finally, at age 85, she said, I'm not going to run anymore.

I'm retiring.

And so they had an election and they elected her again by right.

And so that was that was the kind of ramrod that these electric co-ops around the state needed to get it.

Over the time, I would imagine.

I mean, it's unusual, I suppose, to have a woman leading that charge at first, but she could probably relate to the women doing that publicly.

It's not just a light bulb, it is laundry.

It is everything.

Yeah, yeah.

Out in the barn to.

It's your kids studying.

all kind of things and machinery that would that would make a farm life so much easier.

So this starts growing.

there's a, there's an interesting bit in the book about how now the power companies are taking notice and they're maybe taking action to try to slow the spread.

Can you talk about this fight line by line.

Yeah that's a great term.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it was a way to sort of how would you describe kind of buy off enough of those potential rural customers to make it unfeasible for the co-op to work?

If I can get 5 or 6, you know, there's not going to be many of them anyway.

But if I can sort of pluck off a few of those, then it'll it'll destroy the co-op effort.

And they would go out and knock on doors and they would offer free refrigerator if you sign up with us as opposed to the co-op.

And I remember there's a line in there, some farmer I can't read who is.

I think he's out in West Texas and the the, utility representative knocks on his door and he said, to hell with you.

You know, these co-ops are depending or this co-op is depending on me, and I'm sticking with them.

Yeah, I think there was also the community.

I'm going to say it wrong, probably is Abbeville, which is right outside of temple, which I now drive by, and I stopped at Greens to get sausage logic.

There you go.

But they they too, they saw through it.

They could they could see that this is not going to benefit us or our neighbors.

And it's not just about what I need.

It's about what my community needs and what I what we can do together.

And the power companies followed them for years and years and into the 1950s, of course, of course.

so, you know, this was a while ago, but we're now in the modern era, and co-ops persist.

How do they I guess once they got the state running, then how do they survive?

They're in something like 240 odd counties of the 254.

And it's interesting, you know, we talked about how rural Texas was emptying out for several decades from the depression until fairly recently.

Now, though, a lot of those little towns that emptied out are repopulating as the cities begin to spread their ways.

You know, you've seen what's happened to Georgetown and Round Rock up north of of Austin and probably over this way, as I imagine, anywhere on that triangle.

Yeah.

I mean, it's it's just spread.

Yeah.

And so there are, there are designated areas where the co-ops are still working or still supplying power to their customers.

But now these are suburban customers who have all who want who who expect to get all the, the same, advantages that a city owned utility would offer them, whether it's broadband or, you know, whatever.

But they're still I mean, they're still locally owned or they the locals, if they want that, maybe it's easier to convince your co-op to do something than it would be to convince you.

Exactly.

And the advantages or the main advantages, if these are your neighbors who are serving on the co-op board and the the, the administrators of the co-op or people, you know, and that really came to light during the winter storm a couple of years ago.

I was going to bring that up because if we if we're thinking about power in Texas, we're all probably still thinking about that winter storm.

Everybody's got a story about how much time they lost power.

Yeah, the grid and and you know, we think kind of pan Texas with the grid.

But yeah.

How did the co-ops individually or as a, as a smaller group react and deal with with that challenge?

The co-ops are trying to to make sure that electricity stays on through those really difficult days, and they are as successful or as unsuccessful as the, the, the independent owned utilities.

But if your your power goes out and you call your local co-op, it's probably people, you know, and they're, they're experiencing it with you.

And something about that sense of connectedness, really made a difference.

And there's a I mentioned a survey that the University of Houston did about how people felt about their power provider after that winter storm catastrophe.

And the co-ops came out way ahead.

in terms of customer satisfaction, I mean, it makes sense if you think about these are your these are your neighbors.

And even if you're they, you know, they're without power, you know, they're going through it with you.

Yeah, exactly.

Not far removed somewhere where they're right at headquarters in wherever they're comfortable with their heater while we're shivering.

Yeah.

That's that probably makes a difference.

Yeah.

you mentioned broadband, and I did want to touch on that.

It's not really too heavily featured in the book, but, you know, during the the Covid 19 pandemic, when everybody was suddenly at home and schools were at home, that kind of showed another, I guess, disparity.

Yeah, between people who have high speed internet, which is now kind of a necessity, and the people who don't.

So is that maybe the future of what co-ops can do?

We'll think about Christine.

You know, we mentioned those cities that have become super serve suburbs, cities themselves and have repopulated in the last 20 years or so.

But there are still parts of Texas.

My wife and I have a house out in marathon, Texas, out in the big band area, and it's way out there and it's isolated, and there are a lot of small towns like marathon, who continue to lose population and to decline.

But the but Covid helped us understand that if you have broadband, if you're connected, you can live in little towns, instead of the big cities of the suburbs, your local hospital can stay in business.

Your schools are connected to, you know, maybe the A&M or other ways of keeping that little town connected through power.

Yes.

And, you know, people who maybe don't want to live in those big cities, they can remote work.

They can go back out to that rural area, to the family farm or wherever and, and still enjoy having a job.

And I think the co-ops are truly aware of that and that that's their major focus to keep those small towns connected.

What is the future challenges or what is the co-op?

What are the what are they gonna have to do to keep keep going?

You know, we keep talking about how some of these co-ops are in small towns and and they may not be quite some of them may not be quite as up to date as the power supplier in Houston or Dallas or Austin or whatever.

So their challenge is to make sure that they are able or capable of offering everything to the rural Texan that that the urban Texan has.

I wasn't going to mention to this this book kind of, I guess, came out of your, your, your past, the editor of the co-op power magazine as a co-op member, I faithfully read every every one, in which is your co-op?

I'm in.

Bryan.

So it's to you?

Yeah, right.

and I, I love, I kind of love.

I think the magazine feels like a reflection of co-ops themselves because we're seeing stories from our neighbors, stories from people around Texas.

this book feels like an extension of that.

These are the stories of of people.

It's interesting.

I was, when I became editor of Texas Co-op power.

I had been a speechwriter for a Texas governor who managed to get herself beat by George Bush, so I needed to find a job.

I actually went off and wrote a book, but I still needed to find a job.

And I saw an ad for something called Texas Co-op Power magazine needed an editor.

I never heard of it.

I knew I knew vaguely what co-ops were.

I'd seen their buildings on the outskirts of towns around Texas, and so I became the editor, without realizing it, of the largest circulation magazine in Texas.

And there are stories out there, you know, about those rural Texans, stories that are worth telling and that that's what the magazine is.

Were there any stories in the book that maybe surprised you, or that you were an interested to learn about?

you know, the interesting things are stories like Bartlett, for example, the little town northeast of Austin that was the very first co-op in the country.

And how here are these farmers.

And it's also close to object ville.

These are farmers who are going about their business and realizing they need help, and they band together.

So whether it's surprising or not, it's it's inspiring.

And maybe that's maybe there's something to that today in, you know, we live in a, in a society that's so deeply divided and deeply split.

But when you go out to the, you know, I'm, I'm a city guy living in Austin close to UT, that I tell you that.

But when you go out to these small towns, you realize that there's a there's something about being Texan, having stories interested, being interested in our shared past that maybe we're not as divided as we sometimes think we are.

And writing in the book reminded me of that.

I was going to say reading the book reminded me of that, too.

We we can be so fragmented these days, and but we love our state.

We love our history.

And these stories are a great reminder that when we work together, when we want something, when we feel like we can improve our home and our our local area, right.

We can do that.

Yeah, exactly.

We can make change.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's important to point out that these are people who banded together on their own and realized they were stronger together than they were individually.

we are running low on time.

So in our final maybe four minutes or so, what do you want people to take away from from this book and and from the project?

You know, I think about that and I think it's sort of what we were just describing.

This is the Texas story of people banding together.

We like to think of ourselves as individuals, but from the very beginning, it's people coming and working together to build their cities, to build their schools, to build their hospitals.

and that's that's what has to happen now.

And from now on, if this if this state is to be what it really can be, I, I find myself lately, you know, we think of Texas history a lot of times we think of the Alamo and Sam Houston and those kinds of things, and that's all well and good.

We all know that.

But finding this kind of local history and this is, I guess, statewide local history because we touch all around.

But finding that that local history of, of especially of everyday people who have made these changes, this is the kind of history book that that is so important for us as, as modern Texans to, to look at and to remember that, that this is who we are.

Yeah, I think so.

And again, we talked about subject ville.

I like to say the name, these are Czech immigrants who had a hard life in the old world.

And and there's a quote in there from one of their diaries who something to the effect that, you know, you people who still are back in, in the Czech Republic hear about how life is milk and honey over here in Texas.

No it's not, it's hard.

And the only way you're going to survive is to survive together.

And with their churches and their schools and their businesses, they survived.

it's a wonderful.

Thank you.

I really appreciate you coming here and talking today about this.

I, I don't know that if you say co-op history, people are going to perk their ears up, but I hope that by listening to us talk about it, they understand what really is and will.

Especially if you're in a co-op, you should read this book and learn more about what you're co-op keep.

You know, Christina, that's also important because when when they began to create their co-ops, that was a movement, a movement of people.

And now most people probably don't even know where they get their electricity.

They're like me.

They never it's just that's the power source.

And I pay my bill and that's it.

But I think, yeah, if especially if you're in one, maybe realize the value of it and very much and aim to keep it and not just let it go away, get absorbed into something else because, because having that local control and that local influence makes a difference, as I think, as we all saw in that winter storm, it doesn't make that difference.

You're right about that.

Well, thank you so much for coming here and talking.

Thanks for having me.

that book again is called Power by Joe Holley.

We thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you again soon.