The Stockyards is paved with bricks.
Millions of bricks. Ten million bricks. I know—I counted. Actually, I read that figure in a book. Someone check my math, but I calculate that if the Stockyards were vertical—if all those bricks were stacked on top of each other to make four walls—it would be a building measuring 105 feet wide—and one mile high.
I say we leave it just lying there.
The other day I think I was the only person at the Stockyards who was walking around looking down at all those ten million bricks. At first. But soon other folks noticed me as I was looking down. Soon they, too, began to look down as they walked, assuming that I was looking down at—or for—something.
“Mama, whaddaya reckon that ol’ coot is looking for?”
“I dunno, son. But if we find it first, it’s ours.”
Many of the bricks were made in Thurber. Note that the Thurber “brand” is stamped (recessed) on this brick.
But the Thurber brand is embossed (raised) on this brick. The triangle containing the letters B, T, and T (for “Brick, Tile and Terra Cotta Workers’ Alliance”) is the mark of the union and appears on “newer” bricks—after 1903. Thurber bricks were also used to build the packing plants and to pave Camp Bowie Boulevard, Congress Avenue in Austin, and Seawall Boulevard in Galveston.
Millions of bricks for the Stockyards and packing plants were made in Thurber.
