Jan. 1, 2025 is the first day of a new elected term for many Montague County officials. There will be a swearing-in ceremony at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 1 in the courthouse annex.
The public is invited to attend with refreshments to follow.
Officials being sworn in are: Sheriff Marshall Thomas, County Attorney, Commissioner One Roy Darden, Commissioner Three Mark Murphey, Constables Jerry DeMoss and Harvey Johnson and Tax Assessor Kathy Phillips.

By BARBARA GREEN
[email protected]
Captain Kent Stagg of the Bowie Police Department recalls a friend told him, “I was a cop before I was cop” looking back to a childhood where he always played the cop for cops and robbers, and his bicycle had a siren.
It makes him smile as he recalls being something of a “geek” who always knew he was going to be a lawman. More than 30 years later as he retires from a career in law enforcement, including the past 20 at Bowie PD, he looks back on a life of service in the only career he wanted.
At the age of 56, Stagg ends this part of his working career on Dec. 31, but he is looking forward to new opportunities and spending time with his dad, Lowell, who has battled some significant health issues in the last year, but is doing much better ready to enjoy time with his son.
Stagg grew up in Alvord the adopted son of Lowell and the late Wanda Stagg, who passed in October 2022. He graduated from Alvord High in 1986 and spent much of his teen years running around Bowie. Lowell worked as a purchasing agent for Southland Corporation in Dallas. This veteran lawman had various influences when he was growing up including friends and family who were in law enforcement.
“I think just seeing the officers in their uniforms and being around them brought home to me the notion of what the police did. I watched all the TV cop shows and they were entertaining but maybe not true,” recalls Stagg.

Read the full feature in your weekend Bowie News.

Jerry Browder recently donated his grandfather’s antique tractor to Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum in Nocona in an effort to perpetuate it past his generation. It has been in his family for 90 years.
By Jerry Browder,
Denton
In 1934, during the Dustbowl and Great Depression in Southwestern Oklahoma, my grandfather, Benjamin Browder of Gould, OK in Harmon County, OK, acquired this new 1934 first year Model A John Deere S/N 410666 from Lowry Malloy Implement Company in Hollis, OK.
Between 1930 and 1935, 750,000 farmers in the U.S. declared bankruptcy. The “Yearbook of Agriculture” for 1934 reads, “Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production…. 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil….”

Read the full history of this tractor and how it came to the museum in your weekend Bowie News. (Courtesy photo)