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Second Monday Trade Days thriving at 122-plus years
The metal shed with roll-down sides was completed in late October and is located in the area known as the animal section. (Photo by Barbara Green)
By BARBARA GREEN
Longtime Bowie resident the late Marvin Brashear described Second Monday Trade Days “like one big family getting together once a month.”
Brashear went on to earn the moniker of “Mr. Second Monday,” for his involvement in the early days as the event transitioned from the downtown wagon yards to its present home on city property.
In 1989, Brashear told The Bowie News he recalled walking around the wagon yards when he was a boy as trade days marked 20 years of business. It had begun with a bunch of workhorses and mules, brought together to trade between farmers and ranchers.
Little did those hard-working folks know they were establishing a North Texas tradition that is nearly 125 years old.
Second Monday Trade Days happens the weekend before the second Monday of each month. It is located on the southeastern edge of the city on U.S. Highway Business 81, also known as Wise Street.
The market is one of the largest and oldest ones on the North Texas circuit. It welcomes, on average, about 5,000 visitors a month but can bulge the site with more than 10,000 on a good-weather month.
The idea for a center for barter and trade came in 1893 when a group of livestockmen and dealers from across Montague, Clay and Wise Counties conceived the need.
Read the full feature in the mid-week Bowie News.
As a card-carrying member of the Sons of the Republic of Texas, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Shadowland Giant Lone Star hosta.
Make no mistake, I don’t believe this hosta was discovered in the shady soil under a Texas Madrone in Guadalupe National Park. It was actually a sport or morphological change in s hosta named Key West. That sounds like a fairy tale story all its own.
But Shadowland Giant Lone Star has winner written all over it. It is large and has thick leaves. When 12 straight days of rain brought out a rainforest of slugs and other forest floor creatures, the bane of hosta growers everywhere, it didn’t load up with holes but simply got more beautiful.
Read the full Garden Guy column in Thursday’s Bowie News.
Supertunia Mini Vista Pink Cloud petunia is having its debut year or thanks to Susan Middleton Turner in south Georgia’s zone 9 Miller County it’s breakout year.
Susan’s house looks quite like a movie set, and you would have to think that Supertunia Mini Vista petunias play a prominent role.
Last year it was the award-winning Supertunia Mini Vista Indigo that dazzled with incredible color. The petunias were planted in banister baskets across the front of the house. I featured her photos in an article I wrote about Mini Vista petunias.
Read the full Garden Guy column in your Thursday Bowie News.
The boil order for the 400 block of Decatur Street due to a line break and repair mid-week has been lifted.
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