The Town contained “stores galore, with four soda fountains and ice cream by the ton,” Bickers wrote. “We have the Red Cross and Ladies Aid Society, a large Sunday School where all go except a few moss backs and roughnecks,” Bickers wrote. “We have a High School, parent-teachers society and a community league that meets on the hill. And we have good town officers … Ours is a model town.”
It was in Bickers’ “model town” that Martha Jeraldine Morris Tata grew up over the course of the next two decades