On Friday, I visited the archives on my campus. We have an interesting archive because we have both a special collection of books and plenty of books on the history of Wichita Falls.
While I had visited the special collection before – and was quite impressed with first editions of classics – I had never visited the archives on Wichita Falls, so it was cool to see how many books existed on our history. There were at least three or four different rooms that included books or boxes of things from one wall to the next.
The archivist who helped me out gave me a few books to look at. I don’t know if this is what you’re looking for at all, but there was an interesting story in one of the books.
It talked about a runaway elephant from the Ringling Brothers Circus that came to town in 1900 and ended up trampling someone in town. Because of this, the townspeople were going to kill it but they didn’t have any weapons that would kill such big game.
The funniest part of the story turned out to be the part that’s fake.
Rumor said a garbage man needed a roof for his house, so he skinned the elephant and made a roof out of the skin. But a heavy rain and warm sunshine shrunk the skin.
Just like that story, I had no clue what I would find in the archives, and I similarly didn’t know much of the history of Wichita Falls. It was interesting to spend an afternoon in the archives, learning more about my college and its town.
-Lane