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12-13-2006, 11:11 AM
Texas A&M Prof Plans Photo History of Village
By Ben Moffett - Contributing Reporter
Rep © 2006 Ben Moffett - Permission To Reprint Granted
PIE TOWN – Already one of the most famous tiny towns in America because of its unique name, Pie Town will likely be in for further celebrity in the next few years, thanks to Professor Jerry Thompson, the son of Jerry W. Thompson of Quemado.
Thompson, the younger, is dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas. And when he has some time, he works on a book, maybe two books, about the Pie Town of another era.<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/thompson-pensive.jpg border=2 align=right vspace=2 hspace=2>
Thompson is a 1956 graduate of Pie Town Grade School, back in the days when they held commencement ceremonies for completing the eight grade. And, he proudly notes, “I was sixth in my class when I graduated from Quemado High in 1960.” There were seven graduates that year.
Thompson invokes the name of Pie Town and Quemado frequently in his classrooms and his conversation. Once, in an intellectual dispute, an Ivy Leaguer looked at him and heatedly proclaimed: “Do you realize I have a Ph.D. from Harvard?”
Thompson got right back in his face. “And do you realize I graduated from Pie Town Elementary?” he replied, forsaking for a moment his own doctoral work, and elevating Pie Town Elementary to exalted status in the same breath.
Thompson took his doctorate in history from the not-too-shabby Carnegie-Mellon University of Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1982.<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/pietown_daily_pie.jpg border=2 align=left vspace=2 hspace=2>
Thompson has acreage and a cabin at Jewett Gap, halfway between Quemado and Apache Creek, and he’s holes up there some summers writing and adding to his collection of about 20 books.
Readers can find a list of all his titles and learn about Thompson’s other academic credentials at his Internet site: www.tamiu.edu/~jthompson/ (http://www.tamiu.edu/~jthompson/).
Thompson wants to take a look at Pie Town "through the eye of the camera, which would feature about 100 to 120 of the Farm Securities 1940 photos, with about a 50 to 60 page introduction."
Another possibility is an autobiographical piece about coming of age in this part of the country centered around attending school in Quemado and Pie Town.”
Thompson has plenty of stories to tell about school days in Catron County including one about an extraordinary brawl at a Quemado basketball game against Magdalena. “With two minutes to go, Quemado was way ahead and a fight broke out in the gym,” he said. “There had been a plane crash and a car accident at about the time of the game, and all the policemen had left. Then something happened, and the fans poured out of the stands. It was quite a brawl and it lasted for a while. I just sat and watched until it finally subsided and everybody went their own way.”
Thompson noted that the schools weren’t always state-of-the-art in those days. “For biology, we used to go out on the school grounds and catch grasshoppers,” he said. Still, he learned enough to get into New Mexico School of Mines in Socorro where he met a history professor named Paige Christiansen.
“My father wanted me to major in geology,” he said. “Then I took a history class from Christiansen and became fascinated with the subject. Science was out the window, so I transferred to Western New Mexico University.”
Thompson got a BA in history from WNMU in 1964, and headed for the University of New Mexico for a master’s degree.
“At UNM I fell under the influence of Donald Cutter,” a well-known scholar in Spanish colonial history and the history of the Southwest. “I fell in love with the discipline and wrote my master’s these on John Robert Baylor (a noted Texas Indian fighter, and confederate governor of Arizona).”
From Baylor, Thompson said he naturally became interested in Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley.
Sibley was the Civil War general who trekked up the El Camino Real to Glorieta before being turned back by Union forces. “The retreat was interesting,” said Thompson. “Sibley took a six day detour at about Polvadera, kind of going around the M Mountain at Socorro and back into the valley south of Fort Craig, because he didn’t want to run into Kit Carson, who was stationed there.”
The nature of his writings no doubt helped Thompson land a job at Laredo Junior College in 1968, and he worked his way up from there. He has returned to Catron County often for sustenance and to get away from the “awful Texas summer heat” to write and refresh in the relative cool along the 8,000-foot plus Continental Divide.
By Ben Moffett - Contributing Reporter
Rep © 2006 Ben Moffett - Permission To Reprint Granted
PIE TOWN – Already one of the most famous tiny towns in America because of its unique name, Pie Town will likely be in for further celebrity in the next few years, thanks to Professor Jerry Thompson, the son of Jerry W. Thompson of Quemado.
Thompson, the younger, is dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas. And when he has some time, he works on a book, maybe two books, about the Pie Town of another era.<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/thompson-pensive.jpg border=2 align=right vspace=2 hspace=2>
Thompson is a 1956 graduate of Pie Town Grade School, back in the days when they held commencement ceremonies for completing the eight grade. And, he proudly notes, “I was sixth in my class when I graduated from Quemado High in 1960.” There were seven graduates that year.
Thompson invokes the name of Pie Town and Quemado frequently in his classrooms and his conversation. Once, in an intellectual dispute, an Ivy Leaguer looked at him and heatedly proclaimed: “Do you realize I have a Ph.D. from Harvard?”
Thompson got right back in his face. “And do you realize I graduated from Pie Town Elementary?” he replied, forsaking for a moment his own doctoral work, and elevating Pie Town Elementary to exalted status in the same breath.
Thompson took his doctorate in history from the not-too-shabby Carnegie-Mellon University of Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1982.<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/pietown_daily_pie.jpg border=2 align=left vspace=2 hspace=2>
Thompson has acreage and a cabin at Jewett Gap, halfway between Quemado and Apache Creek, and he’s holes up there some summers writing and adding to his collection of about 20 books.
Readers can find a list of all his titles and learn about Thompson’s other academic credentials at his Internet site: www.tamiu.edu/~jthompson/ (http://www.tamiu.edu/~jthompson/).
Thompson wants to take a look at Pie Town "through the eye of the camera, which would feature about 100 to 120 of the Farm Securities 1940 photos, with about a 50 to 60 page introduction."
Another possibility is an autobiographical piece about coming of age in this part of the country centered around attending school in Quemado and Pie Town.”
Thompson has plenty of stories to tell about school days in Catron County including one about an extraordinary brawl at a Quemado basketball game against Magdalena. “With two minutes to go, Quemado was way ahead and a fight broke out in the gym,” he said. “There had been a plane crash and a car accident at about the time of the game, and all the policemen had left. Then something happened, and the fans poured out of the stands. It was quite a brawl and it lasted for a while. I just sat and watched until it finally subsided and everybody went their own way.”
Thompson noted that the schools weren’t always state-of-the-art in those days. “For biology, we used to go out on the school grounds and catch grasshoppers,” he said. Still, he learned enough to get into New Mexico School of Mines in Socorro where he met a history professor named Paige Christiansen.
“My father wanted me to major in geology,” he said. “Then I took a history class from Christiansen and became fascinated with the subject. Science was out the window, so I transferred to Western New Mexico University.”
Thompson got a BA in history from WNMU in 1964, and headed for the University of New Mexico for a master’s degree.
“At UNM I fell under the influence of Donald Cutter,” a well-known scholar in Spanish colonial history and the history of the Southwest. “I fell in love with the discipline and wrote my master’s these on John Robert Baylor (a noted Texas Indian fighter, and confederate governor of Arizona).”
From Baylor, Thompson said he naturally became interested in Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley.
Sibley was the Civil War general who trekked up the El Camino Real to Glorieta before being turned back by Union forces. “The retreat was interesting,” said Thompson. “Sibley took a six day detour at about Polvadera, kind of going around the M Mountain at Socorro and back into the valley south of Fort Craig, because he didn’t want to run into Kit Carson, who was stationed there.”
The nature of his writings no doubt helped Thompson land a job at Laredo Junior College in 1968, and he worked his way up from there. He has returned to Catron County often for sustenance and to get away from the “awful Texas summer heat” to write and refresh in the relative cool along the 8,000-foot plus Continental Divide.