Early preacher helped tame West Texas town

Probably because of Western movies, we tend to think of the American West as wild and wooly. In some cases it was. A lady named Opal Berryman set out to change that image a bit with her book about her father. She said that “good men were relatively few,” but they contributed “much to the proper development of the West.” In her book, Pioneer Preacher, she tells about growing up in West Texas as the oldest child of her Baptist preacher father, George Berryman. The family moved in 1905 to a town whose name she spelled “La Mesa.” Located 60 miles south of Lubbock, the community was platted only two years earlier in an area where the land was so flat it reminded newcomers of a tabletop. Although the Spanish “La Mesa” was suggested, the town committee chose to spell and pronounce it “Lamesa.” The railroad came in 1910. Actually, Lamesa grew after it won an election for county seat over the nearby Chicago. The Berrymans first had arrived in Chicago and so packed up and moved to Lamesa as did numerous other families. While in Chicago and looking for a place to stay, they found only an empty storefront in which to set up housekeeping. A local merchant sold the new family several yards of red calico material to put over the two front windows. With a borrowed wagon sheet attached to a wire, the storefront was divided into two rooms. Imagine the surprise of the new minister when on a Saturday night two drunk cowboys banged on the door, thinking the building was a bawdy house in a “red light” district...AzleNews