In the 1950s, Tamina was beautiful. There were no towns around us but Rayford and Conroe. It seemed like the land went on and on. In the summertime, I spent most of my time hunting and fishing—deer, coon, rabbit, squirrel. Years later, when the cities were being built around us, the builders would truck in all their trash from the work sites and dump them into our ponds, polluting them so bad all the fish died. We couldn’t get anyone to stop them. 

The Taylors and the Piersons were the first two families to settle in Tamina back in 1871. That’s when the Houston & Great Northern Railroad finished building the tracks from Houston through Montgomery County. My dad told me freed slaves came here from all over—Maryland, Louisiana, Alabama, the Carolinas, and around Texas because of the lumber work they could find. Farming brought people here too. Land could be bought for fifty cents an acre back then. 

When the Grogan Cochran Lumber Company came in and bought some 3,000 acres for their sawmill back in 1917, that’s when Tamina began to shrink in size. Shenandoah then bought a bunch of my uncle’s farmland. When he got old, I guess it was too hard to keep it up. I remember he plowed every bit of that land with one horse. And Oak Ridge High School was built on Miss Evan’s hog farm. 

Change is slow, because people here can’t seem to get together on one subject. If they could, then they’d be able to accomplish something. The main problem right now is the lack of a sewage system. It’s a big problem. See, right now, a lot is burdening us down. We’re worried Tamina won’t be here another ten years. We worry that if Shenandoah or another town close by puts our utilities in, they’ll have a reason to annex Tamina and can probably tax the residents of Tamina out. We’re about to lose the property from Home Depot to the track. I hear Shenandoah has bought more land to put in a hotel. Tamina’s looking to lose that whole parcel of land. That’s why we’re scared. If they take this from us, where are we going to live?