What exactly do macaroni, oysters, and beer have in common?
The best person to answer that question would be University of Texas at Arlington and Navarro College instructor Gene Rhea Tucker, Ph. D.
On Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012, Mr. Tucker will do a reading and question and answer session for his new book Oysters, Macaroni, and Beer: Thurber, Texas, and the Company Store.
What began as a master’s thesis has morphed into a now-published case-study that looks at the community of Thurber, Texas, a small coal-mining ghost town located 75 miles west of Fort Worth. Tucker, who was a graduate assistant at the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas at Tarleton University, explores the relationship between the town’s inhabitants and the town’s owner, the “company store” Texas and Pacific Coal Company. The book focuses not only on the unions and labor relations of the time, but also melds them with a larger history of industrialization in Texas.
Greg Kosc, Ph. D., associate professor of history at Southeast Campus, will kick off the event, which is open to the public. The reading will take place in the Southeast Campus Library (ESED 1200) in the Silent Study Area. For more information, contact Tracey Minzenmayer, assistant director of library services, at 817-515-3388 or tracey.minzenmayer@tccd.edu.