BEXAR COUNTY HISTORICAL CONNISSIOIJ
ORAL HISTORY PROCRAM
INTERVIEFl fliTII : Perry Kallison reporting his memories of the devastating
San Antonio river flood of 1921 which wiped out the San
Antonio business district . The d r ought of 1950 .
INTERVIEfiER : Mrs . Perry Kallis on
DATE: July 18, 1976
(The first few minutes are blank)
P .K . : As the channel was very narrotv and crooked, the t•Jater overflowed
downtorvn San Antonio. Especially on Houston Street. The v-1ater rose as
high as the mezzanine floor of the Gunter Hotel. On the southrvest neigh-borhoods
of San Antonio , Alazan Creek, the high waters got into homes and
tl1ere were over l(JO lives lost in that flood . I remember driving dmmtown
that morning from a higher level and did not realize what had happened
until we saw horses running down the street. And the old L. Frank saddlery
building that faces the river, they even took drov-med horses o ut of the
basement of that building. Of course, that was in the horse and buggy days
and the horses were confined . The old L. Frank saddlery building was on
Commerce Street but it 1-1ent to reach dor-m to the river . And that ' s where
all the high v1ater t>1as backed up in the channels of the San Antonio river.
Nany business firms on IIouston Street lost their complete inventories and
never did recover financially from that disaster. Since that time, there's
been many dollars spent on the San Antonio river to ~tiden the channel; to
do many things and build the Olmos dam. But still t here is alriays the
possibility and al;.rays the danger if a heavy flood o f fifteen, t;.;enty inches
of rain tvould fall at one time . It would still give a flood condition to
San Antonio. The Olmos Dam tvas then built and has saved San Antonio several
times from a heavy flood .,
This is Frances Kallison and my husband (blank) from the city . The
KALLISON 2
Olmos Park basin and that pasture was completely flooded. I distinctly
recall Mr . Sellers rounding up his horses with a motor boat , no less . The
street, Contour Drive, on our property was one mass of swirling water .
My children hari two pet ducks named Elmer and Sadie. The children were
cackling with glee and delight when they looked out of the window that
morning and saw Elmer and Sadi e having one grand time disporting themselves
up and down Contour. For some reason, they stayed right on Contour adja­cent
to our property line and did not stray away . Thanks to the Olmos
Dam, the October 1946 flood did not destroy the downtown area as had happ­ened
in the September 1921 flood. And now I 'm going to turn this micro­phone
back to my husband, Perry Kallison, who will relate his experiences
of the other extreme: the severe drought of the 1950's . .. the early part
of the 1950 ' s .
P. K.: South Texas over the years , I have read in stories of the droughts
we had in the ' BO ' s and the 90 ' s in J. Frank Dobie , the writer, who wrote
short stories of the droughts in those years. But the worst drought that
we can record happened in 1950 in South Texas and other parts of Texas.
It started in 1950 and we did not get our first good rain until May 7, 1957
... practically seven years and many fields did not have a blade of grass;
in many fields it was not farme0. . Many cattle had to be moved out under
drought conditions. That is the l-ongest drought that has been on record
in the San Antonio and the South Texas area . Many cattlemen went broke
because they could not feed their cattle and they just ... the feed was so
high . .. it would have cost more than t he worth of the cattle. Then the
government started a buying program to help out; this was during the depres­sion
years .•. just as an afterthought . To help the ranchers that had cattle ,
the government was buying the cattle and were paying the price of $16 .75
for a cor.,r, which the rancher thought was a wonderful price. Many calves
KALLISON 3
were killed during the 1950 drought. By 1957, there was practically no
feed to be had . No hay to be bought . The government entered a program
wher e they assisteri ranchers in buying hay. They brought in trainloads
of hay and allocated it among the ranchers to help out the situation. Dut
with all of that help , many of them never survived the losses they su~tained
in those years . It is almost unbelievable to think that you could go for that
many years "''ithout having practically a drop of rain in many sections o .f
South Texas. This, no doubt , as far as history is concerned, was the hea­viest
drought that we ever hari and in the middle of this we decided, we
heard about rain-makers, so a group of us got together and we raised $50,000
to hire a rain-maker . The idea, which you know, was to seed the clouds
which is being done now but that was the very newest idea at that time.
Several o f us met, one was Gene Becker of the Handy Andy company, Reed
Lehman of the Lehman Seed Company, Lester r&ipple, an attorney was one .
All three of these men are now deceased but they all helped out in that
program. Fred Maly of the sports department of the newspaper was very
active in that campaign to raise the money . We hired this man from Arizona
and he called himself Precipitation Control . The idea was to seed the clouds
~dth iodide, silver iodide, would make the clouds and "''ater form and the
rain come. We also planted generators with the silver iodide a stretch of
50 miles across from San Antonio south up into the hills. The idea ~vas
when we heard from or were notifed by an office in Denver that cloud forma­tions
looked liked they rvere bearing water, they would noti fy us to have
our generators work . It was a big boondoggle and they never did any good ,
the generators . The fact is, I always admireri the man named Barnes who sold
us on the idea of seeding the clouds; that was his business and he met
with us and at that meeting , he said, "I'm taking your money and I'm not
promising you anything . I will try and maybe this will work and maybe not.
KALLISON 4
Remember there's no guarantee." And of course, there was no rain at that
time . The effects of that drought on many ranchers that lasted for many
years and many of them never recovered their losses of their cattle and
their land.
This is Frances Kallison speaking again. I want to clarify one fac-tor.
Perry did a flash-back to the Depression, when the government was
helping the ranchers out by buying their cattle for $16.00 a head. He
meant to compare that aid in the Depression of the 1930' s to the aid the
government rendered in the drought of the 1950's by supplying hay in an
attempt to help the ranchers to keep their herds alive during this very,
very trying , horrible period. Now the interesting thing is when the 1950
to 1957, seven year drought, broke, it broke with a vengeance. We had then
more floods. Fortunately these were not devastating floods but t hey were
very bad. We had rainfall , and I remember out at our ranch our tanks over­flot.
ved their banks and overflo'VJed the road; one tank overflowed the road
and made the road impassable . I remember the cane and the higara and the
feedstuffs began to grow and they grew six feet tall . vle had a nephet-1 who
was over six feet tall; took his picture beside this cane and it towered
over him. Very interesting that here we had seven very severe dry years
and then when the rains did come, they came in such abundance that again
we had flooding and we had all the creeks overflowing their banks. I remem­ber
in one of those floods, those poor cattlemen that had suffered such
terrible loss of livestock from starvation, again suffered loss of live­stock
by their livestock being washed down the creeks.
This is Perry Kallison.again and the day that I am talking is July 18,
1976 . It ' s hard to believe notv that I am 72 years old. I can look back
on many events that have happened in my lifetime. Having lived the greater
part of the 20th century, from the beginning in 1903 to 1976. I remember
KALLISON 5
the Depression; I remember the hard times; I remember the droughts; I rem­ember
particularly during the Depression, when the banks all were closed .
You could not get any money out of your bank. Of course, that rvas the time
that Roosevelt came in as President and made the turn around that reall y
pulled the country out. rvhat really pulled the country out of the Depression
of all those years came the War years, the preparation, getting ready for
rvorld War II.
This is Frances Kallison again. Yes , the preparation for r<Torld War II
and rearmament and the War itself effort, did pull the country out of the
Depression and ushered in a period of great prosperity for the next thirty
years. There were minor recessions during that period but on the whole,
the period since World War II, since 1951, has been one of great prosperity
throughout our country. The prosperity has not been evenly dis tributed;
there are people today, some 6~ million, who are unemployed and there are
many others whoSe wages are so low that they cannot keep abreast of infla­tion
. The cost of living increases. But by and large, the American people
are prosperous; they are happy and they are affluent. rvhether this is
good or whether this is bad, perhaps we have t oo much affluence, I do not
know. Rack to World War II, I remember all the boys that were in training
out at the air bases; out at Fort Sam Houston. I recall horv the USO begged
us to take these young men into our homes and to entertain and to make
them feel at home; give them hospitalit!J before they r.-tere called to go
overseas. I remember t hat our home t:-Jas at all times open to these young
men. Many of them r¥ould come after one invitation; f'lould return uninvited,
to share our table and share our beds if they rvanted to be away from camp
over night or if they were on leave and could not find room at one of the
hotels in tmm. At that time , there were only a fe~v hotels here. The big
hotel building flare had not come about. ~nd rooms were scarce for these
KALLIS ON 6
young men, especially those that came in from the bases out of the San Antonio
area on leave . I v1ould call before the high Jewish holy days; r¥e were
asked to take service men home to dinner after the services and everybody
opened their homes whether it was convenient or not . I recall visiting
Brook General Hospital with a USO t-mrker, Mrs. Ethel Saul son, twice a
week; seeing what we could do for the men who were bedridden; what items
they needed; contact their parents; l ittle services we could render in any
v1ay, sllape or form . Everybody was doing some kind of war work . Ei ther
for the usa or the Red Cross . We were trying to help t he servicemen them­selves
, personally; or we were trying to render ai d and assistance to t heir
families while the man of the house r¥as overseas and away from home . A
favorite tvay of entertai ning these men r-1as t o pick up a qroup on· the steps
of the Municipal Auditorium after church services on Sunday and take them out
to our ranch for a barbecue and let them see a real Texas , working ranch .
This gave great delight to the young men from the North and the East and
the Midwest who had not seen an operation such as this. I recall that
after the war was over, and the language school was formed out at I believe
Randolph I 'm not sure exactly about the location of the languaqe school ,
but I recall being asked by the officers in charge if we would not have
young men from all over the rvorld, foreign countries such as India, Iran,
and other places in the Middle East that were here t o learn English so
they could be trained by our instructors in aviation and in various military
phases or branches of the military service. I remember very well how inte­resting
these affairs were for me because even though I was very busy pre­paring
food and serving food and guiding the young men and to talk with
them about their homes; their families and about the customs of t heir countries .
We had a gentleman from Israel who was the military attache to Washington
and Ottawa for the Israeli embassies in Canada and in the Uni ted States .
KALLIS ON 7
This colonel ~vas a very interesting person; he wanted to see a Texas working
ranch . lle t<las not at the language school; he was here on a mission to speak
for the sale of Israeli bonds. lie s_vent the week end tvi th us out at the
ranch; he had requested seeing a ranch and his hosts here had approached
h•S
Perry and myself to entertain him for the weekend . I remember1 saying that
the climate and soil in Israel was very similar to the soil and climate
in South Texas. He was very interested in the idea of importing some Texas
Herefords to Israel to place on some grazing land his family owned in Israel.
This gentleman left here very cordial and feeling very, very warm hearted
towards Texas and Texans . My husband gave him a Stetson hat. When he re-turned
to Israel, he sent me, as a little token, a fourth century A. D. Sab-bat
lamp that he had dug up on some of his land. He explained to us that
the land of Israel had been inhabited for six t housand years and that it
was impossible to dig a foundation for a building or even to spade the ground
for a corn patch or a rose bed t-Tithout turning up some very interesting
artifacts of the generations of the ages gone by . f<!e later learned that
this gentleman lost his life in an automobile in Israel and this was very
ironic because he had served in World War II with distinction; he had fought
on the side of the British and his father had fought on the side of the
British in World War I . This is just one of the interesting people that
we met, interesting personalities that we had the privilege of entertaining
in those days out at the ranch . I think this Colonel was wit h us in October
of about 1958 .
END OF SIDE 2 (remainder of tape is blank)
" ·~ \ .
KALLI SON , PERRY
Depression-1 9301s,4,5
Drought-1950,2-4,
rain maker,3,4
Flood-1921,1,2
Israel ,6,7
vJorld HarTl ,5 ,6
L-Still
another person's memory of the 1921 flood ,
INDEX
As a rancher himself, Kallison has a very vivid recoll ection of
the drought which lasted from 1950 to 1957.
The Israel reference is interesting in its relation to Texas
ranching vi s-a-vis Israel.