Frost, Texas · What Endures

Part Five of 8

Open for Business, More or Less

The morning after, Frost could have walked away. It didn't.

Within twenty-four hours a row of temporary business stalls was going up downtown, and seventeen of them were spoken for by Wednesday. The meat market had lost its roof, so it became headquarters. Sandwiches were “piled high on the counter, free for all.” The Salvation Army poured coffee all night.

National Guardsmen from Corsicana came to watch over the ruins, and that night the weather turned cold. They stood guard around their fires “swathed about by blankets.” That was in May, in Texas, in a town called Frost.

Corsicana sent food. Italy held a mass meeting. Blooming Grove sent bedding and towels. The Red Cross set up at daylight. The dead were buried Thursday afternoon, and the service began almost to the minute of the storm, forty-eight hours on.

Then the lumber came in by rail, and the town started building. Within days the Corsicana paper had the headline for it: “Determination to Rise From Debris.” The Methodists had a new sanctuary up by 1931. The bank rose again on the same corner, around the same vault and the same tile floor.

A town that gets knocked flat and builds back on the very same spot is saying something. Frost said it in 1930.

More pictures of the town before and after are on Frost's photographs page.

Some things are built to endure.