Tornado Town (Texas Country Reporter)

Tornadoes rip apart this tiny town 3 times since 1938. Wynn Hamilton has survived all 3 in this jinxed town.

Wynn Hamilton
Pecos, TX

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Video Script:: 

when it rains is most pretty place in the world when it doesn't rain is bad and this probably the same way while I was kid it was just beautiful would tell you what it was like around this place where you're a little kid well from my memory that it was a pretty active little town we had probably 80 people lived here when I was a little kid I grew up to fond memories that the whole early days of my life here the time it seems has a way of coloring your memories the older you get a selective process weeds out those unhappy moments making room for more pleasant recollections to grow Wynn Hamilton once played on the steps of the railroad depot in Saragosa Texas what's left of the old town is a weathered and withering backdrop of memories for that boy that is somewhere still inside winds heart [Music] I really enjoyed it that old steam needs you know I Calista yeah I miss that steam engine they had a bailment church down I miss that too but there's two things I really miss to those steam using that bell ringing there were Sunday mornings of all win Hamilton's cherished hometown memories there are some dark moments he just can't seem to shake and that he kept hollering to me and my sister and grandmother that we need to get in that building quick and he put us in there and then he'd run back to the store and that Tim related the tornado hit [Music] it was a destructive force beyond imagination the crippling fury came churning out of the West Texas clouds and cut a town to its knees leaving but a skeleton of Saragossa behind there was there was barns there was people there everything was moving in this town and tonight tornado hit in 1938 it was a booming of the place people started moving off after that though a post office when I was a kid it was walled off across here and this is the waiting room and and this all the mailboxes are right here and the best part was over here there right here's where you bought you you take you to ride the railroad and the car that brought the mail down if you want even had the faster Department an apartment in the end if you wanted to ride tannaz hole two or three and you could buy them right here and the post office right here so everything was real handy now this is agent office right here that's where my daddy was hated for years and years and used to be dealing out there we take it flag the trains that was coming through wasn't too many came through but he could lag them while most of the town moved and resettled down the road aways after that 1938 tornado that didn't stop Mother Nature from hauling her worst at Saragosa again and then in 1964 we had another tornado that that wiped out my barns my cotton pickers from my trailers and several buildings in this vicinity right here why he died started about two miles away from us and one of them out they didn't take long to live without it would seem that wherever Saragosa moved the twisters would talk the struggling West Texas town in a cruel game at seek and destroy and then we had another tornado in 1987 that came in near late need and then wiped out the community center and Saragosa there was around 30 people killed that afternoon and that tornado that came through here and wiped out probably I'd say roughly eighty two hundred houses were completely wiped death completely there was nothing left it's pretty rough they had a lot of friends down there that was killed in that in that tornado quite a few [Music] you can always rebuild that you can't rebuild a life that's gone those weren't these people down there they were my best friends and that's what that's where we thought up and I guess that's about as good as you could put it our best friends down the road and a decade later a town emerges once again the piles of rubble are gone now and new trees are growing where once there was nothing you believe there's such a thing as a town been jinxed I don't know the way the man from Midland came out here and he was telling me said tornadoes don't hitting same spot three times in a row and I should they sure do I said just go right on in I hit him take a picture down there with it antennas bent over and I said this is for three that I know of as a blown away within a hundred foot of each other so there's barns and and the houses and everything else is going way down there so until I said I think you if you look that's their ghosts do you find out that's different it is really different than they have played whenever win Hamilton looks out across the empty pastures of the old Saragosa he hears the sounds of a bustling turn-of-the-century town with steam engines and church bells those are the boyhood memories interlaced with tragedy from the sky but Winn has discovered that through tragedy what endures is the human spirit a spirit shared only by the people of Saragossa Texas [Music] this is about the only place I've ever known has you've been here as long as I have at home [Music] you