Golly, Miss Mollie

Imagine my surprise to open the Trib on July 27 and see my picture of Mollie Adams gazing back at me in the story, “When paying for sin was legal in Waco.” The last time I saw the original was at Fort Fisher. My copy is the centerpiece of my “garage museum” and she is like an old friend. I also have two brass swinging lamps which hung in her establishment. I can only imagine brandy sipped as cigar smoke swirled around those lamps in the red-velvet drawing room. It was 1910 and Mollie’s glory days.

The items are still in my former home on Lake Highlands, but Mollie’s picture has moved with me.

My father-in-law E.R. “Bubba” Nash used to regale us with tales of his childhood when he and his brother, Joe, rode their bicycles from their home at 15th Street and Columbus Avenue to The Reservation and peeked through the lace curtains. Frequently, they would come face to face with some of Waco’s “pillars of propriety” at Miss Mollie’s.

Mollie was a colorful, charismatic figure in her heyday, but she died penniless in 1944 in the McLennan County Home for Indigents at age 74. She was given a proper burial in Oakwood Cemetery, paid for by two prominent businessmen. I believe Mollie would have liked that.

Helen Nash-Weathers, Waco

New Hewitt facilities

In my 53 years I have never felt the need to write to the editor but each day’s news prompts me to speak out.

Don’t get me started on the raid by Texas Rangers on McLennan County Tax Assessor-Collector Buddy Skeen’s office. And last week there were articles about the Hewitt City police station being too small and the fire station too old. Remember: the Hewitt City Council bought land for a new complex, despite an election that residents voted against.

This is Hewitt. We don’t have the resources of Waco. Politicians need to serve the people. Why do we go through the voting process if they are going to do what they want anyway?

Yes, a new police and fire station would be great, but not in today’s economy. I am retired so I know how to live within my means. Come on, folks. Let’s think it through.

Ed C. Wilson, Hewitt

Planned Parenthood

Will someone please tell me why some choose to sing praises of Planned Parenthood’s “good services,” as if it erases the shedding of innocent blood that flows by abortion? Abortion may be legal, but it isn’t right.

Stop offering abortion services and I’ll lead the parade and hail your good services. But I won’t hold my breath that you would ever stop providing abortions because it’s in your DNA as an organization going as far back as Margaret Sanger, who established the “Negro Project” because she was concerned about “people of African descent” having too many babies.

And who designated Planned Parenthood as the poster child organization for abstinence education in the “Nobody’s Fool” event being held today? It’s not the “abstinence” they teach at Nobody’s Fool that is the problem. Their record as the largest murderer of innocent life in our county disqualifies them from teaching our easily influenced babies about abstinence.

Joe A. Carbajal, Waco