By Bartee Haile

(Hard as it may be to believe, this is my 2,000th column! My sincere thanks to the newspapers and, most of all, the readers who made it possible. – BH.)

The post office at Thurber closed permanently on Nov. 30, 1936, leaving the once thriving mining town with hardly a pulse and neighboring Mingus on the critical list. 

Separated by two miles and the Erath-Palo Pinto county line, the two shared a mutual prosperity in the boom times of the coal-burning locomotive. The future wa...