Page 26 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2021- Online Magazine

Local
History

POST, TEXAS

A NATIVE REMEMBERS

by Heidi Payne

f you want the proverbial dirt
on Post, Texas, just ask someone
Iwith roots as deep as retired
Postmaster Johnny Kemp and
his wife Nancy. Johnny was born
there in 1940 and worked at the
Post, Texas post office before a
zip code was established, proudly
wearing his uniform with a Pony
Express rider emblem. Most
people know that Post City was
founded in 1907 by C.W. Post, the
cereal magnate from Battle Creek,
Michigan and the wealthiest man
to develop a model town. He had
made his fortune starting in 1895 breathed better there, he sought to section of 640 total acres, “Their
on innovative fast-food breakfasts, better his lot in life. He purchased chickens got mixed up.” C.W.
including a caffeine-free coffee- more than 200,000 acres of land in embellished his own lavish home,
like concoction called Postum and West Texas to design his utopian now the funeral home on Main
Grape Nuts cereal. But according city, with landscaped trees planted Street, with leather wallpaper and
to Johnny, when C.W. visited Fort on every street and the prohibition structural work by stonemasons
Worth, Texas and found that he of alcoholic beverages and brothels. from Scotland, but he never
actually lived there. Mr. Post
C.W.’s took considerable risks with his
construction dream town, from questionable
company, the efforts to stimulate rain by lighting
Double U, dynamite in the sky with kites,
offered financing to successfully building a water
for 160-acre reservoir right below the caprock,
quarter sections, providing gravity-fed water for
which included the citizens of Post. Suffering
a built trim from poor health most of his
house, a barn adult life, C.W. died in 1914 just
and a windmill. before turning 60 years old, when
But Johnny the town then incorporated and
reports one changed its name respectfully to
problem with Post. After C.W. died, the Post
four neighbors
Johnny and Nancy Kemp estate pledged $75,000 and the
sharing a

26 Lubbock Senior Link