A few years after we moved to Uvalde from North Texas, my grandfather and grandmother H.J. Saunders decided to join us.
They sold the Saunders house on Saunders Street, in Trenton, Texas, and brought their furniture, etc, to Uvalde by train.
They bought acreage adjoining our ranch, and while their house was being built, they lived in a house about four miles away. This house was on a farm my father had leased, buying the stock on the farm—about fifty large Polland-china hogs.
The land was fenced with strong metal hog-wire. It is a sort of mesh like chicken wire, only much stronger.
Hogs will chew right through chicken wire.
There were shade trees all along the fence lines, with a water pipe also running along the fence line. And under each tree there was installed a drip-valve to allow water to constantly drop, forming “wallows” for the hogs.
The summers are very hot there, so shade and mud-wallows are a must for hogs in the heat of the day or they would die from the heat.
One hot summer afternoon a severe electrical storm developed, and lightning struck one of the trees to which the metal hog wire was attached, traveling down the fence the length of the hog-wallows. Many of the hogs were touching the fence, and each other in the water and mud, and everyone were killed.
There were no other stock in the field.
The trees, water and metal wire formed a perfect conductor for the lightening.
-Nona
Linden Tree Leaves 