Star Hotel, Lamesa, Texas Elizabeth "Betty" and Russell Uriah Humphreys owned and operated the Star Hotel (in Lamesa) east of downtown, but west of railroad tracks in the early 1900 to mid 1900's after they married in east Texas.  Elizabeth was Elizabeth "Betty" Rainer Hailey daughter of William Carter Rainer and Emily Ann Irby Rainer and 1st wife of William Marion Hailey, deceased.  Russell was her 2nd husband. Submitted by Louise G. Stratton, April 2007  Auto work both career, hobby for Hogg by Lynn Beck, Lamesa Press-Reporter, Wed. Sept. 5, 2001    Ask most people if they like their job well enought to take up that same line of work as a hobby and the answer will be no--sometimes, a very emphatic no.  And while many people are able to discover enjoyable leisure pursuits and hobby activities, it's only a lucky few who find something in life that fits their bill for both work and play.    Liston Hogg is one of those lucky few.  For Hogg, that one thing has always been automobiles.  He just enjoys working with cars, doing everything from run-of-the-mill "wrecking" body work to complete restoration of vintage vehicles.  "I picked up the trade in Fort Worth,"  he says, when he lived there during World War II and worked as inspector for Consolidated Aircraft.     It was there, he explains, that he happened to "tear a fender off" his car and decided to fix it himself.  "That's when I started," he says.  "Right then."  Hogg found that he liked doing body work.  He enjoyed seeing what he could do, he says with something that was "tore up."  His interest led him to not only an enjoyable career field, but to a couple of interesting hobbies as well.    Hogg went to work in the body shop at Lamesa's Davy Jones Motors in 1946.  After 13 years there, he logged a five-year stint doing body work at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring, until a round of military down-sizing abolished his job.  After another year at Davy Jones followed by seven years at Vaughn Chevrolet, Hogg opened his own shop, Quality Body Works, in 1964.    An automobile even entered into the picture the day Hogg focused his attention on a little gal named Dorris Evelyn Brown, who was to later become Mrs. Liston Hogg.     Hogg was driving a group of kids to the old Cole Theater, he explains, and Dorris (along with her date) were among the passengers.  "We started seeing each other after that," he says.  The two married on June 16, 1941, and are now the parnets of four children.  They have eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandkids.      Only one of the Hogg's children lives in Lamesa now, daughter Kayron and her husband Jimmy Barron live in Brownfield, Judy and husband Robert Rutledge live in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Melody and husband Billy Sisk live in Idalou.  It's son David and his wife Diane who reside in Lamesa.  David following in his father's footsteps, owns and operates his own body shop and still has his father's old shop.     A career in the automotive field was probaby in the stars for son David. As Liston tells it, he was down at Davy Jones painting a car when son David decided he was ready to enter the world.  "They had to pick me up on the way to the hospital when David was born,"  Hogg says with a laugh.  "I started him in  the body shop when he was seven years old," he adds.    Hogg diversified Quality Body Works by adding a marine business.  Water in area lakes was plentiful, he says, and boating was popular.  "In 1974, I sold 64 boats,"  Hogg says.  "It was a good crop year--there was lots of money and good water in the lakes."    Hogg also added interest to his work by running a wrecker service here for some 20-plus years.  "You'd never knew what you were going to find on the other end when they called you, "Hogg says, recalling one Christmas Eve night in particular.  He was north of town, nearly to Welch, going after a car when another call came in   ---there had been an accident on Rock Crusher Road.  When he got to the scene, he says, he found a car that had literally been crushed into a "V" shaped when it ran into a telephone pole.  Hoggs says he had to call in another wrecker so that each could pull on one end of the car in order "to stretch it back out."  That was how it was done in the days before the "jaws of life," Hogg says.   "We pulled cars apart to get people out," he explains.  "But when you moved in the car and took the pressure off, they's start to hurt."  He finally gave up the wrecker business, he says, handing it over to son David.   Even thought he's been retired for 20 years,  Hogg goes to work every morning.  He likes to go help David, he says.  The two work together on their combined hobby-business, restoring old cars.  It's a slow and meticulous process, Hogg says.  Father and son are both exacting in the detail they demand when restoring a car.  It's all got to be done with as many original parts as possible, Hogg says, and finding replacement parts can be a time-consuming search.  Even the paint, Hogg explains, should replicate the colors used when the car was new.

Matching paint, Hoggs says, is a lot easier these days since the invention of computerized color-matching technology.  "Over a period of years I've wasted a lot of paint trying to match someone's car," Hogg says of the "eyeball method" of mixing paint.     Right now, father and son team are working on a 1940 Packard. After taking it enitely apart, they're putting it all back together so it will eventually look like it just came off the showroom floor.  They've been at it six or eight months now, Hogg says.  The owner isn't in any hurry for it, Hogg explains.  The folks who collect restored vehicles want them to be done right, and that takes time.    The Hoggs get their business by word-of-mouth and throught people they meet at car shows.  The only "advertising" they did, Hogg says, was on David's race car.  David always had a car and drove at the drag races,"  Hogg says.  He was part of the "pit crew" for his son.  They hauled the car on a trailer, he says, hitting area drag strips in Odessa, San Angelo, El Paso and out-of-state strips in Oklahoma City and Hobbs.    In addition to automobiles, Hogg has also enjoyed wooding working as a hobby.  He grew up aroundit, he explains, as his father, his uncles, and even his grandmother Hogg wre wood workers.  He's made quite a bit of furniture and smaller decorative objects for his wife and children, often creating original pieces based on something he'd seen on display somewhere.    He made a sewing machine cabinet for Dorris, for example, by copying one he'd seen in Lubbock.  "I made about half a dozen trips to Lubbock to re-look at the cabinet," he chuckles.  He also crafted an elaborate stepstool-ladder-ironing board combination based on a model that one of his daughter had seen at a craft show.    Hogg had to quit wood working he says, along with the painting portion of the auto body work he loves, after a bout with cancer left him with damaged lungs.  Surgery, radiation and chemotherapy for espohageal cancer seven years ago cleared him of cancer, but left its mark in weakened lulngs.  Both his lungs, Hogg says, have collapsed and though successfully treated, they aren't what they used to be.  I'm on oxygen now," he points out, adding that he must also sleep with his upper body elevated in order to breathe well.     Hogg isn't willing to remain idle, however.  There's more cars to restore, more great-grandkids to spoil and more fish to catch. Submitted by Louise G. Stratton, July 2007 Napolean Bonaparte Means died on December 8th, 1908.  I don't know when he was born yet, as I have just started researching descendants. He served in CSA, Comp F, 1st Texas Calvary.  In 1907, N.B.Means built the "City Hotel" (Ritchey), which was still standing when I came there March ' 06, as was the "Alpine Furniture Store", which belonged to J.H. (James Henry) Rector ( my great uncle).  His wife is Ellen M. Means, whom is buried next to him (married June 20th, 1861).  William "Will" Louis Means is his son ( my great step-grandfather), whom was a Woodsman of the World.  All are buried in Elm Grove Cemetary, as are other members of my family.  If you have any other questions, please holler back at me!  Respectfully, Clayton Daniels  (Descendant of Rector, Hunter, and Means families, Pioneers of Alpine)  <cwd@taylortel.net> My great grandmother and one of her sons are buried in the Old Ackerly Cemetery. When my grandmother passed away in 1998, my mother, my dad and I had a stone placed there in their memory. We searched for a long time, hoping to find the exact spot, but from the time of our first visit to the time of our visit when we ordered the stone, things had changed&ldots;i.e.: the cement border that had been around the graves (broken in hundreds of pieces, but still able to be found) had been scraped away! We were so afraid the grave sites would be lost forever that we had a double marker put as close as we could guess to the actual spot. Anyway, I have a photo of that stone, along with names and dates if you would like them for the site. I really would like to have the information preserved for the future generations, if they want to find this family.  Thank you!  Holly Homan Washington State Holly Homan <hdhoman@air-pipe.com>