The latest addition to the You'll Love Lufkin! series is up.

Eddie Bryant over at luftex.com, has a pile of old Lufkin photos and postcards. We even have some of the same ones.

At least that's what the Lufkin Daily News found out this week. The Pine Blogger runs the LDN to ground on a ridiculous assertion that the 2006 average high temperature was 5 degrees warmer than normal in Lufkin.

Apparently, the LDN has relented:

A correction to this story will be in the Sunday LDN. Thanks to Mr. Fillo for checking his data. The five degree increase would have probably never caught my eye had I not attended the American Geophysical Union meeting last month where hundreds of talks/posters were presented on global warming.

Good eye, Mr. Bonner!

So, if you guys stumble across this, drop me a line at the email at the bottom of the page.

• Dana Scarborough
• Stephen Allred
• Greg Stephenson (Nuclear subs?)
• Harlan Neal (class of 1985)
• Kristi Baker
• Charles Ashton
• Christy Carroll (Baton Rouge?)
• Yvette Clements
• Leslie Mewbourn Keltner
• Kathy Moore
• Karen Rivenbark (Interlochen?)
• Kelly Dickinson
• Lindsay Hicks (did you marry roho?)
• Kim Carter
• Beth Lumpkin

Marcella: As a graduate of the class of 1986, you are someone special. Remember, there's nowhere you can go that you haven't learned how to go in time. Whatever the hell that means.

....

Arlene: [about the nametags she's made for the reunion] I had the yearbook pictures put on so everybody knows who everybody was!
Martin Q. Blank: A special torture!

Grosse Pointe Blank, so many sarcastic bits...

Technorati Tag: lufkin high school

A federal judge has awarded $3.4 million in back pay plus interest to Lufkin Industries employees whose class-action lawsuit alleged racial discrimination in hiring and workplace behavior going back decades, according to court documents.

When employees will see their money is unknown, plaintiff's attorney Timothy Garrigan, of Nacogdoches, said Tuesday. The case was filed in 1997 and became a class-action suit in 1999. Many employees have worked for Lufkin for 30 or 40 years.

I have to wonder how long and how many of these battles it will take to beat back this kind of institutional racism. I expect to hear cases of individuals or small groups discriminated against by pockets of old-school bigots (more of which hopefully retire every day), but the scale of this case makes me wonder how far we've really come.

$3.4M among 700 people is less than $5000 each, on average. That's not much, considering the pile of stunted careers and curtailed earnings inflicted upon these workers.

Technorati Tag: lufkin

Local station KTRE notes on its website, that mural artist, Lance Hunter was in Lufkin recently to touch up his murals:

There are "different problems on some of the different murals," Hunter said. The LCC Phone Mural on Frank Street "has a lot of exhaust fumes from diesel trucks and that was adversely affecting a couple of the colors."

I wish he could do something about that annoying street-light right in the middle of the LCC mural.

Technorati Tag: lufkin

Angelina County commissioners on Tuesday voted to declare Abitibi Consolidated's 1999 tax abatement for the Lufkin paper mill in default as of Sept. 2.

The original tax abatement was granted by the county to Donahue Industries, the mill's former owner, on March 3, 1999, according to Angelina County Judge Joe Berry. Abitibi Consolidated Inc. "inherited" the abatement, he said.

Berry read commissioners the letter he was sending Abitibi on the decision.

"Angelina County fully supports the area's economic development efforts and has fully supported the ... incentive agreement for the Lufkin mill," Berry read. "However, due to the extended idling of the mill ... Abitibi has 120 days from the date of this letter to cure such default. ... We sincerely hope to be able to work with Abitibi Consolidated in curing this incident of default and if so will thereafter continue our history of support for your facility as a major asset to our community."

If the mill re-opens, Berry said, the court would consider a new abatement agreement; meanwhile, the Canadian company will need to pay about $300,000 in abated taxes for 2004-2005 in addition to interest and penalties, Berry said.

Related stories may be found in /locales/angelina.

Technorati Tag: paper mill