At our early morning WLBOTT staff meeting, Sister Magdalena was quite excited this morning. She’s all about connecting people, sharing joyful connections, and trying to manage in her late night Wikipedia random article obsession.
Today’s topic was the intersectionality of Niue and Old Dime Box, Texas. We’re not sure about the sunglasses.
A Little Bit About Niue
Niue is a self-governing island country in free association with New Zealand. It is situated in the South Pacific Ocean, is part of Polynesia, and is predominantly inhabited by Polynesians. As one of the world’s largest coral islands, Niue is nicknamed “The Rock”, which comes from the traditional name “Rock of Polynesia”.
As of 2006, between 90% and 95% of Niuean people live in New Zealand, along with about 70% of the speakers of the Niuean language. Niue is a bilingual country: 30% of the population speak both Niuean and English; 11% speak only English; and 46% speak only Niuean.
The first Europeans to sight Niue sailed under Captain James Cook in 1774. Cook made three attempts to land, but the inhabitants refused to grant permission to do so. He named the island “Savage Island” because, as legend has it, the natives who “greeted” him were painted in what appeared to be blood. The red substance was actually hulahula, a native red fe’i banana.
Dime Box is an unincorporated community and census designated place in Lee County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census, Dime Box had a population of 207. The Dime Box Independent School District serves area students and is home to the Dime Box High School Longhorns. It is named after what is now called Old Dime Box.
By Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31617545
Of course, this begs the obvious question: Which came first? Was there a dime in the box and people built a town around it, or was the town already named Dime Box and someone with a sense of the ironic built a big dime and put it in a box?
To add to the mystery, the town welcomes you with a massive mailbox.
A long time ago, like when horses brought the mail, if you wanted a letter delivered you left it, along with a dime, in a wooden box for weekly delivery to nearby Giddings. This wooden box was inside the Brown’s Mill post office.
I remember now why I called the area around Old Dime Box the Old Dime Box Triangle. Old Dime Box (ODB) lies on Hwy 21 between Bastrop and Caldwell and I would pass through it on every trip between UC and Texas A&M. Very early in my freshman year, a buddy was driving down to San Antonio for the weekend and several of us crammed into his car to car pool. About 5 miles north of Old Dime Box, his car died and we pulled it over on the side of the road. Since it was kinder simpler days, A couple guys hitchhiked back to A&M in the dark and retrieved another car, picked us up and took us to SA. Not sure what happened to the dead car.
The Thanksgiving of my freshman year, I went back to San Antonio and was driven by two girls I knew from high school. Over the weekend, there was a big ice storm, so we waited to drive back to A&M on Monday. The temperatures had melted the ice all the way to Old Dime Box, but just outside ODB, we hit a patch of ice on an overpass. The driver lost control and the car smashed into a guard rail and we spun around and ended up in a ditch. We didn’t roll and since we were wearing seatbelts, we were safe. However, one of the girls was bringing a bunch of clothes back to school and had them hanging on a bar across the backseat. The clothes all fell down and the girl in the back was covered under a big pile of clothes. We had the car towed to ODB and then called the driver’s dad on a coin phone from a feed store. He proceeded to have a tow truck come up from UC to pick up the car and he drove us from ODB to A&M. While waiting for 3 hours in the ODB feed store, I went to the bathroom and a guy was selling condominium timeshares.
Less interesting, but also in my first year, we were pulled over just outside ODB by a Highway Patrol cop and were given a speeding ticket. This was a known speed trap since it was the main road to Austin or SA from A&M.
So, 3 incidents in less than 1 year very close to ODB and thus, I named it the ODB Triangle where bad stuff happened. On the bright side, ODB is 10 miles from Snow’s BBQ in Lexington, but I never visited it until recent times.
Elder JimZim
Commonalities
Let’s focus on the things that bind our two communities, that emphasize our shared sisterhood/brotherhood.
Let’s start here: Niue has the hard-shelled Coconut Crab, while Dime Box has the hard-shelled Armadillo.
Agriculture is a major factor in our cultural exchange.
Tourism
Family
The biggest commonality is family.
And a Word about Coconut Crabs
Most families grow their own food crops for subsistence and sell their surplus at the Niue Makete in Alofi, or export to New Zealand. Coconut crab, or uga, is also part of the food chain; it lives in the forest and coastal areas.
The coconut crab (Birgus latro) is a terrestrial species of giant hermit crab, and is also known as the robber crab or palm thief. It is the largest living terrestrial arthropod, with a weight up to 4.1 kg (9 lb). The distance from the tip of one leg to the tip of another can be as wide as 1 m (3 ft 3 in).
By Pïnpin – own work from Inscape site CoconutCrab and Image:BlankMap-World6, compact.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3494176
A popular internet urban legend suggests that Amelia Earhart crash-landed on Nikumaroro and her remains were rapidly consumed by coconut crabs on the island. However, as no evidence of Earhart’s plane has been found on or near Nikumaroro, this theory is generally discredited by historians.
