Editor’s note: This is an occasional series of columns about Tom Linton’s travels to the state parks of Texas with his dog, Brigid.

Pat Neff was elected governor of Texas in 1920. While in office, he did two very important things. Both have contributed to the preservation of our cultural heritage.

The great folksinger Huddie Ledbetter, better known as “Leadbelly,” was an inmate at the state prison in Sugar Land and had gained a reputation for entertaining visitors to the prison with the songs he had written. Of these, “Good Night Irene” and “The Midnight Special” are probably the best known.

Neff, while on a tour of the prison, heard a performance by Leadbelly. Neff, shortly thereafter, gave him an unconditional pardon. Leadbelly later went on to join Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and others to bring the Depression-era folk music of the South to the rest of the world.

Neff stayed in Texas and performed a second important action that also produced long-term, far-reaching effects.

He persuaded the Legislature to create the State Parks Board.

Neff’s underlying thought in creating the State Parks Board was to have a state agency whose mission it was to develop campgrounds for people to use as they traveled about the state for recreation in their new means of long-distance travel: the automobile.

Prior to the creation of state campgrounds, travelers simply found a suitable looking site and “pitched camp.” River crossings and crossroads were commonly such locations and, because of their desirability, were used repeatedly.

One such was where I experienced my first camping experience, an old crossing on the Trinity River, a few miles down river from Huntsville. An area that now lies beneath the waters of Lake Livingston.

In the small East Texas farming community where I was born, for the Fourth of July celebration, families in the community would pool their resources for a barbecue and camp out.

The location used by our community was at that old river crossing site on the Trinity. Food and pots and pans were packed in wagons pulled by teams of mules and transported to the river.

The teams would be unhitched and tied up away from the camp site. The wagon was covered by a “wagon sheet,” a large cloth that was thrown over the cotton being transported from the fields to the cotton gin.

The sheet would provide shelter, and we would sleep at night on quilt pallets in the bed of the wagon.

In preparation for cooking, a large pit was dug at a level spot on the riverbank. A fire of hickory and oak wood was built in the pit. When the coals “got right” (according to the chief barbecue overseer) several pieces of fence wire would be anchored over the bed of coals. The meat would then be placed there for cooking — a procedure that lasted all night long.

To fortify themselves, those who tended the fire and did the cooking, prepared “camp coffee.” This was a potent brew made using the following recipe:

Place one pound of coffee in a one gallon syrup bucket, fill it with water, suspend it on a green limb, set in a forked stick to allow for adjustment above the fire, bring to a boil, boil for “a while,” break an egg and throw it in (shell and all).

The resultant brew was shared around among the adults, and some indulgent parents allowed their children to have a few sips.

That, I suppose, is why I prefer strong coffee to this day.

There were trotlines set in the river and, by the next day, we had barbecue and fresh catfish for our Fourth of July feast.

This little detour for my “stroll down memory lane” occurred in 1941. In the years immediately preceding, Neff’s vision had begun to be accomplished through the efforts of the Civilian Conservation Corp, a federal work program set up during the Great Depression.

But it had been a long, dry run finance-wise for Neff and his long-time ally in this effort, David E. Colp, chairman of the State Parks Board.

In 1925, Neff requested that the Texas Legislature appropriate $50,000 to be used to develop some 50 tracts of land that he and the parks board had managed to have donated to the state as park sites.

However, the Legislature failed to act on his request. And no appropriation by the Legislature for parks became the old familiar refrain for many years to come.

With the enactment of the CCC program at the federal level in 1933, it seemed that the means of financing the state park system had finally arrived. But once again due to inaction, the state almost let that program slip through its hands.

The parks board appeared to be such a weak entity — well intended but ineffectual — that the CCC refused to work with it. Neff continued pushing for the parks even after he left the governor’s office.

With the future of the CCC in Texas in doubt, Neff and Colp contacted the powers that be in Washington in an attempt to get this decision reversed. But they obviously were not bargaining from a position of much strength.

At the time, the parks board had no offices, no employees and an annual budget of $375 (from Texas Library & Archives Commission publications).

The answer came back that if the state would appropriate $22,500 to provide funding for staff and facilities, CCC would operate through the parks board. If not, the 26 park projects ongoing in the state at the time would be canceled.

Once again, the Legislature failed to appropriate the necessary funds.

Well, that seemed like the coup de grace for the parks system and its rescue by the CCC. But in politics, you never can tell where help (or harm) will come from.

Help came in the form of Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson. She gave the parks board one-time emergency funding of $25,000.

This ensured that the state could keep the CCC program. We now have 30-plus parks in the state as a direct result of Neff, Colp and “Ma” Ferguson’s refusal to give up on a good idea.

As part of this program, the Huntsville State Park was built, just a few miles up the Trinity River from where I first experienced camping (and syrup bucket coffee).

Huntsville State Park was the first state park I ever visited — a visit in which we drove through the park in my cousin’s Model A coupe and went swimming in Lake Raven — ah, but that is another story!

Tom Linton is president of the Friends of Galveston Island State Park.