“Rural Texas Women at Work 1930—1960,” a photo exhibit paying tribute to the industrious, hard working women who lived and worked through the three decades that included the Great Depression and World War II, will have its official opening at noon May 8 at the Blanco Library.

Part of the “Brown Bag Series,” the program will feature the exhibit as well as a panel discussion by local women, remembering their lives during those times. Shirley Beck will moderate the panel composed of Gwen Risinger, Jerry Copeland, Maxine Grobe and Leona Smylie. Gretchen Sanders, county extension agent, will introduce the program.

A filmed interview with sisters Laura Lindeman Caza and Charlene Lindeman Singleton from the Library’s oral history collection will also be shown.

Part of a series of programs in the next few weeks complementing the library’s annual “One Book,One Community” effort, the exhibit will be on display through May 22. Other programs based upon this year’s book selection, “Listening Is an Act of Love,” are scheduled for May 22 (Growing Up in Blanco) and the Oral History Committee’s inaugural program on June 5 (“My Story, Your Story, Our Story.”)

Most of the photographs in the exhibit were taken by county agents from the Agricultural Extension Service, which also sponsored local “home demonstration” clubs. Rural women who sewed the family’s clothes, preserved food, raised gardens, milked cows, trimmed lamps, and produced needlework and fancy quilts, also enjoyed the socialization and learning offered by these club.

In 1940, there were 57,000 women in 3,000 clubs across Texas. Between l959 and 2000, that number had declined by 35,000. The three existing Blanco county clubs, Chimney Ranch, Ranch Hiway and Round Mountain, are co-sponsors with the Friends of the Library of this exhibit, made possible by a grant from the Texas Council for the Humanities.

Panel members will also discuss how, with the expansion of electrical services in the latter years, came the advent of electric ranges to replace wood burning stoves, washing machines to replace scrub boards, refrigerators to replace ice boxes, lights to replace lamps, and freezers to replace smoke houses.

“This should be a very special program as the women on the panel talk about life in Blanco in earlier times. It is another effort of our ‘One Book, One Community’ program stressing that we learn about each other by listening,” according to Jan Redmond, library director.