Strawn, Texas Depot, back when there was a train running
Strawn, Texas. Yep, same name as mine and a distant relative in the family food chain. We visited the town last Saturday for a day trip and lunch. Founded in the late 1800s and soon to be the gateway to our newest Texas state park, “Palo Pinto Mountains State Park.” A 5,400-acre rough and rustic layout that includes a lake, a river, a creek, mountains, trails, rocky escarpments as big as a house, and every kind of critter imaginable. The main entrance is through the town, which is in need of a shot in the arm to boost the economy. 80 percent of the downtown buildings are vacant. The Paramount Plus, Taylor Sherriden-driven television show “1883 The Bass Reeves Story” wrapped filming in the town last March and, at the request of the city fathers, left many of the sets and changes made to the abandoned 1800-style buildings. The little town has seen better days, but no one can remember when.
The Strawn Greyhounds are the winningest six-man football team in history, with numerous state championships. Mary’s Cafe, the famous eatery written up in food magazines and Texas Monthly for her large Chicken Fried Steaks, was left in its original condition because Mary and her gals fed the film crews good ole’ high-calorie Texas vittles; Chicken fried everything and topped off with gallons of white gravy, and to finish up, with a lot of sugary pie, iced tea, and coldbeer ( all one word in Texas).
Fake front movie set left by the 1883 crewsOld Hotel repurposed for the series
I’m no stranger to Strawn. My affiliation with the village goes back to 1958 when my father purchased a lot on Lake Tucker, the town’s source of drinking water and a beautiful small body of water formed by a creek when the dam was built by the PWA in the 1930s. The lot itself was steep and rocky, backing up to a massive hill and rock escarpment with boulders the size of a single-family home and a Buick. There was a dwelling of sorts, a small plywood one-room fishing shack with a tar paper roof. It had running water, a bathroom, a window unit, a hotplate for cooking a few cots, and a small dock. My mother was appalled but captive and had to rough it; she couldn’t walk out and darn sure couldn’t swim back to the dam. The place was crawling with Rattlesnakes, Copperheads, and Coral Snakes, and that was just the vicinity of the shack. Down at the dock, by our flat-bottom aluminum boat, the only transportation to the shack unless you could rock climb, the Water Moccasins were as thick as mosquitos. My mother, holding my baby sister in a parental death hug, damn near had a nervous breakdown as my father and I set about chopping the heads off of every venomous reptile we could find with a sharpshooter-shovel and a chunkable bolder. The Rattlers were the most fun; they would strike the shovel and break a fang before they were guillotined. I got to remove and keep the rattlers for later use in scaring the kids in my neighborhood. I could have been bitten many times over if I had thought about being scared, but I tackled the task with glee and abandon. I was a feral boy in my element.
The second night in the shack, during the wee hours before dawn, my mother heard something sniffing and clawing at the door. It could have been a Coyote, a Mountain Lion, a Bobcat, a Bear, or the dreaded Sasquatch. That was it for her, and we packed and left the next morning. She never went back.
Every visit to the grocery store found me hounding my mother for a nickel or two so I could ride the stationary pony to nowhere. She always gave in and handed me a few nickels to keep me riding the range while she shopped. In my kid’s mind, the wilds of Texas stretched before me, Indians around every corner, wild critters stalking me on my trusty steed. When the coins ran out, I would sit quietly on Twigger until my mother fetched me. I missed my pony, but I was glad when she changed stores, and the new one had a rocket ship to nowhere.
I am not a food critic or a reviewer, so forgive me if this sounds a bit over the top; true accounts usually do.
Some years back, I was tinkering around making a hot sauce or a salsa for my consumption and gastronomic distress. A buddy of mine who served in Vietnam suggested I use one of the peppers he smuggled back to the States in 1970 and has, for decades, grown them in his backyard garden. Sure thing, I would love to use them. He warned me they are the hottest peppers on earth, and a grown man would die within twenty minutes if he ate a whole pepper. He saw a chicken eat one, and the poor bird exploded into a mass of feathers and guts within a few minutes.
A few days ago, he brought me one small pepper and said it was all I would need. It was triple-wrapped in foil, double-bagged in heavy-duty Ziploc bags, and transported in a soft-walled Yeti cooler.
“Why all the elaborate precautions?” I asked.
” He looked a bit nervous as he handed me the bag and said, ” These babies are so damn hot that even breathing or smelling them will singe your lungs, destroy your sense of smell, and might make you blind.” Now I’m scared.
Written on the baggie is the name of the pepper, “Vietnamese Death Pepper.” The name alone is enough to scare the liver out of me, but being a man and not wanting to disappoint my buddy and look like a pansy-ass, I proceeded on.
The cute little Vietnamese Death Pepper
I gingerly removed the foil-wrapped pepper from the baggies, took it to the back patio, positioned myself upwind, and unwrapped the foil cacoon. There it lay, a small, harmless-looking red pepper about the size of my pinky toe. It was quite beautiful in its own way. My buddy said to wear gloves when handling the little demon and to use only a tiny sliver in your recipe, or you might die in agony. I put on leather gloves, a scuba mask, and a triple filter breathing device, shaved a tiny sliver into a Tupperware container, then wrapped the pepper up and stored it in the bottom drawer of my fridge. I figure to use this in my salsa or hot sauce that’s cooking on the range.
Even with Jalapenos, hot cajun onions, and ghost peppers, my hot pepper sauce is too mild, so I put the sliver into the boiling mix, letting the brew steep for a few hours, and I shuffled off to watch cooking videos.
I bottled the mix into a clean Jameson Irish Whiskey bottle and corked it shut. Then completed my salsa and added one drop of the hot sauce to the mix. My wife, MoMo, stood on our patio while I Facetimed her the procedure. It’s now or never. I dipped a sacrificed corn chip into the salsa, raised it to my quivering lips, and popped it into my mouth. Dang, now that’s some good stuff. About two minutes later, my guts churned, my belly swelled like a dead whale, I had trouble breathing, and my vision blurred; then my legs gave out, and I went down for the count. MoMo rushed in and began resuscitation; she was sure I was a goner. I saw visions and was going to the light, but the ghost of Chef Anthony Bourdain told me to go back and “not use so much of that little pepper,” he also called me a moron as he floated back to his personal cloud. I spent the next three days in the bathroom or confined to my bed, but I made a full recovery and never felt better. My gut is cleaned out, my vision is better, I can smell a fly’s fart, and my skin rash has healed, and my teeth are gleaming white. This stuff might be a miracle elixir. I cooked a new brew and used a minuscule dot of the killer pepper. The new batch turned out perfect; just enough heat and flavor, but none of the life-threatening side effects.
I’m working on a label, and the name of my new hot pepper sauce is “Davey Crockett’s Ass Cannon.” A nod to my buddies over at “The Sons of The Alamo” lodge, of which I am a member. It’s guaranteed to blow out your colon, incinerate those pesky hemorrhoids, make the lame walk, the mute talk, turn your hair from gray to its natural color, and remove wrinkles. Pictured above is what’s left of my second batch of salsa using my hot pepper sauce.
After a week in the mountains of New Mexico, it’s good to be back home, I guess, but I would rather be back in Ruidoso’s cool, thin mountain air.
Mrs. MoMo and I have been, for years, regular visitors to the village of Ruidoso, New Mexico. If not for Texans, we believe the town would be a service station, a post office with one red light, and a herd of wild horses if Texans stopped coming. I’ve yet to meet a local that wasn’t a former resident of Texas.
We are used to seeing and swerving our car to avoid hitting, feeding, and gawking at the Deer, the ornery Elk, and the pesky herds of Wild Horses, and now we have seen the handy work of the local dumpster-diving Black Bears. These aren’t your usual Bears; they are “smarter than the average Bear.” The dumpsters have a bolted stop-gap, and the Einstien Bears have figured out how to open the lids. The big one wore a pork pie hat and a necktie; the little sidekick sported a bowtie and whined a lot. The lady next door captured them with her iPhone camera.
We awoke, carried our coffee mugs onto the front deck, and were greeted with a trail of white plastic trash bags torn and strewn half a block down the street. A kind lady in the house across the street helped us clean it up. I had thrown away an empty bottle of Irish Whiskey and found the top cork pulled out and slobbery evidence that a Bear had stuck his tongue in the bottle, trying to get the last drop of hooch. They also enjoyed the last bite of the Frito Bean Dip we tossed and some stale corn chips and chicken scraps. If I had known the critters were that hungry, I would have sat out a “Pic-a-Nic Basket” for them.
The big draw for Ruidoso is the quarter horse races at the Downs. I don’t bet anymore (I’m a cheap ass), but MoMo has it down to a science, and she wins money. If the horse is cute and frisky, and she likes his racing colors and the color of the jockey’s silks, and the horse takes a big poop while parading before the race, she slaps some cash down. She also considers the name of the pony, like; Blue Byou, Lewie Lewie We Gotta Go, Take The Money And Run, Trailer Park Queen, Beach Blanket Bingo, Mama’s Money Bag, and so on. Do the owners ask the horse if they like their name? Probably not. Imagine a stately racehorse with a ridiculous name.
Since the pot is now legal in New Mexico, we saw small groups of aged Hippies wandering the sidewalk in the Mid-Town shopping district. It seems the Woodstock generation has moved to New Mexico for the fresh mountain air breathed through a bong.
A Typical Beer Joint on Jacksboro Highway, photo by a local Wino
I’ve known old buddy Mooch for around fifty years and thought I knew everything about the man, but now I know I don’t
I rode with Mooch to Fort Worth to pick up a load of mulch. It’s one of those places where a tractor drops a bucket full in the bed of your pickup truck. Cheap and efficient. When Mooch picked me up, I assumed his Chihuahua, Giblet, would be in the front seat next to Mooch. Giblet was in the back seat strapped into a child carrier wearing Apple Air Pods, held in place with scotch tape. I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I said nothing about a dog using Air Pods. I did ask what Giblet was listening to. Mooch said, “He likes those Tibetian Dog Chants; it keeps him soothed, and he doesn’t break out in hives or crap in the seat. Chihuahuas are a nervous type, you know.” He’s right; the little shit has bitten me numerous times; once, while trying to steal my Whataburger, he bit my bottom lip, and I needed stitches. The dog is so damn old; he’s probably broken some kind of Chihuahua life record.
Since we were near Jacksboro Highway, Mooch asked me how about dropping by his favorite bar for a beer. Sounded good to me, it was over a hundred degrees, and there’s nothing like a dark, cold bar in the summer.
Only a few bars are left on the old Hell’s Highway; they’ve all been dozed, and shopping centers and fast food joints have taken their place. We drove until we were in the country, then pulled into a gravel parking lot in front of Big Mamu’s Bar And Grill.
” This is my favorite bar in my whole life,” says Mooch. ” I’ve been coming here since I was of legal age to drink beer. This is where I got my first taste of the nightlife and other things I can’t discuss.” We ambled in, sat at the bar, and a female bartender brought us two ice-cold Lone Star longnecks. Mooch introduced her as Little Mamu. Her mama, Big Mamu, sold the place to her some years ago and retired back to Chigger Bayou, Louisiana, her hometown. Little Mamu and her husband, Budraux, run the business. Little Mamu, after a closer look, was darn rough. She’s seen some action in her bar years, probably shot or cut a few folks and busted some heads. Bottle blond hair and a hefty figure with arms like Popeye, I wouldn’t want to mess with her. The songs say the gals look better at closing time, but I doubt Mamu would improve by 2 am.
This bar was right out of the 1950s. Red naugahyde booths with little jukeboxes at each table. The rest of the furnishings looked to be original as well. The old Wurlitzer JukeBox in the corner was an antique but was pumping out Merel Haggard like a champ. The neon and backlit beer signs were old and likely worth a fortune. The Ham’s Beer bear was there, the Miller High Life man fishing for trout, and a revolving Jax Beer sign. This was a man’s bar. It dripped dive and beer joint like a dimestore Siv.
Mooch pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and sat on the bar. ” You about ready, Little Mamu?” he says. Mamu grabbed a step stool, climbed onto the bar, and walked over to where Mooch and I sat. I didn’t know if she would do a Hoochi Coochi dance or drop-kick one of us in the face. Mooch turned on the flashlight; Little Mamu raised her skirt a bit, and Mooch shined the light up her dress, bent over, and took a peek upward. ” Yep, everything looks just fine, gal,” he says, handing her a twenty-dollar bill. ” When did you start wearing those Fruit of The Loom underwear? ” Little Mamu didn’t miss a beat, ” I would have worn my Fourth of July ones if I had known you were coming; you haven’t been here in months,” she says. I’m not sure what I just saw; Mooch looking up a woman’s dress with a flashlight? I’ve seen some things, but this is the best one yet. We finished our beer and left.
Hitch up the wagons, load the party bus, and roll em out…
I’m kidding of sorts, we don’t own a wagon or a bus anymore, but the Honda CRV is a good substitute, and it has air conditioning and practically drives itself. It’s been over a hundred degrees here for a month. I’m not talking about a mere pansy-assed 100 degrees; we’re talking real temperatures, like, 105-110, and that’s without a heat index thrown in that makes it feel like a visit to Hell On Wheels Texas in Satan’s un-airconditioned tour bus. MoMo and I are escaping and going to Ruidoso, New Mexico, this week. The land of enchantment, cool air, majestic mountains, and high rental rates. Hoping to see Deer, Elk, Bear, and Aliens if we stop in Roswell. Since the pot is legal in New Mexico, and Ruidoso has a large collection of cute little shops selling the evil weed, we will likely see many old hippie-type folks stumbling around town or cleaning out the Hostess cupcake aisle at “The Walmart.” The last time we were there, MoMo purchased some gummies made in the shape of Willi Nelson’s head, and they messed up my head badly. They were supposed to relax you and let you sleep like a baby.. naturally. At least that’s what the cute little Pot-a-rista told us. All I heard for two days was ” On The Road Again” and “Red-Headed Stranger,” and that was in my head, no music playing. I’m taking ample Irish Whiskey this time. At least if I stumble and fall from the whiskey, I won’t think it’s a revelation or a sign from above and say, “Wow, that was far-out; let’s do it again.”
Aliens eating Egg-A-Muffins and happy meals…
On the last trip to Ruidoso, we stopped in Roswell, New Mexico, UFO, and Alien Central. Having breakfast in the local Mcdonald’s downtown, a short walk to the Alien Museum, was a treat. The place’s interior is all UFO design with a play area shaped like a saucer. There was no shortage of strange people in the place. One homeless alien was taking a sink bath in the men’s restroom, and another ratty alien was begging for money in the parking lot. As we left, MoMo got excited because she spotted a little alien walking with some Earth Pod People. We stopped to gawk and realized It was a five-year-old big-headed kid in spider man pajamas walking with his parental units. She was bummed out. I told her not to worry keep believing because they will be here soon. Turns out, they are here and have been for quite a while now. She’s scared.
Some Of My Favorite Things…sort of like Julie Andrews sang about in that movie with all the singing kids
One of the better albums from 1960s Japan. Godzilla does a jam-up job on his Yokohamafuchi electric guitar, although when he attempted to sing ” It’s Hard To Say I Love You When I’m Breathing Fire,” with his backup singers “The Hiroshima Sisters,” he hiccuped and accidentally incinerated the girls, along with most of the studio musicians.
Kids with a few dollars in change will buy anything. I was one of the little suckers for these ads in the back of comic books. Charles Atlas training manuals, tea-cup monkeys, live sea horses, tiny submarines that ran on baking soda, and the above X-Ray Specs. I sent my five quarters in an envelope and a month later received my prize. They were more like those cheesy 3-D glasses than real glasses. Georgie, my buddy, was my test specimen. Nope, nothing there, still Georgie in his baseball cap, no bones, innards, or X-Ray vision. I should have ordered the genuine Super Man glasses. I tried them on a few of the tom-boy girls in the neighborhood. After I told them I could see their bones and guts, they beat me with a hula-hoop; although I tried to tell them I was kidding, the beating continued; I barely got away. I handed them to my mother; she put them on, looked at me, and said, ” I see you’re still wearing yesterday’s underwear.”
Back before we had NPR and educational television, we kids had Shari Lewis and Lambchop, Howdy Doodie ( who was a real kid with strings tied to his body), Mickey and Amanda, the mud turtle and Opossum, Soupy Sales, and White Fang and a dozen more. This album was somewhat educational, in a Dave Gardner, Rusty Warren adult party sort of way. The gal that sings songs about puppets is Shari Lewis’s half-sister, which tried to horn in on Shari’s gig by coming up with two repulsive puppets calling them “Clam Chop” and “Devil Baby.”My cousin Jok loaned me the album. He’s the one that blew up everything with cherry bombs and shot my other cousin, Ginger, in her butt with an arrow. He was not the best influence.
A picture of my Christmas display in my front yard from six years ago. I saw nothing wrong with having a rubber T-Rex and a few Raptors eating Santa and Barbie for Christmas dinner. I had colored solar lights at night, which looked like a professional display. I was feeling pretty darn good about it until a few old ladies in my neighborhood, the ones that drove Cadillacs, sported blue hair, and wore prune faces, complained to the association office, and under threat of arrest and seizure of my home, I removed the display.
Yep…I had one of those too. Imagine giving a kid a toy gun that shoots hard plastic bullets, and they hurt at close range. In the 1950s, folks didn’t see the harm in giving us kiddos potential leather weapons. Everything was good until my cousin, a little cherry bomb kid, forced a 22-caliber bullet into my rifle and blew the thing to pieces. I also possessed a real sharp full-size Jim Bowie knife and a WW2 Army Surplus hand grenade.
I first met Billy Roy on a Monday morning in September of 1957 when Mrs. Edwards, our third-grade teacher, introduced him to our class. He stood next to her, arms crossed with a sour-ball look on his face.
I knew this kid was trouble. He hadn’t done a thing to anyone yet, but he had that weaselly look about him; beady eyes, no chin, partially bucked front teeth, and a bad haircut giving him the appearance of a hillbilly.
Our teacher says he is from Hamburg, Germany, and his father is an officer out at Carswell Air Force Base. Billy Roy, she says, is a German and an American citizen but doesn’t speak good English quite yet. So then, what is he, an all-American boy or a Nazi transplant? We, kids, knew all about those guys, watching World War II movies on channel 11 and playing war with our BB guns. We always whopped the Nazis and the Jap’s. We also took care of the Mexican army when we defended the Alamo.
As luck would have it, Billy Roy now lives in my neighborhood, three houses down from my best buddy, Skipper, so after school, the gang calls an emergency meeting to figure out how to deal with this infiltrator.
It’s decided to give the “new kid” a chance to prove his salt; he would be allowed to hang with us until deemed worthy or fell flat on his face.
Our parents got word of our secret plan and told us, “We had better be nice to Billy Roy, or we would wind up at the “Dope Farm.” Someone ratted us out; most likely, it was Georgie; he’s afraid of everything and can’t keep a secret. He is also a known titty-baby.
“The Dope Farm” is a juvenile detention institution that our parents use as a threat when we act up. It keeps us in line. The stories about the place give us nightmares; it’s Sing-Sing for children. One of my older cousins spent some time there, and later when he was supposedly rehabilitated, he robbed a Piggly Wiggly dressed as a woman.
Saturday came our day to ride our bikes to Forest Park diamonds for pick-up baseball games. Our group of eight departed from Skipper’s house at 8:30 am. Billy Roy is standing on the sidewalk as we approach his house.
Skipper stops and asks Billy Roy if he has a bike and a glove; in broken English, he states he has neither of those items.
Georgie, the titty-baby, then says in a snarky tone, “if you don’t have a bike and don’t play baseball, you can’t be part of our gang.” The word’s spoken, the gauntlet laid. It looks as if Billy Roy might be out. Everyone gives him “the look” as they ride by. I feel a little bad for the kid.
Billy Roy keeps to himself during the next school week, eating his sack lunch alone and staying inside during recess. We can care less. He can’t tote his salt.
Saturday morning, 8:30 am, the same scenario. We leave Skippers’ house on bikes, heading for the ball diamonds. As we approach Billy Roys’s house, he comes flying out of his garage on a brand-spanking-new Schwinn Hornet bike. A chrome headlight and taillight adorn the bright red and white bike—the sun’s reflection off the chrome fenders that cover the white sidewall balloon tires is blinding. Hanging on the handlebars is a new double-stitched “Plug Redman” Rawlings baseball glove, and sitting on his little head is a genuine New York Yankees ball cap.
Skipper skids to a stop, and the rest of our bunch almost wrecks our bikes, trying to miss him. What is going on here?
The gang is in awe and more than a tad envious. This kid’s been here two weeks, doesn’t play baseball, can’t speak English, is likely a German spy, and here he is riding the Cadillac of bikes and now sports new ball equipment. Some snot-nose in our neighborhood is as rich as King Faruk, and it isn’t us.
Skipper, the wise leader of our bunch, surveys the scene, then tells Billy Roy that he can come along with us to the baseball diamonds since he now has the required items. So he rides at the end of our pack and struggles to control his expensive bike. He crashes a few times but catches up. Unfortunately for our intern, things don’t go well at the ballpark.
After educating Billy Roy on holding and swinging a bat, he’s bonked square in the forehead with a 40-mile-per-hour hardball. He’s out like a corpse.
The umpire, some kid’s father, drags him over to the bleachers and pours a cup of cold water on his head. Billy Roy wakes up, staggers for a minute, and acts like nothing happened. We are impressed; he’s tougher than we thought.
Around the fourth inning, Billy Roy tells us that he is going home. He’s a bit dizzy and wobbly after his bonk and can’t participate in the rest of the game. We get it. He departs, driving his fancy bike from curb to curb like a blind drunk.
After the game, which we won, we gathered our stuff left in the dugout.
Stevie says he can’t find his Cub Scout knife. Freckled Face Bean can’t find his Roy Rogers watch, and Skippers’ decoder ring is missing. My almost new pack of Juicy Fruit is also gone. Good Lord! There’s a thief amongst us. Georgie, the titty-baby, is the likely culprit; but he says he can’t find his dental retainer, so he’s cleared. That makes Billy “the Nazi” Roy, the perpetrator. There is an ass-whoopin’ brewing. With retribution in our hearts, we haul ass to Billy’s house.
Mrs. Roy answers their door. We demand to see Billy, so she brings him to face us. He stands behind the screen door for protection. But, of course, he denies it all until Skipper tells him to step onto the porch so he can whoop him. Billy steps onto the porch, but before Skipper can get a lick in, Billy pulls a switchblade knife from his pocket. He pops the blade and waves it at Skipper. Yikes! Not only is the little Nazi a thief, but he’s also a West Side Story hoodlum. We leave the porch and the guilty Billy Roy to his young life of crime.
After the incident, Billy Roy, to us kids, is a fart in the wind.
Having ruined his reputation in our neighborhood, he starts hanging with some older hoodlum boys from across the railroad tracks; we call them “The Hard Guys.” We are sure they will wind up at “The Dope Farm” sooner or later, and now young Billy will join them.
Billy Roy has been missing from school for almost a week, a few days before Christmas vacation. We figure he has the bird flu or polio.
The next day, a rumor around the neighborhood, and now our school, is that Billy Roy and two of the “Hard Guys” were pinched for holding up our small neighborhood grocery store with a Mattel Fanner 50 cap pistol.
We all agreed that the bonk from the baseball injured his kid’s brain and turned him into a criminal. Last we heard, Billy and the two “hard guys” were off to the “Dope Farm.”
Pictured above is my first realistic gun, The Fanner 50. It had authentic steel bullets that took green stickum caps, the cylinder turned as you fired it, and cap smoke belched from the realistic barrel. All my buddies in the neighborhood had them, and we thought we were bad assed cowboys. Billy Roy, one of our buddies who turned into a hoodlum child after hanging out with the “hard guys” across the tracks, attempted to rob our neighborhood grocery store with his Fanner 50. He was arrested and sent to the Dope Farm for a few months. After that, he went on to a stellar life in crime, all because of a cap gun.
Port Aransas, Texas, 1967, My Chevy Impala with a mighty V8, 283 engine, and no air conditioning, loaded with my longboards, ready for the waves. Note all the smashed bugs on the grill and front of the hood. Texas, in the summer, is a buggy place. The board over the driver’s side is my 9 ft 6-inch “Surfboard Hawaii,” and the other is a 9ft. “Hansen”; is perfect for the surf in Texas. Leashes weren’t around yet, so if you lost your board, it was a long swim.
My first rock band, 1965 “The Dolphins.” I can’t remember who came up with that name, but I wanted to use ” Don’t Hit Your Sister,” but it was vetoed by the other members. Jarry and I stayed with the band, but had different members the following year and a new name, “The Orphans.” We were playing a gig at the Harrington Park Swimming Pool in Plano, Texas. Left to right; Jarry Boy Davis, Warren Whitworth, Ron Miller on drums, Jerry Nelson and me with my cheap Japanese electric guitar.
One of my favorite books in grade school. Most of the kids were into “Fun With Dick and Jane” and that dog of theirs, the one that bit everyone in the neighborhood. I liked a more realistic read, like Mickey Spillane’s crime novels and The Grapes of Wrath. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Badger, confiscated this book and escorted me to the principal’s office, which resulted in me getting a butt-whooping when I got home.
1968, my late cousin, Wandering Star. Pictured here with his wife, Saphron, and their nice little hippie family. They lived in a tepe in a commune in the Colorado Rockies. True to the Indian traditions required in the commune, they named their children after the first thing Wandering Star saw when he stuck his head out of the tent after the children’s natural holistic birth. Left to right are; Morning Rain, Chattering Squirrel, Sunny Morning, and Two Dogs Screwing. I heard that later in life, the kids renamed themselves.
Texas International Pop Festival, August 1969, in Lewisville, Texas. Me and my pal, Jarry Boy Davis, are in there somewhere, as well as my wife, MoMo. A crowd of around 200 thousand kids and some adults attended. It was three days of great music, fatal sunburns, LSD freakouts, giant joints passing through the crowd, no food, no water, no sleep, 100-degree temperatures, and no shade. It was worth it; I met Janis Joplin while standing in line to buy a hot dog. This was at night, and this gal asked to cut in line, so being the gentleman that I was, I let her cut in. She turned, introduced herself as Janis with a hearty handshake, and it was then that I knew who she was. She was a fellow Texan, so we briefly talked about the heat. It was the 60s, so you had to be cool and act like it was no big deal, but I about pissed myself. She was a nice gal who had good music later that night and died too soon. This was also the night that Led Zepplin got on stage, and Jimmy Paige declared they would never return to this Hell Hole of a state because of the heat. A few months later, they played a concert in Dallas and had to eat some humble pie. It wasn’t Woodstock, but damn close.
My father, Johnny Strawn, on the left, playing twin fiddles with Bob Wills
In the early fifties, my Father, Johnny Strawn, owned the Sunset Ballroom, just a stone’s throw off Jacksboro Highway in West Fort Worth, Texas. A country fiddle player by profession, he soon realized that trying to play nightly gigs at other clubs and managing his own business didn’t work, so he hired, as his club manager, his childhood running buddy, best friend, and my God Father, Dick Hickman.
Dick and my Father had grown up together in depression era Fort Worth and remained best friends to their last day. Decades later, they often reminisced, over a good glass of scotch, that “they didn’t know they were poor because everyone had the same amount of nothing that they did.”
Dick, besides being the new manager, was also pulling double duty as the club’s bouncer. A job he deplored but accepted and performed well when required. Being a family man and a peaceful sort, he soon became weary of kicking unruly customer’s rears every night, so my father, in a lapse of good judgment, hired one of the local tough guys to take Dicks place as the official bouncer and security, A mean little cat, that went by the name of “Toes Malone.” If he had another first name, he kept it a secret.
Toe’s was a likable two-bit-north side thug that had experienced one too many run-ins with the Fort Worth mob. The boys in the mob liked him and thought he was a funny guy to be around, so when Toe’s tried to horn in on their action or crossed them in any way, instead of just killing him outright like anyone else, they would shoot, or remove a body part to teach him a lesson.
After a few major discussions in a back ally with his admirers and the loss of an ear, three fingers, and an arm, “Toe’s” got his new name.
He didn’t give up being a tough guy. Being the mean little son-of-a-gun that he was, he had the local boot shop install two small pen knife blades into the toes of his Justin cowboy boots.
He was pretty agile for a one-armed cat and could carve you up like a Winn Dixie rib-roast before you knew what happened to you.
No one messed with Toes. He was the original Bad Leroy Brown of the South.
The patrons loved Toes so much that they would ask him to show his little “toe knives” to their wives just for laughs. He would gladly hoist his boot up on their table, proudly display his shiny little blades to anyone who asked, and tip a buck or two. The wives, giggling like school girls, would open their pack of Lucky Strikes on his boot tip blades.
He was part of the entertainment, sort of a hoodlum head waiter that would kill you if you complained about anything.
My father said his presence increased business, so he kept Toe’s own despite his reputation. In later years, he admitted that firing Toe’s would have likely led to his own early demise.
Toe’s, being a hoodlum to the core, couldn’t help himself and finally crossed the mob boys one too many times. On a cold December night in 1953, out by Crystal Springs Ballroom, they blew him in half with a shotgun blast.
My Father, saddened by the grisly demise of his entertaining employee, was relieved that he didn’t have to fire him.
Toes had no true friends to speak of, so it was that the memorial drew only a sparse gathering of musicians, the very mobsters whose hands bore the stain of his demise, and a handful of patrons from the Sunset.
On top of his casket sat his little knife boots and a nice framed picture of a 10-year-old Toe’s. A very fitting end. And once again, Dick had his old job back.
The Sunset, as the legend goes, was where the famous Roger Miller goosing incident occurred.
It’s been said it happened at Rosas or any number of clubs in Fort Worth, but I have it from two witnesses, my father, and Dick, that it happened at the Sunset.
Roger Miller, one of future “King of the Road” fame, grew up around Fort Worth and Oklahoma and, like many stars, struggled many years in the joints before making it big in Nashville. He was worse than a half-assed fiddle player but a promising songwriter, scraping out a living by frequenting the Sunset Ballroom, Rosas, Stella’s, The Crystal Springs Ballroom, or any other club that would let him sing and play for a few bucks.
One August night at the Sunset, he sang a few tunes onstage and tortured his fiddle for the less-than-appreciative crowd. The dance floor was full of sweaty “tummy rubbing” dancers doing their best to “not pass out” from the oppressive Texas heat that saturated every corner of the un-air-conditioned joint.
An attractive couple took to the floor, the lady in her fitted peddle pushers moving her backside with a careless grace that drew the attention of the young musicians on stage.
She got that jiggling backside near the edge of the stage, and Roger Miller, being the pre-Icky Twerp idiot that he was, couldn’t resist reaching out with his fiddle bow and goosing her tush.
She jumped.. pushed her dance partner away, and slugged him in the nose. Under the influence of numerous whiskey and cokes, the injured fellow stumbled and fell into a table full of visiting mob boys who turned out to see Roger torture his fiddle and sing a few tunes.
The ensuing brawl lasted a good ten minutes, clearing out the club. Dick carried the fighters out by the collar, two at a time. The mob boys “whooped up” on most everyone within a three-table area, and the rest of the people just whooped each other. The Fort Worth police came in, assessed the situation, sat at the bar, had a free Coke, took their pay-off money, and left.
Roger was banned from playing his fiddle at the Sunset, and soon after that incident, he went on to Nashville and started writing better tunes and working in better joints.
My Mother, fed up with my father’s teetering on the fringe of certain death, finally told him to sell the place or he would be living there by himself.
Dad sold it to Dick, who, after a few months, realized the nightclub business was not for him. He sold it to a steady patron with a questionable reputation, and the club, after becoming an illegal gambling joint in the late fifties, finally ceased to exist and was demolished in the mid-seventies.
Despite its well-deserved reputation, most of the great entertainers did manage to play there; Lefty Frizzle, Marty Robbins, Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys, Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers, Willie Nelson, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and a long cast of other impressive country music acts.
One Saturday night, a few weeks before Dad sold it to Dick, Bob Wills, and his band had a show in Weatherford, Texas, that was canceled due to bad weather. Not wanting to make the night a complete loss, he stopped at the Sunset on his way back into town. Being good friends with my Dad and his mentor, Bob took the whole band on stage and did a knocked-out impromptu show. Word on the Jacksboro Highway spread fast; within an hour, the place was packed to capacity. I have an old 8×10 black and white picture of Bob and Dad playing twin fiddles on San Antonio Rose. It was a night he was profoundly proud of and, over the years, spoke of it often.
The old place may have carried a less than stellar reputation, but that long demolished building hosted some of the greatest musicians in country music.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 