Postcard From The Last Picture Show & Beyond

(Continued from road trip post 7)   (Go to the first post of this series)

The wives were expecting us home in a couple of days and we were about 500 miles away with more planned stops along the road ahead so we got up pretty early, ate a quick breakfast and headed west to the nice little town of Eastland, Texas.

From 1957 until 1968, Marene Johnson Johnson ( yes, that's her name) served as the Eastland postmaster. For seven years, once all mailboxes were filled and the packages delivered, Marene worked on her pet project - a giant mural made entirely of postage stamps. When she was finished, she gave up her postmaster job and left the mural, all 11,217 stamps of it, for future patrons to gaze upon and admire.

The Eastland Post Office Mural

The centerpiece of the mural is a replica of the United Nations seal surrounded by stamps from around the world. She also created portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin (America's 1st postmaster general), a map of Texas and the Confederate flag. Putting a final touch to her work, she surrounded all of it in a frame of yellow roses. It's not a thing that blows your socks off, but it sure is interesting to stand there and contemplate how much work went into it, how much patience and perseverance it must have taken and what a unique talent Marene Johnson Johnson possessed. 

Putting Eastland in our rearview mirror, we headed west on Hwy 6 for a short 10 mile drive to Cisco and the site of the infamous Santa Claus Bank Robbery. At the time it occurred, the Santa Claus Bank Robbery led to the largest manhunt ever seen in Texas.

On December 23, 1927, around noon, ex-cons Marshall Ratliff, Henry Helms, Robert Hill and Louis Davis held up the First National Bank in Cisco. The four men met in Wichita Falls while planning the crime and on the morning of the 23rd, they stole a car and headed for Cisco, about 120 miles away. Arriving just before noon, they were ready to make themselves some easy money.

During this time period, three or four Texas banks a day were being robbed. In response, the Texas Bankers Association offered a $5,000 reward to anyone shooting a bank robber during the crime. This reward helped turn a simple bank robbery into a deadly crime. As the group neared the bank, Ratliff donned a Santa Claus suit he had borrowed from Mrs. Midge Tellet who ran the boarding house where they had been staying in Wichita Falls. Ratliff got out of the car several blocks from the bank and a few minutes later, followed by children attracted to Santa, he joined the other three in an alley and led the way into the bank. As Santa entered, he drew all eyes toward him as a distraction. Several seconds later, the other three drew their guns shouting "This is a holdup!" While they covered the customers and employees, Santa grabbed money from the tellers and forced one to open the vault. Mrs. B. P. Blassengame and her daughter entered the bank while the holdup was in progress and seeing what was happening, she grabbed her daughter's hand and ran back out of the door. She began screaming for help, alerting most of the citizenry as well as Chief of Police G. E. (Bit) Bedford, who just happened to be nearby.

Several minutes later, Santa (Ratliff) had filled his sack with money and came out of the vault. Seeing someone outside, Hill fired a shot through the window. A shot was returned. Hill fired several more shots and then a fusillade of gunfire began as many citizens who owned guns were now outside the bank. The robbers forced all of the people in the bank out the door towards their car. Several of the hostages were wounded as they emerged into the alley, but most managed to escape. Two small girls, Laverne Comer and Emma May Robertson, did not break away and were taken as hostages. In a shootout in the alley, as the robbers tried to get to their car, Chief Bedford and Deputy George Carmichael were mortally wounded. Ratliff, still dressed as Santa, was slightly wounded while Davis was severely wounded.

As the four began their escape with their hostages, they realized they had neglected to get gas for the car and it was almost empty. To make matters worse, before exiting the alley, one of the tires was shot out. They drove to the edge of town, pursued by the mob, and attempted to commandeer an Oldsmobile belonging to the Harris family. Fourteen-year-old Woody, who was driving, gave them the car but ran away with the keys. The robbers transferred their things to the Oldsmobile in the midst of gunfire which wounded Hill, only to realize they could not start the car. Davis was by then unconscious and close to death, so they left him in the car and moved back to the first car with their two hostages. It was not until later they realized they had left the stolen money with Davis.

The First National Bank of Cisco building still stands today

The mob found Davis and the money and temporarily gave up the chase. The money, $12,400 in cash and $150,000 in securities, was returned to the bank which had an estimated 225 bullet holes in the walls. Besides the two police officers, there had been six townspeople wounded in the shootout, but no one was sure whether the robbers or the mob was responsible.

The robbers abandoned the bullet-ridden car and the two girls several miles from town and continued on foot. They stole another car the next morning and managed to evade the search parties for a while, until they wrecked the car near Putnam. They commandeered a vehicle driven by Carl Wylie, forcing him to drive and taking him hostage for twenty-four hours. They then let Wylie have his car back and stole another car.

The two wounded men, especially Ratliff, who by now had discarded his Santa suit, were doing very poorly due to their wounds, lack of food, and the icy, sleeting conditions. Eventually, the threesome was ambushed by Sheriff Foster of Young County at South Bend as they tried to cross the Brazos River. Another car chase followed with a shootout in a field as the three tried to make their escape. Cy Bradford, a Texas Ranger, hit all three men with his 6 shots. Ratliff was hit and fell to the ground. Helms and Hill were both wounded, but they managed to escape into the woods. Several days later, after dodging an intense manhunt assisted by an airplane, the two made it into Graham and peacefully surrendered. Two more men had been wounded in the manhunt bringing the total number of wounded to eight, not counting the three surviving robbers.

Helms, Hill, and Ratliff had several wounds apiece and had not eaten for days. All survived however, and soon faced trials. Hill pleaded guilty to armed robbery and in March was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He escaped from prison three times but was recaptured each time. After settling down, he was paroled in the mid-1940s, changed his name, and became a law-abiding citizen. Helms was identified as the one who had gunned down both lawmen and was given the death sentence in late February. After an unsuccessful insanity plea, he was executed by electric chair on September 6, 1929. "Santa" Ratliff was first convicted of armed robbery on January 27, 1928, and sentenced to 99 years in prison. On March 30, he was sentenced to execution for his role in the deaths of Bedford and Carmichael, although no one could testify to having seen him fire a gun in the bank. Ratliff appealed his case, going for an insanity plea. He had begun acting insane the day that Helms was executed, and thoroughly convinced his jailers that he was. His mother, Rilla Carter, filed for a lunacy hearing in Huntsville. However, the citizens of Eastland County were infuriated that he had not been executed yet, and even further aggravated to know that Ratliff was attempting the insanity plea. For his safety, he was transferred to the Eastland County jail. While there, he convinced his jailers that he really was insane as they had to feed him, bathe him, and take him to the toilet.

On November 18, Ratliff attempted to escape, killing Tom Jones in the process. He was quickly recaptured and put back in jail. A crowd began to gather the next morning and by nightfall had grown to over 1,000. They began demanding Ratliff be given to them. The sheriff refused but was overpowered as the mob rushed in and found Ratliff. Dragging him out, they tied his hands and feet and headed for a nearby power pole. The first attempt to hang him failed when the knot came loose and he fell to the ground. The second time, however, the knot held. Ratliff was pronounced dead at 9:55 P.M. on November 19. Jones' death brought the total number of dead, including three bank robbers, to six. No one was ever tried in association with the lynching, even though a grand jury was formed, as nobody came forward as a witness. The whole town declared they had not seen anything.

Leaving Cisco, we jumped on Hwy 183 north for 29 miles to Breckenridge to see a large mural painted on the side of a building. Tiny mirrors were mixed with the paint so the sign would sparkle in the sunlight. We also intended to see Breckenridge Aviation Museum's collection of World War II airplanes and memorabilia. Plus, there was an intriguing little sculpture generally known as a "Purple People Eater" thingy in a farmer's field just outside of town. I love road kitsch, offbeat Americana, roadside attractions. How could I pass up something with a name like that? Plus, in general, it's on our back roads route home so why not?

Where's the sparkles?

Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. We arrived on a Sunday only to find the museum is not open on Sunday unless you call several days ahead to make arrangements. We did find the mural and it was indeed very large and it did indeed have little, tiny mirrors embedded in the paint. I expected to see this really cool, sparkling painting, but I'm afraid it didn't live up to my expectations. Even in bright sun on a cloudless day, the sparkles were minimal and you had to get up close and tilt your head on an angle to see the sparkles at all. Maybe in it's youthful heyday it was much more, but now that it's older, it has lost some of its vitality and sparkle. And we never saw the Purple People Eater thingy. I later found out the last time somebody reported seeing it was three years earlier and it had started to rust. A lot of things can happen in three years. I'm sure Breckenridge is a wonderful town with a lot of wonderful, happy folks living there, but I'm afraid we drove there excited and drove away disappointed.

The Royal Theatre

We took Breckenridge in stride as we are road tripper experienced enough to know not everything is as exciting when you get there as it was when you were just thinking about it. Sure enough, our mood began to lighten again as soon as we got on our way to our next destination - Archer City, home of Larry McMurtry and the town where "The Last Picture Show" was filmed. "The Last Picture Show" earned 8 academy award nominations and won two. The movie has been rated as a top 100 movies of all time. The film critic Roger Ebert gave it four stars out of four and named it the best film of 1971. He added it to his "Great Movies List" writing, "the film is above all an evocation of mood. It is about a town with no reason to exist and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is transgression."

We had another disappointment when we found McMurtry's bookstore was closed. Over a few years, he opened four bookstores in Archer City and stocked them with over 400,000 fine and scholarly books he had hand-picked for his personal collection. When he turned 76 years old and none of his children expressed any interest in operating a bookstore, he decided to sell 300,000 books at auction. The auction was a huge success and he closed 3 of the stores. Now there is only one left which contains between 150,000 and 200,000 books. As most of the sales now come from online orders, he also reduced the time the store is open to only 4 hours per day, Thursday through Saturday . 

The blinking yellow light

The Royal Theatre, which plays a major part in the movie is still there. At least the front is. Not many people know in real life, the back half of the theater burned down in 1965 and it has never been rebuilt. With its closure, the heart of the town was lost. The movie, released in 1971, used the front of the movie house, but filmed the interior scenes in a theater in Olney, a town a few miles south of Archer City. The blinking yellow light is also often seen throughout the movie and it is still there, still blinking. The whole time we were there,  we saw just three or four people and very few cars. Even on a Sunday, with a population of 1,700, you would think there would be more life, but when the oil crash hit and McMurtry closed his bookstores, I got the feeling the town has actually taken on the rather sad life of Anarene, the name given to it in the movie. If you haven't seen "The Last Picture Show," I strongly recommend it.

Always happy on a road trip!

 And with that, it was time to head back home, a distance of about 475 miles. It was already afternoon by the time we left, so we'll stop in Wichita Falls, Texas for a bite to eat and find a hotel room for our last night on the road. Between Archer City and Wichita Falls however, is the interesting little ghost town of Mankins. We had just enough daylight hours left to stop by there. Why go by Mankins? Because it is the only place in Texas, perhaps even the nation, where a monkey crossing the road was hit and killed by a car! To read all about Mankins and that poor monkey, click here.

Postcard From The Middle Of Nowhere Texas

Continued from (road trip post 6)    (Go to the 1st post here)

The Fredericksburg Comfort Inn was actually better than expected and at a decent price - clean, good wifi, good shower and a comfortable bed. From our experience, Comfort Inns range from good to "never again" so this one goes on our "Acceptable" list. Of course, the fact that it was rather late when we checked in after a frustrating afternoon and evening (see previous post here), plus the fact we were both very tired probably had some bearing on a good night's sleep. After partaking of the pretty decent "free" breakfast and a fill up for the truck, we pointed her northwest on Highway 87 to Koockville where we caught Hwy 29 to Menard and then jumped on Hwy 83 North toward Eden. An interesting side note about Eden, Texas - the population is 2,560, but about 1,300 of those residents are inmates at the Eden Detention Center, a for-profit prison under contract to the Feds. Once past Eden, staying on Hwy 83, we might not have been in the middle of nowhere, but we could see it from there.

The pasture in front of the museum with a couple of
railroad cars and inoperable windmills

After miles of open spaces and seeing almost no other cars, we came to the intersection with FM 765, a little 2-lane black-top road. Going west on this road, after a few more miles of nothing but stunted mesquite trees, widely dispersed farm houses, a few cows and wide open spaces, it became just a hard-packed dirt road. Now we were definitely in the middle of nowhere! We eventually saw a sign nailed onto a fencepost that announced we would reach our destination after a short drive down a private, dirt road past a herd of Longhorns - The Barrow Ranch Museum. 

So far out in the boonies that you have to be going there to get there, we had found a most fascinating collection of "stuff." Ernest and Dorothy Barrow constructed 3 very large metal buildings around their house to hold over forty years of collections from their extensive travels and donations from their many friends. Ernest and Dorothy are both gone now, but before their passing, they set up a non-profit foundation with a Board of Directors in order to keep the museum open to the public and to provide funds for its upkeep. To that end, entrance is free, but a donation is requested.

Pulling up to what appeared to be a working ranch house, we parked in a small gravel parking lot. Besides a few longhorns milling around watching us, it appeared we were the only living things in the vicinity. There were a couple of railroad cars and non-functioning windmills sitting in the field with the longhorns, several old tractors and a good bit of old, rusted metal pieces from farm implements just laying around the grounds. It was eerily quiet. There were no signs saying "Enter Here," no doors marked "Entrance" and nobody to greet us. Just as we were about to get back in the truck and leave, an older gentleman came from the house and asked if we were there to see the museum.

He introduced himself as Gary Glass, caretaker of the ranch and museum. Gary has worked on this ranch for over 40 years, helped build the museum buildings and has many interesting stories to tell, which he is more than happy to do. He gave us a personal tour of each building and talked about most every item. Except for a few questions, we rarely were able to get a word in, but he was so interesting, we didn't mind. I can understand that. It's very quiet and must be very lonely out there. He said there's very few visitors so he really enjoys it when somebody shows up.

He invited us to follow him into a huge metal building which we found held an amazing amount of, well, of "stuff." It can only be described as a hoarder's vast collection of things. From early-American dining rooms to a 1950's soda fountain to old pump organs, antique washing machines, radios, record players and archeological artifacts, the groupings made no sense. The world's largest collection of Indian arrowheads (about 15,000 in all), old west rifles and guns sit next to gems, mineral specimens and sea shells.

Once we made it through this building, Gary led us to a large second building (he told us that when they ran out of room in one building, they would just build another one) that was just as full of things as the first! A vast collection of china and Oriental carvings was displayed next to World War II memorabilia which included captured German and Japanese flags.  Old dolls and dozens of Hummel figurines sat next to medical and dental tools and stuffed animals. The 3rd building contained mostly farm implements, drilling equipment, old cars, an antique fire truck and odds 'n ends such as some kind of farm implement embedded in a tree stump which had grown up around it. As we finished this last building, Gary led us outside and pointed out what each of the rusted items in the yard were along with a few more stories about life on the ranch.

The old soda fountain inside the museum

We were there for about 2 hours and enjoyed all of it, but even today, I still am overwhelmed at the number of items in those buildings. Just as we said goodbye to Gary, another car with a man and woman drove up an parked next to us. Gary's face seemed to light up and with a smile he asked the new arrivals, "Are you here to see the museum?"

Seeing as how it was time for lunch, we headed to Balinger and the infamous haunted Gonzalez Restaurant for a good Tex-Mex meal. Bad, bad decision. When we arrived, the only customers were just one family of 4 in the whole place. That normally is a big warning sign, but what the heck, Chip and I both love Tex-Mex cuisine and we're here so we might as well partake of the buffet and who knows, maybe we'll even see the ghost everyone calls Norton.

Entrance to Gonzalez Restaurant

According to legend, a local outlaw was spotted in town and the police gave chase. He ended up hiding inside the restaurant, but the police found him and when he pulled a gun, they shot him dead right there inside the building. Since then, staff and customers have claimed to see a ghostly apparition wearing cowboy clothing, sometimes walking through walls. Norton also moves things around, especially dishes, silverware, salt shakers and cooking implements. Often, people will experience unexplained cold spots within the building and some have reported an invisible hand touching their necks and arms.

As we walked in, we were greeted by an older Hispanic lady who showed us to a table. We ordered tea and said we would have the buffet. I cannot tell you in strong enough terms just how bad the food was. The crumbled beef was a sickish, gray color and it tasted like wet chicken feathers. The chicken looked disgusting enough that I didn't touch it. The refried beans were the same color as the beef and was the consistency of soup. The lettuce for a salad tasted like it had been cut and then left open in the refrigerator for three days. The best thing on the whole buffet was the rice, which was passable. When we returned to our table, we found a bowl of cold, greasy chips and a bland salsa that was obviously straight out of a can.

No customers at 1:00pm on a Saturday should
have given us a warning

I have dozens of road trips under my belt as well as numerous vacations and hundreds of business-related travels where I have eaten at least 2 and often 3 times a day in restaurants, cafe's, dinners, hotels, bars, bowling alleys and dance halls. This one stands out above all those places as the number one worst meal! And the really weird thing was the one lady who was the greeter, waitress and cashier (we never saw another staff person) sat down across the empty room and stared at us the whole time. She never came over to check on us, never said a word, rarely blinked...just sat there staring at us.

The buffet line

I'm not a picky eater, but I couldn't eat most of the buffet food so I made a small meal of rice and flour tortillas. Chip didn't think the food was as bad as I did, but I noted he didn't go back for seconds. When we got up to leave, our staring friend got up and took our money. She never smiled, but at least she did say thank you. We left feeling ripped off, still hungry and we never did see Norton.

Backtracking south on Hwy 83 for about 12 miles, we then went east on Hwy 1929 until after a few twists and turns on several other small 2-lane Farm-to-Market roads, we reached the town of Mercury. Founded in 1904 when the Fort Worth and Rio Grand Railroad reached this point. Mercury soon became a bustling livestock shipping point and by 1914 it had over 550 citizens and a number of commercial businesses. A major fire burned down most of the town's buildings in 1919. In 1929, just as the town's business came back to where it was before the fire, another fire once again destroyed most of the buildings and the town never recovered. Growth stopped and when a major highway bypassed the community in 1938, Mercury began to decline. By 1940, the post office was discontinued and most businesses closed. The final nail in the town's coffin came in 1949 when the Mercury schools closed. Today it is a virtual ghost town with a scattered population of about 150 people living in the area.

So why did we drive through Mercury? Because just south of the town is the geographical center of Texas! Being a native Texan, I just couldn't resist. There is a historical marker on Hwy 377 about 2 miles south of Mercury, but the marker is not exactly where the center of Texas is located. The actual center is at N 31° 23.492 W 099° 10.238 which is about 5 miles away, but you can't go there because it is on private property and in Texas, that means no trespassing or you just might find yourself trying to outrun a load of buckshot! Neither Chip nor I got to be as old as we are by being fools so we made it to the historical marker and called it good enough.

We had just enough time left in the day to visit a place on my Texas bucket list - the Regency Bridge. If you are as big of a fan of the TV show Texas Country Reporter as I am, then you are familiar with the Regency Bridge because it is the bridge they drive over during the opening and closing segments of the show. The 325-foot, one-way, wood-surfaced  bridge is located in a very rural area at the intersection of two gravel roads - Mills County Road 433 and San Saba County Road 137. It's another place where you have to be going there to get there. You most probably won't find it by accident. The local farmers and ranchers call it "the swinging bridge" because as you cross, it swings from side-to-side and rolls up and down - rather disconcerting, but evidently safe as it has never collapsed. I posted an earlier blog entry about the bridge which you can read here.

Regency Bridge aka The Swinging Bridge

We were done for the day and it was about time to head on back home. We'll be stopping at a few more interesting places along the way, but for this night,  there was a room waiting for us at the Holiday Inn Express in Stephenville.