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.