STORY AND PHOTOS BY BARBARA BRANNON |
If you ever get an invitation to go touring around the hinterlands with a former county judge, take it.
They’re repositories of historical knowledge.
They know every back road in the 900 or so square miles of a West Texas county, since their commissioners are in charge of maintenance.
And they may well remember exactly who lived where, who ranched where, who raised crops where—and who ran into trouble where.
Such is certainly the case of former Dickens County Judge Woodie McArthur.
The McArthurs farmed land around Kalgary, near where the corners of Crosby, Dickens, Garza and Kent counties meet, also not far from the historic Red Mud community. Woodie’s granddad traded a wagon for 80 acres of land.
Back in early days— long before White River Lake was impounded—a McArthur forebear owned a liquor store that did a quarter million dollars in business, with customers coming from as far away as Paducah. To get there you had to cross the longest wooden bridge over the White River, with only one lane.
A bootlegging operation sprang up in due time, in the sparsely populated county. The family that owned it—not the McArthurs— sold liquor and ran a prostitution rung from the home behind it until they were busted one day. So saith the Judge.
Deer were plentiful at one time, migrating into the post oak country from the south and east. And there used to be lots of antelope and turkey.
“This was snake country,” recalled Judge Woodie on a trek down some of those dirt roads back in April. “Snakes would get up next to the irrigation pumps, and you had to watch out.”
And sometimes the snakes weren’t even the most dangerous inhabitants around.
I’m riding shotgun in Judge Woodie’s pickup, taking notes left-handed while I hang onto the grab bar with my right.
Our destination is the gravesite of gunslinger William Standifer, who met his fate in an ill-considered encounter with crack shot Pink Higgins nearby. The gravesite isn’t right where the storied 1902 shooting occurred, says Woodie — Higgins, who turned himself in for the act, nonetheless didn’t cotton to his enemy being laid to rest on his land.
It’s a gorgeous day for a drive, and my notebook quickly filled with more tales than I can recount here.
Next weekend we’ll look forward to revisiting some of those remote locales, including the site of the McClain dugout, home of Dickens County’s first county judge until he was disqualified when it was proved the land was actually situated over the line in Crosby County.
Think good thoughts for Judge Woodie, who’s been under the weather lately. Ask traveling mercies for historian Bill O’Neal, who’s coming all the way from Panola County in East Texas to be with us.
And last, come join us for a History Ramble out to these parts on Saturday, Oct. 12, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m starting at the Palace Theater in Spur, for a $20 ticket that also includes a chili cook-off lunch. Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, of course.
