Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!
We're in a series about one of the top Texas Ranger lawmen to ever wear the badge, the great Frank Hamer, who was brought out of retirement to take down Bonnie and Clyde.
In the last post Frank had gotten to a town in South Texas called Navasota where he was the newly hired town Marshal.
The town was run by a racist group called The White Man's Union who had a deal with previous marshals that their members could not be arrested.
Well, that turned them into a bunch of arrogant bullies with no fear of the law and certainly no respect for it.
Naturally Frank was getting on their nerves because he wasn't playing by their rules.
Shortly after he arrested one of the White Man's Union members he heard that one of the town toughs, some big jackass of a bully, had been crowing about town that Frank was a coward because he wore an extra pistol in his gun belt.
Well, it wasn't long before Frank saw him in the street, at which point Frank walks over to the sidewalk, drops his guns and gun belt down and goes out to confront the loud mouth.
Witnesses said Frank "Cuffed him from one side of the street to the other." It was a proper, old fashioned beat down with his fists. Today it would be called Police Brutality. There's a couple things about this incident to keep in mind.
First of all, Frank operated by the Cowboy Code of the West. Part of that code was if someone insulted you, he was going to have to pay a price or else you weren't a man. The other point is that Frank was very smart and strategic.
He knew that he HAD to intimidate the tough guys and the ruffians or he'd never gain any respect in town and thus would have no chance of cleaning the place up. The only way to intimidate a bully or tough guy is to take him down.
For law enforcement was to have 2 full time officers for every 1,000 citizens. For a town like Navasota with 3,200 people, that meant they should have 4 officers, ideally a Marshal and 4 deputies. But for some reason they didn't have the budget for that.
So Frank knew he had no choice but to be brutally aggressive. His friends said he had really big, developed forearms, presumably from working in his father's blacksmith shop. At 6 ft 2 he had long arms too.
They said one of his favorite moves to take someone down was to use an open hand and bring a crashing blow to the side of their head.
One of his Ranger friends, Bill Sterling said, "When he boxed a man alongside the head, it reminded me of a grizzly bear cuffing a steer. Hamer's open palm always took the fight out of the hardiest ruffian."
Lol...this reminds me of that movie called They Call Me Trinity. Anyone seen that one? Man, it's a classic. It's a spoof on the Spaghetti Westerns that Clint Eastwood made in the 60's. It stars Terence Hill.
Anyway this big Mexican bandit comes to steal and harrass a group of Mormons while Terence Hill and his brother, played by Bud Spencer, are there.
The Mexican likes to entertain himself by slapping men upside the head. Until he tries it with Bud. Here's the scene:
The whole movie is ridiculous fun but I imagine the effect of Frank slapping someone upside the head is similar!
Frank's story continues on the next post.
Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas
PS- Here's a couple of gravity-defying sculptures for your enjoymnent:
I think these are cool so I'll be showing some more.
