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 yesterday's post Frank won the respect of his Ranger unit when he took down a murderer during a standoff at the brothel in Del Rio.
During the next year, 1907, Frank was assigned to work along the Mexican border of Southwest Texas. He tracked smugglers and killers who routinely conducted raids in Texas and then ran back across the border to safety.
In just that one year he arrested 7 murderers. Amazingly none of them fought back but the Texas Rangers had a killer reputation and were feared by almost all criminals. All but the craziest.
He figured he rode several thousand miles that one year alone.
One incident that the townspeople of Marathon, Texas talked about for many years happened when the Rangers were called in to keep the peace.
Here's where the one horse town of Marathon is:
The county Sheriff was 69 years old and the town of Marathon only had a population of 500 people.(I looked it up and today it has a population of 470 so it hasn't changed much!) Anyway it was too small to be able to support a Sheriff and jail.
During the Christmas holidays cowboys and roustabouts(workers from the oil fields) would come to town to blow off steam, get drunk, and basically cause trouble. I think they liked Marathon because there was no law enforcement around either.
Especially at Christmas time.
The old Sheriff kept getting reports that "Rowdyism" was getting out of hand there with alot of fighting. He couldn't do much and had no deputies so he sent a request to Captain Rogers of the Rangers for assistance.
Captain Rogers sent Frank and another Ranger to Marathon with orders to "keep the peace during the Holidays." That sounded like an easy job for what they were used to.
When they got there they found out about a "Bad Hombre" by the name of Ed Harris who was beating up people at the local parties and dances.
Frank went alone and found Harris at a dance and told him he was under arrest for drunken, disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. Harris just looked at him with disdain and said "Arrest, hell. Where's your jail?"
Frank approached him and Harris started swinging but after avoiding a couple of punches Frank threw him to the ground and literally drug him down the middle of the street to a windmill they had. Did I tell you that Frank didn't like bullies?
When he got to the windmill he handcuffed him to a corner of it. "There's your jail." Frank told him. He left him there all night and took him to the Justice of the Peace in the morning.
The townsfolk were thrilled and that story was told for decades in Marathon, about the night their windmill became a jail!
Frank's story continues in the next post when he's forced to give up being a cowboy.
Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas
PS- I found another fascinating wire sculpture that really had me wondering if it was really made out of wire.
Here's a closer look, he uses aluminum wire:
He sculpts figures using fiberglass and then covers them with the wire but they still call them wire sculptures. The finished look is amazing.
