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Post by linefacedscrivener on Sept 5, 2021 14:34:32 GMT -5
I discovered a short video on the Bran-Davis Shooting from Waco TV online. It is the same information, but it incorporated some nice pictures.
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Post by bulbous on Sept 6, 2021 12:46:34 GMT -5
Nice little video. Waco could make some money from tourists by re-enacting the various gunfights there. They could bus the husbands and boyfriends to the sites while their wives and girlfriends are touring and shopping at the Magnolia complex.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Sept 6, 2021 15:08:42 GMT -5
Nice little video. Waco could make some money from tourists by re-enacting the various gunfights there. They could bus the husbands and boyfriends to the sites while their wives and girlfriends are touring and shopping at the Magnolia complex. That and a visit to the Texas Ranger Museum work for me!
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Post by bulbous on Sept 7, 2021 8:29:09 GMT -5
I want/need to go to the Texas Rangers Museum, but that would require me to throw myself out into the horrors of I-35 to get there from San Antonio, and I'm just not that desperate, yet.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Dec 3, 2021 14:09:49 GMT -5
"Man is greatly molded by his surroundings. I believe, for instance, that the gloominess in my own nature can be partly traced to the surroundings of a locality in which I spent part of my babyhood. It was a long, narrow valley, lonesome and isolated, up in the Palo Pinto hill country. It was very sparsely settled and its name, Dark Valley, was highly descriptive. So high were the ridges, so thick and tall the oak trees that it was shadowy even in the daytime, and at night it was as dark as a pine forest - and nothing is darker in this world. The creatures of the night whispered and called to one another, faint night-winds murmured through the leaves and now and then among the slightly waving branches could be glimpsed the gleam of a distant star. Surely, the silence, the brooding loneliness, the shadowy mysticism of that lonesome valley entered in some part into my vague-forming nature." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, October 1930
If you travel up to Dark Valley today, you will not be able to see much as it is private property and fenced/gated off to ward off visitors (probably those pesky Howard fans). But wouldn't it be interesting to experience what Howard describes? Well, it turns out we just might be able to.
I just read with interest that Texas Parks & Wildlife is creating a new state park: Palo Pinto Mountains State Park, located in the southwestern corner of the county near the town of Strawn. It is located about 35 miles south of Dark Valley/Graford and 32 miles southwest of Mineral Wells. It is not open yet, but the Texas legislature approve $12.5 million in 2019 to build the park and they began construction earlier this year. It will include new buildings, campgrounds, and it will feature the 90-acre Tucker Lake. A portion of the Palo Pinto Creek also winds through the northern end of the park as well. Of interest is the fact the terrain is very similar to that of the Dark Valley/Graford area of Palo Pinto County, so it presents another way we might soon be able to get in touch with our favorite author.
Here are some videos about the park:
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 22, 2022 9:11:52 GMT -5
And speaking of Dark Valley and the Palo Pinto hills . . . Happy Birthday Robert E. Howard!
Although born in Peaster (about 30 miles east), the family was living in Dark Valley by the creek at the time. Dr. Howard wanted to have better facilities and someone available to make sure Hester's delivery of their son went smooth. She was in her mid-thirties. So, he took his wife to Peaster and they stayed there through the rest of the winter months before making the trip back home. How smoothly the birth went we don't know, but here is the poem that reflects Howard's moods, his reflections on where he was born, and what became the metaphor for the title of Howard's first biography. The Dweller in Dark ValleyRobert E. Howard The nightwinds tossed the tangled trees, the stars were cold with scorn Midnight lay over Dark Valley the hour I was born. The mid-wife dozed beside the hearth, a hand the window tried— She woke and stared and screamed and swooned at what she saw outside. Her hair was white as a leper’s hand; she never spoke again. But laughed and wove the wild flowers into an endless chain; But when my childish tongue could speak, and my infant feet could stray, I found her dying in the hills as the haunted dusk of day. And her darkening eyes at last were sane; she passed with a fearsome word: “You who were born in Dark Valley; beware of the Valley’s lord!” As I came down through Dark Valley, the grim hills gulped the light; I heard the ponderous trampling of a monster in the night. The great trees leaned together, the vines ensnared my feet; I heard across the darkness my own heart’s thundering beat. Damned be the dark ends of the earth where old horrors live again, And monsters of lost ages lurk to eat the souls of men! I climbed the ridge into the moon and trembling there I turned— Down in the blasted shadows two eyes like hellfire burned. Under the black malignant trees a shapeless Shadow fell— I go no more to Dark Valley which is the Gate of Hell.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 22, 2022 9:36:31 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2022 13:39:00 GMT -5
Thanks for the link Linefacedscrivener.
..and Happy birthday to Robert E. Howard.
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Post by Von K on Jan 22, 2022 20:10:52 GMT -5
Thanks linefacedscrivener. A very fitting choice.
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 24, 2022 16:04:27 GMT -5
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Jan 26, 2022 13:12:07 GMT -5
"The 'Santa Claus' gang had looted Southwestern banks for more than a year, had swept into Cisco, 35 miles away [from Cross Plains] and in an attempt to rob the main bank, had raved into a wholesale gun-battle that strewed the streets with dead and wounded. Two or three of them had gotten away into the brush and posses were beating the hills for them. . . Let me see; it was three – no, four years ago [December 23, 1927]. It doesn’t seem that long. All the Southwest rang with the news. Their names were on all men’s tongues. Now I doubt not they are completely forgotten, except by the kin of the men they slew, except by the men who carry the scars of their bullets. Helms, the leader, went to the chair, roaring and cursing blasphemies, fighting against his doom so terribly that the onlookers stood appalled. Hill, the boy whose life was twisted and ruined in this boyhood when a ghastly blunder consigned him to a reformatory instead of the orphanage to which he should have been sent – he is serving a life sentence in the penitentiary, after an escape and a recapture. Blackie, the sardonic jester, dying with a rifle-bullet through him, gasped the names of respectable business men of Wichita Falls as his pals and accomplices, for a last grim jest. Ratcliff, who entered the bank clad in a Santa Claus robe and whiskers to avoid suspicion, feigned madness, killed his jailer, was shot down as he sought to escape by the jailer’s daughter, and that night a mob tore him, wounded as he was, from his bunk, and strung him up to a near-by tree, to sway in the shrieking blizzard. Eh – life is a strange fierce thing." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 13, 1932 This is the story that sparked the idea for creating this thread. I happened to come across the March 1930 issue of Startling Detective on Internet Archive, so I thought I would post a link for those interested in reading this version of the robbery. Here's the link: archive.org/details/StartlingDetectiveMar1930/page/n13/mode/2up
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Feb 9, 2022 19:52:34 GMT -5
"A ship ought to be able to make that port in a thick fog with no port-lights showing, by simply following the smell! The smell along the wharfs of Galveston, Aransas and Rockport is none too sweet, but that of Corpus Christi surpasses them all put together." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, Circa December 1932
My wife and I just finished a coastal tour of Texas. We spent a week traveling from Galveston to Corpus Christi. The smells were certainly different, but not quite as bad as Howard indicated. Howard went to Galveston with his buddy Truett Vinson to see the Bathing Girls Review, which I covered previously in this thread. We stayed in Galveston for a couple of nights, but as it was February, no bathing beauty contest.
From Galveston, we went down the island to San Luis pass (where we did some off-roading on the beach, which was a blast), then down to Palacios where we stayed at at bed and breakfast (the Peaceful Pelican).
The next day we went to Fulton and visited the Fulton Mansion, a historic home that has survived many hurricanes because of the way it was built. The mansion has a lot of Howard time-frame history and I couldn't help but refer to him a half-dozen times on our visit there.
From there we went to Rockport. Howard also stayed at a hotel in Rockport:
"I remember a night I spent at Rockport, a little port not very far from Corpus Christi. I stayed in a big rambling hotel close to the water’s edge . . ." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, October 1931
I know Rob Roehm figured out which hotel this likely was and wrote an article about it, though I am unsure right now as to where that was posted.
It is unknown if Howard ever made it to Port Aransas, but he does mention it in the email above. We finally made our way to Port Aransas, by crossing to the island on a ferry and we were able to drive for quite a ways on the beach.
We then made our way to Corpus, which again, Howard mentions, but it is unknown if he ever made it there.
It was a great trip, one I would recommend, and there were many spots along the way that made me think of Robert E. Howard.
[The picture at top is the Gulf of Mexico at Port Aransas]
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Post by linefacedscrivener on Mar 1, 2022 10:10:52 GMT -5
"Gad, the country buzzed like so many bees! The authorities sent south for the great Ranger captain Tom Hickman, and Gonzuallas – 'Lone Wolf' Gonzuallas – 'Trigger Finger' Gonzuallas – 'Quick Action' Gonzuallas –hero of more touch-and-go gun-fights that I know, and already almost a mythical figure in the Southwest." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 13, 1932 In my Texas Ranger Hall of Fame Newsletter, they just announced: "The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame has received the donation of a collection of artifacts belonging to legendary Texas Ranger Captain Manuel Trazazas Gonzaullas (1891 - 1977), nicknamed “Lone Wolf.” He was born in Spain and became a naturalized United States citizen. He served in the Mexican Army and as a United States Treasury Department Special Agent. "In 1920, he enlisted in the Texas Rangers and was assigned to combat gambling, bootlegging, and prostitution in the lawless oil fields of East Texas. "In 1935, the Texas Legislature created the Texas Department of Public Safety consisting of the Texas Highway Patrol, Texas Rangers, and Bureau of Intelligence. Gonzaullas was chosen to head the Bureau of Intelligence and created one of the leading crime laboratories in the US. "In 1940, he returned to the Rangers becoming the first Hispanic Captain in the modern Ranger force. One of his most notable assignments was to Texarkana in 1946, to investigate the Texarkana Phantom Killer serial murders. After retirement in 1951, he lived in Hollywood for a time advising radio, television, and films including Tales of the Texas Rangers. Captain Gonzaullas was one of the last Roaring Twenties and Depression-era Rangers and lived to see the founding of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. After his passing he was inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. "Mr. L. Stanley White II, of Coldspring, Texas, inherited this collection of artifacts once owned by Captain Gonzaullas. Mr. White’s family, particularly Carroll A. Green and Harroll H. Green, were close friends of the Captain. "The collection consists of: Engraved Colt Single Action 45, manufactured in 1912 Matched pair of heavily engraved, gold decorated, specially modified Colt 45 Automatics, manufactured in 1931 Matched pair of engraved Smith & Wesson .44 Special Pistols, manufactured in 1929 & 1938 Peerless Handcuffs Inscribed Photo of MT Gonzaullas 1951 Newsweek page about Capt. Gonzaullas Pair of S.D. Myers Holsters Pair of Holsters and gun belt with magazine pouch 1951 Houston Chronicle page" And the caption for the picture above: "Customized Colt Model 1911 Automatic Pistols Worn by Gonzaullas in the 1930s East Texas Oil Fields. Gift of Stan L. White and Sara White Morrison in Memory of Carroll A. Green and Harroll H. (Pet) Green."
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Post by bulbous on Mar 1, 2022 18:03:54 GMT -5
Nice! I'm definitely going to have to sail the savage seas of IH35 to Waco to go see that place.
Thanks for posting, Linedface.
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Post by dcoulsonadams on Jul 24, 2023 8:33:05 GMT -5
"Gad, the country buzzed like so many bees! The authorities sent south for the great Ranger captain Tom Hickman, and Gonzuallas – 'Lone Wolf' Gonzuallas – 'Trigger Finger' Gonzuallas – 'Quick Action' Gonzuallas –hero of more touch-and-go gun-fights that I know, and already almost a mythical figure in the Southwest." -Robert E. Howard to H.P. Lovecraft, July 13, 1932.... @linefaced this thread is one of the greatest, most informative things I've ever stumbled upon on the internet - TREMENDOUS job!!!!!! I signed up for this board last night soley because of this thread - I'm out Brownwood way, and a writer - you and I need to discuss all of this
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