Gun Duel Halted on the Levee

(This regular Tyler Courier-Times feature presents from staff members items of Interest and comments not classified as regular news stories.)

SPRING is here, unmistakably. That is, meaning it’s here sans any further cold weather.

Authority: The whip-poor-will.

For the past several mornings around 5, we’ve heard that nocturnal bird back in the little vale west of our place repeat his quaint, lonesome call in succession.

You can usually put it down as a good sign there will be no more cold weather when the whip-poor-will makes his appearance.

Funny thing about the bird world. They class the whip-poor- will as belonging to the goatsucker family, although it has nothing to do with goats. It eats mosquitoes, principally.

[As in the previous post, the artist is no doubt Arthur Bishop himself - Ed]

(This regular Tyler Courier-Times feature presents from staff members items of interest and comments not classified as regular news stories.)

THE TIME: Near Christmas, 1928. In Dallas.

The artist had shipped his latest oil painting, 30”x40”, to an art dealer on Fifth Avenue in New York for exhibition and sale.

Three days before Christmas he received the following wire from the New York dealer: “Will you accept one thousand dollars net for your painting?” He wired back:

“Yes, if you will wire me the money at once.”

The one thousand dollars was received next morning.

The painting commemorated Charles A. Lindbergh’s memorable transatlantic flight to Paris. The famous flier had autographed it for the artist in Kansas City.

[Ed - fairly sure the “exacting artist” is Arthur Bishop himself here]

THE EXACTING artist, not satisfied with the result he had achieved of a strong wind blowing the trees in an oil painting he was doing depicting a mesquite forest, decided to tackle the job later.

Preparing to leave, he placed the canvas on the floor against the wall.

About that time, his year-old, diapered daughter, crawling aimlessly about the room, lightly sideswiped the row of trees in the still-moist canvas with her derriere.

“Eureka!” cried out the artist. “You have done it, baby — you have created the effect that I couldn’t get. It’s wonderful!”

AS WE WROTE here about a year ago after having been in a Tyler clinic for several days: About the first things a newsman thinks to write about when he gets released are the nurses.

Well, we further said at that time and repeat now since we have just again been released from the clinic that we, although a newsman, are not going to write about the nurses. They are nice and things like that, though. They are deserving beyond doubt. Dedicated. Have a sense of humor even in their sometimes gory profession.

Ever note they are always smiling, kind and extremely understanding? Seems they are really made happy when you ask them to do something for you. They do it with a firm smile that, interpreted, means they’re sure glad you asked them.

What we were going to write about was how much we sure hated to leave that clinic!

[Ed: I’m really not sure what this one is on about!]

FROM a Courier-Times proofreader’s little “read” book:

We’ve observed: So-called teenagers give more sensible answers to various questions running on TV the past few days than do many adults.

Juvenile delinquency is caused primarily by absence of parental concern for children, say these young people.

It’s a fact. Well, we believe it anyway. Namely, that doctors rank high for the aesthetic, especially in paintings.

As we said a long time ago: The jokesters make more fun of marriage, old age, and death than anything. Yet, these are among the most sacred of life.

Family conversation at our home the other day:

We, looking at wife across the dinner table: Well, see you got your new glasses today.

Staff Notebook

(This regular Tyler Courier-Times feature presents from staff members items of interest and comments not classified as regular news stories.)

TYLER’S little red rooster name of “Chuck” is dead.

Many’ll recall having read here about this tiny fowl’s “daring” escape from a big chicken transport truck rumbling through Tyler nearly a year ago. [Ed: hopefully I’ll find this story in the collection at some point!]

Landing in front of a West Erwin Street service station, and taken in by Charles E. Alston, operator of the place, the little chicken, then an “infant”, grew to gain a measure of fame. Here he found an exciting world —- unlike the prosaic one he’d have discovered in the barnyard.

“Chuck” became a great pet with a very evident predilection for people. He was wont to strut around the station as though he were human, his “nonchicken” antics creating such wide acclaim that a Dallas newspaper also featured him.

“A smart aleck killed Chuck,” Alston said.

“It was Tuesday of last week. A feller went out of his way to run up on the curb where Chuck was ‘asleep’ and crushed out his life,” the sorrowing man explained.

Staff Notebook

(This regular Tyler Courier-Times feature presents from staff members items of interest and comments not  classified as regular news stories.)

REMEMBER that little watch pocket they used to put in men’s trousers? A great repository for all kinds of small odds and ends? Greenback, too?

Things were usually stuffed in the tiny pocket when a guy was in a hurry or something. Long after men quit carrying pocket watches they continued to put these pockets in suits.

Well, when fashion decreed that this odd pant pocket give way to modern style they took somehing [sic] away from living. For men, that is.

One time we found three one- dollar bills in our watch pocket that we had forgotten about. Another time, needed a thin dime for a quick telephone call. Frantically rummaging around in our pockets we discovered 15c that had gotten stashed away in the ‘'ol’ reliable”, so to speak. We were always finding forgotten things in that little pocket.

8A Tyler Morning Telegraph

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1950

The Story Began in Naples Italian Girl Who Became GI Bride Proud To Be American

By ARTHUR BISHOP

Morning Telegraph Staff Writer

Eva Ermenia Carrano wondered about the big American GI who always smiled and said "’comesta” to her in broken- Italian every time she passed the officers’ club. Was he OK? She didn’t know, but she refrained from making “comesta” (hello) a mutual greeting until one day—

“Comesta yourself,” Eva shot back with a warm smile, but that was the extent of their association and conversation every time they passed each other until nearly three months later when the GI found her condescending enough to linger and talk. She didn’t exactly know about this American soldier and wanted to find out what sort of fellow he was before she ventured further with him.

After that first pleasant exchange of terribly butchered Italian and broken English intermingled with sign language by hand to fill in, all was well. That was in 1944.

In 1946 Eva Ermenia Carrano of Sorrento, Italy, and the big GI, who turned out to be T/Sgt. H. H. McMurrian of Tyler, were married at the home of the Eva’s sister in Bari, Italy. That, however, was after McMurrian had returned to the States, been discharged from the army and gone back to Italy. Rep. Lindley Beckworth speeded up the passport for the future Mrs. McMurrian to come to America.

Mrs. McMurrian, a full-fledged American citizen since last February, was so excited when she was notified to go to the federal building here for her final citizenship papers that she wrecked the car which she was driving alone at the time. The automobile turned over and Mrs. McMurrian sustained a cut and bruised face but she was not deterred.

She found other means of transportation and went on into town and secured her precious papers that same day.

McMurrian, technical sergeant who served with the 606th Ordnance Group, 1794th Tank Battalion, was in charge of the officers club in a large apartment building in Naples. Eva Carrano lived with her parents on one of the upper floors.

During the war, before the Americans marched in, Eva was perforce employed in one of Mussolini’s bomb plant, putting certain gadgets in the weapons. After Italy was liberated, she found another job. It was in going to and from work each day that she had to pass the officers’ club where she first met her husband.

“Ah, yes, the U.S.A. I love,” Mrs. McMurrian asserts with no little emphasis. “Freedom, liberty, the people—it’s all so wonderful. I love the people, they are so nice to me. There is so much here for everyone.” She knew only a few words of English on her arrival in Tyler. Now she speaks it with a fair degree of fluency.

“I’m an American citizen,” she said seriously as she fumbled through a strong box to produce the documents granting her citizenship.

The little five-foot, 26-year-old comely woman sat and talked exuberantly of the small, everyday things which most citizens take as a matter of routine: running hot and cold water, the privacy of one’s home, the abundance of everything in the stores, the friendliness of the people.

Eva Ermenia, whose hobby is flowers and fine needle work, used to gaze out across the Bay of Naples, she said, and wonder if the war had brought a life of hopelessness and misery to all the world. People were hungry and cold and ragged. But she had placed her trust in God, she said, and then (with a smile) in “Mac,” and all was changed as if by the wave of a fairy’s wand.

The MacMurrians, who attend the Bascom Methodist Church, finished a new, modern home at 129 North Lyons, about a year ago. McMurrian is owner of Mac’s Chuck Wagon Cafe on East Elm Street.

CT INS - Tobacco

By ARTHUR BISHOP

What’s a poor guy going to do?

Picking up a national magazine several months ago, cigaret smokers in Tyler and the country over were jarred as if receiving a sledge-hammer punch below the solar plexus. The periodical carried an article on the dangers of cigaret smoking to one’s health and particularly pointing out that it is the probable cause of the increase of cancer of the lungs in both men and women.

It is a well known fact that such, articles can throw fear into some people quicker than an atom bomb can Hiroshima a cat.

Immediately after that story appeared, big inroads were made Into cigaret sales. Many of the nation’s cigaret smokers quit, horrified at the thought of contracting the dreaded killer. Others not quite so fearful, decided to cut down on smoking, while still others resorted to chewing gum and nibbling on candy to appease the powerful craving for a smoke.

The article further claimed that tests proved that pipe smoking was worse than cigarets and moreover that cigar smoking was the very worst of all forms of tobacco’s use.

Well, that gave cigar smokers a fit of fear. Some quit the weed entirely while others turned to cigarets or the pipe to give them that deep sense of relief that only a smoke can.

After the magazine article, many cigaret users continued to smoke but with a dreadful fear—that is, until a few months later when another national magazine came out with an article setting forth that the idea about cigarets causing cancer and other ailments was virtual hooey. It said nothing had ever been proven along the lines claimed by the first magazine article. The second article did not even mention the effects, harmful or otherwise, of the cigar or pipe.

The matter dragged along and the cigaret smokers and the cigar smokers gained much relief of burdened minds after the second article. Many of those who had quit resumed smoking and those who had reduced their smoking then started back smoking with their old abandonment The sales of cigarets zoomed again.

Come another few months—just a few days ago, in fact—Tylerites picked up their Morning Telegraph and read a long article under a Paris, France, dateline, quoting medical science as claiming that cigarets were the cause of the increase in cancer of the lungs in the past few years—just as the first article had done.

In the last paragraph of the newspaper article however, it stated tests made on cigar smokers proved there was no increase in cancer in the smoker of cigars and the non-smoker. Thus cigars received a clean sendoff like cigarets did in the second magazine article.

But regardless, the whole thing descends down to: What’s a poor guy going to do with so many conflicting claims thrown at him right and left? One side says don’t do it, the other says do it, then another says its OK to smoke this but not that.

However, many right here in Tyler have definitely proved in their own individual cases: Quit tobacco in every form and you will eat better, sleep better, feel better and if you are underweight you will put on weight rapidly.

Veteran Tyler Printer Recalls Saga Of 'Demon’ Johnny Rudd

Veteran Tyler 24                      

By ARTHUR BISHOP

Morning Telegraph Staff Writer

(Editor’s Note: contains racial language that would be unacceptable in this day and age)

Sixty thousand dollars!

That’s a wad of jack for a hard-working, printer to have dumped into his lap.

That much dough would make any guy laboring for a living beam in anticipation — become emotionally uncontrollable.

Well, that much moola was willed to a Tyler printer. And did he beam! He became so enraptured when notified that the money was a a lawyer’s office here for him that he took off his apron and yelled out to his co- workers :

“Boys, I’m resigning!”

An attorney had just called and requested that the lucky printer come to his office, sign some papers and receive a certified check for the 60,000 bucks. The amount had been bequeathed to him by an aunt in a distant city.

The fortunate hombre’s name was Johnny Rudd. Age about 30. They called him “Demon”.

The time was the month of June in 1898.

Rudd was working on the old Democrat-Reporter of which the present-day publications of the T. B. Butler Publishing Company are the successors.

Reminiscing this week about old-time printers, Floyd E. Aten, veteran linotype operator for the Butler publications, recalled the story of Johnny Rudd, “demon printer”. Rudd was later a fellow employe of Aten.

On account of his great energy and skill in setting type by hand, which incidentally was the only way it could be done during that era, Rudd was given the sobriquet of “Demon.”

Immediately following receipt of the 60 grand, the printer lost no time in getting himself outfitted in a rich man's fashion.

Later that day he came back by the newspaper plant sporting a frocktail coat, striped trousers and top hat. He looked like a suave diplomat come to town.

“Boys,” he grinned as he strutted into the place, “all of you ‘slaves’ are invited to a big blowout that Mr. Vanderbilt (meaning me) is throwing this blessed day. Be at the St. Charles at 9 tonight.”

It was a nice party the boys had that night. Little Chinese Wong Lee, bus boy from the hotel, helped serve the sandwiches, soda pop and coffee. Three or four Negro minstrels with stringed instruments furnished the music.

In a few days Demon departed from the Rose City. A few weeks later his Tyler pals received a letter from him bearing a Mexia, Texas, dateline. He informed one and all that he had bought a saloon in that city, although he never drank.

The wag called his bar his weary man’s paradise, “where the downtrodden can gain sur-crease [sic] from sorrow.”

“The upstairs,” he wrote, “I have equipped as a rooming house where tired printers can commune with Morpheus. Also a boomer printer can always get a handout here, for I have a free lunch at the bar.”

Five years after receiving the fortune the printer par excellence was back -on a stool setting type—broke. The hombre’s generosity in behalf of his fellow man eventually finished him financially.

“I have had a wonderful life,” he wrote friends here after he had returned to the profession.

There’s not much else to the saga of Johnny Rudd, demon printer, except to say that a month after he wrote to Tyler pals he was dead.

He had either fallen or jumped off a bridge over the Colorado River near Austin and drowned. It was never determined if the act was deliberate.

Rule G For Railroaders Don't Drink While On Duty

By A. B. JEFFERYS             

Ask any employe of the operating department of a railroad what its famed Rule G is and he will tell you, no doubt quite seriously, that it is a certain prescribed guide, or words to that effect, for the conduct of employees while on duty. Or simpler —don’t drink whisky with the destiny of trusting passengers and others in your hands.

A sort of a “golden rule” of the hard and fast safety regulations of American railroads, Rule G reads:

“The use of intoxicants is prohibited.”

That’s about as explicit as a rule packing so much meaning can be put.

And in most instances of violations of the rule, which in the history of the nation’s railway lines have been relative few and remote, a grievance committee can hardly consistently decide and recommend other than against the offender.

This means in effect that the employe who thought he’d “whoop it up” a bit is involved in a serious predicament — suspension from work for a period with loss of pay. In extreme cases the rule- breaker is — putting it in railroad lingua franca— canned.

Responsibility Divided

So meticulous in the observance of safety rules are operating employes that Rule G is, figurative, covered with dust. Its violation is considered perhaps the gravest offense that can be committed on the country’s transportation system.

The safety of a railroad’s passengers depends on the clear and sober minds of the men behind the throttle and “behind the throttle” means more than literally the engineer. It stretches on down the line to the dispatcher, the way station telegraph operator and scores of others, the lesser of which is not the dutiful section foreman — the man who is responsible for maintaining the roadbed hard and the glistening rails aligned or spaced to the fraction of an inch.

According to press reports Friday a recent railroad train crack-up in Canada, a head-on collision, was subsequently attributed by a jury to one of the crews’ violation of a vital rule, the nature of which was not revealed.

That disaster, however, brings to mind to a Tyler newspaperman, himself a onetime railroader, a dramatic and fatal Texas train wreck of many years ago.

Telegraphic Control

A southbound freight train had orders to wait at a certain siding between stations until 5:49 a.m. for a northbound freight. The latter was a long train pulling a string of 25 or 30 carloads of Texas longhorns and many carloads of perishables. It had superior rights of way and was traveling fast.

Trains then, unlike telephonic dispatching of today, were run solely by telegraph. Each train order received by a telegraph operator was immediately repeated back to the sending dispatcher so obviously there would be a double safety check.

While the southbound freight had orders to proceed at 5:49 a.m. the northbound cattle train’s orders read that it was to meet the southbound train at the designated siding at 5:59—a discrepancy of 10 minutes. And a lot can happen in that short period of time and in this case it did.

The confliction put both trains on the main line simultaneously, meaning an inevitable head-on collision was stacked in the cards.

Crash At Curve

Briefly it happened. The trains met at a curve and piled up. The engineer and fireman on the cattle train were killed. The 25 or 30 cars of longhorns pyramided crazily and caught fire.

Amid the bellowing and burning bovines, the hissing steam from the smashed locomotives and the crackle of searing flames, the engineer of the southbound freight, scalded and dying, was extricated, cut out, from his demolished cab. His fireman jumping in time to save his life, suffered two broken legs. The head brakeman on the northbound train met death from a broken neck by leaping from atop the speeding train.

The dispatcher, wholly responsible for the catastrophe and next day charged with murder, sent a .38 bullet burrowing through his brain.

IT SEEMS like it was only yesterday.

When we were in the First Grade at school our teacher said to us one day:

“Arthur, spell ‘cat’,”

“What cat?” we asked.

“Any cat,” the teacher answered.

“ ‘E-n-y c-a-t’,” we spelled out.

“Arthur, I don’t think you’ll ever make a good speller,” the teacher opined.

She continued on:

“Arthur, spell ‘any’,” she suggested.

“Eny what?” we asked.

“Just ‘any’,” she frowned.

“ ‘J-i-s-t e-n-y’,” we spelled out for her.

“Arthur, you just don’t get it,” she said in apparent dismay.

“Don’t git what?” we queried.

“Well, Arthur, you just don’t understand things,” she half smiled.

“What things?” we came back.

“Oh, nothing,” she emphasized.

Well, the teacher was really right.

Curly Amounted To More Than 'Hill Of Beans'

(NOTE: The following article, a development of material obtained by the writer from several references at Tyler’s public library, is presented because of a recent selection by a jury of a certain piece of creative work of the principal of this story as one of the world's best known.)

By ARTHUR BISHOP

‘'‘He’ll never amount to a hill of beans” is the prediction often made about some young man attending school whose low trades seem to doom him to an unsuccessful life. However, many dilatory students do eventually make a success in life—in many instances reaching the very pinnacle of success.

For instance:

In the spring of 1851 there was enrolled at West Point Military Academy an impetuous sort of young man, about 17 years old, who subsequently was to prove somewhat of a problem to the institute’s faculty, an impudent youth strangely averse to military matters.

CALLED ‘CURLY'

Because of his bushy head of curly hair, his fellow cadets gave the new entrant the appropriate moniker of “Curly.”

It soon became evident that although attending a war college, he disliked to be taught soldiering, and in the discussion of warfare indulged in by the other cadets he was wont to quickly withdraw himself and would have no part in such talk.

After a few months, Curly developed an illness that was feared to be tuberculosis. It soon became necessary for him to be granted a leave of absence, but after an extended period of convalescence he returned to the school apparently with his health restored.

Curly had not been long in attendance at West Point when it became a common thing for him to receive reprimands for his infractions of the rules and regulations. As time went on he became worse. His grades became consistently low and even after repeated warnings he did not improve in his studies. 

LEE WAS SUPERINTENDENT

Finally, due to his continuous violations of the chool’s decorum and his bad grades, the situation reached such an impasse that it became necessary for the superintendent to expel the young fellow, which was done with much reluctance, in 1853. (Incidentally, the West Point superintendent at the time was the later-famed Robert E. Lee).

Upon receiving this adverse information, the hot-headed youth lost no time in departing and the affair was soon forgotten at the military academy.                     

But Curly, not deterred by his had [sic] showing at West Point, made a great success in future years. He became famous throughout the world for his work as a great artist, his most noted piece being “Whistler’s Mother,” recently declared one of the best known works of art.

Early Tyler Mysteries Still U(nsolved?)

Tyler Courier Times-Telegraph June 12 1949

By ARTHUR BISHOP

The Rose Capital of America, somber in a measure, exciting and swashbuckling at times but on the whole tranquil and morally clean from year to year, has in the distant past been stimulated by some uncanny episode or deep mystery that has forever remained unsolved.

Strange things baffling the minds of the curious have taken place here in years gone by, proving that the enigmatic, the mysterious can happen anywhere there are people, whether in a peaceful city like this mecca of East Texas or among teeming populations of the biggest cities of the world.

Away back in the more than hundred-year history of this sandy land city, there have been murder mysteries, and odd happenings and phenomena involving the human element that defied solution. Some were gruesome, some beneficent. Others were of a nature that demonstrated there is good in most everybody however vile they may appear.

One of the many stories run in the Tyler papers during the past few years about episodes that occurred in the early 1900’s, was the case of the suave cardsharp, tagged with the phony sobriquet “The Baron.” One night he suddenly disappeared, in 1907. Two years later his identified skeleton was found on the roof of a two- story building down by the railroad tracks. Revenge and robbery were assumed to have been the motive for this murder. No clue was ever discovered as to the identity of the murderer. 

Mysterious Doctor

Other abstruse and profound things of a half century ago excited the people here and gave buoyancy to minds that otherwise would have grown stale from the monotony of the times.

A notable example of the unusual back in the Rose City’s boisterous days was the case of the mysterious doctor who blew into the city 41 years ago ostensibly to hang out his shingle and serve suffering humanity hereabouts. Serve them he did but for a matter of only the three short weeks he was here.

His first appearance was one winter evening in 1908, during a showing of the Al G. Fields Minstrels at Tyler’s then Grand Opera House, when the management suddenly stopped the show and inquired if there was a doctor in the house.

A few rows back from the stage a patron, apparently suffering some sort of violent physical attack, had slumped unconscious in his seat. Quick medical attention was apparent and imperative.

Doctor Responded

Fortunately, there was a doctor present—a tall, distinguished- looking person, about 35—who, responding to the call, arose from his place in the audience, made his way down between the seats and with the help of patrons bore the stricken man to the aisle, stretching him out on the floor. 

He felt the man’s pulse, then produced from an inside coat pocket a hypodermic syringe with which he gave the victim an injection. In two or three minutes the patient opened his eyes, clambered to his feet, and assisted by the doctor made his way to the foyer of the opera house, whence he was taken home by horse and buggy.

Thus Tyler was first introduced to handsome Doctor Daniel Dalton, who had just arrived in this fair city that week. He was putting up at the “Swank” St. Charles Hotel, down on the levee, near the depot. (C. Unis, now conducting a grocery store here at 720 East Erwin Street, was operating the hotel at that time.)

The doctor, a most likeable personality with a human warmth that elicited unfettered confidence from all who came in contact with him, claimed he was here looking for an office and general medical practice. Oddly he brought no baggage with him. “My personal effects and office equipment are now en route and should be here most any day,” he informed the hotel management upon registering—as from Birmingham, Ala.

One night during the same week of the opera house incident, as Doctor Dalton was taking his evening meal at the St. Charles restaurant, a railroad man bounded in saying a brakeman had been struck by an engine in the near-by railroad yards and was bleeding to death from a severed blood vessel. He asked that someone be sent for a doctor quickly.

Disappeared Suddenly

At that, Dalton, his meal yet unfinished, grabbed his hat and asked the railroad man to lead him to the injured brakeman. Arriving on the scene, he immediately improvised a tourniquet and arrested the dangerous spurt of blood.

Whatever else may be said of the doctor, he did save human lives here, and administered to ailing persons around the hotel and in the levee district during the three weeks he was here.

There isn’t much else to this story about Doctor Dalton, except he disappeared one day as suddenly as he had come. What became of him? No one ever knew.

Tyler’s Old Levee Quiet Now But Once Boisterous

BUT ONCE..........................3-18

TYLER’S OLD.....................3-36

By ARTHUR BISHOP

Morning Telegraph Staff Writer

 All’s calm on Tyler’s Old Levee now.

But 30 years ago and even farther back it was swaggering and animate. Its Saturday nights' bloody fisticuffs, suave con men, tinhorn gamblers, smart aleck pistol-toters, wise, colorful characters and the prosaic habitues gave it a spontaneity that was all its own.

In 1950 it’s somber, ordinary. But in the heyday of the free lunch and high button shoes, it was probably the smallest, most colorful district of any city in the country.

Gyps, murderers, rough-and- ready, kindly souls, hoboes, worldly women and celebrities paraded, some only momentarily, about its compact confines from time to time. Each gave it added color.

Desperado Frank James; Minstrel man Al G. Fields; Evangelist Sam Jones; Showman William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill; actors from plays showing at the Grand Opera House who roomed for a night or week at the old St. Charles Hotel on the levee, all contributed to the fame of the area.

There was “The Baron,” noted on the levee as a cardsharp, who reputedly belonged to the nobility of The Netherlands. He sported a big $1,000 diamond ring and a huge, fiery cravat pin which everybody claimed were purchased with his ill-gotten gains by cheating his fellow man at the game of cards. He put up at the St. Charles.

The Baron came up missing one day. Two years later his skeleton was found atop the two-story hotel building. His death, by whatever means it came, met with public approval, for no one liked him.

Then there was a lovable character. handsome Doc Nevens. who never let a guy down. He blew into the Rose City about once a year and stayed at the St. Charles for two or three weeks, then he was up and gone. Doc dished out help to all who needed it. Later, in the East, he was sent up the river for safecracking there.

The wise say don’t pass judgment on your fellow man. You never can tell how he’s going to turn out. There was ”Boohoo” who went from hashslinging on the Levee to become railroad superintendent on a line out of Denver.

"Garrulous Doc" who used to peddle eye glasses to the riff raff on the Levee, was a kindly soul, even if some thought him a gyp. He did help some with poor eyesight. for a fact. He finally went blind and little Wong Lee, cook on the Levee, fed him for free, because he surely did fix up Wong Lee’s eyes so he could see better.

Funny thing about “Professor” A. Allah, who used to gyp the gullible down on the Levee. He sold a little booklet called "Why?" at 50 cents a copy. It told one how to attain an abundant life full of material and spiritual wealth. The old prof died in Dallas and left $35,000 in cold cash to education.

Frail, little Rosie who used to hawk candy among the Levee-ites - she was as pretty as a rose and as frail and graceful as a lillie. She became a lion tamer for Ringling Brothers circus.

Where he came from and where he went, no one knows, but Willie Bokjac, alias The Spider, a habitue of the Levee, was a petty con man who city-slicked people but made them think they were gypping him. The guy caught many in his web, but the coppers never could get anything definite on him.

Many remember "Choo Choo Annie” who used to ride the rattlers and who eventually married a railroad brokeman who later became general manager of a railroad in the East. All the railroad men around the Levee knew her and would fight for her. were one to make an affront, for she was nice.

There’s a raft of others who. in their own way, crooked or on the level, brought color and fame to Tyler’s oldtime Levee.

There is still one man in the Rose City who has spent more than the past half century in one location on the old Levee. He’s little Chinese Lem Tong, onetime owner of the restaurant in which he’s now employed by its present proprietor. E. W. Doman. Lem prepares chow mein and other celebrated Chinese dishes for the 65-year-old eating house. The place is now known as the Cotton Belt Cafe.

Immigrating from Shanghai in the 1880s, Lem finally landed in Tyler after a short stop or two at other points in the United States. He engaged in the restaurant business not long after his arrival here. He’s been at it since. His age is estimated at 75 or 80— no one knows exactly, not even himself

On The House, Yet

Willie The Spider Dines Out

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Following publication in this newspaper a few days ago of a “Willie The Spider” story, the first episode of this unusual character, which appeared in these columns some two years ago, is re-run below that it may be included as one of a projected series of such Morning Telegraph features. They will be published from time to time.)

By ARTHUR BISHOP

Morning Telegraph Staff Writer

On a summer’s evening in 1915, one Willie The Spider rolled into Tyler on a Cotton Belt rattler, disembarked near the depot, stretched himself and then ambled downtown to ogle around tor a likely spot for chow.

The guy was hungry and broke but from past experiences he knew he stood a good chance of appeasing the pangs of an empty stomach by the simple expedient of a little hocus pocus.

The Spider, long-legged, long- armed and long on a hundred different schemes of getting by in a pinch, was a map peddler by profession. By impulse he was a smalltime con man—whenever he bumped up against some perplexing situation like simultaneously having a yen for grub and being sans the dough.

He was in reality a smalltime con man par excellence, as the intelligentsia would say. So uncanny was he in the art of fleecing that the coppers never could pin a thing on the mug. From the standpoint of law and order there never was anything to pin on him. He operated on the up and up, so to speak. The best adjective to describe him would be “ingenious” —provided you don’t mind desecrating the word by associating it with the noun “crook.”

The Spider operated so ingeniously that the victim who at first thought The Spider had committed an offense, conversely discovered (he thought) that he himself (the victim) had pulled a faux pas and, naturally, apologized profusely or/and made amends for his mistake. 

Walking the downtown section, the con man selected the city’s swankiest restaurant, went in and seated himself at a table for service. He appeared rather out of place there, what with his nondescript personal accoutrementsbe ing more “nondescripted” from ???? [travelling in]? an upper berth of a cattle [carriage?]. Naturally, he attracted the of the restaurant man as well as a number of patrons The hombre was served a No.1 meal. After finishing and arising [he slipped] a silver coffee spoon from the table into his inside coat pocket. The manager saw the whole thing.

“All right, feller,” the manager demanded as The Spider presented himself before the cashier and fumbled with his $1.50 dinner tab, “shell out that spoon!”

Three or four others, lined up for the purpose of paying their meal tabs, turned their eyes on The Spider.

“What spoon, pray may I ask, do you refer to?” nonchalantly queried The Spider.

“Why, the spoon you yanked off that table and put in your inside pocket,” accused the manager.

“Oh, that’s a spoon my dear ol’ mother gave me, mister,” The Spider explained. “I happened to have it with me when I accidentally dropped your service spoon on the floor and substituted mine.

“The angered manager strode back to The Spider’s table. There on the floor was the restaurant’s spoon.

“Here, take a look,” The Spider added as he withdrew his own spoon from his pocket and dangled it before the startled manager’s eyes. “There’s my initials engraved on it,” pointed out the con man.

The restaurant man was mortified.

The Spider had him, now, in his web. There were several ways for the restaurateur to extricate himself. He thought fast.

As The Spider fumbled in his pocket for the money (that wasn’t there) as if to pay his check, the restaurant man stuck out his hand and held The Spider’s arm.

GREAT moments in a Connally Heights home Tuesday come the dawn:

Wife, on awakening, ogling the radium-dial clock and waking up husband: Good gracious. It’s 8 o’clock. Don’t know why that alarm didn’t go off.

Husband: Maybe you didn’t pull the alarm jigger out last night.

Wife: Yes. I pulled it out.

Husband: I slept good last night. Didn’t wake up at all.

Wife, making way to kitchen: I slept good, too.

Fifteen minutes later. Husband clambered out of bed. Dressed. Went to breakfast table.

As they ate the morning meal he glanced up at the kitchen clock.

He: Is that clock stopped?

She: No. It's running.

Both taking a second look at the timepiece, exclaimed:

Oops! My gosh! What you know about that! It’s only 2:10!