Auctions and Frozen Brick Chili
by Bryce Martin
Uncle Noah loved an auction, especially when it involved livestock. He enjoyed judging the quality of a good animal, knowing its worth and usefulness on the farm, and what price it should bring on the local market. It was a form of “horse trading” from bygone days, where you tried to steal a bargain if you could.
I tagged along at one auction and found it exciting; the farm animals paraded to the forefront under bright lights and scrubbed-up farmers in their cleanest duds and – best of all – the auctioneer.
I had seen movies where someone not familiar with auction protocol had rubbed their ear or made some innocent gesture and the auctioneer took it as a bid. I didn’t want that to happen to me, so, not knowing the rules, I sat on my hands and avoided any sudden eye or head movements.
Noah confided he had developed a certain strategy over the years.
“Bid strong from the go. You’ll have everyone afraid of you after that when something comes up you really want.”
Noah worked most of his later years as a laborer for Freeto Construction, a general construction outfit that built roads, bridges and buildings in the four-state region.
During a stretch when he was doing some road work at Range Line in Joplin, he stopped in regularly at Fred and Red’s Café on South Main.
“Those regulars come in and all you hear is, ‘Gimme a bowl of red.’ All they got to do is say the word ‘red’ and the waitress has a bowl of chili in front of them in nothin’ flat.”
The place specialized in incredibly great chili. A treat was to take home a frozen brick of the stuff to heat up and serve on just the right chilly evening.
...
Tell them how the weather was... -- Ernest Hemingway bryce_martin_1@Lycos.com
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
BELLE STARR, A HOMEGROWN OUTLAW
by Bryce Martin
My great-grandmother on my father’s mother’s side, Marsha Blackburn, was born in 1849 and died the year I was born in 1943. Marsha often regaled her wide-eyed young daughter Edna May with fact-based accounts of the methods “wild Indians” employed to torture captured white people and how she earned extra money by taking in laundry, including that of Belle Starr, known as “the Bandit Queen” in myth and legend.
My grandmother, Edna May, told me many of the stories her mother told her. Some I have checked on myself for more details, such as the life of Belle Starr.
She was born Myra Maybelle (or Maebelle) Shirley on February 5, 1848, near Carthage, in Jasper County, Mo., to John Shirley and Elizabeth “Eliza” Hatfield Pennington. Eliza was John’s third wife.
Carthage has a rich history and is a beautiful, small town. It predates Joplin, the other major Jasper County city, by 30 years. Where Route 66 and 71 meet at Carthage is known worldwide as “the Crossroads of American.” That distinction may not hold much longer since bypasses around towns and cities in the path of 66 are going in left and right.
John Shirley prospered and owned several businesses in Carthage. One was the Carthage Hotel, still standing during visits there with my grandfather in the mid-1950s. It stood on the north side of the courthouse square.
Myra Belle grew up lacking little to nothing. She attended the Carthage Female Academy, learning manners and the three “R’s” and taking music lessons as well.
The arrival of the Civil War, and wholesale outlawry in the name of Kansas-Missouri border wars changed things.
People chose sides and no side was safe. The Shirley family aided and abetted the vicious bushwhacking gang led by William Clarke Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, as did such natives and Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, a childhood friend of Belle’s.
When the going got too rough, the Shirleys fled to Texas.
Belle married Jim Reed in Texas, a no-count she knew from Missouri. The pair had trouble with the law and traveled to California before coming back to Texas. She lived too in “the Nations,” Indian country near Fort Smith, Ark., and often returned to the southwest Missouri region, usually to the Reed home place. When Reed was killed, she married Sam Starr. Rumors that she married Cole Younger in Galena, Kansas, were denied in later years by Younger himself. Some said she married Cole’s uncle, Bruce Younger, in Chetopa, Kansas.
Sam Starr was killed in a gunfight at a friend’s Christmas party in 1886.
In early February, 1889, Belle was ambushed and murdered by double blasts from a shotgun as she rode alone near her cabin outside Fort Smith. No one was ever charged with the crime.
…
by Bryce Martin
My great-grandmother on my father’s mother’s side, Marsha Blackburn, was born in 1849 and died the year I was born in 1943. Marsha often regaled her wide-eyed young daughter Edna May with fact-based accounts of the methods “wild Indians” employed to torture captured white people and how she earned extra money by taking in laundry, including that of Belle Starr, known as “the Bandit Queen” in myth and legend.
My grandmother, Edna May, told me many of the stories her mother told her. Some I have checked on myself for more details, such as the life of Belle Starr.
She was born Myra Maybelle (or Maebelle) Shirley on February 5, 1848, near Carthage, in Jasper County, Mo., to John Shirley and Elizabeth “Eliza” Hatfield Pennington. Eliza was John’s third wife.
Carthage has a rich history and is a beautiful, small town. It predates Joplin, the other major Jasper County city, by 30 years. Where Route 66 and 71 meet at Carthage is known worldwide as “the Crossroads of American.” That distinction may not hold much longer since bypasses around towns and cities in the path of 66 are going in left and right.
John Shirley prospered and owned several businesses in Carthage. One was the Carthage Hotel, still standing during visits there with my grandfather in the mid-1950s. It stood on the north side of the courthouse square.
Myra Belle grew up lacking little to nothing. She attended the Carthage Female Academy, learning manners and the three “R’s” and taking music lessons as well.
The arrival of the Civil War, and wholesale outlawry in the name of Kansas-Missouri border wars changed things.
People chose sides and no side was safe. The Shirley family aided and abetted the vicious bushwhacking gang led by William Clarke Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, as did such natives and Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, a childhood friend of Belle’s.
When the going got too rough, the Shirleys fled to Texas.
Belle married Jim Reed in Texas, a no-count she knew from Missouri. The pair had trouble with the law and traveled to California before coming back to Texas. She lived too in “the Nations,” Indian country near Fort Smith, Ark., and often returned to the southwest Missouri region, usually to the Reed home place. When Reed was killed, she married Sam Starr. Rumors that she married Cole Younger in Galena, Kansas, were denied in later years by Younger himself. Some said she married Cole’s uncle, Bruce Younger, in Chetopa, Kansas.
Sam Starr was killed in a gunfight at a friend’s Christmas party in 1886.
In early February, 1889, Belle was ambushed and murdered by double blasts from a shotgun as she rode alone near her cabin outside Fort Smith. No one was ever charged with the crime.
…