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.
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IT IS IN THE CARDS
by Bryce Martin


In southeast Kansas, during snowy, cold winters, baseball cards were a multi-sourced form of entertainment.

Take a particular year and arrange them in numerical order. Or, sort the players by teams, by their last names in alphabetical order, by position -- and at whim as your imagination roamed.

I looked carefully at my duplicates (I called them "doubles" even though I might have a jillion of one player, and was not aware of any card collecting terminology until much later in life) and kept for myself the cards with the clearest reproduction, the ones nearest to perfect. The stack of rejects I ended up with were my trading cards.

A wealth of information was on the backsides of the cards. Some sets had full names of the players ("Theodore Bernard Kluszewski"), some had cartoons with little known information about the player. Others had full minor league and major league stats for each year. Others had major league information, and no minor league details.

With thousands of cards, I always looked at "place of birth," mainly to see if anyone was local. A pitcher named Morrie Martin drew my interest. I was from Galena, Kans., just across the line from Joplin, Mo. He was born in Dixon, Mo. A relative? A quick check indicated he was not. To this day, I know the birth places of star players and the obscure alike.

I noticed everything about the cards. Once, when I was nine-years-old, I opened a pack of 1952 Topps at recess and showed one of the cards to a classmate. He looked at the card of Frank Smith, finally saying, "So?" "He has the same initials as yours," I said. "Oh," my friend said, smiling. His name was Frank Sturgis.

Okay, maybe I noticed too much.

I liked odd names, foreign names, long and impossible names, any names. Since the region was mostly made up of Cardinals fans, Al "Red" Schoendienst was popular. I doubt if I will ever forget that he was born in Germantown, Ill., no matter that it serves no purpose to know. We remember much in life that seems to have little if any use. If I ever drive through or near Payette, Idaho, I will know that is the birth spot of Harmon Killebrew.

I wasn't scared off or perplexed by the names since I was a good speller. Before my tenth birthday, I was familiar with Betelguese and with Chamaltenango. Betelgeuse my teacher pronounced "Batel-gooze," and said it was our brightest star. Chamaltenango was "Che-mal-tenango" and other than it being in Guatemala, I don't know if we discussed its significance.

The Joplin Miners ceased being in 1954 as a St. Louis Cardinals minor league team, ending pro baseball in Joplin forever. The year before they had been associated with the New York Yankees. At one game, I worked my way to the bleachers and the end of the home dugout. I talked to one of the players, a long-armed pitcher away from the mound today. He told me his name, and I found it in the scorebook, Bob Muesenfechter. Of course, I have never forgotten it. Nor the rhythmic name of another Miner, John Zeleznock.

In the mid-80s, I had a book listing everyone who had ever played in the major leagues, even for one pitch as a pitcher or one at-bat as a position player. I lived in Bakersfield, Calif., so I looked through the entire book, small print and all, and found and old man who was born there by the name of W.H. "Buckshot" May. The book was a little old and it did not list a date of death for May. I found him in the phone book and interviewed him the next day for an article I had published. I searched the book in its entirety for anyone from Galena, Kans. I found George Grantham, whom I was familiar with, and Bill Windle, whom I was not. Few people would go to that much effort. Old habits die hard.
...

A-ROOTIE TOOT TOOT
by Bryce Martin

As slang for the affirmative “all right,” I wasn’t inclined to say something along the lines of “aw right,” “ah right,” and definitely not “all righty.” A certain show did persuade me to use a silly alternative, “ahrootie.” I still say it today. Then there was “gosharootie.”

Rootie Kazootie was a great marionette show on television. I didn’t get to see many of the episodes before it went off the air, sometime in 1954. The comic books were good too. Rootie was freckle-faced and wore a baseball cap back on his head. Polka Dottie was his girlfriend and a sidekick was a mouse named El Squeako. The villain was Poison Zoomack. I thought that clever but a bit of a stretch. I knew what poison sumac was but what about the kids who didn’t, who lived in the city or places it didn’t grow. Anyway, the bad guy with his tacky mustache and top hat and tails was always trying to steal Rootie’s magic Kazootie, a kazoo. I obtained a kazoo for myself and after several attempts finally got a sound out of it. By then the show had disappeared and soon did my kazoo.

Chuck Berry, the brilliant songwriter and performer, may have been familiar with the show. A good thing maybe since it is a rare word that resonates well with “tutti frutti.”

Tutti frutti, awrootie/I gotta gal named Sue/She knows just what to do…

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THEY DON'T WRITE THE SONGS
by Bryce Martin


The artwork for Rick Beziat's "Encore" article in the current issue of the Nashville Scene is great (May 20). Beziat writes a fun piece about the more memorable concerts held in Nashville during the 1960s and 1970s. I especially liked seeing the old ticket stubs and posters, many of them rare.

I was disappointed though right off the bat when the first song title was written as "Down in the Boon Docks." This is "Music City," and as such I would expect an editor (I reckon the Scene has them) to correct it to "Down in the Boondocks." That is the title of the song, you know.

Then comes "I Can't Stop Lovin' You." Sure, country people tend to drop every "g" they meet head on. But, give Don Gibson credit on this classy song; he didn't do it in title or in his vocal rendition.

Rufus Thomas did let his "g's" thud to the dance floor on his classic song, but the title is dictionary correct. It's "Walking the Dog" and not "Walkin' the Dog." The title of a Rolling Stones smash is "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Just citing it as "Satisfaction" is okay the second time around, but not the first. Bobby "Boris" Pickett did his best Boris Karloff impression to pull off "Monster Mash." It is not "The Monster Mash."

In fairness, The Tennessean is not any better. Just recently columnist Gail Kerr became the 4,192nd writer at her daily newspaper to refer to Porter Wagoner as Porter Waggoner.

Maybe it is like my old friend Leon always says when I bring up such things, "Nobody cares anymore." Sounds like a song title to me.

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When Headaches Are Not A Laughing Matter
by Bryce Martin


I have never had a headache in my life, except from my own doing, and from a rare head cold.

From my own doing would include the time I cracked helmets with an opposing football player in a high school game. That one did not last long. The two of us repeated the exercise on the next play and my headache went away.

I do not know why I have never had a headache. Since I do not have them, I do not think about them much, not until someone else brings up the subject. Moreover, someone does quite often; often enough that the misfortune of having your head ache seems quite common, except for those like me.

My cousin Jimmy and I share a common bond. We are the same age. That carries more weight than one might think. It means we experienced the same songs, the same movies, the same fads and flops. We can talk about things and share interests and understanding that someone just a year younger or older might be out of step with. There are, of course, some my age who are mostly clueless. You tend to gravitate to your own kind.

Jimmy is up on some music I scarcely know, and vice versa. That is because radio stations might play some songs heavily in certain areas and little or not at all in others. You could love it in Trona and never hear it in Galena. By the same token, he had never heard “China Town” by Max Brown, “Darlin’, Darlin’, Darlin’” by Jimmy Thurman, or “Ain’t Love Grand’ by Ron and Joe and the Crew. That is because they were regional hits by locals in my area and never reached the West Coast.

Jimmy raved over“Buzz, Buzz, Buzz” by the Hollywood Flames. It is an older song that I heard maybe two or three times. He also likes “Oh, Julie” by the Crescendos. I barely remember. I had never heard either one played enough to gain a familiarity.

We mostly played records in his room in 1958 when I visited. We both liked Jan and Arnie’s “Jennie Lee,” the Monotones’ “Book of Love,” and all by Little Richard.

I suspect Little Richard you would not want to listen to if you had just a smidgen of a headache.

Here we were years later digging out the old vinyl. I was working fulltime and Jimmy was working the summer while attending college in Sacramento.

I do not know about Jimmy but by now, I had been drunk on several occasions. I often felt bad physically and emotionally the next day from the drinking -- still, though, no headache.

He produced and album and said, “You’ve got to listen to this.”

It was Inside Shelley Berman. The selection was the one where he is talking aloud, the morning after with a hangover. The part Jimmy repeated, after he raised the recording arm and placed it on its stand, was where Berman drops an Alka-Seltzer in a glass of water and says, “Oh, my God – don’t fizz.”

I recalled the skit, even remembered seeing Berman perform it on television, but I never thought it was funny. I guess you had to have experienced a headache to appreciate the humor in it.

Wanda Jackson, Kansas 1963
by Bryce Martin


I drove in the direction of the small town of Arma, nine miles north of Pittsburg, to see the greatest singer on the planet perform. You paid at the door. Wanda Jackson, I had trouble believing, was on stage at the Blue Moon ballroom. She wore a strapless cocktail dress and looked stunning. Her voice was impossible to describe, accented with trills and lilts, smooth and clear when need be, growly, mean, impudent, and nimbly naughty at intervals. She was wild and raw, her lyrics often wonderfully bizarre and delivered in a frenetic rhapsody of rock and roll the equal of any man. Then she would deliver a soothing country ballad, in as soft and artful a voice as you would imagine from an angel.

There was a closed-off wraparound balcony that some of the boys had sneaked up the stairs to find. They wanted to peer down and get a better view of Wanda’s cleavage.

I walked outside when the show bid finale and stood in the gravel driveway. Wanda, with dark hair and eyes, came out and entered a waiting Cadillac. A man assisted her entry and closed her door for her. Someone whispered that it was her husband. She smiled politely, and rather sadly, I thought, acknowledging those nearest her who waved and shouted with a delicate raised hand as a goodbye gesture.

The Cadillac soon disappeared in the dark and the distance and produced a final crunch of gravel before smoothing out on the asphalt. Wanda Jackson. Here. In this place. In my universe. Tonight.

Wow. She was 25-years-old, too, a grown-up prom queen.

Before the summer ended, I came this way again. Another ballroom, the Trianon, sat off the highway in Croweburg, two miles east of Arma. A local band played some decent rock ‘n’ roll. I went once and once was plenty. I don’t pay a cover charge for just anything.

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Wrestling 1959
by Bryce Martin


With only two television channels to chose from, I sometimes dug in on the couch to view the lesser of two evils. Wrestling was not my idea of entertainment. Late in the year in 1959, a regular wrestling show from Chicago was a weekly filmed feature. Individual matches were the norm, and contests included tag team, women, and midget wrestling. I had read in the Globe that KMAC-TV out of Kansas City, Mo., telecast live wrestling, attesting to its surge of popularity. The wrestlers from the Chicago Amphitheatre were the same ones who occasionally came to Joplin to perform. I did like the theatrics involved, their non de plumes, and their chief gimmicks. The Great Bolo wore a full head mask. That helped draw attention away from his soft-body and minimal physique. He head-butted regularly. His opponent would hold his forehead in pain and excitedly demand that the referee remove his mask to see what kind of foreign object hidden there was doing the damage. Fat chance. Haystack Calhoun was a mammoth hick in overalls. Danny Hodge was a clean-cut college wrestling champion from Oklahoma. Wild Red Berry was a veteran from Pittsburg in nearby Crawford County who looked too old. Lou Thesz was old. He somehow exuded class in this classless excuse for a sport. Antonio Rocca had thighs like beer barrels. If he got his man in a leg scissors it was all over. Others were Mighty Atlas, Sandor Szabo, Oni Wiki Wiki, and Gorgeous George. The latter was on the Johnny Holmes sports segment in Joplin promoting a match for that night. "I've noticed the women since I've been here," he told Holmes. "They all look like they came out of a book... a bad book." He likely received the intended response that night, a crowd of irate women yelling for his hide.

The title for the wrestling tapes from Chicago locally was, The Wrestling Show. It was a title that did not go unnoticed by some of my classmates. We often discussed something we had watched recently on television. Odds were, if you watched television at all you witnessed what everyone else did. We discussed how phony the whole thing was. "Did you notice it is called The Wrestling Show?" Someone asked, emphasizing the word Show.