Sixties Surfin' on the High Desert
by Bryce Martin

A Ridgecrest Calif., band from the early 1960s helped pioneer a genre -- "surf music" -- on the desert, no less.
The Ramblers was the name of a rock band in Ridgecrest, the first prominent rock band in the area, if not the first one altogether.
A later incarnation of the band was The Hustlers.
The Hustlers' drummer had a day job, as all the members did. Gary Olinger chucked 100-pound bags, loading soda ash into boxcars and onto flatbeds for Stauffer Chemical Co. at Westend in Searles Valley.
It was 1965. The Hustlers played weekends at the lively and popular Pat and Charlie's in Ridgecrest. The band had previously performed at The Desert Playhouse on Balsam St. A handmade sign posted around town featured drawings of dice and playing cards to help brand the Hustlers image.
Besides Olinger, a 1958 Trona High School grad, David Wilkie (guitar) from Ridgecrest , Jim Shouse (bass guitar), and Mickey Meyers (lead guitar, vocals) formed the group. Meyers was the lead singer and guitarist. Tall, slender and with blonde, curly hair, he was the epitome of the California surfer. Olinger and Wilkie were the two civilians.
Meyers was the one common denominator for the Ramblers/Hustlers.
Olinger said Meyers was near deaf in one ear, and he drummed loud because of that, positioning his drums to the side of Meyers' good ear so he could catch the beat.
Prior to Pat and Charlies's, when the Meyers-fronted band was known as The Ramblers, they rocked at the Acey-Deucey Club at China Lake and in Ridgecrest, traveling as far as Lancaster. In addition to Meyers, the cast included John Schoellman, rhythm guitar, Curley Curry, drums, John Vanderbeck, tenor sax. All
but Vanderbeck, a civil service employee, wore Navy whites.
In 1963, The Ramblers had a single record released on Sidewinder Records, "Ticonderoga" b/w"Mozart Stomp" (Sidewinder 101), both instrumentals.
Vanderbeck, who lives now in Seattle, Wash., said he thinks Meyers named his composition after the aircraft carrier, the USS Ticonderoga.
Both songs have been reissued in recent years in a compilation package. The two instrumentals and some other songs were recorded in the Downey Records facility in Downey, Calif.
Downey Records was a small independent. It utilized a plain blue label with silver letters. On this label, the Chanteys released the anthem of all surf rock instumentals in 1963: "Pipeline." That song was recorded in a garage for a total cost of under a hundred dollars.
The Ramblers are known now as a "surf" group, a connotation Vanderbeck said he nor his bandmates even thought of at the time.
Although the two bands were just a couple of years apart, Olinger said he was not acquainted with the members of The Ramblers, other than Meyers.
"We started out at The Playhouse as The Hustlers," Olinger said. "Two guitars, bass and drums. Just like The Beatles."
Pat and Charlie's was started by Pat Burke and Charlie Brown. The building had been a meat market operated by Brown. Burke was a milkman who later went to work at
the meat market and married Brown's daughter. Brown bought the building next to the meat market and combined it into one large building.
"Pat came by one day and said he'd like to have us at Pat and Charlie's," said Olinger. "It had been a go-go joint."
The Hustlers stayed on when Pat and Charlie's was sold and it became J.D.'s.
Olinger said The Hustlers tried spreading out some. Efforts to branch out were not shared by all the band members, which led to the group's demise, according to
Olinger.
"We wanted to travel. But when Shouse left we had to get another guitar player. Wilkie went to playing bass, but the new guitar player had a great job at the base and didn't want to travel. That was it for us."
Olinger lives in the state of Washington. After leaving Ridgecrest he worked with Bay Area bands in San Francisco for several years. Wilkie is in the construction business in San Diego, it is unknown by Olinger where Shouse is, and Meyers has an executive postion with IBM Corp. in Southern California.
Lew Talley and the Whackers, a country music group, was another notable house band at the club. Once the club changed ownership to J.D.'s, it wasn't long after that The Hustlers departed. Country music would become the main musical bill of fare.


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How I Got to State Street (or, Drunk in the Hot Afternoon)
by Bryce Martin

I rented a room for $30 a week in a big house on the corner of 18th and Blair just off 21st Street in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village area. Others rented rooms there too, mostly day workers who were drunks on the side, or vice versa.

A stupendous two and a half story tall foursquare style house built in 1928, it rested high on a long corner lot, with a basic box shape and tall, old trees in front.

The woman who owned the house was Patsy Austin of Patsy and Faye’s, a beauty salon on 21st near Jones Pet Shop, where you could purchase a baby alligator and any number of other furry, fuzzy, feathered and scaly creatures. Of the dozen or so rental rooms in the large house, I occupied the smallest room of all -- for which I paid the lowest rent. The section of the house I lived in was a build-on. It had a back entrance at the rear, east side of the house. The ground level addition had seven rooms in all. In the middle hallway, a small room provided a communal shower and toilet.

Outside and heading toward the front of the house, wooden stairs led to other rented rooms upstairs. In the house proper, singer Johnny Rodriguez often stayed. His once sparkling star on the horizon had dimmed, along with rumors of drug use. I would see him two or three times a week up the street where he had walked from Patsy's to the corner Jim Dandy convenience store while he would be buying a sixer of Coors Light Silver Bullet, and I would be cradling a sixer of Schaefer’s (hey, it’s the quantity that counts, not the quality). He always had a big smile, and always swore I was in a backing band at some place in California at some club he had sang in and used the house band. Each time I told him it wasn’t I, but noted that I had came here from California, and each time he smiled that much brighter and said, "It wasss you." After a time, I figured why not . . . it must have been I. He had his last major hit in 1988 with "I Didn't (Every Chance I Had)," which reached No. 12 on the country charts. By 1989, he and Capitol Records split the sheets.

"Have a Jim Dandy day," the clerk always said when a customer went to exit. I hated that. Maybe I didn't want to have a Jim Dandy day.

I once got seven weeks behind in rent and received a loud pounding on my door one morning around 3:00 a.m. by a drunken Patsy. I was a little besotted myself and not long under my bedcover, not even into my REM sleep mode. She wanted me out that very morning. I was concerned at first, then realizing she likely wouldn’t even remember it in the morning, I went back to sleep and managed in a few days to visit her front door and pay her in full – as if weeks hadn’t past since I had last seen her, and she had never pounded on my door and demanded I leave. I was told that was the longest anyone had ever gone without paying their rent. I chose to take that as a positive and I took a certain pride in that revelation. As long as I was living like a rebel outcast I might as well feel comfortable in the role.

Nick Fain was a sometimes visitor. Nick was roots rocker Steve Earle’s favorite uncle growing up in Texas. Steve Earle's birth name: Stephen Fain Earle. Nick was battling some personal drug and alcohol demons of his own and always looking for a handout. A few months back, I had traveled with him and a couple who came over from Murfreesboro on a jaunt to Chattanooga where Earle was touring as the opening act for Hank Williams Jr. The Murfreesboro married couple had made the trip exclusively to see Hank Jr. We arrived at the Chattanooga venue in time to see Earle and his band perform a final three songs. I considered myself fortunate that one of those was "Guitar Town," my favorite Earle song. We did have one other passenger on the way day, an odd duck named Lou. Nick, Lou and myself soon found Earle backstage in the hospitality room. A large table was filled with all types of cold cuts, bread and condiments for making sandwiches. Earle was there, relaxed in a sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves. He was cordial and pleasant and made small talk before announcing he was leaving. I thought he meant in the bus, but he said no, he was driving his car but the bus probably would leave soon. Nick, meanwhile could not find Lou. I told Nick he would have to look for his friend on his own because I was not taking a chance of being left behind if the bus left and I was searching for his friend on my own. When the bus was ready to pull out, Nick was with me and Lou was till lost. We left him in Chattanooga. Better yet, he did it without our help.

I rode back in the bus with Earle’s band. Once we arrived in Nashville, we debarked near the Hall of Shame lounge off Demonbreun. Earle pulled up alongside in his Mercedes. I asked if he was going my way and he offered me a ride home. He had with him his young son, Justin. That was when I lived at the Natchez Trace Apartments on Fairfax Avenue just off 21st. Nick had lived there, too, across and above me. Earle was friendly and said it was not even out of his way since his ex lived nearby and he was heading in the same direction to drop off Justin.

Earle quit high school in Texas about midway through and hooked up with his uncle Nick. Already proficient on guitar, he traveled around Texas and at age 19 landed in Nashville. His debut album, Guitar Town, came out in 1986 and the title track was a big summer hit that year.

On the ride home, I told Earle that I had joined a record club but of the five choices I received free for joining, the one they didn't send was his second album, Exit 0. They suggested I name a replacement for it. I mentioned how that riled me enough to send back the ones they did send and a nasty note telling them to shove their bogus offer.

Earle was first thought of as country but soon more aptly designated as a roots rocker. His third album, Copperhead Road, came out in 1988.

On the bus, I had kept feeding Nick beers from a cooler in the middle part of the bus. Nick asked me to and I figured why not. It's rough being cut off from the hootch, I knew firsthand. I'd slip one inside my jacket and take it to him in the back bedroom where he was watching movies on an overhead TV with Justin. The band must have been instructed to 86 Nick because pretty soon guitarist Richard Bennett approached me. "Nick is not drinking, is he?" That caught be a little off guard. I wasn't aware anyone was keeping track. I was glad I had been acting as if I was aware. "He's watching movies back there. Seems okay to me." Maybe a few beers was the gateway to worse things from Nick. I made a short trip to the back a little later to inform Nick he was on his own. Meantime, I hiked myself another beer and conversed with Bennett about his part in the guitar trifecta I had witnessed earlier onstage in Chattanooga, especially on "Guitar Town."

At my Blair lair, Nick was wanting to borrow some money from any of us and promised he would pay it right back. Ha. What gall. He also needed a place to stay -- temporarily, he stressed. To back up the paying the loan right back part, he said was getting ready to meet his nephew Steve Earle at Brown’s Diner in just a few minutes. "Steve will stake me some cash," Nick said. That was doubful. It was a Sunday, and we all knew, except obviously for Nick, that Brown’s Diner was not open on a Sunday. It could have been a parking lot meet, but it sounded bogus as hell. Nick finally left, realizing he was running a bad con. He was getting no takers at the Blair House. As he walked on, a dinner knife could be seen protruding from the top of one of his back pockets. It was a regular one with a rounded point and just enough teeth indentations to make minor food cuts. It was hardly a weapon, but that seemed the obvious reason Nick was carrying it. I guessed he was afraid someone was after him and that is why he was looking for a place to hole up, and the knife was the only weapon he could get his hands on.

A little down the hall, a large man who went by the name of Shannon Dale had lived there for years. His walls were totally covered with Playboy Magazine centerfolds. "No, I don't jack off to them," he said, as I scanned the spread-out pages (no pun intended). I figured that was his ready response when a first-timer such as myself eyed his flesh collection. He was one of the many who had came to Nashville to make it in country music, got lost in the shuffle, aged and gone to seed. He showed me an old 45 rpm record where his name was listed as songwriter under the song’s title. It was from an obscure singer on the King label.

Slender and with wild, stringy long hair, Dwayne Leftridge lived in a room across from me. He once sang on stage at the Bluebird Café on talent night. With the hair, jeans, and overall appearance, he reminded me of a 60s California hippie, then again, that was a common look everywhere that had spread well beyond California. He didn't toke though, as far as I could tell, and probably didn't even consume much alcohol, either. He had spent some time in California, plying his seasonal trade as a palm tree trimmer (really) on occasion in my stamping grounds of Bakersfield.

In my small office in Nashville on Music Row where I served as editor of the Nashville Inquirer, I often walked to the Burger King down the street on 21st Avenue. That's where Burger King Betty kept order on the lot of the Whopper. Next door and directly south of Burger King's parking lot was San Antonio Taco Co. Behind it and downstairs was Bobby's. It was a bar owned and operated by a hefty fellow who was said to have won a lottery in New York and this was what he had to show for it. It was Betty's job starting at about dark to when Burger King closed to keep anyone from parking, and leaving their vehicle unattended, anyone who wasn't patronizing Burger King. After Betty would run someone off, a favorite thing was for them to open a car door, place an empty beer bottle upright on the asphalt and drive away. "Is Rolling Rock beer?" Betty asked. "I can't keep up with what these rich Vanderbilt kids drink."

There was a little shop area just to the north of Burger King and on the corner where a man did the same thing as Betty. He was looking out for the convenience store that sat back from the street. Young people came in, mostly Vanderbilt students who lived in nearby dorms, for beer and cigarettes. Those who lingered too long in their cars or around the entrance he asked to leave. "Get a real job," those asked to leave would shout to him.

Nashville singer-songwriter Owen Davis wrote the song “The Other Side of Nashville.” It was the title tune of an acclaimed 1983 documentary film in which he appeared alongside such luminaries as Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and Hank Williams Jr. Throw in Donnie Qualls, too. I didn't know Davis, any of the "luminaries," although I had spoken with Cash and Bare on occasion, but I knew Qualls.

Among Davis' other notable compositions were “Border of the Quarter,” recorded by Leon Redbone, and “Play Me or Trade Me,” which became a minor 1982 hit duet by Mel Tillis and Nancy Sinatra.

Bobby's dream of making a killing selling New York style pizza to poor souls in Nashville who had been deprived of such heavenly bliss failed to catch on to any great degree and his Bobby's went out of business. Jerry Seabolt, former record producer ("California Sun" by the Rivieras, and others) and promotion man for Smash Records, took over with his own place he called Duffy's Tavern, and it went out of business in about a year's time. I had paid to see Pat McLaughlin perform at Duffy's on a Saturday night and I had seen Tara Moonshadow sing for tips during the week, she and Dwayne Leftridge, who had spent the past few days making and copying fliers to staple on area telephone poles residing along the sidewalks to announce the engamement. I thought I had found my hangout. When Duffy's folded, San Antonio Taco bought that portion of the building (it was all connected) to use for storage.

Ron Holmes moved in later, upstairs somewhere. He had lived there before and knew all the long-timers and wondered where others had landed who had came and went over the years. One who came by occasionally that he knew was Vince Matthews, a Tennessee boy from Waverly who had co-written "Love in the Hot Afternoon," a BMI award winner and big hit for Gene Watson. Matthews was wild, but in a put-on sort of way, and loud.

LOVE IN THE HOT AFTERNOON
(Kent Westberry - Vincent Matthews)
© '70 Songs Of PolyGram, BMI

From somewhere outside I hear the street vendor cry "filet gumbo"
From my window I see him going down the street and he don't know
That she fell right to sleep in the damp tangled sheets so soon
After love in the hot afternoon

Now the Bourbon Street lady sleeps like a baby in the shadows
She was new to me full of mystery but now I know
That she's just a girl and I'm just a guy in the room
For love in the hot afternoon
[ fiddle ] We got high in the park this morning and we sat without talking
Then we came back here in the heat of the day tired of walking
Where under her breath she hummed to herself a tune
Of love in the hot afternoon


Matthews may have just came from a few blocks over on Belmont Boulevard visiting Harlan Sanders, a songwriting friend of his who lives on that street. Sanders, from Bakerfield, Calif., is a also a friend of mine. Matthews and Sanders have written songs recorded by Johnny Cash. They also have in common that they were friends with another songwriter who wrote for Cash, Glen Sherley, who took his own life in 1978 in California. Matthews is a survivor who could write about his bad times in song and later prosper for it, "Wrinkled Crinkled Wadded Dollar Bill," and "Melva's Wine," as recorded by Cash as evidence.

Shannon Dale Holmes knew from years past. Dale had once worked as a night clerk at a little store on Music Row where he shot and killed a young black male he said was shoplifting. That according to Holmes, who said Dale once pointed a gun in his face and pulled the trigger. "I saw the bullet," Holmes said. "I saw it and felt it, just as it went by my face." Holmes said Dale was knee-crawlin' drunk at the time. "He had a thing for my wife June," Holmes said. "I got him on the floor and was pounding on him. June was yelling and pulled me off. We took him home that night. When we got to where he lived, I pushed him out and rolled him so he rolled down the hill to his place."

Holmes, from Anniston, Alabama, had written no hits but he had songs published he had written with the likes of Billy Swan and Mack Vickery. His self-written songs included one titled "Nam Was Easier Than Nashville."As a vocalist, he had a recent release, "Take a Chance on Love," on indie label Fawn Records. It received a nice review from Music Row magazine. Holmes had written songs and recorded at times using the name Ron DuVall (doo-VAL).

We paired on a shift working together in the Village at the Mobil gas station, facing a side street and across from Cotten’s Music on 21st, pumping gas and pushing oil and anti-freeze to customers. On December 22, 1989, it was 10 degrees below zero as I worked the islands. A radio weather report said the coldest temperature ever recorded in Nashville was the 17 degrees below that shuddered the city January 21, 1985.

A fellow gas jock named David Hadley said he was quitting and going back to Oklahoma. He said he lived in a condo on State Street with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, washer and dryer and the works. He left and I moved in. I paid Shane $20 to help me move. Shane, as I understood it, was Faye's (of Patsy and Faye's) son and he lived there as a roomer. I didn't know where Faye called home. I really didn’t need any help in the actual moving, but Shane had access to Patsy's van and I had no vehicle. While we were loading, Shane told me I set the record for having the most stuff in that little room of anyone who had ever lived in it. When I came back around in a week or so to see if any mail had arrived for me, Patsy scolded me for not giving her a notice before moving.

The condo was on the second floor and the woman who owned it lived in Hermitage. Some recent brain surgery had left her disoriented to the point she was no longer able to make it up and down the stairs very well. The house in Hermitage was her childhood home she had inherited when her parents passed on. She had bought the condo to be nearer the hospital. The guy who went to Oklahoma had left me her phone number, and he told me before leaving that he had told her I would be there. I never called her. It was a full six weeks before I ever saw her.

She came by one day and introduced herself. She was a pleasant and well-mannered woman. I expected to be given ultimatums about rent money and so forth, but before I knew it she was gone and such subjects never surfaced. I had a phone. The condo was a two-bedroom with a large bed in the master bedroom, outfitted in its queens’ accessories. Louvered Dutch-doors opened to an outside view. Granted, it was to the front parking lot of the enclosed facility, but in the background you could see the skyscrapers. The rooms were clean and fresh and painted in bright whites and light blues.

Hadley was still there for about a day after I moved in. "Let's burn one he said." He sat cross-legged on the floor and I joined him. He rolled his own, but it was sage that he smoked. An empty box of cigars he had ordered by mail sat on a nearby table. They were Lord Beaconsfield Rounds. The box of 50 maduros sold for $25.30 and came from T.J. Boggs, a tobacconist in Joplin, Mo., next door to my own home town in Kansas.

I had caught a break. Or, had I? It would be hell to get used to this and go back to where I had been. Well, maybe more in the vein of mental hell. I no longer worked for the publication on Music Row across from the Alamo Church where I was the editor, as well as doing all the writing, for the Nashville Inquirer. It was a monthly tabloid that exposed the crooked dealers and dirty dealings on Music Row.

When I first started with the publication, it dealt solely with the independent country music business. The publisher even threw an awards show at the Maxwell House and invited as special guests Stonewall Jackson, Sheb Wooley and Jack Greene.

I quit that job. It was before working at the Mobil station. The publisher didn’t like to pay people, including his editor, me.

The Mobil gas station owner sold the place and all new people came in. Too bad, too. A regular customer was John Prine and his red Corvette. He left his car once for some work and one of the two mechanics lifted a cassette tape from his car of test songs he had recorded. I lifted it from the mechanic with the idea of returning it to Prine. I still have it somewhere. Perry Baggs, the drummer for Jason and the Scorchers was a regular. I saw Jason once at Jim Dandy wearing his cowboy hat and spurs.

I told Baggs he looked like Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers. He said he didn’t know what Phil Everly looked like. If it had been Don Everly, no problem. I could have shown him. Don Everly was a regular a couple of blocks up at Brown’s Diner. Don was the dark-haired one of the Everly Brothers and Phil the blond-haired brother. I always felt they were never the same after leaving Cadence Records and going to Warner Bros. There was something about "Cathy's Clown" indicating to me that they had crossed the line of innocence, I guess you might say, and the baby fat along with their appeal was now gone.

I had my condo but not much money until I landed a cook’s job at Steak ‘n’ Egg Kitchen, a 24-hour restaurant on West End Avenue nearly identical in setup and menu to a Waffle House.

I still made the rounds on Music Row during my off time. I had made many contacts due to my previous job with Nashville Inquirer. I had interviewed and written about Mickey Gilley, Ray Price, Crash Craddock, Jo-el Sonnier, Robin Lee, and a long list of others. I introduced Holmes to Willi Beery, a girl who ran an office for a man in Texas, Overton Lee, who had a Nashville record label and publishing company. She released a CD album of singers and songs on OL Records and included Holmes’ "Take a Chance on Love" as the only cut by someone not on her employer’s label. She had recorded an album a few years back for Wedge Records, owned by a rockabilly singer from the 1950s, Ralph Johnson. Her full name was Nelda Willene Beery.

Born in 1920, Mel Holt lived in Hendersonville and owned Step One Records in Nashville. He wrote songs and published them with his Lyn Pen Publishing. Owning SOR helped get him cuts by The Kendalls, Dawnett Faucett, The Geezinslaws, Curtis Potter, Southern Reign, Cal Smith, Ray Pennington, who managed the label for him, and others.

He wrote "It's Too Soon After Too Late Last Night," a song he got Beery to record. It came out on Wedge SR-1039 in late 1988.

Holmes and me walked Music Row with Willi's place as our destination. We decided to check out the secondhand store across from Belmont Church, which was a little out of the way. Holmes spotted a black and white 1958 Alabama license plate for a dollar and had to have it. "I remember these," he said. Willi's place was an apartment on high ground. You left the sidewalk to walk up concrete steps. Nearly all the apartments here served dually as living quarters and music offices. When you entered Willi's apartment, it had a reception area that included a desk, couches, tables, chairs and lamps and looked like most any Music Row setup.

As I knocked on the door, Holmes snickered at the sign on the adjoining door -- Hunka Burning Love Music Publishing. It was Pat Murphy's place. He was from Shreveport and had an album coming out on OL Records titled Every Heart. The title song was written by Mae Boren Axton ("Heartbreak Hotel") and one that Murphy said was written years ago for Elvis Presley but was misplaced over the years and he was now getting a chance to record it for the first time.

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...

KOAM-TV EARLY DAYS IN PITTSBURG, KANSAS
by Bryce Martin

Programs didn’t necessarily conform to 30-minute and one-hour formats. That was obvious when KOAM sometimes used various shorts and clips to fill in airtime, much the same as the way newspapers fitted small fillers to eliminate white space on a page. A common method was to insert “visual records.” These were short pieces showcasing singers warbling ballads or folk or novelty songs. They were originally produced by the film world in Hollywood and later utilized as television cameos. An entertaining one was “You Get No Bread with (One Meat Ball).” It was performed by a dark-haired man who looked Italian and possessed a fat and expressive face. He was convincing as he sang about a down-on-his-luck oaf who enters a restaurant and after looking at the menu realizes he has just enough money for one meatball. That’s bad enough he groans but he really emotes when he finds that you get, well, no bread with one meatball.
Another was “The Little White Duck.” The singer was a younger Burl Ives. I recognized Ives from seeing him occasionally on live television. It was obvious this segment was done a few years back. It was a little corny: “there’s a little white duck sittin’ on the water/a little white duck doin’ what he oughter.” Then there was the obnoxious song, “The Cat Came Back.” The words -- about dumping off a cat and having it return “the very next day” – were not so bad. It was the creepy and deliberate way the guy sang the song that was grating. *

(*Between 1941 and 1947, more than 2000 “soundies” were produced by the Mills Novelty Company for coin-operated machines, mostly jazz and ballad shorts. Early TV stations later used them to fill airtime. In addition, between 1950 and 1952, some 700 similar film shorts were produced in the Hollywood studios of Louis Snader. The three mentioned above likely were done by Snader.)
...

Cave Springs notes
by Bryce Martin

Lallah taught her first school at Cave Springs in 1917. She was 16 and lived nearby in Central City. Both locales were just over the state line in Missouri, a short distance from Galena, Kansas. On cold, blizzard mornings, she recalled rubbing the frozen feet of her pupils with kerosene for hours at a time. She had a student named Mamie, age 4, and Mamie had a brother, Dan, that first year. Lallah would meet both of them again in Picher, Okla., in 1935. Mamie, whose father was in prison for “picking” ore, by then had taken up with Gus, the owner of the infamous Bloody Knuckle dance hall in Picher. Lallah sought a comparison between the Blizzard Dance Hall she knew about in Central City and the Bloody Knuckle. She was told the one in Picher was much worse. “You could pick up eyeballs like shelled grapes all over the Bloody Knuckle,” she was told. A majority of the miners liked to wet their whistles at such places as the Bloody Knuckle while others preferred to join in on a square dance and work up what they called a “kitchen sweat.” Another pupil at the clapboard Cave Springs School, other than Mamie, was a red-haired Sam Miller. He was later killed during the miners’ riot, the Tri-State War. The following spring, Lallah had just one student at Cave Springs graduate. He was just a year younger than her, a Swedish boy named Lutie Lungren. The family had come to Cave Springs from Minnesota, their landing spot in America. Mr. Lungren was lured to the Tri-State area the same as most, by the jack and lead fields. Lutie had four younger brothers, Olaf, Axel, Peter and Elmer. She taught all of them, except for the youngest, Elmer. The Lungren family later moved to the Blue Mound area. Lutie, however, became active in supporting the striking miners later on. It nearly cost him his life. Lallah was still in Picher in 1935 when she joined a large group for a drive to the baptizin’ ground at Short Creek alongside her old stamping ground at Cave Springs School. Taking the old Tanyard Hollow abandoned dirt road (Tanyard Hollow was once a mining camp) she came to where the large congregation had gathered. Here, she ran into Jake Connor, another student of hers in ’17 at Cave Springs. He was now married with four children. Lallah, whom most all those present knew, had been gone long enough to nearly be a stranger. She had to explain to Jake why she was there. Times were tense, spies were around, and you were either on one side or the other. People wanted to know which side, and it better be the right one. Soon after Lallah returned to Picher, Lutie was beaten severely by the Hooded Klan. Lallah employed an Indian, Redfeather, to help get Lutie across the state line and into Galena to see Dr. Munson, Lutie’s doctor since birth. Dr. Munson had treated miners for silicosis for years and admired Lutie for his work in helping the “poor man,” even if it did cost him three teeth, some skin and much pain.

Dan died not long later, a victim of miner’s con (silicosis).

On April 11, 1937, all hell broke loose. The pickhandlers marched to the striking CIOers headquarters on Main Street in Galena. A deadly encounter followed, with pistol and rifle volleys filling the air. Three men, all strikers, were charged with murder. All three were former pupils of Lallah. Lutie went to Washington, D.C to find some perspective, came back and was jailed several times for his activities and started leaning toward becoming a Communist. After all, some said, it was the Communists and nobody else who were trying to keep the Galena boys out of jail. The accused murderers were offered a deal: let it go and we’ll drop all charges. It’s not fair, the Galena boys protested, since it was self-defense. Lallah was ready to go back to her life in New York and her husband who waited there. She was still a stranger because she had never told anyone where she stood. When there’s a disagreement, sides must be taken. That’s just the way it is. Just ask the Galena boys.
…

Summer sounds 1959
by Bryce Martin

It was a bloody sixteenth summer in 1959. Mildly gory, I should say. Each time I raised myself from the sides of the pool at Schifferdecker Park, the rough concrete scraped off enough chest and stomach skin to produce bleeding. There was no getting around it, no other way to get out. I tried time after time to pull off a kind of pull-up and while in midair flip myself out of the pool to ground level. It was pointless. For one thing, my wet trunks weighted me down too much for that and for another it would have to be a move of perfection. That was why I kept giving it an occasional try anyway.

“Sugaree” played over and over on the pool turntable and its thump-thump bass lines drifted tinnily from some large speakers hung on tall poles. Light summer winds caused the sounds to fade in and out like waves at the shore. The speakers were painted a military green, were squarish and had uvula-like stems protruding from the centers.

Sugaree, sugaree
...I miss you in the daytime
But I miss you more at night

It wasn’t a dirty song as sung by Rusty York, but it sounded like it was.
...

Inspiration hard earned
by Bryce Martin

My grandfather composed a tribute to his and my grandmother’s son, my father, who died in the service of his country.

A beautiful sympathy card from Mrs. J. P. Gilbert, Route 1, Box 98, Galena, Kans., was sent to my grandparents November 14, 1944.

Some of the words in the message inspired my grandfather to write a poem, which he later turned into a song he would sometimes sing. The lines that triggered the composition were: “Do not think that you have lost him/For that could never be….” (Italics mine).

Overseas
By Noah Martin

Oh, my darling, come put your arms around me,
For they say you are going away,
Going away they say, far across the sea.

Little did I think when a baby in my arms,
You would be taken from me and sent across the sea.

Darling, when you are far away,
Just pray and think of me,
A broken hearted mother far back across the sea.

Just a kind word, I pass it on to you,
I am a broken hearted father,
His son he longs to see, but that can never be,
For he was sent far across the sea.

Be not hasty in what you say to your darling boy,
For he too may be sent across the deep blue sea.

They say as time passes on, memory grows dim,
But with me that will never be,
For he was sent across the deep blue sea.

The glory of old newspapers
by Bryce Martin

Three columns wide and four inches deep, our team picture was at the bottom of the fold on the front page of the September 9, 1955, issue of the weekly Galena Record newspaper. The headline above the photo: “Elks Dodgers, Galena Little League City Champions”

A short piece accompanying the picture is without a byline. The writer, though, is likely the man who would know the story better than most anyone else, the manager of the Elks Dodgers, and the publisher of the Galena Record, Frank Bruce.

I know because I am one of those in the photograph.

This issue marks the thirteenth week for the Galena Record, a tabloid-sized, five-column width newspaper. It is in competition with the longstanding and more traditional format Galena Sentinel-Times, also a weekly.

I'm informed in a nice preview regarding the upcoming season that Coach J.W. Brewington has 51 out for football at the high school. They’ve already had one practice under the lights. The schedule for the Bulldogs, a member of the Neosho Valley League, kicks off with a non-league tilt at Mineral on Sept. 23.

Inside the newspaper, the full weekly television schedule starting Friday for KSWM (Joplin) and KOAM (Pittsburg) is printed and advertising outdoes copy about 80 percent to 20 percent after getting beyond the front page. Since revenue comes from advertising, the newspaper appears healthy in that respect.

As it so often happens with start-up publications, local politics and issues affecting community living are the reasons cited for new publishers in bringing in another “voice.”

In the favored left-hand column at the top of the page, Bruce gives his views in his personal opinion column titled “Frankly Speaking.” Much of the entire front page is devoted to pictures and stories of the progress with the work on the new community baseball diamond and the financial situation with the just-concluded Little League baseball season.

In Bruce’s editorial, he tells how he’d like to see Democrats and Republicans stop throwing dirt on each other and instead toss it as a source of pride as a top cover for the ball field under construction adjacent to Liberty school.

“So we maintain that when the main source of irritation in Galena is removed, harmony will be everywhere, and we can all work together for a better Galena and for the good of all concerned.”

He concludes that “if by now you don’t know this ‘source of irritation’ then you haven’t been reading the Galena Record regularly.”

In reading it I find that the new diamond will require 300 truckloads from the Shoal Creek bottoms for the dirt-topping. Each load amounts to about three yards of dirt. The area just south of the park bridge is where the dirt is coming from. The field will be ready by next spring when the high school team is first to put it to use. The junior league players from ages 13 through 15 will began summer play after that, along with the town team.

As noted by the Record, the city has a fine Little League facility on East Eighth Street.

In a separate story regarding the financial status of the Galena Little League, it “has $300.02 with which to start league operations next season.”

Data such as that will keep oiled the “Frankly Speaking” machinery of opinion.
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