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"Please
Don't Kill Brownie!"
and The Naked Man of Honey Island
Excerpted from
The Kountze News via A book Edited by Roy Hamric and published by Heidelberg Publishers
in Austin in 1975 which will be difficult to find unless you happen to live in
Smithville. |
| | While
not naked, The Jasper Post
Office Mural shows that
East Texas men enjoyed working at least without shirts.
TE Photo |
| Introduction
: These
two tales are actually news stories that appeared in the Kountze News, written
by Editor and Publisher Archer Fullingim, who believed that the best part
of small town papers were in the small stories in the back pages. Archer was a
transplanted northerner (Wise County) who came to East Texas via Florida, Cuba,
World War II, California, and West Texas and fell in love with the Big Thicket.
|
"Please
Don't Kill Brownie."
Like they say in East Texas,
this might just make your eyes sour up a little.
"Old "Red"
Williams, the town dogcatcher, just sat down with the girls at the elementary
school and cried, remembering all the heart-breaking letters he received from
them. This all happened after "Red," true to his word picked up all the stray,
untagged dogs he could lay a hand on. Then he was told about the little brown
female dog at the elementary school.
He came to find out that the little
dog had been adopted by a group of small girls, and when they learned that "Red"
had picked up their little brown dog, they sat down and penned him these letters
:
Dear Dogcatcher, If we get our dog back we will buy him a collar.
If you don't know the one I am talking about, it's the one you got today at school.
Please do not shoot him. Please do not shoot him. From: Sue, Debbie, Sandy, Frances,
Carol, Mary, Beth, and Kath.
Dear Mr. Williams: I am one of the
many that was crying this morning when you got Brownie. The first time we saw
her we started feeding her and that's the way it happened. Every time something
happened to her we tried to help her any way we could. She was brown and we are
Girl Scouts, so we named her Brownie. If we get her a collar and you give her
the shots she needs, may we have her back, Please! Please! - One of the Sad Ones
Dear Red Williams, I know you know my daddy. He is Ben Williams.
I am one of the girls who came to say goodbye to the dog. I know it is silly of
me to cry, but the dog was kind to us. I am not mad at you, but will you keep
good care of the dog. For me. Please. We all love him. Do not kill him. Love always,
Suzanne Williams
When "Red" read the letters he beat it to the
office of Principal James Heaton, Jr., his eyes awash, clutching the letters.
The soft-hearted "Red" wanted to do something
The dog was in the pound,
but he was not going to kill her, not after all those tears and letters. Mr. Heaton
gave a dollar toward buying her a tag and getting her vaccinated and spayed and
"Red" too gave a dollar. Then the printer, when he read the letters, gave a dollar,
but they need a few more, so if you want to help save the dog for the little girls,
call up Mr. Heaton and see if he has enough money. |
| The
Naked Man of Honey Island
Evidently there had been several sightings of the Naked Man before this excerpt
begins.
The Honey Island wild man story just won't die. The
naked man was seen a third time recently, this time standing near a creek on the
Sour Lake road. Sheriff A.D. "Red" Lindsey did not reveal the name of the couple
who saw the man. The pair did not care for the publicity.
The couple
said they were riding in their car along the highway when they saw the nude man
standing by a water hole. They said he turned and walked into the woods as soon
as he saw he was observed.
The Sheriff's theory now is that persons who
have seen the man saw a naked man, all right, but that the man is not "wild,"
but drunk. He believes he might be a character who is in the habit of working
in the woods with his axe, without any clothes on, while he takes frequent nips
from a jug. At a stage of his inebriation, the man forgets where he left his clothes
and starts wandering around in search of them. Another theory is that the man
might be one who, saturated with comic book criminology, is deliberately perpetrating
a hoax and is enjoying it.
However, the sheriff leans to the other theory.
He has known one or two men who worked in the woods naked, while they nipped the
bottle, but the sheriff does not suspect any definite person. |
Epilog
After his retirement, and long before David Letterman, Archer Fullingim drew
up his top ten weekly newspapers in Texas list. They were (in 1975) The Burnet
Highlander; The Tulia Herald (Swisher Co.); The Diboll Free Press (Angelina Co.);
The Canadian Record (Hemphill Co.); The Hays County Citizen; The Castro County
News; The Quanah Tribune-Chief (Hardeman Co.); The Post Dispatch (Garza Co.);
and the Rockport Pilot (Aransas Co.). He couldn't come up with a tenth paper among
the 500 weeklies then in Texas. Where was Metta
Johnson and the Smithville Times when he needed them?
Related Topics: Jasper, Texas
| East Texas Towns
"Bob
Bowman's East Texas" | "All
Things Historical" | |
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