Texas Panhandle Tales

by Mike Cox

Overview

The Texas Panhandle is like a whole 'nother country. The area stretching from just south of Lubbock all the way north to Oklahoma is filled with ranch land, oil fields, windy plains, and some of the Lone Star State's most unique history. Meet the duck that started a gun battle in Oldham County and find out how Kate Polly's pancake flipping saved her life. Or witness Gene Autry's days as a performer in Childress and a different sort of "gold rush" in Palo Duro Canyon as historian Mike Cox shares his favorite pieces of the Panhandle's past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781614238157
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	04/25/2012
Series:	American Chronicles
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Mike Cox's family tree has deep Texas roots. He began his full-time newspaper career as a reporter for the San Angelo Standard-Times in 1967 and later worked for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Austin American-Statesman. After a twenty-year career in journalism, he joined the Texas Department of Public Safety and served as its spokesman for fifteen years. He retired from the state in 2007, but in 2010 he retired from retirement and now works in the communications division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. An elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he is the author of twenty nonfiction books. In 2010, he received the West Texas Book and Music Festival's A.C. Greene Award for lifetime achievement. He lives in Fredericksburg in the Texas hill country.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

Indians

Kate Polly's Pancakes 11

The Great Panhandle Indian Raid 14

Buffalo Hunters

Zulu Stockade, Texas 18

Andrew Johnson at Adobe Walls 20

J. Wright Mooar's Buffalo 24

Soldiers

Our Indian Summer in the Far West 28

Cowboys

The Pitchfork Kid 33

Panhandle Cowboy Buys Himself a Circus 36

Old XIT Hands Whoop It Up in Dalhart 38

Critters

Remembering Blackie 42

The Last Buffalo 44

Antelope Still Home on the Range in the Panhandle 46

Law and Disorder

Dead Duck Triggers a Gun Battle 49

R.G. Miller's Big Day Was His Last 54

Clarendon's "Cowardly" Constable 55

Clairemont and Its Old Jail 58

"Kid" Murray 60

Mysteries

Palo Duro Mystery Man 63

Lubbock's Memphis Man and Other Spooks 67

The Wind

Wind Wagons 71

Racing the Wind 73

Dusters 76

World's Tallest Windmill No More 79

Ghost Towns

Tee Pee City 83

A Letter from Estacado 85

More than Names on the Map

Booker 88

Punkin Center 90

Earth 92

Kent County 95

Characters

Mobeetie's Parson Brown 97

Plains Pioneer Charlie Saigling 99

Panhandle Lawmaker Envisioned High Plains Statehood 102

Indian Jim 105

Gene Autry Comes to Childress 108

Laughing Matters

Brownfield's Roosevelt Riot 111

Lamesa: Home of the Chicken-Fried Steak…Not! 113

One Famous Son of Fritch 116

High Plains Ingenuity

Bone Roads 119

Cow Patties 120

Low Tech v. High Tech in the 1890s 122

Travel Trailers Panhandle Style 124

When Coins Fell from the Sky 126

Getting There and Back

Lonnie Houston's Last Ride 130

The Amarillo "Symphony" 133

Amarillo's First Airmail 136

Long Road to Hamblen Drive 138

About the Author 143