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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?
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