ROY BEAN LEAVES

3/16/1903 - The legendary life of Wild West character, Phantly Roy Bean Jr., comes to a surprisingly peaceful end when the former judge dies from pneumonia in his Langtry saloon at the age of 78 after a bout of heavy weekend drinking in the town of San Antonio and exposure to a sleet storm while chasing a group of cattle rustlers.

Bean

The youngest of five children, Bean Jr. is born to Phantly Roy Bean Sr. and the former Anna Henderson Gore in Mason County, Kentucky.  An extremely poor family, when the youngest Bean is only fifteen, he leaves home, rides a flatboat to New Orleans and after getting into trouble with Louisiana authorities, joins his teamster and bullwhacker elder brother Sam in San Antonio, Texas.  In 1848, the pair open up at trading post in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, but the endeavor is soon left behind when the men are forced to flee west into Sonora, Mexico after Roy kills a Mexican desperado that had been throwing threats about town on how he would soon be killing a "gringo."  The live "gringo" next shows up in 1849 in the Pacific Coast town of San Diego, where he lives in the home of another brother, Joshua (the last Mexican alcalde of San Diego, when the town is incorporated by the California State Legislature in 1850, Bean becomes the first duly elected U.S. mayor of the city, he leaves town and heads north when he is caught illegally selling the town's city hall and some local pueblo lands to himself and his drinking buddy, Lt. Cave J. Couts).  Shortly after arriving in San Diego, Roy is in trouble with the authorities again after he engages in a marksmanship contest on horseback against a Scotsman named John Collins.  Choosing to shoot at each other instead of at stationary targets, Collins is wounded in the right arm but survives the encounter.  Both men arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder, considered handsome and good catch as a youth, Roy receives wine, food, cigars, and flowers from the local ladies as he languishes in jail, languishes that is until he discovers one lovely senorita has hidden a set of knives in the tamales that have been gifted to Bean, knives the captive uses to dig through his cell wall to freedom on April 17, 1852.  Riding north, Roy joins up with his brother Joshua again, this time tending bar for the older Bean at his new enterprise, a drinking establishment and store in the town of Mission San Gabriel called the "Headquarters Saloon."  When 34-year-old Joshua is murdered after getting into an argument about a local lady, Roy inherits the bar, but once more has to flee a successful business when he lets his horniness do his thinking.  In 1854, after courting a local woman who has been promised to an officer in the Mexican Army, Bean challenges the officer to a duel and kills the man, an outcome that is unsatisfactory to six of the dead man's friend, who put Roy on horse and tie a rope around his neck that will set him dancing on air once the horse moves.  And move she does, but before Bean can die, the Mexican girl comes out of hiding and cuts Roy down.  Fleeing town and then California with a permanent rope burn souvenir around his neck (to go along with a stiff neck that will plague him the rest of his life), Roy migrates to New Mexico where his brother Sam has now become the first duly elected sheriff of Dona Ana County.  By 1861, the brothers are operating a combination saloon and store in the Grant County town of Pinos Altos (just north of the town of Silver City) ... advertised as serving liquor and having "a fine billiard table," it is an establishment that Roy decorates with a personal working cannon he places just outside the front door of the store for show (an accoutrement that will come in handy driving off a band of 200 Membreno & Chiricahua Apaches led by Mangas Coloradas and Cochise later in the same year, when the weapon is loaded with nails and fired as the hostiles invade the front door of the store).   

Joshua Bean

Mission San Gabriel

Pinos Altos

A Southern sympathizer through and through, when the American Civil War starts, Bean begins supplying the Confederate Army of Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, especially after it's supply wagons are seized and the army retreats back into Texas following it's disastrous loss in New Mexico at the Battle of Glorieta Pass (known to historians as the "Gettysburg of the West").  Helping himself to money from his brother Sam's safe, Roy returns to Texas and sets up a supply business in San Antonio.  For the remainder of the war, Bean will help the South and line his own pockets by running the Union's naval blockade of Texas, hauling bundles of cotton to British off the coast of Matamoros, Mexico and then returning to town with urgently needed supplies.  When the conflict ends in 1865, Bean remains in San Antonio and tries his hand at a variety of businesses over the next twenty years ... his lumber enterprise will fall apart when it is discovered that Bean's inventory has come from chopping down the trees of a neighbor, his dairy business craters when it is discovered that Bean is watering down the milk his cows give with moisture from a local stream (caught when minnows are found swimming in some of Bean's leche, the flim-flam artist tries to con his way out of his troubles by claiming he needs to stop the cows from drinking so much minnow tainted water), and his butcher shop fails when it is discovered Bean has been rustling cattle from the ranches of his San Antonio neighbors.  In San Antonio, Bean also tries his hand at being a family man, marrying the sixteen-year-old daughter (Virginia) of a respected local rancher, Leandro Chavez, on October 28, 1866.  Settling in a poor section of San Antonio called "Beanville," the honeymoon soon ends for the couple with Roy arrested for aggravated assault and threatening Virginia's life in 1867 (despite their tumultuous marriage, the union will produce four children ... Roy Jr. (1866), Laura (1872), Zulema (1874), and Sam (1875), and the couple also adopt a boy named John.  His marriage just as big a failure as his business cons, Bean decides to vacate San Antonio and set up shop to the west, in one of the railroad towns springing up along the trestles of the westward heading Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad (called the Sunset Route, the tracks start in New Orleans and then moves across the Chiuahuan Desert of West Texas, the tracks sharing the scorching land with rattlesnakes, bobcats, and scorpions as they head into El Paso.  Separated and then divorced by Virginia (the children have been farmed out to a San Antonio couple, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Fest, Jr.), running another saloon/store in Beanville, in the spring of 1882, with a nest egg of $900 (provided by a local businesswomen that wants Roy out of town so badly that she buys out his entire inventory) Bean buys a large tent, supplies, and ten 55-gallon barrels of whiskey and follows the railroad tracks west to a grading camp called Eagle Nest (in turn, the spot on the map will be called Vinegarron by Bean for the whip scorpions abounding in the area that emit a "vinegar" smell when alarmed, and then Langtry, when the town moves a short distance away for the engineer, George Langtry, who supervises the teams of Chinese workers building the railroad).

Battle Of Glorieta Pass

Virginia Chavez Bean

Historical Marker

Located in Val Verde County near where the Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers come together (most of the desert land is owned by the railroad or rancher Cezario Torres), what becomes the unincorporated town of Langtry, Texas will sit at an elevation of 1,289 feet above sea level and only average 14 inches of rain a year (from May to September the town averages a daily high temperature of 95.2 degrees).  It's population will never grow much beyond a population of a few hundred residents, but within twenty miles of the city limits when Bean arrives can be found almost 10,000 railroad workers, cowboys, gamblers, and outlaws (the moves to Vinegaroon and then Langtry are made after the saloon he opens in the town of Strawbridge fails, due in large part to a competitor lacing Bean's inventory with kerosene).  The nearest court being located at Fort Stockton, 135 miles away to the southeast (San Antonio is 186 miles away, Austin is 231 miles away, Dallas is 348 miles away, and Houston is 371 miles away), on July 5, 1882, the day after America's Independence Day is celebrated, Texas Ranger Captain Thomas L. Oglesby writes to his commanding officer, Adjutant General Wilburn H. King, that the region needs to have a magistrate appointed to adjudicate the laws of the state.  It is unknown what strings Bean pulls, but with host of offenses on his record over the years, and no formal training whatsoever as a judge or lawyer, Bean is somehow given the job (when deemed necessary, he will consult the one law book he has, the 1879 edition of the Revised Statutes of Texas), with first his tent and then a permanent store and saloon, The Jersey Lilly (named after Bean's boyhood crush, entertainer Emilie Charlotte Le Breton of the English isle of Jersey, better known to the world as Lillie Langtry, eventually, Bean builds a home across the street from his saloon, anticipating that someday Langtry will perform in Langtry at his home, and names his abode The Opera House), and it's denizens, serving as a courthouse filled with potential jurors as they are needed.  With no jail to speak of in town, most cases are settled with fines (most of the time for whatever amount of money the guilty party has on them, or if money is not available, by being assigned with working, "community service," about town), and when matters are more serious, the convicted individual is shackled to a post outside Bean's bar with a heavy log chain (some are also tied to the town's only tree, a large oak near the judge's saloon.  Only twice during Bean's career as a judge will a defendant be sentenced to hang, and that sentence is never carried out, the other time, the prisoner frees himself from the post and vanishes into the desert.  Calling himself and his court the "Only Law West Of The Pecos," Bean becomes a justice of the peace on August 2, 1882 (with a brief hiatus in 1886, when Bean loses an election, he will be Langtry's magistrate until 1896).

The Jersey Lilly - Bean Is On Porch In Sombrero Hat

Langtry

The eccentric court that Bean runs in Langtry will eventually make the judge into a Wild West legend (long after his death, actor Walter Brennan will win his third Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1940 for playing the judge opposite Gary Cooper in The Westerner, actor Victor Jory will be Bean in the 1969 film A Time For Dying, and Academy Award winning actor Paul Newman will play Bean in the 1972 comedy The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean ... and thus far on TV, he will be portrayed over the years by actors Edgar Buchanan, Frank Ferguson, Peter Whitney, Tom Skerritt, Billy Beck, Tommy Duggan, Andy Griffith, Brad Sullivan, and Ned Beatty).  Among the strange moments for the Law West of the Pecos are (one of the first things Bean does upon accepting his appointment is to shoot up the saloon of a rival Jewish businessman):

*When an Irishman named Paddy O'Rourke is put on trial after killing a Chinese laborer, 200 of the man's angry friends threaten Bean with mayhem, so he consults his law book and can find no law within stating it is illegal to kill a Chinaman ... and presto, the crowd breaks up when Bean announces the case is dismissed.

*When new law books are sent to Bean, he uses them not to upgrade the jurisprudence he is offering, but instead uses the books as kindling for the stove in his saloon.

*When a Southern Pacific railroad worker falls to his death from the company's bridge over the Pecos River, Bean finds the death accidental, but fines the corpse the $40 he is carrying for also carrying a concealed revolver (which the judge of course confiscates and from then on uses as a gavel during court proceedings).

*When a train passenger stops at Bean's bar for a beer and pays his five cent tab with a $20 gold piece, Bean refuses to make change for the man and fines him instead ... $19.95 for contempt of court and the threat that the contempt fees will double if the passenger keeps protesting the decision ... which he doesn't, leaving town as soon as the train he came in on is ready to continue west.

*Though not legally allowed to grant divorces (the job of a district court), Bean does anyway, charging $10 for every parting he oversees.

*When a rival barkeep is found guilty of assault by a six-man jury and fined two dozen bottles of beer, Bean rules that the fine must be paid in Jersey Lilly beer.

*When a railroad contractor with some knowledge of the law comes to Bean's court and wins a case using the latest Texas statutes, Bean bans law books from being used henceforth during proceedings of his court.

*During quiet periods where no train tourists are in his bar, Bean often sits on the porch of his saloon shooting off a shotgun while yelling "cold beer" ... the bar usually fills up shortly afterwards.

*Like divorce, marriages are not a function of Bean's court, but for $5 he ties the knot for many couples anyway (also the town coroner, he charges a $10 burial fee for each body that comes his way) and ends each ceremony by stating, "... and may God have mercy on your souls."

*Owed money by a local restaurant owner who is late in paying, Bean sets up outside the door to the eating establishment at its busiest time, and charges everyone for their meals until the money he is owed, plus interest, is all paid.

*Fake hangings are often held by Bean to scare others into swiftly paying their fines, and horse theft charges are often remedied, after fines, by allowing the culprits to escape back to wherever they came from in the first place. 

  *Informed by a district attorney in Del Rio that he is not authorized to grant divorces, Bean gets the lawyer into a poker game.  Down $230 to Bean, Bean is willing to forgive the debt if the attorney will never mention the matter of divorces again ... and he never does. 

*A common fine in Bean's court is that the offender found guilty has to buy a round of drinks for the judge, jury, and anyone else in the Jersey Lilly.

*Popping $2 fines on drunk and disorderly miscreants from the weekend, the judge uses Mondays to clear his docket of pending cases, sending the guilty on their way with words warning them to get out of his bar and not to come back again.

*Bar patrons conned into contributions to help a crippled stranger, when it is discovered that the man's afflictions are a ruse, the miscreant is brought back to Bean's saloon, the money he gathered is confiscated and then he is splayed out on the joint's pool table, where the judge decides the culprit should have a real physical disability and threatens to cut off the man's legs with a rusty saw, but can't figure out where the cuts should take place ... so everyone takes a break to contemplate the matter over drinks, everyone but the former "cripple," who vacates the premise and is never seen in Langtry again.

*Discovering he'd been stiffed by an eastern tourist having beers while the train he is on takes on water at the town depot, Bean board's the train while it waits to leave town, puts a revolver in the face of the stranger, and demands the thirty-five cents he is owed ... which is handed over in the form of a dollar immediately (and just to show what a hale fellow he is, for once in his career as a judge, Bean gives the man back his correct change).

*Finding out in 1890 that financial speculator Jay Gould is touring the area, Bean stops the millionaire's train with a danger flag, then makes Gould and his daughter his guests in the Jersey Lilly for two hours of drinks and story telling about his life from the judge ... enough time to send the New York Stock Exchange into a brief panic when news is received that the missing Gould has perished in Texas train crash.

*Thinking to give himself and the citizens of Langtry some entertainment and some cash, in 1896, Bean organizes a heavyweight championship boxing match between 165-pound former English blacksmith, Bob Fitzsimmons, and Irish world champion, 180-pound Peter Maher for a payday of $15,000 (most of the money coming from swells and gamblers in El Paso).  There is only one problem however, boxing is illegal in both nearby Mexico and in Texas.  Undeterred though, Bean has the fight take place on a sandbar in the Rio Grande River, territory considered to be part of Mexico, but a part that Bean is sure the 200 Mexican soldiers assigned to the fight will not swim out to.  Sandbar converted by forty men into a make-shift fight arena, before hundreds of boxing fans from all over America, a troop of 26 Texas Rangers (ready to arrest Bean if any fisticuffs take place in Texas, filmed for later showings around the nation (an early variant of pay-per-view events), on February 21st, in midnight blue trunks, Fitzsimmons, meets a black trunked Maher for the title, which the lighter man (Fitzsimmons still holds the record as the lightest heavyweight champion in boxing history) wins in the first round, knocking out Maher with a right hand at 1:35 of the match (both men wear five-ounce gloves).  Not much of a fight, Bean is pleased anyway by besting the authorities of both Mexico and Texas, and because the cost of Langtry's food, whiskey, beer and "sporting" girls have all been marked up 100% while the region is hosting the event.  

The Boxing Match

Bean In Front Of His Courthouse

Judge Bean

Brennan As Bean 

And as if Bean's bar and courtroom aren't crazy enough, the judge is also the owner of a pet black bear that depending on the source, is either named Bruno or Sarsaparilla (he is said to be won by the judge in a poker game).  Trained by the judge himself, Bruno is able to catch and chug beers thrown to him (at first by the judge and later by bemused patrons of the bar), uncap the bottles with his teeth, and then down the suds in a single massive gulp.  Kept on a chain long enough to allow Bruno to roam the bar and select places to pee, Bruno proves to be a lucrative business partner for Bean as folks are constantly buying the bear beers ... the judge pockets the money and Bruno is rarely if ever thirsty.  And the bear is also used to convince drunks never to pass out in the bar again when the miscreants awake from their over-indulgence to discover the drooling ursine's claws and teeth only steps away, acting as if he has just found a source for his next meal (Bean keeps the bear just out of reach on it's chain, something that the terrified drunks never seem to discover).  The bear and Bean finally part shortly after a new century has begun ... in one tale a disgruntled customer, a traveling salesman named Sam Betters (the man has fallen prey to Bean's no change policy, with the judge keeping another $20 gold piece; screaming at the magistrate as he runs to catch his train, the judge finds Betters in contempt of court, fines him $20, and declares the beer to have been on the house) who tricks Bean into believing the bear is dead when the men have drinks later in an El Paso bar and Betters convinces his drinking companion to have his dead pet stuffed, not knowing the bear is still alive, alive until Bean sends a telegram to a confederate in Langtry to send Bruno's carcass to a El Paso taxidermist immediately for stuffing, and afraid of disobeying a Bean order, Bruno is shot and skinned by the judge's man (Bean will be incensed for months and keeps an eye out for Betters for the rest of his life).  In the other tale, on his deathbed, Bean bequeaths Bruno to Lillie Langtry, a gift Langtry isn't interested in at all when she is finally able to visit the town after Bean's death, but one that doesn't have to be dealt with when the bear breaks loose of the chain he is on, and after scattering a crowd of citizens, vaqueros, and cowboys, runs off into the desert (for years afterward, people will claim to hear the bear roaring in the night for a beer).

Bruno/Sarsaparilla

      

In 1885, the town of Langtry becomes part of Texas' newly formed Val Verde County, and a local well- digger wins the election for magistrate, beating Bean by a margin of 25 votes to 17.  But Bean is reluctant to give up his gavel, and eventually the well-digger resigns and the judge is officially back in business until 1896.  Feuding with the Torres family once more (the family owns most of the property in town and has tried to get rid of Bean for years, but Bean has taken advantage of a right-away law to build his bar and home on railroad property), rival saloon owner Jesus Torres is declared the winner of the 1896 election when it is determined that Bean has received more votes for judge than there are qualified voters, but as with the well-digger, Bean refuses to hand over his notary public seal or his law book and continues to judge cases.  Eventually, the men come to a compromise and each man rules on cases on their side of Langtry's railroad tracks.  Not content with the compromise, two years later when the men run against each other again, Bean keeps Torres voters from casting their ballots by chasing his opposition away from the town's polling place with a shotgun until the sheriff of Del Rio arrives on the scene and threatens to chain the judge to his pet bear if he keeps interfering in the election.  Free to vote as it chooses, the town puts Torres in office for another term ... which Bean continues to ignore until he is legally elected once more in the magistrate contests of 1900 and 1902 (unbeknownst to those Langtry citizens not in need, the judge uses much of the fine money his court provides to help the poor of the region and insure that the local schoolhouse is stocked with firewood each winter).

Bean - Painting By Charles B. Wilson

Death finally comes calling for the judge on March 16, 1903.  After a drinking binge in San Antonio (the judge is depressed that a modern electrical power station is being built for Langtry on the nearby Pecos River), Bean decides to accompany two Val Verde deputy sheriffs on a search of the region for a group of cattle rustlers, when during their hunt, the judge and his band find themselves suddenly assaulted by a sleet storm for which they are totally unprepared.  Urging a return to Langtry which Bean denies, the men spend a freezing evening huddled together under their saddle blankets.  In the morning, Bean is sick and delirious, babbling on and on about his boyhood in Kentucky.  Arguments about how to proceed negated by Bean's fever, the judge is brought back to the Jersey Lilly and a doctor is wired for from the the town of Del Rio.  Arriving on Monday in Langtry on the next westbound Southern Pacific train, Dr. Donald Taylor Atkinson (the 28-year-old will receive his medical degree from the Hospital College of Medicine in Lexington, Kentucky) will give Bean a shot of codeine and a dose of digitalis for his weakened heart, but it does little good and the judge passes away at 10:03 in the evening, slumped over his desk in the bar.  He is 78-years-old.

Bean

Of course, no tale of Bean's life would be complete without mentioning the judge's decades long crush on the entertainer, Lillie Langtry (her real name is Emilie Charlotte Le Breton).  For years, the judge will sing praises about the beauty and acting ability of his fantasy girl while claiming to be her acquaintance and stating that one day she will perform in Langtry.  As noted earlier, backing up his infatuation with the actress, he names his bar after her, calls his home the Opera House anticipating Langtry will perform there someday, and loves telling how he named the town after her ... and woe be to anyone in the town that scoffs at his claims.  He also claims to frequently correspond with the actress, and purports that in return, she sends him a brace of pistols that he cherishes for the rest of his life.  The truth is that Bean doesn't know Langtry and that Langtry doesn't know him.  When Bean expires in 1903, it is without ever having met the actress.  However, Bean's claim that one day Langtry would visit the town named after her does come true only ten months after his death.  Traveling from New Orleans to San Francisco on the Southern Pacific railroad line, Langtry decides to stop off in the town to meet her number one fan, but discovers instead that the judge has passed away.  Passed away but not forgotten, Langtry visits the Jersey Lilly and the Opera House, watches as the bear she has inherited from the judge escapes into the desert, and listens to the townspeople tell Judge Roy Bean stories.  Smiling as she reboards her west bound train, Langtry will one day write of her stop in Langtry in her 1925 autobiography, "The Days I Knew," stating, "It was a short visit, but an unforgettable one."  Linked forever with her #1 fan, she too dies after an unsuccessful battle with pneumonia in Monte Carlo, Monaco on February 12, 1929.  She is 75 years old at her passing.

Langtry

The Judge

And those are the Bean tales I'm sticking to ... March 16, 1903, and Judge Roy Bean begins his passage into a Wild West legend.

Waiting For Customers - Bronze

Sculpture By Erik Christianson

 

     

 

        

  

A GREAT ATHLETE - OLLIE GENOA MATSON II

Thanks to Coach John Murio for turning me on to the saga of his San Francisco boyhood hero ... you chose wisely Coach, you chose wisely!  R 

2/19/2011 - Surrounded by his family at his home in Los Angeles, California, one of the greatest American athletes (Matson is one of only three men to win an Olympic Medal and also go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the other two are Jim Thorpe and Bob Hayes), Olympic sprinter and NFL Hall-of-Famer Ollie Genoa Matson II passes at the age of 80 as a result of dementia complications involving respiratory failure.

In Action

Ollie Genoa Matson II is born on May 1, 1930 to railroad brakeman Oliver Matson, and school teacher Gertrude Matson, in the small east Texas railroad town of Trinity.  As a youngster growing up, Matson sadly sees his parents separate and then divorce.  Living with his mother and twin sister after his parents part, when Matson is in junior high school the family moves to Houston (the football he plays with is a tin can wrapped in rags), where Gertrude finds love again and gets married for the second time.  Two years after setting down in Houston, the family is on the move once more, this time transplanting to the bustling California port city of San Francisco, where the youth becomes interested in playing football after following the career of an uncle that plays on a semi-professional team.  Matriculating at George Washington High School (built for $8 million and featuring murals depicting George Washington's life painted by Russian-American artist Victor Mikhail Arnautoff, the Richmond District school opens in 1936 and overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge ... along with Matson, among its notable alumni will be poet Maya Angelou, Jefferson Starship singer Marty Balin, tennis player Rosemary Casals, gold medal swimmer Ann Curtis, actor Danny Glover, Grammy winning singer Johnny Mathis, and Miss America Lee Meriwether), Matson shows off his potential athletic greatness playing end, halfback, and defensive back for three years as a varsity Eagle.  Sidelined breaking his ankle in 1945, to stay in shape for football, his head coach advises the running back that he should take up track too.  Indifferent to the sport at first, Matson soon becomes obsessed with the elements of running and becomes nationally recognized as a scholastic sprinter and quarter-miler (as a senior, he will break the world interscholastic record for the 440-yard dash, putting down a 47.8 second run to best the previous mark of 48.2 seconds, has a 100-yard dash speed of 9.6 seconds, and almost qualifying for the 1948 American Olympics team, he finishes fourth in his specialty, and vows to be a part of the team in 1952), and he also does a little pole vaulting when his coach isn't watching.  In 1947, San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Don Shelby will state, "Matson gives every indication of being the hottest thing San Francisco high school football fans have seen in quite a spell."  And he is right, reaching his adult size, Matson as a high school senior is a 6'2," 220 pound package of muscle and speed capable of going around, over, or through opposing players, becoming an All-City running back while setting a city record by scoring 102 points in only seven games.  Matson will soon come to be known as "Mercury" Matson and he is just getting started!

High School Football

High School Track

Enrolling at San Francisco City College in 1948, Matson's presence on the Rams football roster is instantly felt as Ollie sets a junior college record by scoring 19 touchdowns in a single season, while leading the team to an undefeated record, it's second junior college championship, and being named a first-team All-American Junior College halfback.  Many major university scouts drooling at the prospect of Matson playing for their squad, the youth instead decides to remain in San Francisco and enroll at the University of San Francisco, a small private all-male Jesuit university sitting on a 55-acre campus between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden State Park (their enrollment at the time is just over 1,200 students), an institution that makes Matson feel comfortable and at home (his mother wants him to study hard and become either a doctor or a dentist).  Thinking he might try basketball next (with legendary center, Bill Russell leading the way, the USF basketball program will win the NCAA national championship in 1955 and 1956), Matson decides to concentrate on football while at the university (he also becomes a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity), and makes the varsity team in 1949 (the Dons are 7-3 for the year, as the squad scores 260 points while allowing only 144, a 10-0 loss to Tulsa at Tulsa is their worst defeat of the season ... Matson scores seven touchdowns, one on a run of 92 yards and is selected as a member of All-Coast Team and a Catholic All-American), 1950 (the team is 7-4 for the year, scoring 291 points while allowing 181 and gaining revenge on Tulsa by beating the Golden Hurricanes 23-14 at home ... Matson scores thirteen touchdowns in his junior campaign and once more is selected as a member of the All-Coast and Catholic All-American teams) and 1951, a team that is considered one of the greatest college squads of all-time, a band of brothers that becomes know for being "undefeated, untied, and uninvited."

The University Of San Francisco

1949 & 1950 Programs

In his senior year as a USF Don, Matson will be part of a legendary 33-man team that has a magical year.  Under the guidance of Joe "The Barracuda" Kuharich (a former player for Notre Dame and the Chicago Cardinals, and a coach with a resume that will one day include jobs with Notre Dame, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Chicago Cardinals, the Washington Redskins, and the Philadelphia Eagles) and chief assistant Brad Lynn, the 1951 USF squad features nine individuals that will be drafted by the NFL; along with Matson there is 6'7" tackle Bob St. Clair (a 1990 member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame credited with blocking ten field goals in 1956, he is known as "The Geek" by teammates for his penchant for eating raw meat), legendary 6'4" defensive end Gino Marchetti (a 25-year-old U.S. Army veteran of WWII that experiences the Battle of the Bulge as a machine-gunner, he is discovered tending bar ... after he finishes playing for the Dons, he goes on to have a pro football Hall of Fame career that includes two championships with the Baltimore Colts, 11 All-Pro selections, 11 Pro Bowl selections, one interception, 13 fumble recoveries, 2 touchdowns, and a place on the NFL's 1950s All Decade Team, and the 50th, 75th, and 100th All-Time Anniversary clubs), 6'0" guard Louis "Red" Stephens (an honorable mention All-Pro, he will play five years for the Washington Redskins before going on to be a line coach for Kuharich at Notre Dame and a scout for four years with the Philadelphia Eagles), quarterback Charles Edward Brown (twice making the Pro Bowl team, he will have an 11-year career with the Chicago Bears, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Baltimore Colts, he will be the UPI Comeback Player of the Year in 1963), 5'11" end, 190-pound end Ralph Thomas (he will have a five-year career with Chicago Cardinals and Washington Redskins), safety Joe "Scooter" Scudero (he will be a CFL All-Star in 1953 and make the Pro Bowl in 1955 while having a seven year professional career with the Toronto Argonauts, the Washington Redskins, and the Pittsburgh Steelers), 6'5" tackle Mike Mergen (he will be drafted by the Chicago Cardinals), and team captain and linebacker Burl Abron Toler (a member also of the junior college championship team that Matson plays for in 1948, Toler is chosen in the 9th Round of the 1952 draft by the Cleveland Browns, but hurts his knee in that year's College All-Star Game <a 10-7 defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Rams> and never plays a down in the NFL ... however, he does go on to become the NFL's first African-American official, and as such, has a 25-year career calling penalties on the pros and also becomes the first African-American to officiate a Super Bowl game).  And the publicist of the team is 25-year-old Alvin Ray "Pete" Rozelle, who will go on to become the commissioner of the NFL in 1960 (he will be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1985).  Coming together as a team, the 1951 Dons bond in the classroom, on the training field (Kuharich will annually take his team 170 miles north of San Francisco to the town of Corning, where one practice is run with the thermometer registering 112 degrees), at football practice, and as the players experience the racial animus that comes at Matson and Toler (on a trip to Oklahoma, the pair are not allowed to stay in a hotel that only caters to their white teammates, so the whole team moves to another place that takes both white and black players, and they do the same when restaurants refuse to serve the men).       

Kuharich

  
St. Clair & Marchetti In The 1958 NFL Championship Game Against The Giants

Kezar Stadium

With the bigger universities in California unwilling to risk their reputations against the USF team, Kuharich puts together a season of opposition from wherever he can find teams willing to face his charges ... for the 1951 season, the Dons will play San Jose State, the Camp Pendleton Marines, the San Diego Naval Base, and Santa Clara, at their home field of Kezar Stadium (an outdoor athletics stadium built for $300,000 in 1925 capable of seating 50,000 people ... it is named for the Kezar Family that gives a gift of $100,000 to the San Francisco Park Commission for its construction in 1922), while road games take the squad to Boise, Idaho, San Jose, California, New York City, New York, Stockton, California, and to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California for a contest against Loyola, and they will play the San Jose Spartans twice, once at home and once in San Jose.  Kicking off the season with a home game on September 21, the Dons beat the Spartans 39-2 before a crowd of 16,000 fans, with Matson scoring on touchdown runs of 54 and 45 yards (by the end of the season, the Dons fans will be singing "Good Night, Irene" and waving handkerchiefs at the opposing team in the fourth quarter of games).  The next team to be knocked off is the Idaho Vandals, 28-7, behind three touchdowns from Matson, one of which is after a 64-yard run in which he reverses direction twice,  The Marines of Camp Pendleton fare no better the next week, getting zipped 26-0 behind two Matson touchdown runs of 14 and 55 yards.  San Jose up again, the Spartans lose even worse to the Dons in San Jose, going down 42-7, as Matson runs for 195 yards on 25 carries (a 7.8 yard average), scores three times (and has a fourth, 53-yard ramble called back).  Then the Dons travel cross-country to face the Fordham Rams at Triborough Stadium in New York (Fordham is 3-1 at the time with victories over Missouri, Dartmouth, and Boston College), winning their closest game of the season 32-26 as Matson returns two kickoffs for touchdowns (94 and 90 yards respectively), along with scoring on a six-yard dive play (he will have 302 total yards for the game), a contest that Pete Rozelle drives legendary east-coast sportswriter Grantland Rice to so that the Dons will receive the proper coverage in the next day's papers.  The U.S. Navy by way of San Diego is the next roadkill USF defeats, handing the naval base football team a 26-7 pounding behind Matson's 249 yards on 29 carries, while he also breaks up ten pass plays on defense.  The following week, Santa Clara goes down to the Dons by the exact same score behind three touchdowns and 229 yards from Matson, playing in his last home game for San Francisco.  Playing the Pacific Tigers at Valley Bowl in Stockton, California, the Dons win their 8th game of the season, 47-14, with Matson scoring two of his team's seven touchdowns gaining 175 yards on 29 carries.  And closing out November, on a Sunday afternoon at the Rose Bowl, San Francisco gains it's ninth win of the season, besting Loyola by 20-2, with Matson gaining another 112 yards while scoring two more touchdowns.

L-R, Toler, Brown, Marchetti, Matson

A Matson Carry Against Fordham

Matson Scores

Undefeated

It is a wonderful, 9-0 season, and riding the Southern Pacific Daylight train back to San Francisco (a nine hour journey), the team downs celebratory beers and sings along as nose guard Vince Tringali (ukulele) and linebacker Dick Colombini (accordion) provide the music to "Up A Lazy River" and the team's unofficial theme song, legendary bluesman Lead Belly's (Huddie William Ledbetter) "Good Night, Irene," fully expecting to be invited to a prestigious holiday bowl game (there are only eight bowl games in 1951).  But there is an odious surprise waiting for the team when they get back to San Francisco.  Meeting with Coach Kuharich shortly after getting off the train, the Dons are told that they have indeed been invited to play in Florida's Orange Bowl with one huge caveat ... they are invited to play Georgia Tech (the Yellow Jackets are 10-0-1 in 1951) if they leave their two black players, Toler and Matson home (in a time of Jim Crow before Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Gator Bowl president Sam Wolfson has conspired with the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl to come to an agreement that none of their games will feature any teams with black players).  And then the team shows it has as much class and character as it does athletic ability, maybe even more considering the times ... instantly angered, Marchetti screams "Hell No!  We ain't going without Burl and Ollie," and without a thought or a moment of hesitation, the team unanimously roars their concurrence (the 8-1-1 Baylor Bears will get the bid instead and will later lose to Georgia Tech by a score of 17-14).  And so it is that the undefeated and untied University of San Francisco Dons, a 9-0 squad that has outscored it's opponents, 338 to 86 (beating teams by an average score of 31-8, they will only be ranked #14 in the final AP poll of the season), a team that holds opponents to net rushing average of 52 yards a game, a group that will have nine players drafted by the NFL (with five of them making at least one Pro Bowl squad and three going into the Canton Hall of Fame ... something no other college team can still claim) stays home for New Year's Day, 1952 (already financially burdened to the tune of being $70,000 in arrears, the school will back the team, but without the revenue that a bowl game would have produced, two days after the team decides the Orange Bowl can go to hell, the University of San Francisco disbands it's football program).  And though Matson is selected for his All-American performance (for the season, Matson leads the nation in rushing with 1,566 yards <four yards short of the then single-season NCAA best> and scoring with 21 touchdowns) he too is slighted ... he is not a "unanimous first team selection and on some lists, he makes the squad not as a running back, but as a pass defender, and in the balloting for the annual Heisman Trophy as the best college player in the nation, Matson finishes in 9th place, losing to Princeton's single-wing star back, Dick Kazmaier (he is a phenomenal athlete himself, lettering each year in high school for football, baseball, basketball, track & field, and golf, his the last Heisman to be won by single-wing back, and the last that the Ivy League produces), who leads the Tigers to an undefeated season by throwing for 966 yards and thirteen touchdowns while also rushing for 861 yards and nine touchdowns (Matson will also be behind Hank Lauricella of Tennessee, Babe Parilli of Kentucky, Bill McColl of Stanford, Johnny Karras of Illinois, Larry Isbell of Baylor, and Hugh McElhenny of Washington).           

Playing Defense

Kazmaier

Not Ollie

His career as a college football player over, Matson does no brooding over the missed bowl game or personal accolades, instead, he concentrates on the challenge he gave himself four years before, especially when he is told by a coach he has taken too long of a layoff ... making the U.S. Track & Field Team as a sprinter before the next Olympic Games.  Egged on by the words of Stanford track coach Dink Templeton (who is chosen to also coach the Olympics track team), Matson practices, practices, and practices even more.  By June 27, 1952, when the trials for the U.S. track team begin in Los Angeles, California at the Memorial Coliseum, Matson is ready.  Running a 47.3 in the 400 meter event, Ollie finishes in third place and makes the Olympic team.  The XV Summer Olympics begin in Helsinki, Finland on July 19, 1952 (in the NFL draft of 1952, Matson is the third pick overall, selected by the Chicago Cardinals after the L.A. Rams take quarterback Bill Wade of Vanderbilt and the New York Yanks choose Cal linebacker Les Richter, and just before the Green Bay Packers take Kentucky quarterback "Babe" Parilli ... wanting to concentrate on the matter at hand, Matson will wait until the Olympics are over to sign his first pro football contract).  Matson's run at Olympic glory begins on Thursday, July 24th, with two 400 meter runs that take the running back into the semi-finals field with a time of 47.53 seconds.  The next day, Matson has two more runs, putting down a best of 46.94 seconds in the finale to win a bronze medal behind the 46.09 time of Jamaica's George Rhoden and the 46.20 time of Jamaica's Herb McKenley.  Leading off for the United States' 4x400 meter relay team (the group is composed of Matson, Gene Cole, Charlie Moore, and Mal Whitfield), Matson races again on Saturday as the United States qualifies for the Sunday relay finals with a time of 3:11.05.  On Sunday, the team wins a silver medal by posting a time of 3:04.0 (the U.S. will have a slight lead when Matson passes the baton to Gene Cole for the second leg of the event), just a tenth of a second away from the gold that Jamaica wins posting a World Record time of 3:03.9 (the Jamaica team is composed of Arthur Wint, Les Laing, Herb McKenley, and George Rhoden).  Mission accomplished, the bronze and silver medals that Matson takes home from the competition will be the most prized accomplishments of his athletic career because as he states, "In the Olympics you're competing against the best there are.  It isn't the Iowa State Fair.  It's the world championship."

Dink Templeton

The U.S. Team Marches In

L-R, McKenley, Rhoden, Matson

Back in the United States, mostly playing defense, Matson is just in time to perform in the 1952 College All-Star game at Soldier's Field in Chicago on a rainy Friday night against the the world champion L.A. Rams, the collegiates losing by a score of 10-7 before over 80,000 fans.  Then Matson is off to the training camp of the Chicago Cardinals (now coached by Matson's college mentor, Joe Kuharich).  Getting into all 12 games of his initial season in the NFL (he will start seven), Matson will share the 1952 Rookie of the Year Award (and he will also make his first Pro Bowl team and be named to the 1st Team of that year's All-Pro squad) with fellow future Hall of Famer, San Francisco 49er Hugh McElhenny (the ninth pick of the San Francisco 49ers, McElhenny will record the lonest run from scrimmage on an 89 yard scamper, goes 40 yards to score a touchdown on his first NFL run, has the longest punt return on a 94 yard run, and averages seven yards per carry) by rushing for three touchdowns, catching three touchdown passes, taking two kickoffs in for scores (one on a hundred yard run and one on a return of 79 yards), and rumbling 34 yards with a fumble for another touchdown, while also intercepting two passes.  Sadly though, despite Matson's efforts, the Cardinals will finish the season with a dismal record of 4-8 (the team is now the Arizona Cardinals), finishing in fifth place of their six team conference and failing to make the playoffs (Cleveland will head the American Conference with an 8-4 record).  All-America selection, graduating from college with a Bachelor's Science Degree in History, a first round NFL selection, two Olympic medals, named one of the rookies of the year, and a first team selection to the Pro Bowl and All-Pro teams, 1952 is also the year that Matson will marry his high school sweetheart and take Mary L. Paige as his bride (the couple meet at a local Baptist Church social as teenagers and will be married for over fifty years in a union that produces four children, two daughters, Lisa Lewis and Barbara King, and two sons, Ollie III and Bruce ... the family will be Matson's proudest accomplishment in life). 

All-Star Program

McElhenny

Just a taste of what is to come, service in the United States Army takes Matson away from the NFL for it's 1953 season, but that doesn't mean it is a year with no football for the private who spends time playing on a squad out of Fort Ord and in a vote of over 16,000 soldiers is named by Army Times as a first team All-Army selection and is chosen as the team's MVP.  In 1954, Matson is back with the Cardinals, and continues what becomes an NFL Hall of Fame career.  For the most part wearing #33, Matson will play fourteen seasons in the NFL (with the Chicago Cardinals, the Los Angeles Rams, the Detroit Lions, and the Philadelphia Eagles ... sadly, the closest he ever gets to playing for a title is finishing 2nd in the East to the 1956 New York Giants with a 7-5 record), rushing for 5,173 yards and 40 touchdowns, catching passes for 3,285 yards and 23 touchdowns, returning kickoffs for 3,746 yards and six touchdowns while being an All-Pro selection seven times and a Pro Bowl selection six times (when it was still really a game, Matson will be the contest's 1956 MVP, leading his East team to a 31-30 victory on a 15 yard touchdown run, taking a punt return downfield for 50 yards, and scoring on an even grander punt return of 91 yards).  When he retires in 1966, Matson is tied for second place for longest kickoff return (105 yards), is first in most touchdown kickoff returns (six), and is second in total yards gained in a career (12,844 yards, behind only Jim Brown).  As a Cardinal, he will set team records for yards gained in a season (924), yards gained rushing in a single game (163), most rushing attempts in a career (761), most rushing attempts in a season (192), longest kickoff return (105 yards), most kickoff returns in a career (86), most kickoff return yardage in a season (1,956), and most touchdowns in a career (50).  As a Los Angeles Ram, Matson will set a record for most rushes in a game and will have the second most proficient gained yardage day against the Chicago Bears in 1959.  And of course, there is the BIG trade of 1959.  General Manager of the Rams by 1959, Pete Rozelle, looking to improve his team's record from the previous year (8-4) and catch the Baltimore Colts, remembers Matson from the days with the USF Dons, and trades for him ... a nine player deal in which Matson goes to the Rams for tackle Frank Fuller, defensive end Glenn Holtzman, tackle Ken Panfil, defensive tackle Art Hauser, end John Tracey, fullback Larry Hickman, halfback Don Brown, the Rams second pick in the 1960 draft (which becomes Duke guard Mike McGee), and the fourth round pick in the 1960 draft (which becomes Marquette end Silas Woods).  Career completed, Matson will be chosen as a member of the NFL's 1950s All-Decade Team (the other halfbacks are Frank Gifford, Hugh McElhenny, and Lenny Moore), gets inducted into the Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Fame, and becomes a member of the Arizona Cardinals Ring of Honor in 2006.

Cover

Ollie

Running For The Rams

With football finally in the rear-view by 1966, Matson begins the "retirement" phase of his life which still includes lots of the game he loved playing.  Matson will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972 (he will be presented by his college coach, Joe Kuharich, who will state Matson is "... an All-American, an All-Pro, and the type of man that brings glory to each and every one that has ever been associated with him."), inducted into the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame in 1976, inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1983, and inducted into the California High School Football Hall of Fame in 2022 (Matson is also a member of The Pigskin Club of Washington D.C.'s National Intercollegiate All-American Football Players Honor Roll).  Among the jobs Matson does while no longer lugging a football about are scouting for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1966 to 1968, teaching P.E. classes at Los Angeles High School and serving as a Roman head football coach (a school my parents both attended long ago and where my Dad once played and coached), coaches the running backs at San Diego State University, and for ten years, he is the special event supervisor for the Los Angeles Coliseum, a job from which he retires in January of 1989.  For Matson though, the most important role he has is that of husband and father.  Insuring that his children will grow up protected and safe, and know right from wrong, Matson becomes "The Man," not only for his family, but also for other relatives, the neighborhood children (when Matson is traded to the Rams, he and Mary will buy a home they live in for the rest of their lives) and the youths he coaches.  Rarely if ever does he get angry and he seems to have a smile and a handshake for everyone he meets.  Among his joys are barbecuing, organizing an annual ping-pong tournament, working in his garden, and listening to his collection of albums featuring Johnny Mathis (a classmate and friend from his San Francisco days), Dinah Washington, and Sam Cooke, and while he can still remember the games, getting together with former teammates and opponents to hash over their accomplishments on the gridiron when they were young (until both fall prey to dementia, Matson's best friend will be the legendary Hall of Fame Baltimore Colt tight end, John Mackey).  And he takes great pride in helping his mother get the very first African-American float in the 1964 Rose Bowl parade (he of course, pays for the whole thing).

Hall Of Fame Induction - L to R - Clarence "Ace" Parker,

Ollie Matson, Gino Marchetti, Lamar Hunt

Meeting With President Nixon - L to R - Bruce, Barbara,

Nixon, Matson, Mary, And Mary's Mother, Mamie

Sadly though, Matson's accolades come as a result of playing college and professional football in a period of bad officiating (to a large extent, the players police themselves), limited teams, poor pay (most of the players have off season jobs to make ends meet), inadequate equipment (leather helmets and primitive face masks, and few rules protecting the players (clothesline tackles are okay), and as good as he is, for many there is a price to pay for getting burped.  Popped one too many times, Matson will develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE, a progressive degenerative disease brought on by too many concussions and blows to the head) and begins losing his memory in his later years (he is one of 110 out of 111 former players found to have the disease).  Progressively worse and worse, Matson will wash each of the family's four cars every day, begin barbequing for dinner at 6:30 in the morning, gets lost driving home from Hollywood Park (a locale he'd been visiting for years), becomes unable to differentiate between a $10 bill and a $100 bill, and forgets what year he went into the Hall of Fame while signing autographs for fans.  In the last five years of his life Matson is confined to a wheelchair or his bed and barely speaks more than to say "Hi" or "Bye" to any visitors.  Surrounded by the people he loves (the exception is his wife Mary, who passes away on Tuesday, February 6, 2007), Ollie Genoa Matson II passes away from respiratory failure brought on by his dementia complications in his Los Angeles residence (the home has now been designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument) at the age of 80; he is survived by his twin sister Ocie Thompson, his four children, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.  Rest in peace #33 ... you were special!

Recovering From A Concussion

Ollie & Mary

Mr. Matson

  

  

       

GOODBYE TO "LONGHAIR" JIM

2/8/1887 - Considered one of the fastest gunfighters of the Wild West (he is said to be quicker than Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, and Bat Masterson), the quick draw career of Timothy Isaiah Courtright (Tim mistaken for Jim, his nicknames are "Longhair Jim" and "Big Jim") comes to an abrupt and bloody end when his protection money feud with fellow pistolero Luke Short plays out with leather finally being slapped in front of the "Shooting Gallery," the appropriately named "Hell's Half Acre" bar and brothel of Fort Worth, Texas resident Ella Blackwell.  Reputation destroyed compliments of his gun jamming (there is also talk that Courtright's draw is delayed a split-second by his gun catching on the chain of his gold pocket watch), the 39-year-old shootist goes to the local Boot Hill as a result of Short bullets that hit "Longhair Jim" in the right thumb, right shoulder, and center of his heart. 

Courtright

The exact date unknown, Timothy Courtright is born to the family of Daniel Courtright (he will have four older sisters and one younger brother) in Sangamon County, Illinois in the spring of 1845 (some sources also having him being born in Iowa between 1845 and 1848).  Little is known about the early years of Courtright beyond the fact that by the time he is a teenager he has developed deadly gunfighter speed drawing his revolver and firing it accurately.  It is an ability that the youth will soon put to good use.  Lying about his age, at seventeen Courtright joins the Union Army and is soon fighting under the command of General John Alexander "Black Jack" Logan (a former Illinois state representative and then a member of Congress who becomes a political general during the Civil War, and one of the veterans of the conflict that will play a major part in establishing Decoration Day after the war, an event that has now morphed into America's Memorial Day).  It will be as a soldier that Tim will somehow mistakenly become Jim, and not worth the trouble of constantly correcting his fellow soldiers, Courtright will just go along with the name change.  Seeing action in the west with the Army of the Tennessee, Courtright receives praise for his bravery in action at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg, and is said to gain the admiration of Logan when he is wounded taking a bullet for meant the general.  War over and the Union victorious, looking for what to do next, Courtright drifts west and southward, working as an army scout and letting his hair grow long as is the custom of the time for many in that occupation, eventually taking up residence in Fort Worth, Texas by the 1870s (he also finds time to marry Sarah Elizabeth "Betty" Weeks, a women who will gift Courtright with three children and perform with him as a sharp-shooter in a Wild West show alongside Wild Bill Hickok).  A wild town with a host of wild citizens, though he tries to become a farmer, Courtright walks the streets of the town wearing two six-shooters with their handle butts forward, and draws from the right hip with his right hand when he needs to shoot.  Unable to make a go at farming, Courtright works as the city jailor, and then in 1875 is hired as a Deputy City Marshal, before running for city marshal himself in 1876.  

Logan

Weeks

Winning his election by three votes (he becomes Fort Worth's first duly elected marshal), Courtright will bring a semblance of peace to Fort Worth for a time, but wears out his welcome with the city's merchants by 1879, falling prey to the businessmen in the city wanting calm, but finding them unwilling to allow him to put in place reforms that will achieve it or use his quick draw on too many of the money-bearing Chisholm Trail cowboys that fill the city (on August 25, 1877, Deputy Marshal Columbus Fitzgerald is shot and killed trying to break up a street fight, a murder that Courtright avenges the same evening).  During his term in office, the gunman is said to have killed five men and cuts the town's murder rate in half, but loses the town's 1879 marshal election to S.M. Farmer (there are also rumors that some of the deaths are a result of Courtright operating a protection racket on the denizens of the town's wild red-light district, "Hell's Half Acre," a five acre of area of lawlessness that will be visited by the like of Bat Masterson, Butch Cassidy, Doc Holliday, Harvey Logan, the Sundance Kid, Etta Place, Luke Short, Sam Bass, and Wyatt Earp).  Leaving his family behind, Courtright then moves west out of Texas and crosses into New Mexico.  Alighting in the silver camp of Lake Valley, Courtright functions once more as a lawman, spending time as an ore guard for the American Mining Company (using a rifle instead of his pistols, Courtright will kill two Mexican bandidos trying rob a silver shipment in 1882), before being hired to become the foreman on the New Mexico ranch of his former commander, John Logan, where his duties include keeping the general's range free of sodbusters and rustlers.  Too good fulfilling his duties, Courtright is once more on the move after he is part of a posse that kills two cowboys, Alexis Grossetete and Robert Elsinger, when the two men refuse to leave the ranch they have established at Gallo Springs, New Mexico (ignoring the men's claim of ownership by way of filing patents on unsurveyed land, Courtright and his friend, Jim McIntire, will shoot down the men as "Mexican" squatters in 1883).  Local authorities advised of the killings by Mormon deacon, Daniel H. McAllister, Courtright and McIntire flee on horseback into Mexico just before they are indicted for murder by a grand jury.  Tiring of life as south-of-the-border fugitives in less than a year, the two gunmen met up with their families in El Paso, Texas, before moving back to Fort Worth, where Courtright opens up the T.I.C. Commercial Detective Agency, a private detective firm that serves as a cover for the gunman's protection racket.

Hell's Half Acre

Lake Valley

Before he can get his detective agency running at full speed though, Courtright finds himself served with extradition papers by New Mexican officials working in conjunction with the Texas Rangers.  Having made many friends while residing in Fort Worth, roughly 2,000 armed citizens are willing to keep Courtright free, but the gunman surrenders instead ... and puts a safer plan into play.  Having a last meal at his favorite restaurant in Fort Worth, Courtright will pull two pistols out from under the table where friends have placed them, get the drop on the lawmen taking him back to New Mexico, and will flee the town on a swift horse that has been placed outside the eatery.  Hiding aboard a train going to Galveston, Courtright will then take a ship to New York City, wander into Canada, before returning to the United States by way of the state of Washington the following year.  Tired again of running, he surrenders to New Mexican authorities again, and placed on trial for the murders, is acquitted by Lake Valley jury (some witnesses have vanished and the "Mexican" lie is believed), a disposition that allows Courtright to return to Fort Worth and reopen his detective agency in 1884, where he quickly discovers that another pistolero, a former friend, has set up shop in the wild Texas city, a gent named Luke Lamar Short.

Luke Short

Wild West all the way, Luke is born on January 22, 1854 in Polk County, Arkansas (he will have nine siblings) to Hetty and Josiah Washington Short.  Two years after his birth, the family packs up and moves to Montague County, Texas, and Short begins putting together a resume of adventure, gun fighting, and death dealing.  In 1862, as an eight-year-old, Short and his older brother help their father escape a Comanche ambush on their ranch, and at the age of thirteen, while still just a school boy, he carves up the face of a local youngster that attempts to bully him, and escaping retribution for the act, the family picks up and moves to the cow town of Fort Worth.  Three years later, as a sixteen-year-old in 1869, Luke drops out of school to become a cowboy, an occupation taking cattle to railheads in Kansas that will command his attention for the next six years (as a full-grown adult, Short will only stand 5'6" tall and weighs 125 pounds dripping wet).  In 1876, Short becomes involved with whiskey peddlers in Sidney, Nebraska and as a result, kills six Sioux Indians when they become belligerent over the cost of what they've already imbibed.  Occupation now that of an Indian fighter (his friend, Bat Masterson will claim that Short has over thirty encounters with hostile Indians during this period in his life), Luke signs on to scout and dispatch ride for General George Crook (a Civil War general that afterward, will chase Indians all over the West as Nantan Lupan, the "Grey Wolf," having encounters with hostiles from Oregon to Arizona, where his career culminates in his taking the surrender of the Apache leader and medicine man, Geronimo, in 1886) during the U.S. Army's campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in 1876 that results in the massacre of George Armstrong Custer and part of the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (in one memorable encounter he is said to be ambushed by fifteen warriors and in a running battle on horseback, kills off five Indians with his pistols before reaching the safety of an Army camp).  The Fort Worth Daily Gazette will describe him as "the bravest scout in the the government's employ."  Out of the army by 1878, Short becomes a professional gambler and saloon keeper (he will be a part owner in three of the most notorious businesses of the Wild West, Tombstone, Arizona's Oriental Saloon, the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas, and Fort Worth's White Elephant Saloon).  Plying his trade in the mining camp of Leadville, Colorado, he will wound a man named Brown in the face with a pistol shot in a bitter argument over a gambling debt in 1879, as the house dealer at Tombstone's  Oriental in 1881, he will kill Charles Storms with slugs to the fellow gambler's neck and heart (considered a justifiable homicide, the two men are so close that Storms' shirt catches on fire as he is shot), and in 1883, he will be wounded in a shooting scrape with Dodge City peace officer L. C. Hartman when three female "singers" (prostitutes) from the Long Branch are arrested by the officer (the policeman survives by feigning death and then slipping away in the darkness of the night ... arrested later, Short will be released on a bond of $2,000 and put on the first train leaving town).  Fighting ordinances meant to clean-up the Dodge City bar business, Short will then become a member of what is called "The Dodge City Peace Commission," a group of gunmen that includes Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Charlie Bassett.  As 1883 ends, Short sells his part in the Long Branch Saloon and returns to Texas, setting up shop briefly in San Antonio, before returning to Fort Worth, where he becomes a co-owner in the White Elephant Saloon (during this period he displays his marksmanship and speed of draw with an unusual feat gunplay ... dining in a local restaurant, he is given a glass of milk that has a fly perched on it's surface, a tainting of his drink that he takes care of by flinging the milk into the air, pulling his .45 pistol, and impressively shooting the fly out of the sky).

Crook

The Oriental Saloon

The Dodge City Peace Commission - Standing (L-R)

William Harris, Luke Short, Bat Masterson, William

Petillon - Seated (L-R) Charlie Bassett, Wyatt Earp,

Frank McLean, Neil Brown

One of the largest and most profitable saloons in Texas, the White Elephant inevitably is targeted for "protection" by Courtright's detective agency in 1887.  Short offers his former pal a flat fee to stay away from his saloon, but Courtright's shakedown wants the business to sign a contract that requires on-site "security" agents to watch over the White Elephant, and because other establishments will then follow suit.  Not one to be intimidated ever, when his compromise is refused, Short tells Courtright to "Go to Hell!" as the town waits for a gunfight between the two to take place ... and it does on Tuesday, February 8, 1887.  Threats exchanged, tipsy and belligerent with liquor, at around 8:00 in the evening, Courtright shows up in front of the White Elephant and calls for Short to come outside and face him in the street.  Accepting the challenge, dressed in his finest evening attire (which includes pants with a specially made right pocket tailored in leather to fit his pistol), Short steps out of the saloon (in town to see his friend, he is accompanied by Bat Masterson), ready to fight, but no guns are immediately pulled as a friend of both men, Jake Johnson, tries to dissuade the two men from fighting by walking the pair down the street.  But the ire in both men has built to a point of no return, and outside a combination bar and brothel called "The Shooting Gallery," the two men square off to each other at a distance of about four feet.  Claiming concerns that Short is armed and will draw on him (Short lies and says he is unarmed), thumbs in his fancy vest, Short moves to pull his coat back to show Courtright he is not wearing a holster, to which the former Fort Worth marshal responds by exclaiming, "Don't you pull a gun on me!" as he pulls his own weapon.  Quicker than Courtright (some say the hammer of Courtright's gun catches on his watch chain), Short's cut-off .45 comes out of his pocket at rattlesnake speed and he gets off the first shot of the encounter, which blows off his opponent's thumb.  Battle over, Short also gets off all the other shots of the confrontation as Courtright tries to make a "border shift" toss of his revolver to his unwounded left hand ... a seconds delay that allows Short to finish the job he has started by emptying his gun at the shakedown artist, wounding the man in the shoulder and sending a fatal bit of lead through the gunman's heart.  Courtright dead with his boots on when he hits the sidewalk and becomes a bound for the local cemetery corpse (in the aftermath of the gunfight, Courtright will receive a huge Fort Worth funeral attended by hundreds with a procession through the city that is six blocks long, and his wife and family will given money by Fort Worth citizens before pulling up stakes and moving to California.  Courtright is buried in the city's Oakwood Cemetery).

Courtright's Pistol

Big News

Fort Worth Grave

Arrested immediately after the killing, Short will almost be lynched by Courtright partisans (a mob is dissuaded from taking Short from his cell by Bat Masterson sitting in front of the cage of his friend with a buckshot loaded shotgun), but will be released from the Tarrant County Jail once the shooting is found to be a justifiable homicide.  Legal matters settled, on March 15, 1887, Luke marries 24-year-old Harriet Beatrice "Hattie" Buck in Oswego, Kansas.  They will spend the rest of Short's life as a loving couple.  And as such, the pair will be found over the next few years following the horse races that take place in New York City's Coney Island racetrack (the Sheepshead Bay Race Track), the track at Saratoga Springs, New York and annually at the Washington Park Race Track in Chicago, Illinois.  Briefly, Short will also try to become a boxing promoter, offering $20,000 for John L. Sullivan to defend his heavyweight boxing championship in Fort Worth.  And in Short's last years, he will engage in one more gunfight on December 23, 1890 (with a former friend named Charles Wright who claims the gambling winnings he is holding for a consortium of men that includes Short has been stolen ... a battle that sees Short taking an ambush shotgun load of buckshot that wounds the gunman in the left leg, hip, and costs him his left thumb, while Wright has his right wrist shattered by a Short return firer ... thought to have life costing wounds, he will spend over three months in a Fort Worth bed being nursed back to health by his wife) and almost shoots down an innocent man in a case of mistaken identity after beating up a drunken lawyer named James J. Singleton he quarrels with in the lobby of Chicago's Leland Hotel in October of 1891.  By the start of 1893 though, Short is at death's door after he develops Bright's disease (a kidney ailment).  Seeking the healing qualities of it's waters, with his wife beside him (she will be only 29-years-old when she becomes a widow), he dies at Gilbert House in Geuda Springs, Kansas on September 8, 1893.  Like Courtright, Short is only 39-years-old when he passes.

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Hattie

Geuda Springs

Short

February 8, 1887 ... Timothy Isaiah Courtright, aka "Longhair Jim," is sent to meet his maker in Fort Worth, Texas by gunman/gambler, Luke Short.

Courtright With His Hair Cut

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