the gangsters of Wink

Sheriff Will Priest sat in his office in Kermit, his gut twisted up inside. It was not something he ate, no sirree! He was caught up in a whirl of overpowering forces he could not escape. "Sheriff," he thought. "What a joke, I'm a joke, I'm no sheriff. I'm just a pawn. The boomtown bullies have taken over Wink and I'm a dead man if I go against them. My hands are tied, because even if I arrest them, Mayor Ostrom will kick them loose."

Sheriff Priest knew that the only way to prevent the bullies from taking over Wink would have been to kill them when they first came to town, without the benefit of the law. And that would have been wrong, so wrong he knew he was incapable of doing it. He knew that gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes had taken over Hendrick Street. With hundreds of roughnecks working in the new oilfield needing to blow off steam after dangerous and exhausting work, the underworld had come to town to soak up the river of money pouring out of the ground. He had heard what had happened up at Borger and a dozen more oil boomtowns all across Texas and Oklahoma. Heavy Brackeen, now firmly established in town, had been at Borger, but somehow had escaped prosecution when the Texas Rangers finally did clean up that town.

"Dang fools, those sharecropper young'uns from the breaks, making more money than their parents ever saw, and blowing it on drinking and gambling and such. How come people want to escape the drudgery on the installment plan? What is wrong with them? If they toughed it out and saved their money, they could leave the oilfields for good. Blowing their money keeps them trapped." The sheriff sighed. He was trapped as they were, but it wasn't his doing -- it was the fault of all the strangers filling the streets of Wink. A cowtown sheriff did not belong in an oil boomtown.

"I wonder if my new deputy in Wink will get killed. He is the only law for the town. He is such a gung-ho and righteous boy. It is black and white for him, good and evil. He shut down a couple of the gambling parlors there a few hours ago, and is now at the boarding house, sleeping the sleep of the just. And I am sitting here, wondering if Heavy will blame me. I realize all I can do is break up fights and keep the rowdies from killing each other, but that boy doesn't know the power of greed."

The door suddenly swung open. Hot Shot Ash stood there, with gun in hand. "Heavy wants to talk to you," said the small and wiry right-hand man of Brackeen. As Hot Shot and the sheriff drove a half hour down the sandy county roads to the City Café in Wink, from which Brackeen ran his operation, the sheriff thought about the reasons he stayed. Was owning land and a house free and clear enough reason to stay?  He might be able to sell it. He was too old to find a new line of work, too old to go to work in the oilfields some place else, and as far as he could determine, he just did not have any options.

The City Café had a big and ornately carved mahogany bar that had been shipped out of El Paso. Bars in a boomtown were for "booze, broads, and brawls."  Fistfights were a nightly occurrence. Booze first makes a man sing like a bird, then become like a bull on the prod, and finally turn into a swine in the gutter.  Many of the fights were among friends, repeated often, and considered to be more like play, never rancorous, just sport and good exercise.

As Hot Shot and the sheriff walked in, a fight was in progress. The men stopped when they saw the badge shining in the light, but after the sheriff walked by, went back to whomping on each other. The other patrons present did not even stop their conversations. In the back room office, Heavy and several other men were sitting around, smoking cigars, sipping whiskey, and playing poker. He did not turn his double-chinned sullen face towards the sheriff until the hand was finished.

Roger and Diana Olien wrote "Oil Booms, Social Change in Five Texas Towns," the source material for this story. Although they interviewed Hot Shot many years later, the book does not report what transpired as Heavy and his men talked to Sheriff Priest for the next few hours. Their mention of the interchange does not go beyond the one phrase, "held the sheriff at gunpoint for several hours explaining the salient facts of Wink life." When I read the phrase, I put down the book, and began to imagine Sheriff Priest's history, his character, and what he felt, as he endured that evening.

This story occurred in the latter part of the 1920's. Many people now living were kids during similar dramas in a number of boomtowns of the west Texas oilfields. Law enforcement sometimes did look the other way or become part of the corruption during those days. When they confiscated a bootlegger's product, for example, they gave it to family and friends, instead of destroying the goods. Law abiding citizens, powerless to change things, endured the troubles, and when the towns were finally brought under control, did not talk about the times with their children. Sometimes it is better to "put things behind you."

Such stories should be told, however. People today, especially kids, still get trapped in situations created by bullies. The "gangsta life" immortalized by rap music, operates in the same brutal way, with drive-by shootings, murders for "turf" or illegal drug markets. Pressure politics exist in corporate life, political life, social life, and even family life. People endure such situations, with resentments building and their souls withering.  

The people of Winkler County soon learned of Brackeen's little talk with the sheriff. Sheriff Priest endured their criticism, and decided to not stand for reelection. A couple of years later, however, he became sheriff again. For most of the 1930's, until his death, he remained the sheriff, and "continued to show considerable toleration of gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes," as the Oliens wrote.

Sheriff Priest was not a hero. He was an average man, trapped by circumstance. He must have believed that he did do some good for the folks of the county, keeping them reasonably unaffected by the squalid behavior "managed" by Brackeen and his ilk. To be reelected, the people of Winkler County must have believed he was acting in their best interests, as well. His story illustrates in bold relief the similar tragic psychological degradation that many people have to endure when bullied by others. A person enduring such pressures often suffers silently for years, as he did until his death. His story also helps us understand stories on the grand scale -- a person can see Saddam Hussein as Heavy Brackeen!  I think the next time that I am in Kermit I will try to find Sheriff Priest's grave.