The Chicken Ranch: Ocho

I am shamed to admit I am remiss in my writing efforts regarding the Chicken Ranch. For these past two months, I have focused so intently on the one-month period in which Marvin Zindler's expose resulted in the shuttering of that long-standing brothel that I have utterly neglected the preceding 100-plus years of history. Although Edna Milton served as madam at the end, she was not the longest-tenured woman in that position. That title belonged to Faye Stewart, better know as Miss Jessie Williams. She is the woman who consolidated the various prostitution ventures in La Grange and moved the operation out of town. She presided over the brothel when it earned it's famous name. She established goodwill and a working relationship with the county sheriff's office. It would not be unjustified to begin this tale with her:

While the previous century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Jessie’s Fashionable Boarding House for young ladies, past the Bad Curve sign, a large farm wagon, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat farmer in sweat-stained coveralls, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black sharecropper, who reposed on the wagon behind the fat farmer, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Jessie’s new screen door, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the white clapboard house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of stern-natured Miss Jessie Williams herself, stubbing out a cigarette in the window of that madam's own parlour.

As always, this is a work in progress. Feedback is always encouraged. In case you missed 'em, here are my previous installments:
Version 7
Version 6
Version 5
Version 4
Version 3
Version 2
Version 1


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