On this date in 1923, Dolph Briscoe, who would go on to become the 41st governor of Texas, was born. He would've been 99 today. Briscoe, a long-time Uvalde rancher, is generally remembered fondly from his terms as governor for being a decent guy. But his administration did earn some dubious distinctions. Briscoe was the last Texas governor to serve a two-year term and the first to serve a four-year term. He undermined two efforts to rewrite Texas' abysmal constitution (which remains a trainwreck to this day). Briscoe once appointed a dead man to the State Health Advisory Commission, and if what I've heard is true, called a press conference in the aftermath to reassure the press and public that he hadn't lost his grip on sanity.
But what most people remember him for--and which doesn't appear in most official biographies--is that he was the governor who ordered the closure of the infamous Chicken Ranch brothel in La Grange. Ironically, Briscoe had no actual legal authority to order the Chicken Ranch (or any other brothel, for that matter) closed. But he did, hoping nobody would call his bluff. Fayette County Jim Flournoy certainly knew the governor had no authority to do so, but acquiesced to Briscoe and effectively ended a surreal two-week media circus that captured the attention of Texas as well as the rest of the country.
Governor Briscoe died June 27, 2010, after ignoring my interview requests for the better part of a year. Happy birthday, Dolph!
is available from both
Amazon.com and
BarnesAndNoble.com. It's also available as an ebook in the following formats:
Kindle,
Nook,
Google Play,
iBooks and
Kobo.
Now Playing: Charlie Byrd Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros
Chicken Ranch Central
No comments:
Post a Comment