Chicken Ranch report no. 10

Another good night of writing. I'm sort of in a state of disbelief. I've hit something of a sticking point, so that's as good a place to hang it up for the night as any, but I can clearly see what lies on the other side. This is good. At this rate (knock wood) I may actually hit my goal of finishing this chapter by the middle of next week. And I'm about to jump head long into my own primary research, which should be loads of fun (just the raw quotes from the interviews I'll be using in this chapter take up 20 pages, so I've no shortage of material).

While the Chicken Ranch is fondly remembered for the most part, and by most accounts offered the women there some measure of safety and security, the vast majority of prostitutes in Texas had neither. It was a hard life, and often the ending was tragic. Here's a sample of tonight's work:

Although the system offered a degree of protection, a woman’s value only amounted to her ability to bring in money. One Austin police officer took note of a well-known prostitute, Georgetown Ella, who’d fallen deathly ill. With their mother unable to work, Ella’s four children faced the likelihood of starvation, and the brothel’s owner, Charley Cooney, was not the type of man to show compassion to any of them. Society in general was not apt to show much compassion, either.

On a brighter note, I picked up two pieces of Chicken Ranch memorabilia off Ebay this week. Neither item was ever actually produced by or sold at the real Chicken Ranch. One was a money clip, which are pretty common, but this showed up at a cheap price and I couldn't resist. The other, a wine glass, features a Chicken Ranch logo. I've never seen such a glass before, so it's an intriguing find. I figure this was either sold as a souvenir at the failed Dallas restaurant or marketed in La Grange in the mid-80s, during the very brief time when they attempted to commercialize the defunct brothel. Either way, they're nice additions to my collection.

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