Roscoe in Years Gone By: Rooster Rhea

Downtown Roscoe as it was around 1950.

Editor's note: I've been busy with other matters and haven't really had a chance to go out and gather the news this week, so I thought I'd give readers something a little different this time, a memory of a former town character. 

When I was a kid growing up Roscoe in the 1950s, there were several local characters that everyone knew—Boxcar Slim, who chose Roscoe to be his home after a life of hoboing, Lester Stevens, a black man with no legs who swept the downtown sidewalks, and Pete Stewart, a retired railroad hand who always waved to the workers in passing trains and was everybody’s friend.

Another one was Rooster Rhea. Rooster was not a big guy, slender and a little below average height. He knew all sorts of things and could fix anything that was fixable. Once a bug got in a kid’s ear, and it went in so far that no one could get it out. The kid was screaming bloody murder, and the adults were trying to come up with a way to get the bug out without hurting the child. Rooster walked up and saw what was going on. He told someone to bring him a glass of water, and when they did, he had the kid lay his head sideways and then poured the water into the ear, and the bug came out.

Once someone called him to kill a skunk that was living under their house, and when he did, he found that it was a mother skunk with a bunch of baby skunks. The little ones were so small they didn’t have their eyes open, so he gathered them up and gave them away, all but two, which he gave to his youngest boy, Bill. At the time I had a mother cat with kittens the same age as those little skunks, so I put the one I got in with them, and the mother cat let it drink milk along with the kittens. Rooster told us that we didn’t have to worry about our skunk being able to spray until it was three or four months old, and when it reached that age, he would “deodorize” it with a razor blade. Bill’s two skunks grew to full size, and they became a familiar sight downtown, following Bill around, one behind the other in a line, just like baby ducks follow mama duck.

Rooster’s downfall was alcohol. Sometimes when he started drinking, he would keep it up for days, during which time his wife and kids didn’t know where he was, or even if they did, couldn’t do anything about it.

His family barely managed to get by and always lived in the most modest of circumstances, in old hotels or sometimes in buildings that were otherwise abandoned. The mother, Marie, was bright enough to do tasks like dishwashing, floor mopping, and cotton picking, but incapable of jobs requiring reading or figuring.

Besides his skills as a handy man, Rooster was also known as the biggest liar in town, and the lies he told were often so fantastic that he left people in wonderment about what they had just heard. As far as I know, he never entered a liar’s contest, but if he had, he would certainly have been a contender.

And he would lie to anyone, including kids. Back when George Parks used to be the editor and publisher of the Roscoe Times, he hired boys from the ages of about 11 to 16 to help him get out the weekly newspaper and do the town’s job printing. And for about five years in the late ‘50s, I was one of those boys. We worked every day after school Monday through Friday and eight to noon on Saturdays. During the summer we were in the Times Office most of the day but not always working.

On slow summer mornings, George would sometimes let us play stickball in the open area behind the Times office known as T. O. Stadium. One summer morning, some of us were back there doing just that, and Rooster was sitting on a stack of cross ties next to the building watching us.

During a break in the action, some of us were talking about big-league baseball teams and players. Rooster said something about one of the players, and Cuppy Graham, around eleven at the time, asked him a question. “Rooster,” he said, “did you ever play baseball when you were young?” “Why, son,” said Rooster, “I used to be the hind catcher for the New York Yankees.” “Really?” asked Cuppy. “Just listen,” answered Rooster, “and I’ll tell y’all what happened one time when I was playing for the Yankees.” And we all moved in a little closer to hear what he was about to say.

“Lefty Grove was pitching that day,” he began, “and I was catching. We were playing the Tigers, and Ty Cobb was on first base. He was the best base-stealer in the American League, and I could tell he was fixing to head for second on the next pitch. So, I signaled to Lefty to throw me a fastball, and I got into a crouch so I could fire the ball to second base as quick as I caught it. Sure enough, as soon as Lefty kicked his leg up in the air to make the pitch, out of the corner of my eye I saw Cobb take off for second base as fast as he could run. I caught the ball and in one motion fired it to second base as hard as I could. It got there so quick that the shortstop didn’t get his glove down in time, and the ball went right through his legs and hit the center field wall on the fly and bounced back to second base on one bounce. The shortstop turned and put his glove up just in time to catch it, and in one motion swept his glove down and tagged Ty Cobb out just as he was sliding into second.”

Finished with his story, Rooster leaned back, tipped up the brim of his fedora hat a little bit, and looked triumphantly at us with a little grin on his face. “He never tried to steal on me again,” he said.

On another occasion, I don’t remember what the topic was or how it came up, but it involved England, and someone asked Rooster if he’d ever been to England. He looked a little offended by the question and said, “Have I ever been to England? Son, you are looking at the man who put the plumbing in Buckingham Palace.”

One of Rooster’s kids was a boy named Bobby, a slow learner who never really learned how to read or write much beyond his name. His understanding was also limited, so he was a perennial problem at the end of the school year. He had already repeated a grade once or twice in elementary school without really making any improvement, so the teachers and principal just took to passing him each year so he could stay in the same grade with kids who were in the same general age range, whether he learned anything or not. And in this way, by the time he was around 16, he was in high school taking Mrs. Anthony’s American History class.

Mrs. Anthony, or Miz A, as we called her, had a special unit in which she had students learn about their family histories. One of their assignments was to go home and ask their parents about their family backgrounds, including anything significant or interesting that the class might like to hear about. Then, when their turn came in class, they would report to the other students and Mrs. A what they had learned. So, Bobby went home and asked Rooster about his family history.

A couple of days later, it was Bobby’s turn in class. Mrs. A asked him if he had anything interesting to report about his family background, and Bobby answered that he did. She asked him what it was, and he replied that his grandfather and grandmother were the king and queen of England. This answer produced some stifled merriment among the boys in the back of the room, and Mrs. A realized Bobby had unwittingly been put up to that response by Rooster. Since students were writing down something in their notebooks for each of their classmates’ responses, someone asked Mrs. A what they should write for Bobby. “Just put that Bobby is related to English royalty,” which in its own way was just as ridiculous as Bobby’s answer. But that’s what his class put about him for the project.

Still, I think my favorite Rooster tale is the one Clifford Jones, my old college roommate, once told me when we were comparing Rooster Rhea stories. Here it is.

“A few years ago,” said Rooster, “I was working in Snyder and had just about finished for the day when I looked to the northwest and saw a dark cloud approaching with rain, thunder and lightning. My pickup back then was an old beat-up Ford with a broken-out front windshield. It had engine trouble and could go only about 30 miles an hour top speed. I realized that if I was going to make it back to Roscoe without getting drenched, I’d have to pack up my tools and leave right then.”

“So that’s what I did. By the time I made it out to the highway, the storm had already hit in Snyder and was right on my tail. I drove that old pickup as fast as it would go, but I could see in my rearview mirror that the rain was just pouring right behind me. And this kept up as I drove past Hermleigh, then through Inadale, and then through Wastella. I crossed Cottonwood Creek, drove on into Roscoe, and crossed the railroad tracks with that storm on my tail the whole way. Then, I headed home, and just as I drove that old pickup into the garage, the storm hit outside with the rain coming down in sheets—and I realized I had made it all the way back from Snyder without getting hit by a single drop of rain. I got out, and when I did, I was surprised to see the pickup bed was completely full of water.”

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JON WOLFE AT LUMBERYARD FRIDAY

Jon Wolfe

Jon Wolfe will make his first appearance ever at the Lumberyard on Friday, August 23. A native of Oklahoma, Wolfe has been a professional musician since 2004, when he settled in Austin and became a regular performer on the Lone Star honky tonk circuit. 

He released his debut album, Almost Gone, in 2004, and has produced three other studio albums since then: It All Happened in a Honky Tonk (2010), Natural Man (2015), and Any Night in Texas (2017).

Top singles include “That Girl in Texas,” “I Don’t Dance,” “What Are You Doin’ Right Now,” and “Boots on a Dance Floor.”

For reservations of more information, contact the Lumberyard at 325-766-2457.

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WEATHER REPORT: THE HEAT WAVE CONTINUES

The August heat wave continues, and this past week was a continuation of the two before it. 

There was only one day, last Wednesday, with a high of 93°F, in which the high was lower than the upper nineties. The other six reached 98° or above, and the weekend was especially hot with a high of 104° on Saturday and 105° on Sunday. No rain ever materialized, and the coming week offers little hope for cooler or wetter days. Forecasters are giving us a 20% chance of rain for tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday, so there is a least a possibility, even if it’s a slim one. However, the hot weather will continue along with the steady south winds.

A break from this weather would be nice, but we may have to wait another week or so before getting it.

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† CAROLA M. MARTIN

Services for Carola M. Martin, 54, will be at 2:00pm on Saturday, August 24, at the Roscoe Church of Christ with Philip Tomlin officiating. Interment will follow at Champion Cemetery under direction of McCoy Funeral Home. She passed away yesterday, August 20, at Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital in Sweetwater.

A visitation will be held from 6:00 to 8:00pm on Friday, August 23, at the funeral home.

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