You Still Can't Kick a Dead Horse (Story)

(2010)  Stories sometimes take on a life of their own. They are passed along like a children’s game of telephone until truth and fiction are hard to separate. 

One such story involves an Allen High School student and a dead horse named Cricket. I can’t even remember who first told me the story. It was probably one of the three guys I met at the Allen Old Timer’s Reunion last year. 

 “Get him to tell you the story about the day his horse died at school,” one of them said. They were referring to Paul Knight, a 1957 Allen High School graduate who literally stood a head above everyone in the room – even without his cowboy hat. 

I spoke briefly with Paul that day but he just smiled when I asked him about “the horse.” I asked around town last summer and got the real story – or so I thought. 

 The high school junior had ridden his horse into town and tethered her outside the old red brick schoolhouse. Sometime that morning a student looked outside to declare there was a horse lying on the ground that appeared to be dead. Kids ran to the windows to witness the spectacle as a truck arrived to remove the unfortunate mare.

 It was also rumored that Paul received a good whupping when he returned home. Not so, said another “old timer” at the AHS alumni tailgate party last fall. “I graduated a few years later but my brother told me the whole story. Paul had ridden the previously mentioned horse several miles into town. Unfortunately the horse had come up lame and a veterinarian had to put him to sleep.” 

 I heard several more variations of the story before I ran into Paul at last Saturday’s Old Timer’s Reunion. It was time to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth –so to speak. “I had hurt my knee when a mule kicked me so I couldn’t practice with the football team,” Paul explained. I took the bus home from school but decided to ride my white mare Cricket back to practice for a laugh.” 

Classmate Dan Dugger convinced Paul to let him take the horse for a ride around the old school gymnasium on Belmont Drive. “Just as they came around the corner of the gym Cricket collapsed like she had been shot,” said Paul. “She just died right there next to the football field.” 

 At this point of the story I need to explain that removing a dead horse is no easy task. No tractor was available that afternoon so Cricket was unceremoniously covered up until the next morning. “Our big concern was getting her off the school property before the little kids came in the next morning,” he added. 

 The tractor did come early and Cricket was taken to Fort Worth where she soon passed into Allen’s collective history. They never determined why the horse died although Paul suspects she ate some bad Bois d’Arc apples or drank some contaminated runoff water that afternoon. 

I actually liked the first version better but it’s hard to argue with a 6’5” cowboy. Thanks Paul for setting the story straight. #

Big Dreams For Small Town Newspaper

“The first two guys I met in town were Walter Curtis and Alvis Story. They took me over to Don Rodenbaugh and the deal was done.” That is how a young man named Buddy Camper started The Allen American newspaper in November of 1969. 

 “I had been running the newspaper in Whiteright and wanted to start a country newspaper of my own,” said Camper. “I was checking out Allen when I ran into Walter and Alvis at the tax office. They thought it was a good idea and wanted me to meet Don, who also saw the need for the small town to have its own newspaper.” 

 “Don Rodenbaugh convinced most of the local businesses to take out advertisements and we started a charter subscriber campaign for $5 a year,” he added. Camper operated the business out of a small 12’ x 18’ block building on Main Street but it kept him close to the action in the city and business community. “It wasn’t long before I was on a first name basis with everyone in town,” Camper said. 

 There weren’t many big news stories during the ten years I was in Allen but a few stick out, said Camper. One story in 1974 involved a woman who streaked down Main Street and was picked up by the police. Her husband barged into the small office one night demanding to know who wrote the story. Camper admitted he was the writer and the husband promptly asked him for extra copies! “I thought I was in big trouble but it turned out to be a good laugh,” he said. It is best to let Camper tell his other “big story” in his own words which were written in a newspaper column called Scribbles in 1972. 

 “I was standing at the counter at The State Bank when there was a loud crash. I heard a scream and the walls of the bank seemed to be caving in   Then I realized it: your editor was right in the middle of an honest to goodness news story….My camera was handy so I rushed out and took a picture of the woman screaming, then came back to see bank president Dudley Robertson helping Mary Meyer out of her station wagon. Her foot had slipped off the brake pedal. … no one was hurt and all’s well that ends well….and I had a subject to write my column about this week.” Speaking with Camper, who now lives in Hideaway, Texas, he paused to remember many of the people who are familiar parts of our town’s history. 

 “I saw Pete Ford almost every day. He knew all the politicians and was a great source of information for the paper. Guys like Jerry Burton, the sheriff and Frank Dugger, the mayor were just fun people to be around. Then there was Lee Rountree, the school superintendent who was a genuine person that always had the best interests of kids and the schools in mind.” “Allen has grown into a first class city but it was also a great place back then,” added Camper, who can regularly be found visiting Allen with a set of golf clubs in tow. “It was a small and cozy place in the 1970’s and I am happy that I was able to be part of that. I still consider it home.”