RURAL ODYSSEY V: TROUBLE IN A KANSAS RIVERSIDE TOWN With THE BALLAD OF "THE SMOKY HILL RIVER RAMBLER"

By Mark J. Curran

RURAL ODYSSEY V - TROUBLE IN A KANSAS RIVER TOWN is a return to fiction. It tells the latest in Curran's stories of Abilene, Kansas. Trouble comes to Abilene in an unexpected armed attack on the town and its residents in 1971 by KKK and "rugged individualists" out for revenge for the conviction and imprisonment in Abilene of their relatives and cronies in past years. Following the "troubles," the author writes of protagonists Mike and Mariah's teaching at the Dwight D. Eisenhower College in Abilene, the birth of their daughter Ariel Sarah O'Brien Palafox, and the Palafox family's travel to Spain. With the passage of time and events in Abilene, Mike and Marah make a life changing move back east and work and teaching at Harvard.

Book Two - a Novella - Ballad of the "Smoky Hill River Rambler" tells the story of Abilene's Mickey Clancy's dream of performing (singing and playing guiitar, including classical guitar) in the restaurants and bars in Durango and other towns of Southwest Colorado. As his music evolves and the repertoire grows, he encounters romance and surprises, not always pleasant, as an itinerant musician.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781698715704

Mark J. Curran

Mark J. Curran is Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University where he worked from 1968 to 2011. He taught Spanish Language as well as the Survey of Spanish Literature, a seminar on "Don Quixote," and Civilization of Spain and Latin American Civilization. He also taught the Portuguese Language (Brazilian Variant) as well as a Survey of Luso-Brazilian Literature, Luso-Brazilian Civilization, and Seminars on Chico Buarque de Hollanda and Brazil's Folk-Popular Literature (the "Literatura de Cordel"). He has written forty-four books, eight in academic circles before retirement, thirty-six with Trafford in retirement. Color images of the covers and summaries of the books appear on his website: www.currancordelconnection.com His e-mail address is: [e-mail]

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© Copyright 2023 Mark J. Curran.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1571-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1570-4 (e)

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Trafford rev. 11/08/2023

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CONTENTS

EPIGRAPH

PREFACE

A SHORT MEMO

BACKGROUND TO RURAL ODYSSEY V

PART I

1 AN UPDATE

2 SETTLED IN, ROUTINE AND ALL IS GOOD

3 THE SURPRISE AND THE ONSLAUGHT OF VIOLENCE

5 ARE WE SAVAGES?

6 A TIME TO REMEMBER – A TIME TO FORGET – THE WILD, WILD, WEST AGAIN.

7 WITH THE PALAFOXES

PART II THE GOOD AND THE BAD

1 ARIEL SARAH O’BRIEN PALAFOX, SEPTEMBER 29, 1973

2 THE NEW NORMAL

3 DDEC AND PROMOTION

4 TIME MARCHES ON

5 ARIEL AND THE BAPTISM PARTIES

6 THE SEPHARDIC NAMING CEREMONY

7 A RETURN TO NORMAL AND THEN, OTHER CHANGES

8 JEREMIAH WATSON DIES IN THE FOUNDRY

9 THERE’S MORE – THE OTHERS

10 OTHERWISE, LIFE GOES ON

11 DAD

12 THE TRIP TO SPAIN – A BOOK IN ITSELF

13 HOME TO KANSAS CITY AND THEN ABILENE

14 DEVELOPMENTS – MOM

15 THE BIG CHANGES TO COME

PART III BALLAD OF THE SMOKY HILL RIVER RAMBLER

PREFACE

1 HOW IT STARTED – THE ABILENE CONNECTION

2 THE KANSAS CITY DAYS

3 THE LINK TO COLORADO

4 THE MULLIGANS AND THE PALACE

5 MOLLIE STEVENS

6 WORKING ON THE MEXICAN MUSIC

7 THE MULLIGANS TO THE PARKERS

8 JUNE 1964 - GIORGIO’S IN THE MALL

9 NEXT: THE MAHOGANY GRILL - AUGUST 1964

10 LATE AUGUST 1964 – ONE NIGHTER AT WIT’S END RANCH

11 THE UNEXPECTED OFFER

12 ONE NIGHTER AT PURA VIDA CAFÉ ON VALLECITO LAKE

13 THE CATTLEMENS’ PICNIC - BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL

14 NEXT GIG – SMALL BUT FUN AT TEQUILA’S IN BAYFIELD

15 SUMMER 1965 – IN TOWN AND ON THE ROAD

16 THE GRAND IMPERIAL IN SILVERTON

17 THE OURAY EXPERIENCE

18 A MUSICAL ASIDE. THE GOSPEL SINGERS AT MIRAMONTE RESERVOIR NEAR NORWOOD. FALL, 1965

19 FALL WINTER 1965-1966

20 1966 – THE SEASON, THE OLD AND THE NEW CRISTINA’S

21 BUT THEN IT HAPPENED

22 THE BREAK AND HOW IT TURNED OUT

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EPIGRAPH

TROUBLE IN A RIVERSIDE TOWN

1857 Abilene, City of the Plains founded by the Hersey’s

1859 McCoy builds cattle pens. The Kansas Pacific RR arrives.

1860s The Cowboys and the Chisholm Trail Days and 600,000 cattle.

1870s Bible Belt Religion. Mansions, banks and businesses. Farms.

1910 – 1952. The Eisenhowers, the River Brethren, and then Dwight D. Eisenhower bring lasting fame to Abilene.

1971. This book is an account of time years later in Abilene. Folks later called it the Abilene War. The town and the country had never seen anything like it.

PREFACE

Mike O’Brien and Mariah Palafox got married in June of 1970 in a wingding of a ceremony out at the old farm east of Abilene. See Rural Odyssey III for the details.

They both taught at Dwight D. Eisenhower College (DDEC) in Fall of 1970 and Spring of 1971 and took Professor Thomas Skidmore of Harvard up on his offer for a combined research – lecture tour in Brazil in the summer of 1971. That went well. See Rural Odyssey IV. The themes were Cowboys and Cordel and The Best of North American Literature.

Both return to campus at DDEC in Abilene in Fall 1971, Mike as a Professor of Spanish and History, Mariah as a Professor of English and Dean of Women.

There are events on the national scene that the reader needs to know to fill in the blanks of my story.

September, 1971. Several KKK members were arrested for ten bombings of school buses; these actions were a protest against the newly required school busing of blacks to white neighborhoods and practical desegregation, this on August 30, 1971. The NAACP becomes important in its support of school busing all over the country.

Cambodia and Viet Nam are a mess, a morass. Jane Fonda visits North Viet Nam.

May1972. Governor George Wallace of Alabama is shot at a political rally in Maryland; he is a presidential candidate representing anti - desegregation.

Watergate takes place. Loss of national trust. Nixon resigns later.

If you can ignore all this, life can still have its pleasures.

A SHORT MEMO

Mike and Mariah Palafox O’Brien are teaching at the Dwight D. Eisenhower College in the Fall of 1971, working hard at their jobs, but finding time to socialize with Mike’s parents Sean and Molly O’Brien in Abilene, Mariah’s Dad and Mom Benjamin and Ariel in Overland Park, Mike’s sister Caitlin and her husband Ron on the old farm just east of the Abilene city limits on old U.S. Highway 40, and school friends still living near Abilene. Foremost among them is Mike’s old music buddy and partner, Jeremiah Watson.

Before continuing with this story, there is background the reader (probably new) needs to know. It is a bit long and complicated but is central to what happened later. Events from as early as 1957 up to the near present are necessary to understand and appreciate this story. Much is found in the series of books titled A Rural Odyssey – Living Can Be Dangerous, A Rural Odyssey II – Abilene, Digging Deeper, A Rural Odyssey III - Dreams Fulfilled and a Return to Abilene, and A Rural Odyssey IV – Abilene, Cowboys and ‘Cordel.’ The background is interwoven with Mike and Mariah’s time in Abilene. Mike O’Brien tells the story.

BACKGROUND TO RURAL ODYSSEY V

I. Mike Plowing and the Enterprise Bank Robbery

I’m Mike (Michael) O’ Brien. I was born in 1941 and grew up on the family farm just one mile east of Abilene city limits. The relation to this story all started in 1957 when I was a mere 16 years old, working on our farm in the summertime for Dad, no specific hourly wage but with the understanding my wages would go toward Dad’s (and Mom’s) financial support for my first years in college in 1959 and 1960. I was doing summer plowing after wheat harvest, driving our tiny Ford tractor with the two bottom plow behind. It could do one acre per hour, and I had probably already done 80 acres since wheat harvest two weeks ago. Now I was down by old Highway 40, my favorite spot, finishing a 40-acre field of wheat stubble. I liked this field because it was next to the highway and I recognized many of the cars and trucks that went by, one in particular that of a cute girl in my class or her just as cute younger sister. But that plowing was boring, so I sang every song I knew (pop music of the 1950s including Elvis, songs from movie musicals and maybe some old country and western), and when I got tired of that I whistled all the same songs and more. I was a darned good whistler, could do the theme from The High and the Mighty and some major melodies from opera overtures brother Paul would bring home on old 78 rpm disks.

I quote from Rural Odyssey Living Can be Dangerous.

… So. I was doing my normal thing, singing songs and whistling to keep from going to sleep, plowing down toward Highway 40. Then I could hear sirens down the highway east and suddenly this old Mercury sedan careened around the corner from the highway and up the gravel county road on the east side of our farm. It screeched to a stop and a guy jumped out and came running at me on the tractor. I didn’t know what in the hell was going on, but he ran closer and I saw he had a gun in his hand, and was yelling, Get the hell off that tractor. Scared shitless, I stopped, got off and who knows, maybe from seeing too many old cowboy movies, put my hands in the air. He grabbed me, forced my hands behind my back and moved us back to the car. Shut up sonny, don’t make a move or it will be curtains for you. Now there were police cars tearing up the country road toward us. He fired a shot in the air out the window and shouted, Don’t come any closer or the kid gets it! One of his cohorts was in the driver’s seat, the other in the front passenger seat, and he had me in the back seat with the gun pointing at me and my hands pinned behind my back.

All of a sudden there were more police cars, highway patrol and even an airplane or two in the air above us. One of the guys in the front seat bent over, pulled a tommy gun from the right side, opened the door, and faced the first cops, yelling, We got the kid in here and we mean business. Hell, I’m only sixteen, a skinny guy, too young to die and shaking in my boots. The guy holding me yanked me out of the back seat, still holding my arms, me in front of him, I guess so the police would believe him, pointing a gun at my head and saying, Don’t come any closer or he gets it. Clear out and give us a head start. The kid goes with us.

What happened next was a blur and a lot out of character. In an impulsive move, not thinking on my part, I got an arm loose and swinging it like an ax to cut off a chicken’s head, managed to knock the guy’s gun arm down and I dove for the ditch at the side of the road. All hell broke loose, rifle and shotgun fire from the police, breaking the back and side windows of the car. It was like Bonny and Clyde and the shootout with the feds.

My guy was down holding his gun arm and shoulder and bleeding like a stuck pig. His buddies in front had their hands up, dropping the guns. Local Sheriff Wiley and two highway patrolmen came forward, cuffed all three of the robbers, stuffed them in the back of a squad car with a barred screen separating back and front. Then Sheriff Wiley ran over to me in the ditch, smiling, saying, Mike, you are a lucky young man. Somebody must have been looking out for you today. Rather, you are a brave and lucky son of a bitch. Mike, get up and we’re going to get you to the hospital. Are you all right?

I was bruised and sore, but, Jesus, no wounds, just shaking in my boots and my jeans were all wet. Christ! I must have peed my pants in the melee. I guess not, ‘cause I don’t feel so good. That was when I threw up in front of him. So, with wet jeans and throw up all over me, they picked me up, moved me into the back seat of the police car, and said, We’re hustling you into the hospital, kid. What about the tractor? (I must have been in shock.) Boy, that’s the least of your worries. I think you’ll get a medal to put on the steering wheel.

All I remember is one very fast ride up to the hospital, just a mile or two down the road, being rushed into a room that seemed all white, with white sheets on a bed, and a nurse giving me some kind of shot. I woke up a few hours later, everything groggy and fuzzy, with Mom and Dad, Caitlin and Ron all in the room. Sheriff Wiley was there, bragging to Mom and Dad of what a fine young and courageous son they had. A real hero.

Mike, I don’t know what made you do it, but starting the hubbub with that guy with the pistol and diving into the ditch saved your … (he started to say ass, but remembering the company), uh, I mean saved your life. Get this guy all the ice cream cones or sundaes or malts he wants; it’s on the sheriff’s office.’"

I guess I was in some kind of shock, or some such thing, but they brought me warm soup and then some ice cream. I recounted all I could remember.

Dear Mom had her rosary in her hand, came up and hugged me and said, Enough excitement for one day, Mick. Your guardian angel must have been on the back of the tractor. Dad said, You get the rest of the day off. I’ll go get the tractor. But you’re not off the hook; maybe you can go back out tomorrow or the next day. The south 40 isn’t finished yet.

The local paper The Abilene Reflector Chronicle reported the whole thing with a two-inch headline on the front page:

FARM BOY FOILS LOCAL BANK ROBBERS

Local high school boy helps to foil Enterprise bank robbers east of town on the county road next to the O’Brien farm.

I became a celebrity for a few days. We used to think not much ever

happened on the farm in those days. Evidently not so.

II. The Redneck Fight at the High School

The next incident took place two years later when I was a senior at Abilene High School in 1959. It had to do with a good buddy from then and years before. Jeremiah Watson is a colored boy whose father is the Pastor of the Ebeneezer First Gospel Church. We had been friends since Garfield Grade School, Junior High and now Abilene High School, but not close friends until about Junior Year. Jeremiah and I wangled a way to escape from afternoon study hall and go to the empty band room and play music. We both had inexpensive electric guitars and tiny amplifiers. Mine guitar was a Kay with a copper-colored finish like the hot rods of those days. Jeremiah could jam or improvise much better than I (in fact, me, not at all), but we both could play all the chords to songs to sing. I had a good lead voice and Jeremiah could sing harmony, so we played Ricky Nelson, the Buddy Holly That’ll Be the Day song, and especially Elvis Presley, Bill Haley’s Rock around the clock and such stuff; we probably got up to about 30 songs. There may have been a bit of Hank Williams too. But Jere also played with some black friends in a small band and they did all those great Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard tunes, and he taught me some of them. I saw her standing on the corner, looky there, looky there, looky there, young blood, oh I say young blood, I can’t get you out of my mind, or, It’s Saturday Night and I just got paid; gonna rock it up, gonna rip it up, gonna rock it up at the ball tonight. And there was Lucille and Mabelline. And, many more I can’t remember now.

But the friendship between junior and senior year included having Jere come out to the farm and we would play catch with my hard ball. Mom would fix us sandwiches for lunch. We both played little league baseball that summer too, but were just average ball players. One time, much later, Jere’s Mom told my Mom that in spite of growing up in Abilene, this was the first and only time Jere had ever been on a farm. Hmm. We had good times.

I quote from A Rural Odyssey – Living Can Be Dangerous:

So, it’s probably Senior year in the spring when it happened. I guess it was a surprise when the class bully came up to me in the hallway by the gym and said, Mick, you shithead Irish punk, you think you’re so goddamned smart and too good for us real country guys. Why are you having that nigger out to your place to play ball, and hell, you’ve never asked me? I blurted out, Because he’s a helluva lot smarter, nicer and talented than you, you red-neck son of a bitch. Butch looked at me kinda funny like and hauled off and punched me in the mouth. Tasting blood, I guess I got mad, all 114 pounds of me and tried to swing back and might have nicked him on the chin. Just then, Rip, the big football player who had seen it all, ran over and said, Butch, try pickin’ on someone your own size for a change. C’mon, let’s go outside. Butch said, As far as I know, you ain’t a nigger lover like Mick this Irish cat licker here, so I got no problems with you. He backed off and went out the door by the cafeteria, yelling as he ran out the door, Mick, this ain’t the end of this! He ran over to his hot rod, and peeled out of the parking lot. I went into the restroom and swabbed my face with a wet paper towel; there was some blood, a cut lip, but no broken teeth. Good buddy Luke and some other guys all came up to me, saying, Damn Mick we didn’t know you had it in ‘ya. Next time give a yell and call us over. We would have made quick work of that duck-tailed hood.

Jeremiah came up. He had been down in the band room practicing his regular gig – trumpet in the high school band. Rip didn’t give me a chance to talk, but blurted out, Jere, you owe Mick one. He took it on the chin for you, tackling ole’ Butch in the hallway by the gym. Jeremiah seemed a bit slow to recognize the situation (you had to be careful anytime when you were 5 out of 400 in a white boy’s school), but said, Mick, I won’ be forgetting this. You prove there are some nice people in Abilene. Thanks, good buddy.

III. The KKK Fire at the Farm

The next incident and by far the most important took place in the hot Kansas summer of 1959 before I would be heading off to college in Kansas City, Missouri, in the Fall. I quote from A Rural Odyssey – Living Can Be Dangerous:

It was the middle of the summer; the day had been hot with those Kansas winds. I was baling hay for a neighbor, and had taken a bath to get the grime off, watched some TV and was early to bed. More work to do the next day. To this day I don’t know why, maybe that ole’ Catholic Guardian angel or something, but I woke up in the late night, early morning, with a start. There was smoke in the air, coming from the second-floor hallway to downstairs. I threw on my jeans, a t-shirt and tennis shoes, and ran down the stairs, yelling, Mom, Dad, there’s a fire. Both jumped out of bed, still in their night clothes, Dad grabbed Mom, half carrying her, and ran into the front room, yelling, It’s in the kitchen and spreading out the back door. We helped Mom through the front door, out on the porch, and down the steps. The heat and flames were behind us, intense, so no chance to do anything but run. All like in a dream. I just remember we three