Frank Moves To Houston And Goes To War With The Press

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about one of the top Texas Ranger lawmen to ever wear the badge, the great Frank Hamer, who was brought out of retirement to take down Bonnie and Clyde.

Recap

In the last post Frank got hitched to Mollie and was ready to move on with his career. He was getting antsy and bored because he'd brought the town of Navasota under control and calmed it down to a point where it was peaceful.

He'd accepted an offer from the Houston mayor to work for $100 a month, which was a decent wage in 1911(about $2,700 in today's dollars).

Today's story

So off he and Mollie went to the big city. It was exploding in population because it had become a hub of oil refineries for the recent need of gasoline for cars and trucks.

12 oil companies had moved into the Houston area, doubling the population in the last few years.

Tall buildings were springing up, as tall as 16 stories, which people thought were "Dangerously tall!" lol. It was the tallest in Texas.

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Cars, electric trolleys, and horse drawn buggies crowded the streets. Houston had 80,000 people and growing fast. Crime was also exploding. The police department was overwhelmed.

The wealthy mayor hired a team of 6 Texas Rangers, some with brutal reputations, in an attempt to send a message to criminals.

Frank was one of them. They reported directly to the mayor, not the police department. The mayor used them for special protection details and investigations but the newspapers didn't like the looks of it one bit.

Main St, Houston, in 1910

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The articles started appearing shortly after Frank arrived, calling the ex Rangers "The Wild Bunch" and accused them of all kinds of misbehavior. A few of the other men were indeed pretty wild and crazy and liked to beat people up or shoot them.

They were out of place, this wasn't the Wild West anymore. The problem was, Frank was lumped in with them and named in the articles.

Well, that didn't sit well with Frank. He was raised with a code of honor in which if someone insulted him they were going to have to answer to him in one way or another.

After about 5 months of reading the articles and Frank warning them to stop telling lies about him, he'd had all he could take.

Frank gave them fair warning

The paper's editor said Frank told him, "I notified this paper some time ago that if it ever wrote anything against me I would fix somebody. The next one of you fellows I see on the street, I am going to smoke him off the earth!" (or at least teach them a lesson they'll never forget!)

It ain't long before Frank makes good on his word, the story continues in the next post.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

for my Preacher friends out there:

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So true! lol.