Big lake, small world, and an eight-wheel two-step
You meet some of the most interesting folks traveling around the USA.
I was doing a tour in Texas several years back, telling my stories and singing my songs for folks. I flew into Dallas/Fort Worth and the promoter who had put the tour together had sent a car to pick me up and take me to my first stop in a town east of there.
My driver was a very nice lady, somewhat older than I, named Alice Gilmore. We immediately hit it off. The drive was a good deal over an hour in 4 p.m. traffic, so we spent the time getting to know one another.
We had no trouble communicating in that my Southern Appalachian twang and her Texas drawl were so similar. I asked, “Now, Alice, are you from Dallas?” To which she answered, “Lord no, Honey. I’m from way west of here.”
I said, “So, West Texas I assume.” Having traveled in the west end of the state a bit I said, “There’s sure some flat country out that way.”
Alice looked over at me and winked. “Where I’m from it’s so flat a person can stand on a tuna can and see the curvature of the earth. In fact, it’s so flat that if your dog runs off you can watch him leave all day!”
I knew I had met my match in Alice Gilmore. I asked exactly where in West Texas she hailed from. To which she replied, “Big Lake.”
I grinned and said, “Now, I’ve been pretty much all over that end of the state either playing gigs or on motorcycle excursions and I don’t recall ever seeing a big lake anywhere.”
She grinned and said, “Well it doesn’t take much water to impress folks out there. I remember one time Mama threw a dishpan of water out the back door. The next day they sent a fellow out from Austin. He studied the spot where those suds had landed, declared it a body of water, and named it Lake Soapy!”
Once I had gotten my breath back from laughing, I asked, “So, what did you folks do for fun in Big Lake?
She replied, “Oh, we’d all load up on Friday nights and go watch the local high school boys get their butts kicked playing eight-man football. Then after the picture show burned down, on Saturdays we’d do the eight-wheel two step.”
I looked over and said, “I know the two step is a dance but how does someone do the eight-wheeled version?”
“On roller skates.”
“So, you had a roller rink in town?”
“Nope. It was in a tent out on my Uncle John’s farm.”
Here’s her tale of just how a roller-skating rink in a tent wound up on a cotton farm.
One Saturday evening when folks drove into town to get ice cream and visit with one another, there at the cotton gin was a tent set up in the gravel parking lot with a sign that read “Skating 50 Cents.”
So, of course everyone stopped to see what was going on. It turns out that back in the day there were these traveling roller rinks that roamed the farm towns in the western part of the country.
The whole thing consisted of a series of wooden panels that went together to form the rink which was enclosed with a canvas top and rollup sides. All this was transported in a big box truck.
The folks who ran the outfit would travel from one little town to the next and since anything that unusual was such a novelty to farm country folks, they gladly paid the admission and had some entertainment.
Things went somewhat awry when the following morning at the Baptist church word went around that almost every home had things gone missing.
Things like Alice’s mama’s silver-plated pickle dish and a half gallon jar of change on someone’s fireplace mantle and a hunting rifle at another home and a brand-new pair of Tony Lama size 9 ½ D boots at another.
Obviously, the only suspects were the two fellows who ran that canvas covered skating rink that had vanished in the night.
It was surmised that while everyone was skating one of those men had slipped off and had robbed every home within a 10-mile radius.
Deputy Sheriff Rufus Billingsley jumped into his patrol car and apprehended the two culprits before they crossed the county line.
On Monday they were arraigned, on Tuesday they were tried and convicted, and by Wednesday they were pulling onions on the county work farm.
The following Monday morning the county held an auction of their property on the courthouse steps. Alice’s dad and her uncle decided that they could turn a profit on the whole deal if they could buy that big truck for a reasonable price.
The idea being to haul cotton seed from the gin and sell it up in Lubbock at a profit. And it could be used to transport farm equipment needing repair up there as well.
Turns out, they outbid Henry Weems and went into the courthouse to sign the papers and write the check for their newfound profit-making scheme.
After the paperwork was taken care of, Alice’s dad asked the clerk of court what they wanted him and his brother to do with the skating rink and the tent packed into their purchase.
To which they were told that it was a package deal. They were the proud owners of the truck, tent, rink and 67 pairs of roller skates of various sizes.
And so, a new line of profit emerged for the Gilmore brothers. They took that roller rink out to Alice’s uncle’s cotton farm and figured out how it went together and set the whole thing up, jukebox and all.
Then every Saturday evening you could find all the folks from miles around doing the eight-wheel two step, each one at 50 cents profit.
Michael Reno Harrell is an award-winning songwriter, a published author, a nationally known storyteller, and a visual artist. He writes a monthly column for The Paper. See more of his work and performance schedule at his website, michaelreno.com, or his YouTube channel, @MichaelRenoharrell.
