“If I don’t hear a good tale by the time the sun is straight up,” he would say, “I make up one of my own.”

I was fourteen, and my young mind was like a sponge—open for whatever might be poured into it. Joe Anthony was just the man to fill my curiosity. He was a respected handyman, a trade he had chosen for most of his seventy-odd years. In that time, he had catalogued the scenes and events around East Texas better than any newspaper reporter with a camera crew.

“A black man don’t ever get asked opinions about anything, so he just jots down what he sees in his head and keeps his mouth shut,” he once said, explaining to me how it was he knew so many secrets about our town and its people. Of all the yarns he told me, he sparked my interest, if not my emerging thirst, with one particular tale. It was about how our fair city once showcased a wet and rowdy image—a whispered piece of history not chronicled in books or writings.