Calling Dr. Joe, Forensics Pioneer

 As a courts and police reporter in the 1970s for The Houston Post, I had the opportunity to write often about one of Texas’ most legendary characters in Dr. Joseph Jachimczyk, who served as Harris County Medical Examiner from 1957 until his retirement in 1995.

Creating Houston’s office from scratch during the salad days of national forensic pathology, Dr. Joe (much easier to spell or pronounce than Jachimczyk) also ranked among the city’s most colorful characters. His frequent court appearances always combined scholarly input with amusing interrogation, particularly whenever aggressive attorneys sought to discredit his findings. Dressed in his signature bow tie and white shoes, Dr. Joe was always capable of sharing a laugh one moment while destroying an accusation the next.

Among my most memorable experiences as a journalist in Houston includes a Dr. Joe autopsy I attended about 1981, as part of research on him as the subject for a magazine feature story. He often allowed journalists to attend autopsies as a way of sharing information about his intriguing profession. And he always began his work with the admonition: “This is not a living person. It cannot feel any pain. Please be comfortable while we learn what this body might have to tell us about the person’s death.”

Dr. Joe died September 7, 2004, at his Houston home from complications of Parkinson’s Disease.

While reporting the monumental highlights of his career, the doctor’s Hearst News Corporation obituary pulled no punches in citing his most controversial case. Noting that Dr. Joe was “not infallible,” the obit cited the 1979 triple slaying in which he ruled that Houston socialite Diana Wanstrath shot her husband and son before killing herself, dubbing it a murder-suicide. A grand jury ultimately reversed that ruling, and three men were sentenced to death for their roles in the triple homicide, memorialized in one of the most interesting true crime books ever written, The Cop Who Wouldn’t Quit—by my former Houston Post colleague Rick Nelson.

It troubled Dr. Joe to apologize for that conclusion, which he always explained as an honest mistake. But he also always fumed when talking about that case and the HPD detective who solved it, Johnny Bonds. In conversations, Dr. Joe always referred sarcastically to Bonds as “Captain America.”

When Dr. Joe retired in 1995, I wrote this article about him, published September 18, 1995, in The National Law Journal.

He Tamed Texas’ Wild Forensics Frontier

The numbers alone are staggering: 250,000 death investigations and more than 125,000 autopsies. But they represent the legacy of a man who serves as this region’s bridge between the dark ages of law enforcement’s past and the modern world of forensics. With a last name too difficult for most to pronounce, he’s been known around Houston since 1957 as simply “Dr. Joe.”

Officially, he was Dr. Joseph A. Jachimczyk. Harris County Medical Examiner, the county’s highest-paid employee. His September 1 retirement concluded an important era in Texas legal history.

In terms of national longevity as a medical examiner, Dr. Jachimczyk, 71, ranked second only to Miami’s Joe Davis, who started his ME career there about a year before Dr. Jachimczyk came to Houston. With Dr. Davis set to retire in January, Dr. Jachimczyk’s departure is the first step of a double loss to the country’s legal medicine community.

“They both have been giants,” said Dr. Boyd Stephens, the chief ME in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. “They did pioneering work in many areas and trained a lot of people…it’s hard to imagine how communities can find someone to match them.”

One of the first MEs to combine a law degree with his medical credentials, Dr. Jachimczyk also holds a degree in theology. His value to Houston and Harris County law enforcement is evident in his paycheck. Earning $150,000 per year at the end of his reign, he ranked for decades as the county’s highest-paid official, eclipsing the district attorney and the sheriff.

But Dr. Jachimczyk hasn’t been of value only to the prosecutors. It’s hard to find defense attorneys with a complaint against him, either. And Dr. Joe believes that one of the finest compliments he could have.

“His office has always felt it is separate and apart from law enforcement and he has succeeded in that effort,” said Stanley G. Schneider, of Houston’s Schneider & McKinney.

“What scares me now is that the search for a successor may become political,” Mr. Schneider added.

From his outpost on Houston’s bank of the River Styx, Dr. Joe has presided over more than his share of famous deaths. He figured prominently in the investigations, detailed in the best seller Blood and Money, concerning the deaths of Joan Robinson Hill and her husband Dr. John Hill. His office fielded the nation’s first serious mass murder case in 1973, dealing with a body county of 27, and literally wrote the book on how to handle such situations. When Howard Hughes flew home to Houston to die in 1976, Dr. Jachimczyk was there to welcome the billionaire to his morgue.

Texas law gives the medical examiner complete control of a body from the moment it drops until transfer to a funeral home, and Dr. Jachimczyk has been aggressive in his exercise of that power. While he didn’t demand a public autopsy of every death, of course, he did insist on calling the shots. All potential murder cases and VIP deaths came to his table.

To fully appreciate Dr. Jachimczyk’s impact on Texas law enforcement requires a look at the situation just before his arrival. In the early 1950s, elected justices of the peace still had the authority to make official rulings on deaths, and they often found themselves at odds with police, attorneys, families and even themselves—indeed, mistakes were common.

As usual with Texas, one prominent scandal prompted a change that would figure in Dr. Jachimczyk’s recruitment. The scandal arose when a dead baby lay on a San Antonio street for 12 hours while two JPs argued over jurisdiction.

A loud public outcry sparked the Legislature to consider a change. Hearings produced incredible tales from police detectives. One told of a drunken JP who came to a funeral home, squinted as a corpse and declared death by heart attack. Later, during funeral preparations, embalmers found knife wounds in the victim’s back.

So in 1955, Texas established it medical examiner system, giving several metropolitan counties the authority to establish legal medicine departments. Houston became the first when, in January 1956, county commissioners appointed a prominent Houston physician named Jared Clarke to create an office there.

A qualified physician, Dr. Clarke nevertheless knew he needed a special assistant to make the office really fulfill its expectations. Traditionally introverted, pathologists had been known for their study of diseases. But the blossoming field of forensic pathology had created a new breed who combined medicine with law and preferred reading Sherlock Holmes to medical texts. Dr. Clarke wanted one of this breed to assist him, and he found one at Harvard University in Dr. Jachimczyk.

The eldest son of parents who had emigrated from Poland during World War I, Dr. Jachimczyk had grown up in Connecticut, where the family ran an ice business. Born September 15, 1923, he helped drive the ice wagon as a youth and served as an altar boy at funerals. As a soldier in World War II, he saw no action. But the GI Bill enabled him to attend college, and he emerged from the University of Tennessee in 1948 with a medical degree. Determined to become a “hotshot” surgeon, he returned to the Northeast for his resident training.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the operating room. He took a course in pathology, and he found himself fascinated with its world of microscopes and cadavers, which he never escaped. By 1956, he had entrenched himself at Harvard’s department of legal medicine and was nearing completion of his law degree at Boston College when Houston called.

Two of Dr. Jachimczyk’s colleagues already had rejected an offer from Dr. Clarke in Houston after touring the primitive facilities established for the new office in the basement of the county’s hospital for indigents. But fierce New England snowstorms prompted Dr. Jachimczyk to take the trip south. He quickly realized the excitement of building a department from the ground up, and he accepted the job.

Before he died a few years ago, veteran Harris County Commissioner E.A. “Squatty” Lyons compared the hiring of Dr. Jachimczyk with the commission’s decision to create the hospital and flood control districts—infrastructures vital to the area.

But Mr. Lyons and his fellow commissioners were not so sure in 1957 when the brash 33-year-old showed up—sporting medical and legal degrees plus a name they couldn’t pronounce—and asked them for $90,000 to modernize the morgue facilities. Commissioners balked until Dr. Joe teamed with a famous Texas Ranger to solve a baffling case and showed them the value of his work.

The Ranger, John Kleavenhagen, was investigating the death of a young veteran in Madisonville, about 100 miles north of Houston. A Veterans Administration doctor had performed an autopsy and had blamed the death on stomach flu. But the Ranger heard that a genuine forensic pathologist had arrived, and he asked Dr. Jachimczyk to review the case. So Dr. Joe called the VA pathologist and asked if he could see some tissue or the slides.

“I got one thing even better,” replied Dr. Ethel Erickson, who would eventually become one of Dr. Jachimczyk’s assistants.

“What do you mean?” Dr. Jachimczyk recalls asking. “You got some frozen blood?”

“No,” she replied, “I’ve got a frozen liver.”

Because her superior at the VA had been studying liver diseases, he had instructed all pathologists to save specimens. With near ghoulish delight, Dr. Jachimczyk collected the organ, thawed it out and ran tests. His investigation produced the state’s first proven case of arsenic poisoning. Confronted with Dr. Jachimczyk’s report, the once-grieving widow confessed she’d been spiking her late husband’s lunches with weed killer.

A dead ringer for the late comedian Sam Levinson, Dr. Jachimczyk—responding to a newspaper reporter—once even selected Mr. Levinson as the actor most likely to portray the doctor in any movies about his life. Although Hollywood hasn’t called—yet—Dr. Jachimczyk received his greatest honor about 10 years ago when the county built a $5 million forensic center and named it after him.

Looking forward to the future, Dr. Jachimczyk predicts such things as bloodless autopsies done by magnetic resonance imaging. As for himself, he’ll be teaching at the University of Texas Medical School as the nation’s first endowed professor of forensic pathology.

Dr. Jachimczyk doesn’t hesitate when asked about the most important thing he’s learned from a life studying the carnage of the human race.

“A belief in the hereafter,” he said. “There’s so much injustice down here that there has to be justice somewhere.”

Creation Of My True Crime Memoir

In June of 2009, award-winning true crime author Ron Chepesiuk (Gangsters of Harlem and Sergeant Smack) sat down with me to do an interview for the New Criminologist web site about the genesis of Luggage by Kroger and true crime writing in general.  Here’s a recap of our discussion.

Chepesiuk:  For Gary Taylor, Houston Texas journalist, writing his award-winning true crime memoir, Luggage by Kroger, was truly personal. Like any good journalist, Taylor has turned his near death experience into a fascinating and riveting true crime tale. What is your book about?

Taylor: Murder and adultery? But that’s too cute, isn’t it?

Chepesiuk: Well, if we leave it there, it sounds like dozens of other true crime books.
 
Taylor: OK. Luggage by Kroger recounts the pivotal year in my life that included a dangerous liaison with a femme fatale lawyer named Catherine Mehaffey. She ended our affair by shooting me in the head and in the back. We met in 1979 while she was under investigation for the still-unsolved murder of a former lover she claimed as a common-law husband. I was estranged from my second wife at the time and vulnerable. Although convicted in my case and suspended from law practice for a while, Catherine went on to trigger additional murder investigations in Texas, including one 1999 Dallas case that landed her husband, Clint Shelton, in prison for a life sentence. While the story of my relationship with Catherine has been covered widely and earned me status as the poster boy for true-life fatal attraction tales, my book represents the first intimate account of this obsessive relationship. What I hope emerges is a genre-crossing book that is as much psychological thriller and mystery yarn as legal procedural and personal memoir.

Chepesiuk: So why did you write this book?
 
Taylor: Even as these events were occurring in 1979-80, I knew that, at some point, I would have to write them down as a personal project to leave a permanent record for my descendants. I also realized I was living an important psychological and cultural story with a front row seat to criminal insanity. I believe the truth of that observation even more today, now that I have written the tale. But I never really had the time to start until just a couple of years ago. And that was probably for the best because, during the past 25 years, subsequent events demonstrated to me the full extent of the drama involved and allowed me to shape the organization of my true crime memoir into the award-winning book that is Luggage by Kroger. Friends often pestered me to write it up, with some of them even suggesting I was sitting on a literary gold mine.

Chepesiuk: But the idea fermented for years.

Taylor: Yes, I never really had the time until recently to pursue it. The popular reception of the movie Fatal Attraction in 1987 triggered my first recognition of the universal appeal my story might have. Let’s face it: Femmes fatales have served as irresistible literary devices since Adam and Eve and Samson and Delilah. Because my story was so similar to the movie, and included a female antagonist to rank with the classics, I became the poster boy for a series of interviews and talk show appearances based on the theme of true-life fatal attractions.

Chepesiuk: Tell us about some of your appearances.

Taylor: They began with a profile in People magazine. That led to stops on Oprah, Regis and Sally Jesse Raphael. Those generated my first movie deal, when one Hollywood production unit contacted me out of the blue and optioned the rights to my story. A script was written, but a writer’s strike sidelined production. By the early 1990s, that script was forgotten. But my unstoppable ex-girlfriend had completed her probation and re-emerged in Dallas with her law license renewed. Immediately, she became a controversial legal figure in that community, and, by 1999, police there were investigating her in a sensational murder case of their own that culminated with the conviction and life sentence of her husband on a murder charge. Reporters included me in their stories as part of her back story—and as the only target in her life who had gained a conviction on her. Immediately Hollywood called again.

Chepesiuk: Did you have any better success with Hollywood?

Taylor:  This time the script led to production, and I collected $65,000 in 2004 simply for sharing the rights to my tale. But the movie, starring Melanie Griffith and Esai Morales. After receiving the fee for my rights in 2004, however, I decided I needed to start writing my own story. I began dabbling with the narrative, showed it to a few journalist friends, received encouragement and got serious about finishing.

Chepesiuk: How would you describe your book’s niche within the true crime genre?

Taylor:  It plays well as both a serial killer tale and a psycho-thriller. I do manage to get inside the head of a woman suspected in a string of murders. I am the only one of her targets ever to get a conviction. There is mention of three murders in my book, but rumors of others are still around. Her conviction in my case resulted in suspension of her law license for eight years—most are amazed she ever got it back

Chepesiuk: Why did you go the self-publish route?

Taylor: I opted to self-publish in 2008 because I was too impatient to spend time seeking an agent. My plan was to enter it in contests and see if the story had much universal appeal. I think the results so far indicate it does. If more sales come from that, so much the better, but, let’s face it: I only have about $3,000 invested in this book so I’m playing with house money here thanks to Hollywood.  What do I have to lose? 

Chepesiuk: Was it hard for you to stay out of your story and make it objective?

Taylor: I was determined to take a detached approach and use humor to illustrate my tale because I did not want the book to read like some sort of bitter attack on a cruel world that had done me wrong—as some true crime memoirs turn out. I’ve never been bitter about what happened to me, but I still feared it might be seen in that light. As a lifelong student of literature and nonfiction, I also wanted to create more than a mere slash-and-burn true crime thriller. I envisioned something along the lines of Fatal Attraction meets Angela’s Ashes—a so-called “nobody memoir” with an authentic dramatic tale.  Since I could tell my story in the first-person, I decided to make it more interesting by at least trying to channel Mickey Spillane. I became a poor man’s Mike Hammer and my girlfriend became the femme fatale trying to bring him down.

Like any good work of literature, my book also has a strong subplot and that actually proved the hardest to write.  It concerns the end of my second marriage, which happened simultaneously as part of my fatal attraction story and resulted in my assumption of custody of my two young daughters as a surprise ending to my book. So, the subplot reads more like Fatal Attraction meets Kramer vs. Kramer, and the process of writing that portion forced me to turn myself inside out. I have pulled no punches covering anything I’ve done in my life. The intersection of that subplot with the main story creates the metaphor for my unusual title, Luggage by Kroger.

These events occurred at a time when I was sleeping on a buddy’s couch while estranged from my second wife, driving around town broke in a $200 car and toting my dirty laundry in a paper grocery sack. Into this desperation suddenly walked a woman who solved all my problems by becoming the only problem I could have. And, as a self-publisher, I enjoyed using that image for the first cover design of my book. I found clip art of a sultry, film noir-style dame pointing a pistol and told the designer: “Stick her in a grocery sack full of dirty clothes. That’s my story!”

Chepesiuk: What were some of the major sources and resources you used in writing the book?

Taylor: I have always been a dedicated pack rat. I kept a journal back when all this was happening. I realized I was romantically involved with someone important, even if she was a psycho-babe. I wanted to psychoanalyze her and study her. There were also depositions and trial transcripts. Much of the book includes testimony from three different trials. I accumulated the documents as part of the 1987 movie deal, when the production company reimbursed me to purchase them for their script.  I simply made extra copies and kept them.  I recreated some of our conversations from memory. I am satisfied I am close enough. Readers will just have to determine for themselves whether my 40-year reputation as a journalist deserves their trust. I had a law professor pal read the book in an early stage, and he gave it a clean bill of legal health.
 
Chepesiuk: Who are some of the true crime writers you like and have learned from?
 
Taylor: True crime has always been a favorite genre of mine. Early influences were Joseph Wambaugh (The Onion Field), Peter Maas (Serpico) and Tommy Thompson (Serpentine and Blood and Money). Thompson in particular influenced me because I was the first reporter on the scene of the 1972 John Hill murder in Houston and then had to watch while Thompson turned that story into a bestseller. I mention this incident in my book. Rick Nelson with The Cop Who Wouldn’t Quit also served as an influence because he was a colleague at The Houston Post in the 1970s. His book of a Houston murder case from those years is fascinating. Regarding more recent direct influences on this book, I have to mention two. From Clifford Irving’s The Hoax I learned the importance of harnessing humor to entertain in explaining my relationship with an obviously dangerous woman. And, from James McManus’s Positively Fifth Street, I learned the power of creating an alter ego to humorously blame for all my shortcomings. He called his alter ego “Bad Jim,” and I simply called mine “the rogue.” I had fun writing about my “evil twin” and, I hope it helps the reader to forgive me my sins.
 
Chepesiuk: What are your future plans as a writer?
 
Taylor:  I work full time as a senior writer for an oil and gas business newsletter and plan to continue doing that until I retire, hopefully in about four years. While that may sound pretty stale, I have to say I’ve managed to work my courts and police background into that job. I ended up covering one of the criminal trials of former Enron CEO Ken Lay, and I did a series of articles a couple of years ago about a young industry CFO who embezzled $70 million from his oil rig company. It seems that crime reporting finds me wherever I go! I would like to do some more ghostwriting of memoirs or even another book if I find a good story to tell. I have been writing something every day since 1968, so I imagine I will find something if I have any time on my hands. It’s become a habit after all these years.

Stalkers Come in Both Genders

Watching the popular TV mini-series “Dirty John” recently, I was struck by the similarities of stalker relationships regardless of gender—characteristics I shared in the 2009 memoir of my experiences dealing with a violent female stalker in 1980. So, I’m posting a pivotal chapter from that book, Luggage By Kroger:A True Crime Memoir as an excerpt for anyone else curious about these things. 

To set the stage, this chapter occurs after a volatile breakup destined to trigger violence as my former girlfriend visits my boss at The Houston Post in an attempt to have me fired from my job as the newspaper’s courthouse reporter. As I often write in a note when autographing my book, "Every Samson has his Delilah."

Chapter 49

January 14, 1980

            “Your psycho girlfriend is over here in the newsroom right now.”

            I couldn’t believe those words whispered over the phone by one of my friends on the city desk at The Houston Post. Ed had called me only a couple hours after deputies had evicted Catherine from the courthouse press room. She must have collected her thoughts and launched Plan B for this day in an attempt to get me fired.

            “What’s she doing?” I asked Ed, enlisting him to at least be my eyes at headquarters.

            “She’s in Logan’s office telling him all about something,” Ed said. “Oh, man, now she’s waving her arms around and pointing in his face.”

            Logan was our managing editor and he worked in one of those offices with glass walls that allowed him to monitor the staff at all times. Of course, on this occasion, they also allowed my scout, Ed Jahn, to provide a play-by-play of Catherine’s visit.

            “What’s he doing?” I asked.

            “He’s just sitting there watching her without much of an expression at all. He looks like a virgin who wandered into a porn movie and is seeing a real pussy for the first time in his life. He knows what they are supposed to look like but he wants to make sure this is it.”

            I was sure Logan had never experienced anything like Mehaffey, even in his long career with newspapers. I still had to laugh as I imagined him sitting there listening to a tirade similar to what had just occurred in the press room. I wondered if she had gotten to the part about the naked pictures of my wife. I realized she had just dismantled my effort to separate my private life with her from my professional life at the Post. And I had a good idea what might be coming next. Two of my three separate lives were about to merge.

            “It looks like she’s leaving now,” said Ed. “He’s still just watching her and it doesn’t seem like he said much. She’s going through the door. Now she’s stopped and answering a question. Now she’s turned and left and he looks pretty confused.”

            “Thanks for the warning, Ed. I owe you.”

            About 15 minutes later Logan called me at the courthouse and issued a succinct demand: “Gary, I need you to just stop whatever you might be doing and come into the office. I don’t want you to even take time to put anything away. Just get up, get in your car and come over here.”

            That was the only time Logan had ever called me on the job. I routinely worked under the direction of his city editor, Johnny B. It was highly unusual to receive a call directly from the managing editor but given my experiences of the past few weeks I was not surprised they had come down to this. I reached his office from downtown in about 20 minutes. Then it was my turn to sit there with everybody watching through the glass.

            “What’s up?” I asked politely, feigning ignorance as I took a seat in a chair across the desk from my boss.

            “I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “I had an interesting visit at little while ago from a Ms Catherine Mehaffey and she had some disturbing things to say about you.”

            I just furrowed my brows in a way to encourage him onward.

            “She believes you are working secretly for the district attorney’s office as an investigator in a case against her.”

            “That’s not true,” I said, eager to make a definitive denial as quickly and forcefully as possible, without laughing. “She has some gripes with me of a personal nature. None of it involves my job here. You are the only one paying me a salary.”

            “She says you’ve made tape recordings of conversations with her and shared them with outsiders.”

            “I recorded her telephone conversations threatening me but I never played them for anyone else. A friend of mine did play part of a conversation he taped because he wanted the other reporters in the press room to let him lock the door.”

            Logan grunted and stroked his chin while locking eyes with me.

            “Okay,” he said, “Here’s what I have to do. Mary Flood is on her way over to the courthouse to relieve you there…..”

            “Aw, c’mon,” I raised my voice interrupting him. “Don’t let Mehaffey get away with this. Can anybody just come in here with any sort of story and ruin someone? I like that job.”

            Mary Flood was a younger reporter destined to attend law school and build a national reputation for legal reporting in the next 20 years, a period in which I often would boast that she owed her start on that career path to me and Catherine Mehaffey. While arguing my case to Logan, he just sat patiently and allowed me to vent. Then he laid down the law.

            “Nope, it is already done,” he said. “I talked to Johnny and he said you’ve been over there a couple of years anyway. It’s time to rotate on some of these beats. He has a desk ready for you back in the office. Now I don’t even want you going back there to get anything you might have left. Make a list of anything you need and Mary will bring it in.”

            “Don’t punish me for this,” I pleaded.

            He looked stunned and said, “Punish you? I’m not punishing you. I’m concerned for your safety. I just want to put as much distance as possible between you and that woman. It’s obvious she’s interfering with your work at that location and it’s my responsibility to make sure everyone at this paper has a chance to succeed in their assignments. You’ll have plenty of good stories to work on general assignment. Now go see Johnny and he’ll show you to your desk.”

            “Okay,” I sighed and got up to leave.

            “Gary,” he said, “I don’t meddle in reporters’ personal lives and you certainly don’t have to tell me this if you feel uncomfortable but after talking with her I’m really curious about something. What did you do to her?”

            There it was: The man’s fault. I, of course, had to be the one who did something to her. The question made me laugh as I imagined him sitting through her tirade wondering if aliens had invaded from Mars. Realizing any accurate explanation would be much too complicated, I searched my mind for a shorter version and finally just said, “Oh, I forgot to put her picture in my wallet.”

            Logan stared a moment trying to figure that out until he saw me grinning and then laughed himself.

            “Okay, okay, I think I understand,” he said. “But you should know something she told me right before she left. I asked her what she wanted me to do about any of this and she just got this strange, faraway look in her eyes and said, ‘I just want him to disappear’.”

            We stood there a moment considering that until I shrugged my shoulders and moved to the door.

            “So, go on, get your new desk and welcome back to the newsroom,” Logan said as I left. Then he added, “And, Gary, under no circumstance do I ever want you to initiate contact with that woman again.”

            So I walked out, went to my new desk, picked up the phone and immediately dialed Catherine at her office.

            “Hope you’re happy now,” I said when she answered.

            “You went to my bosses at Special Crimes so I thought I should go to your boss to teach you a lesson. Where are you now?”

            “I’m at my new desk in the newsroom. They took me off the courthouse beat.”

            “Wait a minute. You mean you haven’t been fired?”

            Instantly I realized I had an edge because she had failed in her primary mission to get me fired. As I thought about it, I realized Logan had been right in my reassignment. Digesting a universal truth about stalkers, I concluded I was lucky to still have a job. Wouldn’t it be easiest for any employer when facing a pest like Mehaffey to just eliminate the whole problem by cutting the worker? I thought. In this case, Logan and my paper had backed me. Suddenly, I felt grateful and decided to twist the knife with her.

            “Fired? No way. He said he wanted me in here for my safety. You know, we have a lot of important elections to cover this year and the Post will need its best people available on the desk for those stories. I’m really kind of excited about this promotion.”

            “Promotion?” I thought I heard her choke a bit as she repeated my mischaracterization of what essentially represented a lateral move for me.

            “And, I will have plenty of time for a little sideline project in this new job,” I said. “I want to do a little research on the lawyer ethics requirements of the State Bar of Texas and see if maybe you’ve slipped up on something I might know about.”

            “Uh, okay, okay,” she said calmly, as if distracted. “I have to go.”

            That night at home I picked up a ringing phone to hear her voice and hung up before she could finish a sentence. For the next two hours the phone rang repeatedly but I did not answer. When Strong arrived back at the house I told him not to answer either. I had decided to end all communication with her. She would be easy to ignore now that I no longer needed to visit the courthouse daily. I believed I might never see her again.

Later, after studying the psychology of the narcissist personality, however, I would learn that my new strategy that night had merely set the stage for a new dimension in our relationship because I had denied the one thing she actually needed the most: an opportunity for confrontation. And I would learn on our anniversary the next day that confrontation was the one thing she really could not live without.

An Epitaph for the Chicken Ranch

Although I am the author of what I consider to be the definitive, historically accurate account of the legendary Texas bordello known as the Chicken Ranch, I had never seen the musical comedy version filmed in 1981 until recently when I caught it running on a cable channel one night. As I watched all the singing and dancing and laughed about the sappy love story at the core of that version, I couldn’t help but think how much more fascinating and dramatic the true story really had been. So, I decided to use this blog as a repository for Chapter 8 of my 2012 book, I, the People: How Marvin ZindlerBusted the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It is excerpted below for anyone curious about the actual legacy of this iconic episode in Texas history. And, of course, there’s a convenient link to the Amazon page for my book, in case this taste leaves you hungry for more of the details.

EIGHT

Chicken Ranch closed—So What?

Let’s try to add some perspective: Marvin Zindler’s closing of the La Grange Chicken Ranch will never rank among the significant turning points of western civilization. Moreover, the story lacks many basic elements of drama usually required for the kind of universal appeal it managed to attain.

No one was murdered. No one was arrested or indicted. No one got convicted. No one served prison time. The story has no seriously scary villains, suffering sympathetic victims or valiantly vanquishing heroes. There is no evidence that anyone’s life was significantly changed by the event. Prostitutes still walk the streets. Even the Chicken Ranch madam, Edna Milton, went on to enjoy a certain celebrity, consulting on the Broadway play and helping at the restaurants.

Yet, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as a musical ran for 1,584 performances on Broadway beginning in June of 1978 and inspired numerous community theater performances nationwide continuing into the new century. The Broadway production collected multiple Tony Award nominations, including for best musical while garnering best actor Tony Awards for the leads.

Hollywood took note and invested an estimated $35 million for a 1982 production starring America’s top leading man at the time, Burt Reynolds, and country music’s reigning queen, Dolly Parton, along with comedian Dom DeLuise as the Zindler-like foil. According to the Internet Movie DataBase, the film version grossed $69, 701,637 in the US, after opening to receipts of $11,874,268 from 1,400 theaters. The film garnered an Oscar nomination for Charles Durning as a light-footed governor literally tap-dancing his way around the scandal plus Golden Globe nods for Parton as best actress and for the film itself as best comedy or musical. Parton re-recorded her 1974 country favorite, I Will Always Love You, for the 1982 film version, marking the first time for a song to hit the top of the country music charts twice by the same artist.

Beyond Broadway and Hollywood, the saga of the Chicken Ranch still merits an 1,800-word historical review in The Handbook of Texas online. According to that account compiled by historian Walter F. Pilcher, the Chicken Ranch generated annual income of more than $500,000 with the girls charging “fifteen dollars for fifteen minutes” and Edna taking 75 percent of the proceeds. The girls still enjoyed weekly income of about three hundred dollars apiece with Edna providing necessities like food, smokes, taxes, shelter and, of course, weekly visits to the doctor. Sheriff Flournoy took fingerprints and photos of all new employees, according to the Handbook, and performed background checks to make sure no criminals made the staff. But he resigned in 1980 after thirty-four years as Fayette County’s sheriff, saying he and his wife “were sick of hearing about the Chicken Ranch and did not want to hear that name again.” He died two years later, still content in the belief that existence of the Chicken Ranch had aided his crime-fighting career by providing him with a window on the dark side of Fayette County.

Even the City of La Grange touts its role on its tourism website as the home of the Chicken Ranch. “What’s synonymous with La Grange, Texas?” the website asks. “Why,” it replies, “the infamous Chicken Ranch! Even though it has been closed for more than thirty years, the legendary brothel is still intriguing.” While nothing remains of the structure, the website boasts, “in our imagination, the most famous brothel of them all lives on and on.”

Can we explain the continuing allure by simply repeating the old Hollywood cliché that sex sells? While that golden rule probably holds some sway, we must still look to academia for more detailed understanding. And, many will be surprised to learn that academia had been attracted to the place even before Marvin Zindler discovered it.

“The situation I was investigating in 1971 was Miss Edna’s strategic and tactical use of folklore in social interaction—her role as a verbal performer,” wrote Texas scholar Robbie Davis-Floyd in an article published in 1973 by the Journal of American Folklore and updated in the Internet-era for the author’s personal website.

A cultural anthropologist with a doctorate from the University of Texas, Davis-Floyd visited the Chicken Ranch three times in 1971 with another female graduate student, interviewing Edna Milton, several of her girls and one of her customers, who initially tried to buy Chicken Ranch-type services from Davis-Floyd.

“He wanted to ‘try me out’ where he was staying, at the Cottonwood Inn down the road,” Davis-Floyd recalled of her exchange with a customer identified as Buddy. “I was twenty-two at the time, and was torn between feeling offended, scared to death, and trying to act professional—an early exposure to the hazards of the field.”

Davis-Floyd’s mission was to study the dynamics of an openly illegal activity, “to ferret out some illegal phenomenon which existed despite its illegality, and figure out why and how it could do so.” As a student in nearby Austin at the University of Texas, she immediately thought of the La Grange Chicken Ranch. Besides interviews at the Chicken Ranch, her research also included polls of the townspeople and, of course, a chat with Frontier Justice himself, Sheriff Jim Flournoy.

“He was sure I must be mistaken as absolutely nothing illegal existed in his domain,” Davis-Floyd recalled of her exchange with the sheriff as he smoked unfiltered Camels, one right after the other, during the interview. When she challenged him by pointing out the Chicken Ranch location on the map in his office, she said Flournoy “got very cold, very mean, and very scary. He took me by the arm, half-pulled me to my car, put me in it, closed the door, and told me to get out of town and never come back.”

Undaunted, Davis-Floyd discovered that the citizens of La Grange divided in two camps in 1971 regarding the presence of a notorious whorehouse operating openly in their midst. She found the “old-timers” of Bohemian or Slovakian descent still displayed what she called “an Old World tolerance for prostitution.” They acknowledged that men have needs, the girls kept to themselves, and the madam contributed to the community. In contrast, newcomers who had lived in La Grange for ten years or less viewed the Chicken Ranch as a black cloud that hovered perpetually over  the town and its women while making their children “the butt of jokes” when they traveled for football games or attended other events.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Davis-Floyd’s observations provided her with an appreciation for Edna Milton that still lingered forty years later.

“Edna was an entrepreneur, par excellence!” she said in a 2011 interview. “It was a female-led and run enterprise.”

In her original 1973 article, Davis-Floyd had not identified Milton or the town by name in an effort to protect the openly illegal activity from exposure. But her updated version for the website holds nothing back, acknowledging the result of Zindler’s reports and the subsequent fanfare that allowed Milton herself to become a public figure basking in the uncovered glory of her time as the “landlady” at what tax collectors knew only as “Edna’s Ranch-Boarding House.”

Most of her research focused on Milton’s verbal interaction with the girls and their male customers, leading Davis-Floyd to observe: “Edna controls her environment through verbal manipulation.”

Transcripts of her sessions at the Chicken Ranch are peppered with lively, profanity-laced dialogue and jokes with men always depicted as the fools. One highlight occurred when Milton ordered her dog, Trixie, to “Show ’em what the girls do to make money!” On that command, the dog rolled onto her back and wiggled her legs in the air to the repeated delight of her mistress. Asked how she reacted when a girl misbehaved, Milton replied: “I crown ’em, but I hardly ever have to.”

At the time of her research, Davis-Floyd said Milton had spent sixteen of her forty-three years as a prostitute with the last nine of those at the Chicken Ranch, which she had purchased in 1962.

In her update, Davis-Floyd concluded: “I have come to realize that the Chicken Ranch in fact was constituted as a mini-matriarchy—a place in which the women quite literally had all the power.”

Beyond her scholarly assessment, Davis-Floyd addressed the enduring appeal of the Chicken Ranch story in her 2011 interview, noting: “It has long been a part of Texas lore, part of our identity as Texans.”

She said, “Going to the Chicken Ranch was kind of a socially acknowledged rite of passage for young men for many years, socially recognized as kind of cool because it was so very Texan.”

Beyond declaring the Chicken Ranch saga “an important piece of Texana,” however, Davis-Floyd seems to touch a deeper truth about the story’s endurance with her observations about the townspeople of La Grange, where a generational divide had shown in 1971 that the Chicken Ranch represented a modern cultural anachronism.

“The newcomers who tried in the ten years before my 1971 study to raise public alarms about the Chicken Ranch found themselves ostracized by the old-timers,” she wrote.

“A newcomer newspaper editor once went so far as to print an article in the local paper and awoke the next day to find his lawn littered with trash,” she wrote. “He, like the others, ceased his protest.”

With its political protection and rural mythology, the Chicken Ranch stood at the intersection of modern Texas and the so-called Good Old Days. Its closing appealed to anyone who could appreciate milestones like the passing of the passenger pigeons or the migration of wolves from Yellowstone Park.

In their effort to squeeze more drama from the tale, villains were created. Writers from Playboy magazine and the musical rendition found an easy target in Zindler, who emerged as a self-promoting, windbag of righteous zeal, the ultimate party-pooper who, in real life had accepted his description by Texas Monthly magazine as a cross between P.T. Barnum and Dudley Do-Right.

But Zindler and his cohorts at the AG’s office needed to exaggerate their villains, too. And that exercise, once again placed the Chicken Ranch at the intersection of old and new as Zindler was used by the Texas law enforcement establishment as a primary weapon in their turf war with local control. For them, closing the Chicken Ranch became as much about putting Frontier Justice in his proper, Twentieth-Century place as it did about investigating organized crime.

There’s no doubt Zindler believed Flournoy was corrupt and no doubt the AG’s investigators knew the dangers of allowing an enterprise like the Chicken Ranch to endure. But it’s also clear from the emotions they displayed in recollection, the thing that really boiled their blood was the idea that Frontier Justice could tell them to get out of his county and leave his whorehouse alone. Their anger served as the match to light the fire that burned the Chicken Ranch to the ground.

Zindler truly went on to perform many courageous and generous acts in the next thirty-four years of his career. But the crowning acknowledgement of the story’s resilience still managed to lead him to the grave. The New York Times said it all with Zindler’s 2007 obituary, published beneath a headline that read: “Marvin Zindler, 85, crusader in ‘Whorehouse in Texas’ case, is dead.”

Random Jokes Collected Over The Years

TEN COMMANDMENTS

BIBLE SCHOOL TEACHER TO FIFTH GRADE CLASS: "There is a commandment for honoring your mother and father. Is there any commandment about brothers and sisters?"

STUDENT (without missing a beat): "Thou shalt not kill?"

A DAY AT THE VET’S

Three Labrador retrievers - one brown, one yellow and one black - were
sitting in the waiting room at the vet's surgery when they struck up a conversation. The black lab turned to the brown and said, "So why are you here?"
The brown lab replied, "I'm a pisser. I piss on everything – the sofa, the curtains, the cat, the kids. But the final straw was last night when I pissed in the middle of my owner's bed."

The black lab said, "So what is the vet going to do?"

"Gonna cut my nuts off," came the reply from the brown lab. "They reckon it'll calm me down."

The black lab then turned to the yellow lab and asked, "Why are you here?"
The yellow lab said, "I'm a digger. I dig under fences, dig up flowers and trees. I dig just for the hell of it. When I'm inside, I dig up the carpets. But I went over the line last night when I dug a great big hole in my owner's couch."

"So what are they going to do to you?" the black lab inquired.

"Looks like I'm losing my nuts too." The dejected yellow lab said.

The yellow lab then turned to the black lab and asked, "Why are you here?"

"I'm a humper," the black lab said. "I'll hump the cat, a pillow, the table, postboxes, whatever. I want to hump everything I see. Yesterday, my owner had just got out of the shower and she was
bending down to dry her toes, and I just couldn't help myself. I hopped on
her back and started humping away."

The yellow and brown labs exchanged a sad glance said "So nuts off
for you too, huh?"

The black lab said, "Naw, I'm just here to get my nails clipped."

HELPING THE HOMELESS

A man was walking down the street when he was approached by a particularly dirty and shabby-looking homeless man who asked him for a hundred dollars for dinner and a warm, dry place to spend the night.
 The man took out his wallet, extracted one hundred dollars and asked, "If I give you this money, will you buy some beer with it instead?" 

 "No, I had to stop drinking years ago," the homeless man replied.

"Will you spend this on a fishing pole and lures instead of food?" the man asked. 

 "Are you nuts?" replied the homeless man.  "I haven't fished in over 20 years!"

"Will you spend the money on a woman in the red light district instead of food?" the man asked. 

"What disease would I get for a lousy hundred bucks?" exclaimed the homeless man.

"Will you go down to Space Coast Harley Davidson and buy a chance on the Fatboy raffle?" asked the man. 

"No, I gave up motorcycles a long time ago for my wife," the homeless man sadly replied.
"Well," said the man, "I'm not going to give you the money.  Instead, I'm going to take you home for a terrific dinner cooked by my wife." 

The homeless man was astounded.  "Won't your wife be furious with you for doing that?  I know I'm dirty, and probably smell pretty disgusting, and my life is a total disaster." 

The man replied, "That's okay.  I just want her to see what a man looks like who's given up beer, fishing, sex, and motorcycles."

A USED RIB

Someone said God didn't have a budget when he created the world.

I said, "Yeah, but let's face it.  He needed a used rib to finish the job and look how that turned out."

A WOMAN'S PERFECT BREAKFAST:
She's sitting at the table with her gourmet coffee.
Her son is on the cover of the Wheaties box.
Her daughter is on the cover of Business Week.
Her boyfriend is on the cover of Playgirl.
And her husband is on the back of the milk carton.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO TODAY

Old enough to remember Abbott and Costello, and too old to
REALLY understand computers? Here’s a primer.

If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive  today, their infamous sketch, "Who's on first?" might have gone something like this:

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM  ABBOTT

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I  help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT:  Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's  Lou.
ABBOTT: Your  computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
ABBOTT:  Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yeah, for  my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT:  Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm  sitting at my computer and I want to type a  proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w"  if you don't start with some straight answers. OK, forget that. Can I watch movies on the Internet?
ABBOTT: Yes, you want Real One.
COSTELLO: Maybe a real one, maybe a  cartoon. What I watch is none of your business. Just tell me what I need!
ABBOTT: Real  One.
COSTELLO: If it's a long movie, I also want  to watch reels 2, 3 and 4. Can I watch them?
ABBOTT: Of course.
COSTELLO: Great! With what?
ABBOTT: Real One.
COSTELLO: OK, I'm at my computer and I want  to watch a movie. What do I do?
ABBOTT: You click the blue  "1".
COSTELLO: I click the blue one what?
ABBOTT: The blue  "1".
COSTELLO: Is that different from the blue w?
ABBOTT: The blue "1" is Real One and the blue "W" is Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: But there are three words in "office for windows"!
ABBOTT: No, just one. But it's the most popular Word in the world.
COSTELLO: It is?
ABBOTT: Yes, but to be fair, there aren't many other Words left. It pretty much wiped out all the other Words out there.
COSTELLO: And that word is real one?
ABBOTT: Real One has nothing to do with Word. Real One isn't even part of Office.
COSTELLO: STOP! Don't start that again. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my  computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!
(A few days later)
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START

………..

MY MIXED HERITAGE

I’m half Irish and half Scottish. My Irish half is always ordering drinks, and my Scottish half is refusing to pay the tab.

ABSTINENCE

Three couples-- an elderly couple, a middle-aged couple, and a young newlywed couple--wanted to join a church. The pastor said, "We have special requirements for new parishioners. You must abstain from having sex for two weeks."

The couples agreed and came back at the end of two weeks.

The pastor went to the elderly couple and asked, "Were you able to abstain from sex for the two weeks?"

The old man replied, "No problem at all, Pastor."

"Congratulations! Welcome to the church!" said the pastor.

The pastor went to the middle-aged couple and asked, "Well, were you able to abstain from sex for the two weeks?"

The man replied, "The first week was not too bad. The second week I had to sleep on the couch for a couple of nights, but, yes, we made it."

"Congratulations! Welcome to the church!" said the pastor.

The pastor then went to the newlyweds and asked, "Well, were you able to abstain from sex for two weeks?"

"No Pastor, we were not able to go without sex for the two weeks," the young man replied sadly.

"What happened?" inquired the pastor.

"My wife was reaching for a can of paint on the top shelf and dropped it. When she bent over to pick it up, I was overcome with lust and took advantage of her right there."

"You understand, of course, this means you will not be welcome in our church," stated the pastor.

"We know," said the young man, "We're not welcome at Home Depot anymore, either.

BRING ON THE BLONDES

BLONDE LOGIC

Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking and one blonde says to the other, "Which do you think is farther away, Florida or the moon?"

The other blonde turns and says "Helloooooooo, can you see Florida...???"

CAR TROUBLE

A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the mechanic it died. After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly.

She asks, "What's the story?"

He replies, "Just crap in the carburetor"

She asks, "How often do I have to do that?"

           

SPEEDING TICKET

A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license. She replied in a huff, "I wish you guys would get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!"

           

RIVER WALK

There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank.

"Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?"

The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side."

           

AT THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE

A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor's office and says that her body hurts wherever she touches it.

"Impossible!" says the doctor. "Show me."

The redhead takes her finger, pushes on her left breast and screams. Then she pushes her elbow and screams even more. She pushes her knee and screams; likewise she pushes her ankle and screams. Everywhere she touches makes her scream.

The doctor says, "You're not really a redhead, are you?

"Well, no" she says, "I'm actually a blonde."

"I thought so," the doctor says. "Your finger is broken."

           

KNITTING

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL OVER!"

"NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

           

BLONDE ON THE SUN

A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day. The Russian said, "We were the first in space!"

The American said, "We were the first on the moon!"

The Blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!"

The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads.

"You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian.

To which the Blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"

           

IN A VACUUM

A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature. Her question was: "If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?"

She thought for a time and then asked, "Is it on or off?"

DOGGY STYLE?

A brunette, a redhead and a blonde sat in a gynaecologist office discussing their pregnancies.

“Mine will be a boy because he was on top,” said the brunette.

“Mine will be a girl because I was on top,” said the redhead.

“Oh my,” asked the blonde, “does that mean I’m having puppies?”

FOOTBALL

A guy took his blonde girlfriend to her first football game. They had great seats right behind their team's bench. After the game, he asked her how she liked the experience.

"Oh, I really liked it," she replied, "especially the tight pants and all the big muscles, but I just couldn't understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents."

Dumbfounded, her date asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, I saw them flip a coin and one team got it and then for the rest of the game, all they kept screaming was: "Get the quarterback! Get the quarterback!" Hel-LLLO! It's only 25 cents!

FLOWERS

A blonde and a redhead are walking down the street and pass a flower shop where the redhead happens to  see her boyfriend buying flowers.
She sighs and says, "Oh, crap, my boyfriend is buying me flowers again."
The blonde looks quizzically at her and says, "What's the big deal, don't you like getting flowers?"
The red head says, "Oh sure, but he always has expectations  after giving me flowers, and I just don't feel like spending  the next three days on my back with my legs in the air."
The blonde says, "Don't you have a vase?"

           

FINALLY, THE BLONDE JOKE TO END ALL BLONDE JOKES!

A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex.

Her friend said, "Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?"

"HELLLOOOOOOO......," answered the blond. "They're watch dogs!"

WHY MEN LIE

One day, while a woodcutter was cutting a branch of a tree above the river, his axe fell into the river.

When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying ?"

The woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into the water.

The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe.

"Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord again went down and came up with a silver axe.  

"Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

Again, the woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord went down again and came up with an iron axe.  

"Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "Yes."

The Lord was pleased with the man's honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happily.

Later one day while he was walking with his wife along the riverbank, the woodcutter's wife fell into the river.

When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, "Why are you crying?"

"Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!"

The Lord went down into the water and came up with Jennifer Lopez.

"Is this your wife?" the Lord asked.

"Yes," cried the woodcutter.

The Lord was furious. "You cheat!  That is an untruth!"

The woodcutter replied, "Oh, forgive me, my Lord.  It is a misunderstanding. You see, if I said 'no' to Jennifer Lopez, You will come up with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Then if I also say 'no' to her, you will thirdly come up with my wife, and I will say ' yes, and then all three will be given to me.  But Lord, I am a poor man and I will not be able to take care of all three wives, so that's why I said yes this time."

The moral of the story:  Whenever a man lies, it is for an honorable and useful reason.

THREE BAR MICE

Three mice are sitting at a bar in a pretty rough neighborhood late at night, trying to impress each other about how tough they are.

The first mouse throws down a shot of bourbon, slams the empty glass onto the bar, turns to the second mouse and says, "When I see a mousetrap, I lie on my back and set it off with my foot. When the bar comes down, I catch it in my teeth, bench press it twenty times to work up an appetite, and then make off with the cheese."

The second mouse orders up two shots of tequila, drinks them down one after the other, slams both glasses on the bar, turns to the first mouse and replies, "Oh yeah? When I see rat poison, I collect as much as I can, take it home, grind it up to a powder, and add it to my coffee each morning so I can get a good buzz going for the rest of the day."

The first two mice then turn to the third mouse. The third mouse finishes the beer he has in front of him, lets out a long sigh and says to the first two, "I don't have time for this bullshit. Gotta go home and fuck the cat."

ONE FOR THE BIRDS

There was a naked man resting and enjoying the view on the beach. He saw a little girl coming toward him, so he covered himself with the newspaper he was reading.

The girl came up to him and asked, "What do you have under the newspaper?"

Thinking quickly, the guy replied, "A bird."

The girl walked away, and the guy fell asleep. When he woke up, he was in a hospital in tremendous pain. The police asked what happened and he replied: "I don't know. I was lying on the beach, this little girl asked me a question, I guess I dozed off, and the next thing I know is I'm here."

The police went to the beach, found the girl, and asked her, "What did you do to that naked fellow?"

After a pause, the girl replied, "To him? Nothing. I was playing with his bird and it spit on me, so I broke its neck, cracked its eggs, and set its nest on fire!"