Oilmen, Policemen and Nightclub Owners in the Suburbs

One aspect of growing up is making sense of your place in the world based on what your parents do for a living. In the suburban neighborhood where I grew up in the fifties, my daddy was a businessman who went to a downtown office building every day. He often worked late into the night and through the weekend. By late teens, I had categorized him as a computerdooter—he managed the accounting and tax records for bigtime oil men like Clint Murchison and Jake L. Hamon.

IBM programmer and machine operator with IBM motto circa 1950s

Many southwest daddies made their livings connected somehow to the oil industry. On the street where I grew up, we had two other types of daddies who seemed strange and alien to me. Two families had daddies who were policemen and one family had a dad who owned a bar with pool tables down on East Grand.

In the last week or so I’ve found much info on the web about the lives of Dallas oilmen, policemen and nightclub owners in 1963. Why? Because the President was assassinated here. Not only have numerous governmental agencies investigated the city, but thousands of conspiracy theorists and even Hollywood continue to spend much time obsessed with this time in U.S. history.

I was too young to have had a chance to visit Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, but here’s a clip of a Hollywood rendition of what went on. The dancer is a fantasy combination of Candy Barr, Judith Campbell Exner, and Marilyn Monroe. In the last scene, Ruby defends working gals and the American Guild of Variety Artists.

Click below for photos from Carousel:

http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z214/diocynic/Carousel/

Here's more on Candy Barr:

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/celebrity/candy_barr/1_index.html

By 1966 or so, I was old enough to go from Dallas to Ft. Worth with a carload of high school friends to visit the Cellar. The dancers removed their bottoms as well as tops. They had lights and buzzers to warn if a police raid was occurring.

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/xdt1.html

If you misbehaved bad enough, the bouncers would throw you down the stairs just like Jack Ruby had done at the Carousel. [Here’s a link to descriptions of Ruby’s abilities as a bouncer of drunks from his club:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ruby5.htm

] Supposedly the Cellar didn’t have a liquor license at the time I visited, so you could buy whiskey-flavored drinks for $4 each. By 1 am or so, I was becoming a bit sleepy from the drinks and endless naked bodies. Sitting Indian-style of the floor , I laid back on a cushion. One of the barmaids kicked me in the head—they were much rougher that Reinhardt teachers—notifying me that I had better sit up and behave.

In the early 70s, I had a friend who took me to the Busy Bee on South Industrial and the Fare on Greenville. Busy Bee was a traditional burlesque joint. The dancers were older and obviously skilled dancers who could do amazing things with their breasts. The Fare had skinny, young go-go dancers.

At this link, Joe Bob describes some of the later history of exotic dancing in Dallas:

http://www.joebobbriggs.com/misccolumns/newpuritanism.asp

Several years ago, the Dallas CVB suffered scandal in part because bed tax funds were used to take convention planners to Dallas strip clubs.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~clj5/Ethics/articles/Isbell31.pdf

A criteria for many meeting planners is if their conventioneers will find a good selection of strip clubs in the city where they hold their convention—same as in Jack Ruby’s days. And I’m sure there are some Dallas policemen who have complex relationships with the nightclub owners. The national association of gentlemen's club owners recognizes Dallas's important role in this trade group. http://www.acenational.org/default.aspx

Big oilmen in Dallas continue to run many things, just like H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison used their power in Dallas 1963. Arkansas oilman Jerry Jones follows Bum Bright and Clint Murchison (both of whom helped pay for the DMN Kennedy Questions ad the morning of the assassination) and Lamar Hunt, son of H.L. Hunt, in their hobbies of prime time sports glamour. Check out conspiracy theorists' stories about Murchison, Hunt and Bright at

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmurchison.htm

And what LBJ’s "girlfriend" had to say about Dallas oilmen at

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/300806jfk.htm