Always for the Underdog: Leather Britches Smith and the Grabow War

Chapter 8: The Outlaw Applied

154 Chapter Eight the฀outLaw฀aPPLied weeks, months, years, and even decades following the Grabow trial, the story still makes the papers. Months after the trial, rumors of a potential strike in a Merryville mill circulated. Tensions rose, but the fears proved to be unfounded. A year later, Charles Cline, a man arrested during the Grabow Trial, found himself arrested again. This time Cline turned out to be the leader of a band of arms smugglers whose band dealt guns and ammunition across the Mexican border. After his capture, Cline led officers to the smugglers’ current camp, and another great gunfight ensued. Cline also produced several documents proving IWW’s interests in Zapata’s Mexico.1 From around 1930, every ten or twenty years, the Lake Charles American Press, the Beaumont Enterprise, the DeRidder Daily News, or some other local paper runs a story about Smith and Grabow. Usually, a news reporter, such as Ralph Ramos, or even a folklorist, adds a few fresh details or a scrap of news. Sometimes the work, like the work of Ramos, delves a bit deeper or stretches a little broader than past discussions . Sometimes an article looks at the closed mills or the weeds currently taking over Grabow, warning readers about the past fading away and urging them to work to preserve it. Each time, those in the know the฀outLaw฀aPPLied฀฀฀|฀฀฀155 reinvigorate their own ideas, and those unaware learn a bit about the story. Each time, Leather Britches rides again. When the library gathered Ester Terry, Gussie Townsley, Frank Hennigan, and me around a table to address a crowd of people, the Grabow War and Leather Britches Smith returned to the forefront. This event offered an opportunity for both teller and audience to share and revitalize the past, if only in a small way. Open to the public, this environment also extended a teller’s typical audience beyond family members and close friends. The event displayed people’s storytelling skills and knowledge; it validated each teller’s status in the community . When Mrs. Terry told her version at the panel, she captivated the crowd, keeping them on the edge of their seats. She demonstrated her own knowledge of the past and her skill as a narrator. In a sense, not only did she celebrate the area’s past and stress the importance of the outlaw figure, but she also employed the figure as a cultural resource for her own ends. At the end of her version, she explained, “We had close connections and kinfolk to Leather Britches, and he was a character that everybody should know about.” Almost a hundred years later, people do still know about him. In fact, Smith, like other outlaws in other towns throughout No Man’s Land, functions as an important cultural resource for all of Merryville. People know about him, and they use him when they need him—summer, winter, spring, or fall. The end of January 2005—a cold front crawled its way to Lake Charles, and the brisk air livened people’s steps. The city, poised to experience the annual Southwest District Livestock Show and Rodeo, readied itself. Schools planned field trips, and hotels prepared every room they could. With the livestock show and rodeo a week away, the city sensed the closeness of the event, especially as its herald came to town. Every year, the Western Heritage Days celebration starts a week before the rodeo. Beginning on the Saturday a week before the rodeo weekend, Western Heritage Days, a kickoff event, labors to generate interest in the rodeo and attract new fans, especially newcomers. During the event, throughout the city of Lake Charles, residents witness events hearkening back to the Old West, which easily could be the Old Southwest or even Old Texas or, for that matter, even Old Southwest 156฀฀฀|฀฀฀aLways฀For฀the฀underdoG Louisiana since these events primarily deal with a crowd interacting with livestock or watching a reenactment of a gunfight. After all, a long tradition of cattle and cowboy culture stretches through the history of Southwest Louisiana; the Lake Charles university even uses the cowboy as its mascot. Quite unexpectedly on a Saturday, my wife witnessed this opening event one year. She drove into a Wal-Mart parking lot, found a space, and parked. She unloaded our two little girls (four and two at the time), buckled them in a shopping cart, and made her way...