THE PHOENIX ARISES

THE PHOENIX ARISES

This story is true; compiled of facts from personal knowledge and conjecture derived from newspaper reports and there are three main actors.

The first was a gangster from Chicago, name o’ Murray Humphreys, an associate of Al Capone and the brains of The Outfit, who, once Capone was imprisoned for tax evasion, left the windy city and settled in Norman, Oklahoma. Humphreys, a main player in Capone’s rise to the top, though he was not Italian, was revered for his money making ability.

The second, another gangster, from New York, name of “Owney” Vincent Madden, had made a fortune from prohibition. Best known for owning the famed Cotton Club, Madden, suspected o’ the murder of another violent man, Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, was made to understand that it was time to leave New York forever, settling in Hot Springs, Arkansas where, with the complicity of a corrupt city government and police force, he continued to thrive.

Our stage is a small town barbershop, name o’ Timmy Joe Sullivan’s which offered, as the sign said: “the best damn haircut in all of Oklahoma”. Men gathered here for a trim and to take part in the jocularity that formed part of the everyday conversation.

“Hey, Timmy Joe, can you trim my nose and ears, while you’re at it? I know it’s nature but it just keeps growing”.

“And stops growing in the place you do want it; on the top of your head”.

Every man, sitting patiently on faded, ancient banquettes awaiting their turn, would join in the laughter. You can picture the scene:

Timmy Joe Sullivan’s barbershop, Texhoma, a great place to shoot the breeze, vent about the Sooners’ poor form or whatever. For the twenty odd minutes that it took Timmy Joe to give the man on the throne his undivided attention, maybe only ten minutes was allowed for the trim and the rest was devoted to chat. Timmy Joe, with his soft Irish accent, knew exactly what all o’ his regulars wanted in the way of a haircut, remembered each’s little idiosyncrasy and, to all o’ his customers, felt like a close friend in whom they could confide without fear o’ judgement. Satisfied with their new coiffure, they would disappear back into their worlds and not give Timmy Joe another thought until that time, two to three weeks hence, when they would require his skill with scissors, once again...and that’s just how TJ liked it.

“Hey, Timmy Joe, how would you describe the business o' barbering?”

“Well, personally, I like to say I am engaged in deforestation”.

TJ had set up shop in the town way back in ’22 and the barber had soon become a favourite o’ the local community, not least, on account o’ the ten cents for a cut, five cents for a shave that was the fixed price for the next two years; no appointments necessary and no jumping the line. Everybody knew the rules and, if’n anybody left the premises for even ten seconds, his place would be forfeited in the queue. Womenfolk trusted their young ‘uns to Timmy Joe because, not only did he have a wooden board that he would place across the armrests o’ his barber chair so that kids could sit, proud and tall, staring into the mirror, but Timmy Joe remembered all the boys’ names, their favourite games and the like and the young boys all loved to jaw with TJ and looked upon the barber as they would a favourite uncle.

If'n a mother insisted on waiting for her boy, Timmy Joe always ensured that there was a copy o’ Modern Woman or the new craze, Vogue, positioned in the magazine rack along with Time and Reader’s Digest and, for some strange reason, The Chicagoan, all o' which TJ subscribed to.

In ’26, four years after setting up business, the barber had proposed to Lily Evangeline, a young widow, who had been bringing her son, Charlie, for his monthly trim ever since his father had died in an automobile accident, twelve months previously. Timmy Joe had kept a respectful distance from the widow and had gone out o' his way to lift the sorrow that engulfed the eight year old in the chair and barber and boy had become fast friends and, after her period of mourning had ended, she had accepted Timmy Joe’s offer o’ marriage with alacrity. Lily had inherited the farm, almost four hundred acres devoted to soybean and rice, upon her husband’s death and was considered a catch by all and sundry but Timmy Joe, though he began to live on the farm, had made it abundantly clear from the get go that he wanted nothing, financially, from the spread and considered it to be Charlie Evangeline’s future; to be protected at all costs.

That’s the kind o' man that Timmy Joe was, an honest teetotaller admired by all that knew him. TJ was a devoted husband and, though he knew that he could never replace Charlie’s real papa, he was determined to be as good a step-father as it was possible to be and they were, indeed, a happy little unit.

Mornings were quiet in the barber shop, which suited Timmy Joe just fine. He’d make himself a cup o’ coffee and settle down in the one and only barber chair to read the latest periodical and could, quite contentedly, have stayed in that position all day long but, as customers began to drift in, he enjoyed catching up with those he hadn’t seen for a few weeks and hearing their latest news. Sage advice was lavished, laughs were many and, occasionally, sorrows were shared in genuine empathy.

“Hey, Timmy Joe, did you ever see a man without a beard?”

“Yep, many times. They call ‘em women”.

But, every now and again, Timmy Joe would be asked a question that seemed to, momentarily, flummox him and, if anybody had really been paying attention to the way he answered, they may have noticed inconsistencies. One o’ these questions was to do with where TJ had originated from? Depending on who the questioner had been, TJ came up with a variety o’ different Irish locations. The other thing that people asked was why TJ subscribed to The Chicagoan, Chicago being so far north. To this, Timmy Joe would, sometimes, say that he had passed through the city, one time, and taken a shine to it or that he had subscribed in error but couldn’t be bothered to cancel the subscription.

I, as a regular frequenter o’ these premises, was savvy enough to have picked up on these nuances and, as an attorney at law, my curiosity was aroused. My office was above the barbershop and, when the law business was quiet, I would wander down and brew a coffee for us and sit and enjoy the repartee that was as normal as the sound of scissors clicking. In this way, I became close with Timmy Joe, intrigued though I remained about his background.

But, apart from these minor anomalies, life for Timmy Joe could not have been better. He was happily wed, lived in a fine house, loved the day to day calmness and steadiness o’ tending his barber business and the years passed peacefully and uneventfully, the business making enough to more than cover the needs o’ Timmy Joe and his family and the farm making a modest, annual profit, all o’ which was ploughed back into the agricultural business in the form o’ machinery upgrades.

“Hey, Timmy Joe, what d’you call a line o’ people waiting for a haircut?”

“A barbecue”.

That’s about when nature began to take a turn for the worse, in a way far more destructive than anybody could have foretold. The drought came in three cruel waves: ’34, ’36 and ’39 and it were the in-between years that fooled most people into thinking the worst was over and encouraged them to borrow heavily and reinvest in their land, only to be caught out, yet again, the following year.

The lack of rain, combined with the high winds served to sweep the unanchored topsoil into clouds o’ dust, known as Black Blizzards, reducing visibility to mere feet, making agriculture impossible, leading to the death o’ crops and the bankruptcy o’ thousands. Banks foreclosed on mortgages and families, known as Okies, were forced to uproot and head west. The Dust Bowl had arrived!

Through it all, Texhoma suffered greatly, including the Evangeline acreage but they had two great advantages: firstly, they were beholden to no bank, having no mortgage on their land. Secondly, they had TJ. Though he had never seen anything like this disaster, TJ kept a cool head in a crisis and he reasoned that the three o’ them could live on the money his barber shop brought in, even though business had slowed considerably since the mass exodus of Okies.

The barber shop became the place for gatherings to debate the whys and what nots o’ this cataclysmic event and everybody had an opinion on cause and solution. Timmy Joe managed to earn enough to see his family through the disaster, long as it lasted, and he strongly advised that the four hundred acres be left fallow with not a single dollar spent on it until the crisis was over for good, as it surely would be, one day. Trusting TJ’s wisdom, Lily and Charlie did exactly that. They watched others invest money, usually mortgaged, into their land and, for a time, look to be recovering, only for a new wave of drought to suddenly arrive and destroy everything.

In ’38, those leeches, the land grabbers, made their move. They, too, knew that Mother Nature would turn eventually and they started to buy up huge tracts o’ land for cents on the dollar. Many families felt that they were lucky to get anything for their acres o’ dust and accepted a pittance for land they’d farmed for generations.

Charlie, when first approached, politely declined the derisory offer made. The second such overture was not presented so pleasantly, with a number o’ the Dixie mafia hovering menacingly in the background. Charlie, now a young man o’ twenty one years was not easily intimidated and, once again, refused the offer made. Lily, though, sensed that these men would be back, unwilling to countenance that anybody would dare to reject their proposal but, despite her fears, she urged her son to say nothing to TJ. Why, exactly, I cannot say. Maybe, intuitively, she sensed something hitherto undisclosed about her husband.

It did not take long for Murray Humphreys to realise the golden opportunity that the catastrophe o’ the Dust Bowl presented and, joining forces with Owney Madden, they began to buy up as much land as they could across the three states o’ Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Where farmers refused to sell cheaply, intimidatory tactics were used and reports o’ homes being firebombed and owners disappearing, never to be seen again, proliferated.

In Timmy Joe’s barbershop, talk o’ these happenings was becoming more and more regular but, on account o’ Lily assuring him that no such threats had been made on their property, though he listened with interest, to the stories his customers told, TJ felt no undue concern for his own family’s wellbeing.

So, when, somebody rushed into his barber shop, one day, and yelled that the Evangeline property was ablaze, nobody was more shocked than Timmy Joe who urged me to drive him home in my car but, by the time we had driven the twenty miles, the barn had burnt completely to the ground incinerating livestock that had been contained within. The house was untouched and Lily and Charlie, though traumatised, were unharmed. TJ was just pleased that his family was safe, reasoning that they could always rebuild a barn as everything had been insured. But Charlie, devastated by this event, was no longer willing to remain quiet and, despite his mother’s protestations, blurted out the truth o’ the attempts to intimidate him into selling the land. Timmy Joe was deeply shocked, as was I. Without another word, he asked me to drive him back to Texhoma but, en route, insisted on stopping at a bar on the lake and ordering a double bourbon, the first drink, he said, that he had taken in almost fourteen years. When he ordered another. I was dumbfounded. Worried for my silent friend, his face betraying all sorts of internal emotions, I kept him company but confined myself to sarsaparilla. By closing time, TJ had consumed an entire bottle o’ bourbon but, far from appearing intoxicated, he seemed resolute and calm and asked me to drive him home.

Mother and son were waiting anxiously and smothered him with hugs and kisses for they surely loved that man. I stood in the background as he addressed his family. This is a verbatim account o’ what he said, best as I can recall:

“I have things to tell you; things that I have kept from you. I mean to get this out and, then, you can judge me, one way or the other. My name is not Timothy Sullivan. It is Tommy O’Connor. I am better known as Thomas “Terrible” O Connor. I was born in County Limerick and was brought to America by my parents as a young boy. I got into bad company in Chicago and began a life of crime, working as an enforcer for the Outfit. That’s where I gained the moniker of “Terrible” for, when my blood was up, there was not a man alive that did not quake upon mention of my name. In 1921, a corrupt cop tried to shake me down and I administered a severe beating. I was staying in a motel when he and several others surrounded the place and a shootout occurred. With shots raining down on me, I was firing blindly in an effort to escape and one of my bullets hit and killed an officer and I became a hunted fugitive...”

I could tell that Lily was astounded to hear this tale, coming from the lips of her husband. Charlie, however, seemed engrossed. Me? I was busy putting together all the clues I had noted over the years: the different birth places, that need to keep up with news from Chicago.

“I was on the lam for two months but was finally arrested in Minnesota and brought back to stand trial in Cook County where I was sentenced to hang by Judge Kickham Scanlan, yet another corrupt official of that disreputable county...”

We all gasped. A condemned man?

“Four days before my execution, I contrived to escape with four others when I overpowered a guard and took his gun. At that time, there was no Cook County sheriff’s department so I was able to cover miles and miles of open countryside without being detected. Long story short, I ended up in Norman, working as an apprentice to a barber, found I had an aptitude for cutting hair, moved to Texhoma and set up my own business, where I determined to live a good, honest life, as far removed from my former ways as possible but, sometimes, fate decrees otherwise. There you have it but, I mean for you to know that, now that my family has been threatened, I aim to exact my revenge and no man can stop me. My blood is up”.

With that, TJ stood, kissed his wife and step-son and reached out to me for the keys to my automobile which I handed over without question and I watched him walk out into the darkness o’ that fateful night, the last time I ever saw him.

Those are the facts. You now know the truth o’ the third character in my story’ my friend, the mild mannered barber, Timothy Joe Sullivan who was really Thomas “Terrible” O’Connor and, we three, had borne witness to this phoenix arising from the ashes.

From this point on, my tale relies on conjecture and you can draw your own conclusions. According to the Hot Springs Sentinel, that same night, a lone gunman entered the hotel and casino complex, The Southern, that Owney Madden had established in Hot Springs, Arkansas and where the likes o’ Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello were frequent visitors. The description o’ that gunman, for sure, fitted TJ to a tee. Seven o’ the Dixie mafia were killed in the ensuing gunfight and Madden, himself, was fortunate to escape with a flesh wound.

The following night, my car was found abandoned in Norman, Oklahoma and the Norman Transcript wrote of a gunman who had shot dead two bodyguards outside the home o’ the notorious Chicago mobster, Murray Humphreys, before entering the house and confronting the occupant. Later, the gunman left, with Humphreys, who was unharmed, admitting to having recognised the intruder but refusing to say who he was or what had taken place between them.

Thereafter, strange as it may seem, the mob’s involvement in the lucrative land grabbing o’ the Dust Bowl years, ended abruptly as they focused on their other illicit activities. I never saw TJ again and Lily and Charlie, a few days after these events, took train for parts unknown and have never returned to Texhoma. The four hundred acres lay, just as they were, still in the name o’ Charlie Evangeline, though the rains, as TJ had prophesied, returned in ’40 and the land was reborn. In ’42, quietly, without fuss, the farm was sold in a private transaction that fetched top dollar. I, myself, handled the legal transaction.

“Hey, Timmy Joe, you should only charge me half price as I’m almost bald”

“Sure, I should be charging you double as it takes me so long to find your hair”.

I miss my friend, I surely do. I miss the laughs we shared but, most of all, I miss the best damn haircut in all of Oklahoma.