The Last Sheriff in Texas by James P. McCollom

Author:James P. McCollom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2017-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

17

At the start of the year, Vail again was in hero mode, his picture in the San Antonio Express:

To the Rescue

Sheriff Vail Ennis is shown as he “delivered” Soprano Frances Yeend, a New York opera singer who was stranded in Beeville Friday morning, to her hotel in San Antonio. Miss Yeend could not make connections for San Antonio because of engine trouble on one of the Trans-Texas airplanes. Ennis took the diva to the Alamo City in his car, arriving in time for an important rehearsal with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra. “The speedometer never left 120,” she told the Express reporter. “It was quite a trip.” “That sure is a brave gal,” Vail told the reporter. “I made her an honorary deputy.”

Camp Ezell had asked Vail to do it. In return, the Symphony comped tickets to Camp and Helen for Miss Yeend’s Saturday performance in Verdi’s Requiem Mass, which concluded with the diva singing “Libera me,” which seemed appropriate after her ride in the Hudson. Camp was in opera heaven. The Ezells were back at the symphony in January for Dorothy Kirsten’s performance as Tosca, Dr. Victor Alessandro directing. Camp gushed: “Although I had seen Tosca twice—once at the Metropolitan and once at Philadelphia’s La Scala—I enjoyed the Saturday night performance of Puccini’s work even more than I had liked the previous interpretations.”

Johnny Barnhart’s cloud hadn’t lifted. Classmates in UT Law ’49 were two years into careers in Dallas and Houston, working with mentors like Leon Jaworski and Joe Jameil. Johnny Barnhart was in solo practice, officed above Mr. Bickford’s jewelry store. He got to the office by eight. Andrea was always there when he arrived. At ten and at three he went to coffee, more often at the Shamrock, where he could count on a warm greeting from Camp Ezell and Gentry Dugat. He visited with the kindly, blind, unjudging Raymond Brown by his chair outside the newsstand. Little else was left of Johnny’s familiar downtown Beeville. Katie Corrigan no longer worked at the newsstand. Reese Wade had become inaccessible. Old school friends found ways to avoid him. But at five, he could get into his red Ford and drive twelve blocks to the tiny 620-square-foot house on Lott Street where the lovely Ginny awaited. She had turned twenty-one in the fall, had worked as a teacher at the junior high, but quit the job in December because she couldn’t bear the tedium of the PTA meetings. Much of their social life centered on St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. As the congregation’s only married couple under thirty, they were doted on. Gladys Berning was trying to teach Ginny to play “St. Louis Woman” on the church organ. Johnny wanted to teach her to play golf. The weather in South Texas was marvelous. January was like spring, with several days in the midseventies. The Thursday golf group at the Beeville Country Club missed just one turn. Greens on the nine-hole course were green. There was golf, and there was shopping.

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